Peter Jackson's King Kong is deep on a lot of symbolic levels. The beginning of the movie starts in New York City; a symbol of human progress. People have mastered their environment, tamed nature and turned this city into a monument of their mastery of the world. The only place the law of the jungle exists here is in those who are poverty stricken and looking for a way out from the bottom up to the top. We see this with Naomi Watt's character, Ann Darrow. She ignores the laws of civilization and must revert back to jungle mentality by trying to steal food in order to survive. The one who rescues her, Jack Black's character, Carl Denham is no different although he'd like to think so. He still lives at the level of civilization and order but eventually must revert to jungle mentality to escape the police seeking his arrest. Both main characters leave civilization completely behind for the literal jungle of Skull Island. This is a harsh land where humans had not yet proven themselves as evolutionary victors. Nature is raw here and life primordial; like Darwin's survival of the fittest. In order to live, the natives have learned to sacrifice life to appease powers beyond their control. This primordial state was exemplified with scenes of King Kong vs. T-Rex. There was something in this powerful showdown that resonated with audience members. I remember the theater I saw this movie in and after the scene where Kong cracks the jawbone of the T-Rex open and beats his chest, every male in the theater let out a deep guttural cheer. My theory is that this struck a chord within men because it was tapping into our ancestral memories from cave man days when ancestors came to the rescue of their lovers to fend off and kill the attacking bear, Lion or Hyena. This feeling was echoed several other times in the movie at different points when the main characters where fighting off hideous giant insects, worms and other monstrous creatures. King Kong is one character the audience identified with because he in some way represents humanity's past triumph over the natural world. The love story between Kong and Ann Darrow is equally as potent on several levels. King Kong is an über Alpha Male and thus a great threat to masculine power everywhere. In its archetype, masculine power finds its strength in mastery of the material world. By its very nature, it's best at destroying. It is also by its nature capable of protecting the feminine and in doing so, finding love. In evolutionary terms the feminine is attracted to the strongest male; the one who can protect and ensure a successful raising of offspring. King Kong is attracted to Ann Darrow not because she is physically attractive to him but because her essence taps into the archetype of what true beauty is all about; empathy. Ann Darrow was capable of having deep empathy for Kong; the ability to put herself in the place of the other and have compassion for him. This was something that Kong never had experienced in the wild where all his relationships were based on brute force, fear and antagonism. Ann knew from the beginning that King Kong was doomed. The men in her world would not stand for this threat to their masculine power. Even though Kong was trapped in a beastly body, Ann Darrow immediately connected with the subtle essence of being behind that body; the one capable of perfect love. In the end this is proven by King Kong who sacrifices himself to save his beloved. |
I'd recommend it to anyone who is willing to see films that don't have clear cut stories and are open to personal interpretation. I liked the artistry of this film. The visuals were fantastic and for a director who went out of his way to avoid computer animation is saying something. The colors and images of this film are what make it so striking. There are several scenes that stand out in my mind. One is of Hugh Jackman's character walking down the busy streets of New York at night in winter. There is traffic and pedestrians swarming all around him but all you hear is the crunch, crunch of his boots in the snow. This was a nice way to show how self absorbed he was, lost in his own world and completely unaware of his surroundings. All this changes when he almost gets hit by a car and the sounds of the city come crashing all around him. Another scene that stands out to me was the very disturbing torture room of the inquisitor. This was one of the more haunting scenes I've seen. The Inquisitor reminded me a bit of the albino monk in The Da Vinci Code but much more frightening a character. The use of light was very effective. Most of the movie is shot in very dark settings and when you see light, often it's a gold light that Aronofsky has said (in an interview) represents material pursuits by the characters. Most of the complaints I've heard about this movie from others is that the message was very unclear. I think Aronofsky intended his audience to make their own interpretations which is what I did. To me, the story of the Conquistador is just metaphor for the early period of people's lives. They are adventurers seeking their fortune and hoping it will help attract a mate. This is basically the deal Queen Isabella makes with Thomas (Hugh Jackman) "If you succeed on your quest, I will be your queen when you return." The second part of the story involves the career phase of a life. The gold tones indicate that characters surrounding Thomas are still after fortunes. They are all ready to abandon cancer research for the much more lucrative task of finding an elixir that can end old age. Thomas on the other hand would like to continue this pursuit with them but because of his wife's situation, he knows that money and wealth can't save the one he loves. The third part of the story involves loss and dealing with death. Thomas's wife has died and now he faces the prospect of his own death even though denial keeps this fact from his consciousness. He is haunted by a ghost of his wife that keeps appearing to him. Tormented, he shouts for her image to leave him alone. This is much like the nature of memory and life review that goes on for elderly people; haunted by images of their past. To me, the tree represents his body. It's old and ready to fall apart but the young Thomas (the part of us that stays young in spirit even as we age) begs that it continue a little longer so that the hope of immortality can stop its demise. When immortality turns out to be a fiction, there is nothing left to do but accept the inevitable. |
Of the reviews I've seen, I've not yet heard any one make the connection between the Iraq battle footage and Shyamalan's intro with the crude indian cave paiting style characters that tell the story of the nymphs and humans. The nymphs are drawn as female in form and the humans as male. When communication with the feminine is cut off, the masculine goes off to war. At the end of the movie, it looks like war is about to errupt between humans and the evil animal side. It takes a very unlikely character to stop this war. Reggie the body builder who has a masculine side with muscles that look like schwarzenegger's. The other side is feminine. He is the balanced symbol for yin and yang and thus able to stop evil. Perhaps this is Shyamalan's message. In order to stop this carnage in the Middle East, we need the masculine (America) to be in touch with it's feminine. Perhaps Shyamalan is truly the visionary writer he was cast as in the movie. If Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2008 and brings the troops home, we will know that he was. |
This movie I rated high quality with exceptional content. The exceptional content were the special effects. I thought the story bogged down a bit in places. It was oriented more towards a kid audience and reminded me a bit like Narnia. Where this movie lacked in story, I believe it made up for by its creativity. It had very thought provoking ideas and the world inhabited by both humans and their daemons was very compelling. Both needed the other in order to exist very much like the interplay between matter and spirit in our world. Life can not exist with just one or the other. I also found it interesting how the daemons for children could shape shift into any animal form whereas the daemons for adults were forever set in only one animal form. This I believe is a symbol speaking about the open mindedness of children. In our world, children could be adopted back and fourth between a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and atheist family while having no problem in adapting to each culture to take on that particular identity. But if you took an adult raised in any one of these religions and then threw them into a society of people with the opposite culture, it may be close to impossible for them to shift and merge into place when they are already set in a particular form of their own ways. |
This movie was impressive for it's elaborate sets, ornate costumes and good acting. Not my kind of movie overall but as a period piece, it was worth watching. Kind of depressing and reminded me a bit of some themes explored in Pan's Labyrinth; one of those being the male character out of touch with the feminine. The Duchess's husband could only think about his wife siring him a baby boy and he seemed to get more angry every time she gave birth to a girl. The Duke set the double standard that it was ok for him to have affairs but when the Duchess chose the same for herself, he punished this by raping her. One of the striking difference I can think of between this film and Pan's Labyrinth is that the characters showed some growth. Rather than turning into the incarnation of evil like the Captain in PL, The Duke eventually begins to show a bit more compassion towards his wife. At the end of the film he reaches out and affectionately holds the hand of the Duchess. (for him a monumental task) Although she was almost completely shattered as an individual at this point, she hesitantly acknowledges this gesture and reciprocates by patting his hand. |
Excellent movie. The only complaint is that Bill Mahr doesn't interview enough religious moderates. The Catholic priest astronomer was excellent but this guy is the exception. Most all the other folks are luny religious wackos. Definitely a must see. Now I have to be fair and watch Expelled. ;-) I saw Ben Stein upset about Sarah Palin. Maybe there is hope for each side moving away from the religious and atheist fringe to a more middle ground of mutual respect and tolerance. |
This movie had great acting, good cinematography and depth in its humanity. Because it was directed by Aronofsky, I wanted to see it, but was very depressing and hard to watch as the main character crashed and burned through his life. At one point in the movie, I thought it would be well worth the ride. Randy (the Ram) Robinson had reestablished a connection with his estranged daughter who he feared was a lesbian. (perhaps out of lack of having a father figure and positive male role model in her life?) The universe begins to throw a beautiful gift at the feet of Randy in the form of a pattern of order and hope amidst his chaotic suffering. Towards the beginning, there were some religious allusions made by the stripper, Cassidy, who Randy finds an attraction to. Randy wears a tattoo of Christ on his back and continually feels the passion of sacrificing his body to the ring as the throngs cheer to see him beat with chairs, whipped with barbed wire, thrown into glass and shot point blank in the chest with a staple gun. Cassidy finds this idea a little amusing and playfully mocks Randy by calling him the "Ram of God." But after a career ending heart attack, Randy must put his "savior in the ring" persona aside and take a demoralizing job as a deli clerk at a local supermarket. When a nosy customer keeps on pestering and asking if he was Ram Robinson, Randy must deny himself three times to feel the stinging betrayal of disassociating from his higher self. Even though he can take the most brutal physical attacks in the ring, it is his own psychological self-attack that pushes him over the edge. After nearly chopping off his fingers in the meat grinder, he goes on a rampage through the supermarket, putting an explanation point on the declaration to his horrid boss, "I quit!" It is at this point that Randy begins the process of rejecting the gift from the universe that had been flowering open before him if he would have only claimed it. Even a beautiful day of cathartic healing spent with his daughter is undone when Randy chooses to ignore a dinner date with her for cocaine and bar sex in the bathroom with a complete stranger. The next thing he realizes, he wakes up in an unfamiliar apartment and must find his way back for a last ditch attempt to reconcile and find his daughter's forgiveness, but it is too late. She is psychologically devastated and her hopes of finding the real father figure to fill the missing void inside is shattered. Things don't get any better for Randy when he rejects the second gift offered to him for potential companionship with Cassidy when she shows up at his doorstep to seek a chance in a relationship. He in turn rejects this in the hopes of resurrecting his role of savior in the ring, for a final rematch with his arch rival, the Ayatollah. We end the movie with Cassidy walking out of the arena, unable to bear and watch Randy getting sacrificed to the cheering crowds. Randy climbs up the ropes for a final body slam of his opponent. He leaps through the air, and... the credits roll. Does he have another heart attack? Does he find cassidy after the match? Nobody will ever know. |
Finally got a chance to check out the movie Limitless. Wow! What a trip! The cinematography and effects were outstanding! I especially loved the tunnel vision moving through New York City in the beginning, showing us a glimpse of the mystical vision or cosmic consciousness the main character, Eddie Morra acquires through the help of his drugs. Some of the most effective use of the visual effects in this movie involve the depiction of Morra's drab, mundane, depressed world in contrast to his transformed, luminous, sunlit drenched, drug induced mystical state. |
Life of Pi |
Finally got a chance to check out the movie Limitless. Wow! What a trip! The cinematography and effects were outstanding! I especially loved the tunnel vision moving through New York City in the beginning, showing us a glimpse of the mystical vision or cosmic consciousness the main character, Eddie Morra acquires through the help of his drugs. Some of the most effective use of the visual effects in this movie involve the depiction of Morra's drab, mundane, depressed world in contrast to his transformed, luminous, sunlit drenched, drug induced mystical state. |
The Tree of Life |
(My friend who got the dialogue going on this movie has text in red) I kind of see it as a work of art - Up to personal interpretation. ---------------------------------------------- I may be wrong but I think this is Malick's objective. We like our movies to make sense. But Tree of Life is trying to emulate reality as closely as possible. And I'll bet everyone alive has at some time or another responded to the absurdities in life by saying, WTF!! ---------------------------------------------- Yes, it is interesting. I heard that half the audience gave it a standing ovation at Cannes while the other half booed. Ok, here's what I've done so far with notes and commentary for my blog: At the beginning, quote from Bible: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" --Job 38;4,7 As we see in the film, laying the foundations of the Earth is a mind blowing affair -- billions of years of painful evolution. The stars didn't so much sing together rather than exploded in fiery infernos of hell and destruction. And sons of God shouting for joy through all this horrendous evolution? the furthest from the truth. It is a brutal game of trillions upon trillions of primitive to complex lives living a brief and meaningless existence. (think about the chaos dinosaur life must have been like) But this part of the Job quote is an interesting contrast to the suffering and meaningless of it all. I think it is an expression of the human spirit, trying to make something meaningful and beautiful out of something that can be quite ugly and meaningless. Is this the image of God within us? Wanting to find something beautiful in what would elicit the response in most of us; "WTF!" I'll come back to this point later. Sean Penn at beginning with candle like nebula forming - "Brother, Mother, it was they who led me to your door." Is he talking to God? Jessica Chastain starts the narration as we are shown images of her childhood and flashbacks to memories of her family and then flash forwards of her raising her own family:
"the nuns taught us there are two ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace. you have to choose which one you'll follow. grace doesn't try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself and others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, and love is shining through all things. They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you, whatever comes." This I find some of the most interesting dialogue in the movie. It is at the heart of the great contrast in this movie between the two modes of being. We see the cold impersonality of nature, incapable of care or concern for life. And this is reflected in many of its beings. But something interesting happens somewhere along the way. I think we witness this with one of the dinosaurs who is about ready to squash a weaker one, but then stops and lets him live. Is this the first manifestation of Grace in the world? Definitely not the last and we see this struggle for grace in the Job quote. "Sons of God shouting for joy." What other way can you shout for joy in the midst of such a crazy world, unless you reach for the kind of Grace Chastain speaks of. This quest for grace describes the mystical path, trying to find it hidden within a cold and what often appears an evil world. But this doesn't stop the longing of the mystic to dig deep within reality until it uncovers the hidden jewels underneath. And according to the mystics, this is possible, where as Chastain says, " love is shining through all things." All things is a hefty statement. How can you find love shining through murder, genocide and human cruelty? But if it is possible to attain a grace consciousness such as followers of Christ and a Buddha seek to emulate, you will be able to shout for joy when everyone else is wailing at and cursing the world. And if this grace is possible, how could anything come to a bad end? That's why from a Buddhist perspective, death is an illusion. It's just rain drops returning back to the ocean. "I will be true to you, whatever comes." Chastain says as a telegram comes with news of her son's death. She collapses to the ground in torment. Father on phone at airport is told the news. "My son" Chastain - "I just want to die and be with him." Her statement sound like a break from the grace she aspires for. That was one comment my step mom had about her character. "She was so idealistic. Too perfect" And this is the nature of Grace. It is so idealistic, people scoff that it's attainable. But does that stop them for trying? We're back to the Job quote; trying to make something ugly into something beautiful. preacher "He's in God's hands now." Chastain - "He was in God's hands the whole time, wasn't he. My hope. My God." Sean Penn - "How did you come to me, in what shape. what disguise?" dizzying montage of images and speed through city. Is he talking to God? mother walking through forest, nebulous cloud Chastain narration again: "Lord, why? Where were you? Did you know? Who are we to you? Answer me." vast empty space and then silence as blind and unconscious matter violently does its thing, shaping the earth in a fiery inferno of hell "We cry to you, my soul. My son. Hear us." On screen: massive water fall crashing down mountain. cells forming, life being born. sun rising over earth. more cellular activity. millions of cells. Millions of DNA strands. water depths. jellyfish. land. temperate hills. a tree. giant sea monster with mortal wound, blood in water, sharks, manta ray, veins with blood cells coursing through, a fetus with heartbeat, an eye forming, forests and frog sounds, dinos foraging, more water, river, dino resting, dinos in background, one sees sleeping dino or injured dino? is ready to move in for kill, but something stops it, decides to leave it. is this the first act of Grace the earth has witnessed with many more to follow as intelligence rises. Chastain: "Life by life, I search for you. My hope. My child." -as we see the massive rings of Saturn. This was the most profound line in the movie for me. Throughout evolution, every being, life by life is searching for Grace. Trying to find treasure hidden in the cold and mundane. Most of the movie is like this- mundane moments of bewildering confusion and aimlessness, until there is some brief and beautiful moment of grace. That scene with the butterfly landing on Jessica Chastain's hand comes to mind. meteor strike, end of dinos? massive wave, Penn- "You spoke to me through her, you spoke with me from the sky, the trees, before I knew I loved you, believed in you. When did you first touch my heart?" Now we see the Love scene between Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, pregnancy, life born, child leaving flooded room through open door, mother giving birth, father holding baby's foot. I think Penn is referring here to grace, "Before I knew I loved you, believed in you. When did you first touch my heart?" These are the moments where grace breaking through the hideousness of life and the meaninglessness within the movie. But when grace does shine through, it's enough to make you "stop cursing the darkness and lighting the candle," as Carl Sagan quoted some guy in one of his books. Or was it, "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." What compels us to light the candle? I think it's the grace that Malick is expressing in his film. It's what makes us love the world when there is still so much to hate. The line where he said, "you spoke to me from the sky, the trees" This I think of as the flow of data from the cosmos. We learn a lot of valuable information that helps us in life through the flow of data into our mind from the outside. And it doesn't always have to be through people. It can be some orange rock on a hill that catches our attention and triggers some insightful idea that becomes useful to us. Contrast of Yin and Yang shown in relationship between Chastain and Pitt's character. The father; Pitt, shows the bias of Terrence Malick in associating the extreme side of the masculine as the one veering away from the one associated with goodness and spirituality. Yet, it is this side the masculine is drawn to in romantic love which Chastain's character represents. "Your mother's naive. It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world. If you're good people take advantage of you." And in another line, "Wrong people go hungry, die. Wrong people get loved. world lives by trickery. You want to succeed you can't be too good." Chastain's character in this movie is on the most extreme side of goodness as mentioned above. And in her role in the 2012 movie, Zero Dark Thirty, Chastain takes on the role of the most extreme side of the masculine, ruthlessly hunting down and killing the most feared killer (Bin Laden) in attempt to bring evil to justice. But little seen is the horrendous casualty and price of war that these actions bring about, which we see is the opposite of goodness in the more spiritual side (Bradley Manning and anti-war left seek to curtail). And we see the casualty of war that this side has on the family in Tree of Life. Pitt's character is trying to raise his sons to be more cunning and ready to fight; "Hit me! common jack! Hit me!" When is son does begin engaging in the mock fight with his dad, Pitt's character knocks him on his back. "Don't leave your tongue out, you're going to lose it! common, hit me! Show me what you got!" When his son refuses to escalate the battle and punch his father more, Pitt's character tells him to leave. And in the next scene at the dinner table, Pitt's character is still in war mode, not appreciating his sons reverting to a more peaceful nature like their mom. When one of his sons starts laughing, he makes him leave the table. Other son smiles. "You too? You going to continue to defy me?" And then in a later scene Pitt's character gets into a physical fight with his son at the table. The mother naturally grabs one of the kids to protect them from the wrath of the father. After punishing two of the kids, Pitt's character gets into a physical fight with his wife in the kitchen, enraged that she could go against his nature. "You turned my own kids against me! You undermine everything I do." Another scene comes to mind when one of the sons begins an inner dialogue about the nature of his dad; "Makes up stories. Says don't put your elbows on the table. He does. Insults people, doesn't care." This reminds me of a connected scene when the son is contemplating the nature of God, reflecting an earlier incident where a kid drowns at the community pool. And as he speaks to God, he looks at one of his neighborhood friends whose head shows scars from being burned in a fire. "You let a boy die. You'll let anything happen. Why should I be good If you aren't?" Like his father, the son views God as not concerned with what is good, trying to make his children warlike, just like Pitt's character was in the yard, hitting his children around, not wanting them to be so good that they might not get ahead in the world. More to come later!
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