Category Archives: movies

On Sleeper

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You know, Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper (1973), would be funny if it weren’t so profectic. Today we are obsessed with our smart phones, tablets, and laptops to the extent that we would be helpless to do anything if the power went out. Woody awakes in a future world to find giant cooperations taking over the world, technology has disconnected people from nature, and robots have a human form, but they all have the same face. The heart of his satire lies with the juxtaposition of his skinny anti-hero, who takes silly to greater heights, and an advanced civilization whose technology has long since outstripped its feeble ethics and morals. Governments have turned into mechanized oligarchies, and primitive revolutionary groups roam the countryside, spouting anarchy and non-conformity. Technology has triumphed over the human form, and physical love can only be done in a machine. Yet, his satire seems almost innocent. He riffs on the dangers of too much technology, the alienating nature of technology, and the absurd inventions that are supposed to make life better. He also riffs on government, control, oppression, revolution, science, religion, sex, and institutional corruption. The visuals, the dialogues, the jokes play on a well-established cinematic traditions, satirizing a series of films from the late sixties and early seventies that deal with apocalyptic end-of-civilization scenarios. The film only takes itself (half) seriously when the main characters plot to steal the “great” leader’s nose–all that is left of him. “We’re here to see the nose. We hear it’s running.” Sleeper also riffs on Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, and Woody gives viewers a strange cautionary satire on the dangers of computers and how their interests are completely disconnected from humanity at all. The movie, in all its absurd silliness, seriously discusses the dehumanization of people as technology creeps in on all sides. This seems to be a common motif in the 21st century.

On Sleeper

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You know, Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper (1973), would be funny if it weren’t so profectic. Today we are obsessed with our smart phones, tablets, and laptops to the extent that we would be helpless to do anything if the power went out. Woody awakes in a future world to find giant cooperations taking over the world, technology has disconnected people from nature, and robots have a human form, but they all have the same face. The heart of his satire lies with the juxtaposition of his skinny anti-hero, who takes silly to greater heights, and an advanced civilization whose technology has long since outstripped its feeble ethics and morals. Governments have turned into mechanized oligarchies, and primitive revolutionary groups roam the countryside, spouting anarchy and non-conformity. Technology has triumphed over the human form, and physical love can only be done in a machine. Yet, his satire seems almost innocent. He riffs on the dangers of too much technology, the alienating nature of technology, and the absurd inventions that are supposed to make life better. He also riffs on government, control, oppression, revolution, science, religion, sex, and institutional corruption. The visuals, the dialogues, the jokes play on a well-established cinematic traditions, satirizing a series of films from the late sixties and early seventies that deal with apocalyptic end-of-civilization scenarios. The film only takes itself (half) seriously when the main characters plot to steal the “great” leader’s nose–all that is left of him. “We’re here to see the nose. We hear it’s running.” Sleeper also riffs on Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, and Woody gives viewers a strange cautionary satire on the dangers of computers and how their interests are completely disconnected from humanity at all. The movie, in all its absurd silliness, seriously discusses the dehumanization of people as technology creeps in on all sides. This seems to be a common motif in the 21st century.

On Frozen (spoiler alert)

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The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On Frozen (spoiler alert)

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The latest animated film from Disney is out, and it’s a doozy. Talk about turning tradition upside down, this movie takes the Disney princess paradigm and rips it apart. The cute young prince is a traitor, and it’s a working class fellow who shows what it takes to be a real man. The story is an old one, perhaps the oldest one, about two siblings who get into trouble and end up apart. This isn’t Cain and Able, but Elsa and Ana, close as young children, find themselves separated by more than space as adults. As it is with almost all Disney products, the dark cloud of loss hangs over the film when the girls’ parents are lost in a shipwreck, turning the young girls into orphans. The movie recounts the coming of age of both sisters–one will be queen, the other, trouble. The wild card in this magical kingdom is Elsa’s powers over cold, ice, and snow, and her inability to control those powers. The movie quickly settles into a permanent winter, Elsa has exiled herself from her kingdom, and Ana has set out to save her accompanied by a man who sells ice, a goofy reindeer, and an even goofier snowman–the court jester of the film. The film’s academy award winning song, “Let It Go,” is Elsa’s anthem of release, liberty, and freedom from the constraints of the male dominated patriarchy under which she has been living her entire life. It is her now absent father who has condemned her to a life of solitude, away from her sister, in which she must not use her powers, which are a metaphor for female agency–the ability of women to decide their own futures regardless of what the male members of the family might have to say. Elsa is strong, powerful, not a helpless Disney princess that needs saving by some handsome male character, albeit woodsman, prince or whatever. Elsa is eventually saved by Ana who makes a gesture of true love toward her sister. Elsa’s anthem, “Let It Go,” underscores her ability to recognize publically that she is a strong woman with the ability and desire to make her own decisions about her life and that the patriarchy can go take a long walk of a short pier. In the end, the typical Disney prince has been cast into exile, the castle doors are flung wide, and Elsa will just be herself now that she has nothing to hide. She will not be someone else’s idea of a perfect helpless female, and she doesn’t need any males around to reinforce either her authority or her identity. She rejects spurious myths about femininity, about how good girls act, and about female passivity in the face of male authority. She rejects tradition, embracing her new identity as an independent and happy person who can live on her own. The movie does not end with any weddings, although one wonders about Ana and her ice salesman boyfriend–she has been learning about love from a snowman who likes warm hugs.

On fractals

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Though they are complex to describe, you have seen them many times in snow flakes, branching river deltas, the branches of pine trees, ancient ferns, and the florettes of a cauliflower. Fractals, though difficult to define, seem to be repeating self-similar patterns that repeat until they are infinitesimly small, but always the same. Fractals, if you were to analyse them from a mathematical standpoint, are non-linear functions that form all sorts of beautiful loops, and swirls that go on and on into a vanishing point somewhere off of the graph paper. We see fractals that occur in nature all the time. They are so common that we would miss if they weren’t there, but we ignore them because they are ubiquitous. Fractals are imprinted in our subconscious to the point that a nautilous shell can only have one design–a spiral of ever increasing size. If the fractal weren’t there, it wouldn’t be a nautilous shell, or pine tree branch, frost on a window, branching lightening, or the Mississippi River delta. Ever look at the way medieval architects imprint a fractal design on the front of Gothic cathedrals? Fractals are pleasing to the eye and soothing for the soul. Part of the universes harmony is wrapped up in fractals, including the designs of galaxies. Now, in the Oscar winning song of the year, “Let it Go,” the word fractal is included in the lyrics, and the main character creates an ice palace out of macro-fractal snow flake. Fascinating.

On fractals

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Though they are complex to describe, you have seen them many times in snow flakes, branching river deltas, the branches of pine trees, ancient ferns, and the florettes of a cauliflower. Fractals, though difficult to define, seem to be repeating self-similar patterns that repeat until they are infinitesimly small, but always the same. Fractals, if you were to analyse them from a mathematical standpoint, are non-linear functions that form all sorts of beautiful loops, and swirls that go on and on into a vanishing point somewhere off of the graph paper. We see fractals that occur in nature all the time. They are so common that we would miss if they weren’t there, but we ignore them because they are ubiquitous. Fractals are imprinted in our subconscious to the point that a nautilous shell can only have one design–a spiral of ever increasing size. If the fractal weren’t there, it wouldn’t be a nautilous shell, or pine tree branch, frost on a window, branching lightening, or the Mississippi River delta. Ever look at the way medieval architects imprint a fractal design on the front of Gothic cathedrals? Fractals are pleasing to the eye and soothing for the soul. Part of the universes harmony is wrapped up in fractals, including the designs of galaxies. Now, in the Oscar winning song of the year, “Let it Go,” the word fractal is included in the lyrics, and the main character creates an ice palace out of macro-fractal snow flake. Fascinating.

On scary movies

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I am currently watching “The Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man.” (1943) One of the multiple, cheap, and tawdry sequels that are so common in the film industry. The studios made all of those sequels, cheap and tawdry, because there was so much money to be made. No matter how bad the films were, they still made tons of money. They made/make money because people loved to be scared, to experience the vicarious thrill of fear that they do not have in their own lives. All scary films are about fear, and yet modern society is quickly becoming scary enough all by itself. Perhaps scary movies are more about the fears we harbor in our sub-conscience than about the ones we face daily on the freeways, at work, or at school. Most of these “monster” movies are based on the beauty and the beast dialectic, and this movie is no different. The beauty here is IIona Massey, a stunning blond actress from Budapest, and she plays opposite both the monster and the wolf man. The voice of reason and modern science is played by Dr. Mannering, the stand-in for the dead Dr. Frankenstein. The problem with making loads of sequels is that in each movie most of the characters are killed, maimed, or burned–often dismembered or frozen, and so you often need an entirely new cast for each film. Characters don’t carry over from movie to movie unless they can’t die or are already undead. The absurdity of life presented by the irrational story lines of most monster movies is a metaphor for the more abstract absurdity that makes up our everyday lives. The frightening part of the Frankenstein movies is the irrational, murderous nature of the crowd, the angry town’s people who want to lynch anything that moves, shouting, screaming, and whining about everything. The truly frightening part of these films occurs when you can’t see a difference between how the crowd acts in the film and how crowds act in real life. Real life, however, is often much more tragic, much more arbitrary than anything that Hollywood could ever dream up. The survivors of riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes can testify to the terrifying reality of the destructive nature of life on earth. Maybe we go to the movies to watch horror pictures and monster movies because, when the film is over, we know we can just get up and walk out.

On scary movies

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I am currently watching “The Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man.” (1943) One of the multiple, cheap, and tawdry sequels that are so common in the film industry. The studios made all of those sequels, cheap and tawdry, because there was so much money to be made. No matter how bad the films were, they still made tons of money. They made/make money because people loved to be scared, to experience the vicarious thrill of fear that they do not have in their own lives. All scary films are about fear, and yet modern society is quickly becoming scary enough all by itself. Perhaps scary movies are more about the fears we harbor in our sub-conscience than about the ones we face daily on the freeways, at work, or at school. Most of these “monster” movies are based on the beauty and the beast dialectic, and this movie is no different. The beauty here is IIona Massey, a stunning blond actress from Budapest, and she plays opposite both the monster and the wolf man. The voice of reason and modern science is played by Dr. Mannering, the stand-in for the dead Dr. Frankenstein. The problem with making loads of sequels is that in each movie most of the characters are killed, maimed, or burned–often dismembered or frozen, and so you often need an entirely new cast for each film. Characters don’t carry over from movie to movie unless they can’t die or are already undead. The absurdity of life presented by the irrational story lines of most monster movies is a metaphor for the more abstract absurdity that makes up our everyday lives. The frightening part of the Frankenstein movies is the irrational, murderous nature of the crowd, the angry town’s people who want to lynch anything that moves, shouting, screaming, and whining about everything. The truly frightening part of these films occurs when you can’t see a difference between how the crowd acts in the film and how crowds act in real life. Real life, however, is often much more tragic, much more arbitrary than anything that Hollywood could ever dream up. The survivors of riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes can testify to the terrifying reality of the destructive nature of life on earth. Maybe we go to the movies to watch horror pictures and monster movies because, when the film is over, we know we can just get up and walk out.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.