button, button...

The Box
Directed by Richard Kelly

Just as (500) Days of Summer was a thinking person’s romantic comedy The Box is a thinking person’s sci-fi/horror film. Richard Kelly, (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) has proven his ability for serving up cryptic socio political commentary through sci-fi and this is no different than his two previous outings (Donnie Darko and Southland Tales).

This time around Kelly works on the classic short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, which was previously adapted as a Twilight Zone episode. This version is expanded to feature length by the addition of government conspiracies and visitors from outer space. The premise remains the same, a mysterious and disfigured stranger, Arlington Steward (played by Frank Langella), delivers a box with a button on it, to a young married couple in financial distress, Arthur and Norma Lewis (played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz). If they press the button they will receive a million dollars but someone they don’t know, somewhere, will die.

This simple idea makes us ask the question. What does it mean to know someone? Do we really know anybody?

Needless to say, the button is pushed (by Norma) and with it the plot moves forward. After a couple of weird incidents a la Richard Kelly, Arthur and Norma are confronted with “technology that is indistinguishable from magic” (Arthur C. Clarke’s third law of prediction), their son is kidnapped and the mysterious Arlington Steward returns to offer them a final choice.

Since I do not want to spoil the film for anyone I will stop here.

I am a big fan of both Donnie Darko and Southland Tales and when I first found out that Richard Kelly was going to adapt “Button, Button”, I was a bit disappointed, since this was a tale I already knew and there would really be no mystery involved or cryptic storytelling to look forward to. Fortunately I was wrong, Kelly managed to go behind the button and its raison d’etre, giving us more than we could have asked out of this philosophical conundrum. To push or not to push the button. The answer should be obvious to any decent person but in a way, that is precisely the point of the “test”, as Arlington Steward calls the entire process, to find out who and how many are capable of pushing the button.

Watching the movie, the answer could be taken as misogynistic, since the three times that a button is pushed it is always done by a woman. What does this tell us about our society or about our women? Is this only because the story unfolds in the seventies?

Truth is that The Box leaves us with much to ponder and with a general feeling of uneasiness. During the climax there is a particular unpleasant feeling that seeped to my very core, a feeling rarely evoked by a movie (only Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs comes to mind). It is the realization of just how low humanity can sink and the sadness of knowing that it is all too real and all too common.

The Box is a story about the greed in humanity and what people are capable of doing because of it. In the end it is clear that the choice is ours, and that… gives us hope.

(500)

Yes, I know it has been twelve days since last I wrote, so let’s just get to it.
I promised my ten best of 2009. Alphabetically.

(500) Days of Summer
Directed by Marc Webb

If you read my post about the Spider-Man movie reboot you already know how I feel about this movie. It’s just a perfect portrayal of modern urban romance, the Annie Hall for the new millennium. It packs everything we have all experienced in a relationship (if you are an ultra romantic hipster that is), infatuation, affinity, first date, sex, love, fighting, hating, moping, feeling terrible and moving on. Not in that order mind you and that is one of the things that make the film so special, its non linear narrative, as it jumps back and forth throughout the 500 day duration of Summer and Tom’s relationship.
Zooey Deschanel, the titular Summer, does a great job as the saucer eyed girlfriend that never seems to quite really fall for Tom. In Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom we can easily recognize our own romantic fantasies for the perfect girl. Together they make the relationship work (or not)but most importantly, they make it believable.
A highlight of the film is the scene that represents that natural high that comes with falling in love, as Tom walks out of his apartment and breaks out into song and dance as everyone on the street joins him. Is it just me or haven’t we all felt like that once.
My only complaint would be that despite showing Tom’s life and aspirations, Webb never really gives us a glimpse into what makes Summer tick. But after all, we are looking through Tom’s glasses and it seems he was quite nearsighted and possibly just appreciating what he was projecting unto Summer and not much more.

In any case, (500) Days of Summer is a true romantic comedy, one for all those of us who wouldn’t be caught dead watching a romantic comedy.

Oscar time of the year

So the nominees are… ten movies! Yes, we now know the Oscar nominees for 2010 and this year the academy decided to expand the nominations for best picture to ten films.
Avatar, James Cameron’s animated (motion captured) attack against American imperialism.
The Blind Side, the Hallmarkized version of Michael Oher’s and foster mom Leigh Anne Tuohy’s true story.
District 9, an extraterrestrial allegory of apartheid.
An Education, a young girl/older man relationship drama.
The Hurt Locker, Irak through the eye of Kathryn Bigelow.
Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s self appointed masterpiece.
Precious, incest, abuse and the chance for a new life.
A Serious Man… faces his own life.
Up, animated life lessons.
Up in the Air, reassessing a controlled life.

So those are the academy’s nominees. I think there where many, much more interesting films out the past year, that also deserve recognition. Here’s my top ten of 2009 (the ones I’ve seen so far) in alphabetical order.

(500) Days of Summer (dir. Marc Webb)
The Box (dir. Richard Kelly)
Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos) (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
District 9 (dir. Neil Blomkamp)
Drag me to Hell (dir. Sam Raimi)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (dir. Wes Anderson)
Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
REC 2 (dir. Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza)
Star Trek (dir. J.J. Abrams)
Whatever Works (dir. Woody Allen)

On my next post I will go into detail on why I picked these films. Stay tuned…

A decade later… are we still living inside The Matrix?

It had been quite a while since the last time I had watched The Matrix trilogy, so I got my hands on a Blu Ray of the first film to rewatch it in high def and enjoy the new video transfer while listening to the commentary by philosophers Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber.

When The Matrix originally came out in 1999 I wasn’t really interested in watching it, although I had loved Bound (the Wachowski’s first film) I thought they had sold out when I saw the trailers for The Matrix, as it seemed like another brainless action film starring Keanu Reeves. At the invitation of my yoga teacher, I was surprised by her endorsement and went to see the movie. Needless to say I came out of the cinema astounded, both by the cinematic brilliance and the philosophic depth of the story. This was a game changer, this movie could transform the world. Or so I thought.

As in any experience, I got out as much as I was already taking in. The Matrix was a metaphor for humanity’s pathetic controlled life. We were all living a dream of mediocrity and unhappiness, totally unfulfilled and sedated. At the same time the opportunity of acknowledging the reality of our existence and changing it was within ourselves. If we had woken up from the dream we had a responsibility to ourselves and the world to act on our newfound knowledge and not only transform ourselves and our lives but also to wake up everyone else around us. We had been given power, now, we had to take responsibility.

The recurring religious mythology of a saviour predestined to appear when humanity most needs him, appealed to our intrinsic need of being saved by someone other than ourselves and as an audience we were played like a fiddle. Fortunately the myth was turned on its head when the saviour needs saving and this salvation comes in the form of love (Trinity resuscitates Neo through the power of love).

With its conclusion The Matrix seemed like a perfectly self contained story of black and white, good versus evil, man against machine. The final message, we have the key to our own salvation, we just have to wake up.

Four years later we were offered parts two and three of the trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. I was excited at the prospect of a new voyage into the Matrix and what it could offer this time around. As the vast majority of moviegoers I was disappointed and I thought this time the Wachoswki’s had really sold out just making sequels to cash in on the enormous success of the original. Oh, was I wrong.

On first release, I saw the sequels as just action spectacles with little of interest regarding philosophy, except for the monologues by the Architect and the Merovingian, which at first, did not make that much sense to me.


Flash forward to 2010. After finally watching The Matrix trilogy as a whole from start to finish I found a new meaning to the entire story and realized that back then I was looking at it through maniqueistic glasses. I just couldn’t accept the fact that the machines were also made of light (as seen in the final sequence of The Matrix Revolutions).

The first Matrix was meant to be a simple introduction to much more complicated themes which were developed throughout Reloaded and Revolutions. The story was not about a messiah. It is a story about humanity and its evolution, about technology and its evolution, about illumination.

The One is not just one person. There are many aspects to the One. There is the dual nature of the One represented by Neo and Trinity, two parts of a whole. There is also the bipolar aspect of the One represented by the relationship between Neo and Agent Smith who somehow are also different sides of a coin. As Neo becomes more divine also Smith becomes more human after Neo enters him. Smith changes and starts multiplying himself just like the virus of humanity he described in the first film, until Neo finally assimilates him and destroys him in the third chapter.

A very important point is the fact that technology is not evil per se. At its inception, technology is not good or evil it is a tool at the hands of humans who are the ones that decide how to use it. As technology comes closer to acting like humans it just strives for survival. The reason why Neo sees that machine city is made of light is precisely because the machines are essentially pure and are following their “nature” as any other entity of creation.

The only possible solution to achieve peace on the three worlds (Zion, Machine City and the Matrix) lies in choice. Choice allows for harmony.

We decide how we want to live our lives. Ultimately there will be humans who will decide to continue living inside the Matrix, thus feeding the machines, which will be peaceful to Zion, which in return will have no reason to destroy the machines. The Matrix will have no need to enforce obedience through agents since the humans living inside have chosen to do it. A perfect system.

It all comes down to choice. We are the masters of our lives. We just have to make the choice.

Late

I’m late, I know. Very late. It was a long weekend (holiday in Mexico) so I was just too lazy and a bit busy. I had to move all the boxes of comic books, dvds and books that were still left at my parent’s place to my apartment before they had the chance to burn them. I also tried to sort out what to sell and what to keep. A lot of comics are going, if someone buys them, that is. On Saturday I met up with the guys who are organizing Com Com, a small comic book convention in Tijuana, to make arrangements for Sadhaka Studio's booth space and conference schedule set up. The event is programmed for early March. I still had the chance to watch a couple of movies each night, which sent me to sleep very, very late. Here’s the list of what I watched: Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Buñuel’s Susana, The Matrix 2 and 3, the Oscar nominated The Blind Side, Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket and Fantastic Mr. Fox (also nominated) and Justice League The New Frontier. I’ll probably be writing about some of them. First up, on my next post, I’ll be delving into my reevaluation of The Matrix trilogy. A look at the Wachowskis' message eleven years after the original release.
Stay tuned…