“Don’t waste my time”

I found the trailer to the movie ‘In Time’ quite interesting. It offered a new and original premise based on a literal interpretation of ‘Time is Money’ and a slightly left-leaning view of what’s wrong with a scarcity based economic model. This latter point piqued my interest even more.

Of late I have been reading about the Resource Based Economy (RBE); an idea proposed by Jacque Fresco, one which does not involve money for the distribution of resources. More on that later. I am now working on a series of posts on RBE. It sure does sounds utopian but it would be immature to come to that judgement without doing further research and asking more questions. That’s what I am aiming for from that series. However, all about that later.

Here, I’ll just post my review of the flick. As I was walking out of the movie hall I wasn’t disappointed. It was an hour and a half of well paced fun with my mind being taken to RBE on quite a few occasions. Some may pick on this distraction and say that it means the movie is not engrossing enough. True; but I like keeping my mind occupied and in this case since some of the dialogues were taking me to my blog series on RBE, I was enjoying the ride.

Soon after I got home I thought I would list out the movie’s good and bad. If I don’t like a movie I would rather not write about it than dissing about it publicly. Since I enjoyed the ride in the movie hall I thought I could write a positive review of this one. Oh well, was I disappointed? Here’s my list. First, I’ll start with the basic plot.

Watchmen

WATCHMEN
~~~~~~~~

Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Mathew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Carla Gugino
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

This is not the ordinary superhero comic adaptation. It is nothing like the high-on-action, special effects filled no-brainers that one is used to. It is darker and involves a greater level of scheming, but more importantly, it is not a classic superhero versus villain or good versus evil saga. In fact, there are no villains in the movie. It is rather a visual into the moral diversity of its superheroes, each flawed in different ways, allowing us to dwell in different ethical perspectives, at least intellectually, and witness their consequences.

It is not that the movie lacks action sequences or special effects (a movie after all with not one but eight or more superheroes won't have any dearth of action) but the movie, just as in the comic, goes beyond all that. Set in the time of the Cold War, with a great risk of an all-out nuclear war, a superhero, Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt, sets out to bring peace in the world. Nothing new about this concept except that he plans to do so by creating a major holocaust and then to use the fear of a larger, common enemy for mankind to forget all their petty in-fighting and thereby, he hopes to see peace reign even at the expense of a million or so lives. A million lives lost to save billion others, that's the twisted logic behind the superhero's thinking. Naturally a few superheroes, like the Comedian do not subscribe to his logic and they are found dead under mysterious circumstances. The whole movie is about a few other vigilante superheroes, Rorschach and Nite Owl II, who are ignorant of the "bigger-enemy" plan, trying to uncover the mystery behind the murders. Nothing too savvy, but still worth watching.

Amidst all these superheroes there is also the presence of a God like Dr. Manhattan who could if he wanted changed the world with a single move but also is incidentally detached from the suffering of mankind and thus does little to make the world a better place. His inaction is also presented from two different ethical perspectives, one the Comedian's perspective which justifies Dr. Manhattan and then Veidt's perspective of always wanting to do more to ensure that the world is a better place. Naturally, you don't get the gist of the different contexts of thought in one go. It takes the whole movie for the idea to sink in and then only on further reflection do you really get a grasp of the deeper ethical questions raised in the movie. And that is probably why this movie is not for everyone. You want mere high-octane action, then you will be disappointed with this one. If you are in the mood for some deeper reflection from different points of view then this is the first movie you should grab.

Zack Snyder's 300 style 3rd-person narration while the story unfolds from Rorschach's diary clearly gives the movie an interesting point of narration. Add to those scenes, the parts where Dr. Manhattan is introduced and his character sketch is defined, and you would expect to have a really fine movie.

But the movie falls apart in the sense that there were many scenes that do not fit the overall theme and could well have been avoided. The relationship between Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, who is also Dr. Manhattan's wife were given too much of screen time. That may have been meant to depict his increasingly detached relationship with mankind, finally making him leave the Earth to live in solitude in Mars reflecting upon human suffering and his role on Earth. His detachment from human suffering was needed in the plot for Veidt to execute his plans to the
full extent, for if any person could have stopped him that was Dr. Manhattan. But still, too much time was spent on the Owl-Spectre relationship. Even the development of Comedian's character sketch were in most cases not relevant to the theme. May be that time could have been used to develop the other characters even more. I felt that too less time was given to Veidt and thus we do not get enough time to really understand him and his logic.

But I may be wrong here. I watched an edited version of Watchmen in a theatre in Kerala where many scenes were simply edited out. I read later that Watchmen is a 3 hour movie, but what I saw was just a little over two hours. And that would certainly have taken the weight off many of the scenes that I could not see to its fully developed extent. However, if at all I find a flaw with the movie, it is this one - many scenes could well have been avoided, atleast to make the movie shorter if nothing else, then the proprietors in Kerala Movie theatres would not edit many scenes out just to save time.

3 stars out of five for the concept and Snyder's narration style, one less than what I would have like to give it, the penalty being for either the length of the movie or for scenes that do not fit the overall theme.

Dialogue that defines the movie - Serendipity

This is a beautiful piece of writing, one that completely defines the tone of the movie. You need to actually watch the movie to understand its context, but inspite of that, I guess you can still gather the inherent philosophy, that is presented in a comical yet so strangely a poignant and serious note.

"Jonathan Trager, prominent television producer for ESPN, died last night from complications of losing his soul mate and his fiance. He was 35 years old. Softspoken and obsessive, Trager never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. But in the final days of his life he revealed an unknown side of psyche. This quasi-jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie like pursuit for his long reputed soul mate, the woman he only spent the few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure. Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Trager secretly comes to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, ahah, but rather it's a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite sublime plan. Asked about the loss of his dear friend, Dean Kansky, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and executive editor of New York Times, described Jonathan as a changed man in the last days of his life. Things were clear for him, Kansky noted. Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients call fate or what we currently refer to as destiny."

The Lake House

It's hypothetical, conceptual and completely unrealistic but nice all the same. Maybe it's the lack of that extra dose of reality that makes the movie so good to watch. There's actually not a moment in the movie "The Lake House" that makes you feel bored, not a moment that makes you feel enough is enough, unlike those so many movies bordered beyond the scope of reality.

But not this one. You know for sure that it is impossible, but you tend to romanticize, what if? You pretty much get the gist of what's going on half way through the movie and if you have watched many movies, you will also get a hint of the climax, but I can bet you will complete the movie, if not for the story, atleast for the serene music.

The music!!! That's one thing. So peaceful, so soothing. You tend to float with the melodious sound waves from the beginning of the movie to the end. The music caresses you through. Takes you to the end and even if the climax is just as you expected, you will like it all the same.

The movie's about a conversation through letters written between Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) living in 2004 and Kate Forrester (Sandra Bullock) living in 2006. Feels crazy, just writing that. Mind you - it's a "conversation" not a narration. They gradually fall in love and their desire to meet each other unfortunately results in the death of one. Though of course, knowledge of the future can be used to save lives, especially if you can talk to the past. That's expected and that's exactly how the movie ends when they both finally meet up, after a four year wait for Alex Wyler and a two year one for Dr. Forrester, on Valentine's Day 2008.

But ya, there's one paradox in the climax that the Director may have just ignored. Its actually the sight of a then unknown Alex Wyler's death in front of Dr. Forrester that made her go back to her happy old home, the lakehouse, and it was then that the beatiful converstaion got kicked off. But of course, if she saves Wyler from that death, then she wouldn't go back to the lake house, the conversation would never have happened and the love story couldn't exist in the first place. So they just can't be together at the end of the movie. But well time travel and its corresponding paradoxes is a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. Nothing ever seems to fit. So all the same, I am ready to ignore this paradox, for in the remaining 90 minutes I had a really good time.

Meet Joe Black

It certainly is an exceptional movie, one that is worth watching. In plain words, the movie is sweet and simple. The theme portrayed in the movie is different, different in the sense of looking at death and life from a different perspective, the new perspective being that of death itself. The movie does not border around the clichéd ideas of a failed life, realising its mistakes in the face of death. Nor does it portray the grim side of death. Rather it does not portray death at all. The movie is all about how death comes to realise what life is all about, about how leading a wonderful and honourable life, leading life to its fullest is its true beauty. The movie centres on death himself learning how to live from an experienced and successful life of an honourable man. Without even a reference to death in the whole movie, the message is clear. Nothing in this life is as certain as death and taxes, fear neither you should.

The thoughts that came to me while watching “Meet Joe Black”.

• I shouldn't act because other people do so in a particular way. Principles, I should have and, insight and foresight should be the basis of my life. Action ought to have reason and the reason must be honourable. Rude and arrogant, I should not be, for wherever I reach; always remember I should, that I started at zero.
• The more you chase after it, the more you long for it. The more you long for it, the harder it is for you to let go. The harder it is for you to let go, it slips away all the more easily. That is life.
• If you haven't tried, you haven't lived.