The holidays are here, and strangely it doesn't seem like they are. Maybe it's the 40 degree weather and the rain. It's sort of worrisome. I want snow and cheer, and we get rain and fog. It's not very conducive to singing songs.
Saw "The Island". It had a lot of potential, but it really was an overwrought political commentary on stem cell research. It was going along being a good little action flick, and then it bludgeons you to death with the club of morality. I'm all for movies making political statements, but there is a degree of tact in this process. "Good Night and Good Luck" was a blunt political commentary, but it was also one of the best acted movies I've seen all year. The script had tact and beauty, working you into the story, allowing you to understand what the characters were risking in taking on the system. The story developed after a while, slowly, and when it came to a head it was well timed. "The Island" has the chance to be an interesting movie, one where a character might actually choose to do something morally ambiguous, but instead it follows the cookie cutter formula of a happy ending. How great would it be to see a movie where the hero chooses to live a good life rather than risk his life? It would be very true to life. We would criticize our hero for not being one, not being a hero, but we would also relate. I would rather live a wonderful life with finanacial security than risk my neck for people I don't even know. I would make a poor hero in a movie. I think that most of us are cowards when it comes to that shit. I really do.
Here's a test. Go play something like paintball. Now imagine that when your friends get shot, they are really dead. Now imagine that your friends have all been taken down and you are alone in the face of 10 enemies. They can't see you, you're hiding behind a rock. You're safe. Sudeenly, they see you and start firing on where you are. Do you fight and die or try and live?
Self preservation is interesting like that. There are questions that you'll ask yourself, about the point of it all, and whether it would make any difference if you take one of them with you when you could just leave peacefully. But what if you couldn't? What if the only way out was death?
How does one get to the point where the only way out IS death? Wars, suicide, murders, it all makes little sense. I mean, one would assume that if you play your cards right, you could avoid being in a life or death situation, and having to choose who dies and who lives. I'm not talking about the moral choice of cutting the rope of a fellow climber to save the team, but more along the lines of a Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima, an insurgent in Iraq, or any of those situations. Where does death become the only option?
It seems like such an easy, lazy way out. It's hard to talk things through or end things reasonably. Eliminating the physical presence of a problem seems so easy. It's like swatting a big fly, but what if you had to look into the eyes of that fly? Hold the fly as it faded away.
I don't think I could do that. I don't know how people do that, even in extraordinary situations. I empathize with the coward in Saving Private Ryan. He's the only character that I really understand in that movie. He's not indoctrinated, he thinks. He has morals.
Man, I did not intend to go on that sort of rant. I just wanted to talk about movies. It's also late...so I'm not sure exactly what I just said. Harumpf.
On the bright side, I intend on starting a writing project tomorrow, to kill the time. Let's say a one act of some variety, or a short film.
-ccmas
Saw "The Island". It had a lot of potential, but it really was an overwrought political commentary on stem cell research. It was going along being a good little action flick, and then it bludgeons you to death with the club of morality. I'm all for movies making political statements, but there is a degree of tact in this process. "Good Night and Good Luck" was a blunt political commentary, but it was also one of the best acted movies I've seen all year. The script had tact and beauty, working you into the story, allowing you to understand what the characters were risking in taking on the system. The story developed after a while, slowly, and when it came to a head it was well timed. "The Island" has the chance to be an interesting movie, one where a character might actually choose to do something morally ambiguous, but instead it follows the cookie cutter formula of a happy ending. How great would it be to see a movie where the hero chooses to live a good life rather than risk his life? It would be very true to life. We would criticize our hero for not being one, not being a hero, but we would also relate. I would rather live a wonderful life with finanacial security than risk my neck for people I don't even know. I would make a poor hero in a movie. I think that most of us are cowards when it comes to that shit. I really do.
Here's a test. Go play something like paintball. Now imagine that when your friends get shot, they are really dead. Now imagine that your friends have all been taken down and you are alone in the face of 10 enemies. They can't see you, you're hiding behind a rock. You're safe. Sudeenly, they see you and start firing on where you are. Do you fight and die or try and live?
Self preservation is interesting like that. There are questions that you'll ask yourself, about the point of it all, and whether it would make any difference if you take one of them with you when you could just leave peacefully. But what if you couldn't? What if the only way out was death?
How does one get to the point where the only way out IS death? Wars, suicide, murders, it all makes little sense. I mean, one would assume that if you play your cards right, you could avoid being in a life or death situation, and having to choose who dies and who lives. I'm not talking about the moral choice of cutting the rope of a fellow climber to save the team, but more along the lines of a Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima, an insurgent in Iraq, or any of those situations. Where does death become the only option?
It seems like such an easy, lazy way out. It's hard to talk things through or end things reasonably. Eliminating the physical presence of a problem seems so easy. It's like swatting a big fly, but what if you had to look into the eyes of that fly? Hold the fly as it faded away.
I don't think I could do that. I don't know how people do that, even in extraordinary situations. I empathize with the coward in Saving Private Ryan. He's the only character that I really understand in that movie. He's not indoctrinated, he thinks. He has morals.
Man, I did not intend to go on that sort of rant. I just wanted to talk about movies. It's also late...so I'm not sure exactly what I just said. Harumpf.
On the bright side, I intend on starting a writing project tomorrow, to kill the time. Let's say a one act of some variety, or a short film.
-ccmas
posted by CCMAS | 2:22 AM
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