Moon

Sometimes I feel that the timeline of my life can be broadly broken down into thematic sections. The year of 2008 was one that was spent largely on figuring out why one ought to be ethical or moral when there may or may not be such a thing as divine retribution. In that patchwork of movies, momentary inspirations and misadventures, I concluded that morals and ethics preserve our sanctity and humanity. They exist to keep society from turning on itself and to prevent individuals from using each other as a means to an end. There is nothing inherently wrong about anybody’s ’immoral’ or ‘unethical’ action because we would be hardpressed to find a single, absolute standard to measure them. Nevertheless, the best gauge of what could be a desirable set of law for all of humanity would be one where everyone do not mind being subjected to at any one time. It would be like the idealistic Kantian model of categorical imperative.

 

Thus far, 2009 seems to be a year where I struggle to define what is to be human.  And the latest addition to the list of influences is Duncan Jones latest creation ‘Moon’. Here’s quoting from user ‘freemantle’ on the IMDB website about what the film is about:

 

In Duncan Jones’ vision of the future, the world’s energy needs are solved by mining the moon for helium-3 which can be used for nuclear fusion. Living on the dark side of the moon is Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), who is coming to the end of a 3 year contract. He has lived in isolation, with only GERTY (Kevin Spacey), a robot who is programmed to serve him. His only contact from the outside world is video messages from his wife (Dominique McElligott) and the company. When one of the mining machines suffers some damage Sam goes out to fix it. However, after seeing images he crashes and wakes up after in the infirmary. GERTY tells Sam he is under orders no to let out the base and he has to trick the robot before being allowed out. In the open spaces of the moon Sam finds another version of himself. Both falls quickly into conflict, both arguing they are the real Sam and the other is a clone. But both also know something wider and darker is happening and they need to solve it before a rescue team arrive.

 

‘Moon’ in 2009 reminds me a lot of what ‘Little Children’ had been to me in 2008 – a profound experience that really pushes me to understand what exactly is meant by humanity/morality. Just as how Little Children leads the audience to slowly give concession as to what is morally permissible, Moon carefully leads the audience to empathise with the clones of sam rockwell. It was such a natural progression that when the audience realise the truth about the situation, they struggle to really see them as anything less than human. Even GERTY, the AI robot which detects impeccably minor fluctuations sam’s emotions and which volunteered to violate protocols on a few occasion so as to help sam, causes serious dissonance. If artificial intelligence has been perfected to such an extent where it can fully mimick the entire spectrum of human emotions and respond empathetically to a follow human being, can we really say that it is just a man-made robot? How is it so different from us, whose mechanisms of emotions and experience is much less understood than a robot?

 

Of late, I realised that I’m a science-fiction convert. Questions about humanity future has never been more poignantly explored than in good sci-fi.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

When the Penguin told me to watch ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ by Edward Albee, he didn’t tell me to NOT watch it at night, and so I did. It was not meant to be of course, because it is too depressing a show to watch in the dead of the night. The theme of failed marriage(s) and pretences in the face of reality were hardly bed-time stories to go to sleep with. 

In his work, Albee picks at every single sliver of pretence and tears it apart with pure vehemence. For anyone who has gone through a long, unhappy relationship that for some reason did not end expectedly, he or she would relate to the mad and bitter tirade between Martha and George. The ability to use the vilest of words and the most despicable tactics possible to get at the person that you know only too well. The sharpest incisions into the weakest spots. Yet, it is ironically this very ability that keeps the marriage together because it is the preciseness of the assaults that strangely forms a bond of intimacy and confidential knowledge, one that is unduplicable elsewhere with a different person.

Towards the end of the story, before the climatic exorcism, Martha divulges the way she has habitually attacked George’s weak spots in their tortured relationship. In a remarkable moment of self-revelation, she acknowledges her deep, authentic, triumphant love and bond with her soulmate, which I thought was exceedingly poignant. 

You’re all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops. (To herself) I disgust me. You know, there’s only been one man in my whole life who’s ever made me happy. Do you know that?…George, my husband…George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me – whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad…Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes, this will do; who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad…Some day, hah! Some night, some stupid, liquor-ridden night, I will go too far and I’ll either break the man’s back or I’ll push him off for good which is what I deserve.

I also sort of liked how the ’supposedly’ innocent and perfect couple represented by Nick and Honey were cornered as the story progressed. Their image was symptomatic of the blissful appearances that many married couples fight to maintain in the public’s eyes, and it was in some ways cathartic to understand how such perfection are not always achievable ideals. As Martha and George up their antes by using their guests as pawns, we begin to see the young couple’s perfection buckle under, thereby revealing the equally disturbing foundations on which their marriage rest on. Not quite dissimilar to George and Martha’s and perhaps a parallel to what could have been the case in an earlier period in the former’s marriage.

The story ended after George announced to Martha that their ’son’ (a figment of imagination that had lasted throughout the entirety of the show) had died. Martha grew hysterical at George’s murder of her only solace in their broken and estranged relationship. The only commonality that had bounded them together throughout all these years of their failed marriage. However, one also appreciates how George is in fact purging their relationships of all the unncessary pretenses, lies and false comforts. Through this violent carthasis, or exorcism in Albee’s word, the couple are then able to regard each other in greater truth and honesty and not hide behind a comforting lie. This reconciliation was depicted at the end of the show as George held Martha lightly and sang the line ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to which she answered, “I am George.” Martha’s confession that she’s “afraid of Virginia Woolf” is a realistic admission and confession that she is afraid of reality, but ready to face it honestly and openly from now on, without continuing to harbor an illusion about a non-existent son

In this play, the mention of Virginia Woolf is equated with the prospect of having one’s life placed under the searing perspicacity of an observer like Virginia Woolf, which is coterminous with the idea of regarding one’s life in a manner that is so brutally honest that no lies can germinate. I also liked how what alcohol symbolised in the show. The characters’ eventual boldness and honesty were brought out as they imbibed more and more alcohol and yet as more truths were being unravelled, they sought to drink even more so as to drown out reality and illicit morsels of  courage from having their senses and reason being dulled. It is all very real but painful to watch, yet the audience feel compelled to watch it because they are not drunk and hence are not impervious to the dramatic irony of the characters’ fate.  

All in all, a pretty interesting text with themes which are only too familiar in our lives. It’s like watching one’s life emptied out in a black box. Very disquieting.

Marathon of a different kind

These few days I have been doing nothing except trying to make a DVD rental company regret its policy. Play! has recently launched a monthly subscription package that offers UNLIMITED DVD rental for $25, it is my personal goal to watch AT LEAST 4 movies a day on average to make sure that I finish EVERY SINGLE MOVIE that they have in that machine. =) I think it offers me a fanstastically legitimate reason to idle non-stop. I’ve watched 12 in 3 days, so far so good. Heh.

One REALLY good movie that I’ve caught was Charlie Wilson’s War which is essentially a standard Hollywood cocktail of politics, hot celebrities and awesome quotes. It’s pretty cool because many people have been criticising US for training the Mujahideens in Afgahnistan thereby creating a terrorist hotbed with their own hands and I thought the show demonstrated how it could have been an imperative back then. I also like it cos I am at times disturbed by how sometimes states are referred to like singular, undifferentiated entities when in actuality politics is really a lot more complicated than that, with many actors affecting decisions at every single juncture. In fact, U.S. support for the Mujahideens seemed to have been rather seredipitous in the movie. It’s also pretty good because I can never remember history well and such stories make it easier.

Am going to keep a list of the watched films.

Bedtime Stories; City of Angels; Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Phonebooth; The Women; Driving Lessons; Your Name is Justine; It’s a Boy-Girl Thing; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Charlie Wilson’s War; Catch Me If You Can; Into the Wild; Breakfast at Tiffany; Half Nelson; The Duchess; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Frost/Nixon; Lions for Lambs; No Country for the Old Man; Body of Lies; Departures, Devil Wears Prada, Children of Glory; Wedding Daze; Pink Panther 2; Darjeeling Limited; Little Miss Sunshine

Little Children

The other night, I watched Little Children and as I do so I found myself idolising Todd Field, the director of the film. It is undisputably one of the best movies that I have ever watched. It was like a literature piece, except that it wasn’t as detailed as I would like it to be but still the director was brilliant in his ability to bring the audience to a different conclusion everytime he throws up new facts for consideration.

You find yourself going down a moral slippery slope which eventually convinces you that morality is but a different perspective of things, only to be rudely brought to your senses that moral/immoral decisions affect one and the people around one in very real terms that may leave immoral decisions utterly undesirable, no matter how gratifying/liberating they may be.

The director also teased out the issue of how ex-convicts should be viewed, whether or not we have a case in discriminating them based on their records. At the end of the movie, he does not show whether it is right or wrong to do so, instead, he introduced a myriad of factors for the viewer to consider. In presenting the many dimensions of the issue, Field leaves his viewer left utterly confounded and to struggle haplessly with earlier judgments passed about the ex-convict in the show.

Movie critic, Brandon Fibbs sheds light on why the movie is titled ‘Little Children’:

The adults are the little children to which the title refers. They spend the entire film in various states of juvenile immaturity, only grasping hold of their mantles of responsibility in the closing moments. Better late than never, we are told; it’s never too late to start acting like a grown up. The film ends with hope. There will be a lot of hard work ahead, but despite their flaws, you come to care for each of these characters and want the best for them–even the sex offender.

The movie ends with this very thought-provoking line:

You can’t change the past. But the future could be a different story. And it had to start somewhere.

Wall.e

It feels silly to blog about Wall.e but then and again, it is really a show that is simple yet articulate. Throughout the entire story, there was no dialogue between Wall.e and his beau, Eva. Their ‘conversations’ comprise mainly of saying each others’ name with great difficulty, the word ‘directive’ and, basically nothing else. Yet despite the scanty exchanges, it was a very moving love story because since no words can be used to express the love that Wall.e has for Eva, he can only resort to using actions. Although they only met briefly, Wall.e tried all he could to impress Eva. And when she went into hibernation mode, he also stuck by her side and cared for her. Perhaps the most touching was when he got crumpled up trying to hold up the aircraft activator. It was so touching.

The ending was perfect too, especially after listening to 4 hours of Biodiversity class. It really makes great sense. My favourite part of the show was the ending which attempts to depict what the people who returned to earth did using various civilisational graphics e.g. hieroglyphs, vangogh, monet, vietnamese drawings. I thought it symbolised how certain ideas, events are equally cherished by all of humanity in spite of geographical location, language and culture.