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Transcendence (2014)
Transcendence: A Philosophical Counterpoint To The Terminator Franchise
First time Director Wally Pfister, best known for his collaborative work as Christopher Nolan's Cinematographer, delivers a solid, gorgeous meditation on the potential benefits and dangers of melding man and machine together. When Will Caster (Johnney Depp) is shot with an irradiated bullet by a member of R.I.F.T., a radical anti tech group lead by Bree (Kate Mara), Will's wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) decides to try and save him by uploading his consciousness into a super computer. While Max (Paul Bettany) has his doubts and reservations about this, he helps his long time friends out. They ultimately do succeed in uploading Will before Max becomes too scared and leaves, getting abducted by Bree and her followers shortly after. Will then guides Evelyn to a rundown town in the middle of nowhere, where over the next 2 years Will becomes stronger while Evelyn helps him build an underground lab. I'll try not to divulge too much of what happens after all this but I do believe the film gets more right than wrong and is better than most people give it credit for.
I can think of several potential reasons why people either disliked or simply weren't interested in seeing it. Captain America was/is still in theaters, Trancendence was released on Good Friday and most people took the day off for religious reasons, the idea that a consciousness can be uploaded into a computer suggests that the body does not have a soul and is thus atheist, alienating several religious groups, the film was marketed as an action type thriller, the film was too slow, too many plot holes and/or leaps of logic, people just simply thought it wasn't a very good movie etc.
As I mentioned in the title of this piece, I think the film is a counterpoint to The Terminator, much in the same vein as M. Night Shyamalan's film Unbreakable, (still his best in my not so humble opinion) which could be viewed as a viable counterpoint to the comic book films of today. Instead of the machine becoming sentient and attempting to wipe out humanity because they have been deemed inferior, we get the machine with a, ahem, human soul who wants to help humanity out by bettering them and the world at large (ecologically speaking). The price for this of course is the potential to lose one's individuality and become part of a singular consciousness (like the Borg from Star Trek). Whether or not that's a better or worse alternative to being wiped out by a nuclear holocaust I'll leave open for debate. I will admit it did feel refreshing to not see one over the top action sequence piled on top of another, although I'm sure most people who went in to see the movie before me would heartily disagree.
Granted, the film does have its short comings. The fact that Will rewrote his source code after being uploaded would render the virus Max created later in the film ineffective would be the biggest (as pointed out by this film's Goof section). And the fact that virtually no press or news reporters were involved was rather vexing. But any of these could be comparable to any of the enormous plot holes/errors found in Christopher Nolan's Inception or the Fascist ideology that makes up his Dark Knight Trilogy. Unfortunately Mr. Pfister did not have Batman or the enormous, memorable action set pieces Mr. Nolan is best remembered by his audiences for to back him up and ensure box office glory. Transcendence is basically an art film with a Hollywood budget.
I'll only pause briefly at the end here to applaud Mr. Pfister's wonderful decision to shoot on anamorphic 35mm film with no digital intermediate. The results speak for themselves visually. Sometimes the old ways simply are the best. Technology should not replace that which has come before it until it has surpassed all previous limitations.
As for the ending of the film, it looks like Bree and R.I.F.T. got their wish when all the tech in the world got virtually (no pun intended) destroyed by Max's plot hole virus. But is that really a good thing? Mr. Pfister only pauses to show us the lights going off in one or two cities and no airplanes crashing into them, although I must say I've had more than my fill of those types of images in the past 12 or 13 years. We get the sense that things have descended into Martial Law and possibly chaos, but I wish there could have been some character resolution for Bree in this regard, given the part she played in helping bring it all about. I guess, since there won't be a sequel to this particular Spring/Summer film (remarkably) I'll just have to ponder what a future world without any tech (but with some of Will's water nanites) would be like. Or I could just start getting into NBC's Revolution TV show. But I think I'll pass.
Gravity (2013)
Rebirth and Giving Birth in Zero-Gravity
The theme of rebirth and the visual motif of human pregnancy runs prevalent throughout Alfonso Cuaron's long awaited new film, Gravity. The film I think first takes a scientific view and then gradually moves towards a more spiritual, religious one at the end. We first see Earth and then the space shuttle and Hubble appear as a dot getting bigger and bigger as we (or they) come closer and closer to the screen. It's when they first appear as a dot that I got the feeling that I was seeing a picture of a Hydrogen atom orbiting around it's nucleus (the Earth). Hydrogen, as we all know (or should) is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe, yet it is also the smallest and simplest one there is on the periodic table. The first shot mimics this idea of the Macro and the Micro, with us starting off in extreme long shot and eventually going in on a single bolt that Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) has to retrieve for Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). Nuts and bolts are also very small, simple things that are essential parts of bigger structures, much like Hydrogen. We then hear via Houston (Ed Harris in a genius bit of voice casting) say that the Russians have sent an anti-satellite missile that has inadvertently caused a lot of high speed debris to hurtle towards the shuttle. While this is the inciting incident that kicks the rest of the film into gear, we never see the missile hit the satellite. However, you could interpret the missile and satellite as a sperm and an egg respectively. A sperm and an egg coming together is what causes the chain reaction that leads to a baby being born, just as the missile and the satellite coming together causes the chain reaction that leads to Ryan's rebirth.At the beginning Ryan is actually referred to by her last name, Stone. Like a stone, Ryan is essentially lifeless more or less, oblivious to the wonderful view of Earth and the stars around her. She is only focused on completing the task at hand. It's only later on that she is called by her first name, when the re-birthing process has begun and she has started to become more characterized. Another thing I found intriguing was that there are three main places in the film: the shuttle, the Russian space station, and the Chinese one. They remind me of the three trimesters that make up a human pregnancy, which, when added together equal nine. The film itself is 90 minutes long, which can also be divided up into thirds, or the typical number of acts that make up the story structure of a feature film. Three is also a reference to the Holy Trinity in Christianity although we get an interesting close up shot of a miniature Buddha statue in the Chinese Shenzhou capsule. Take that to mean whatever you want it to (or anything else I write here for that matter). One shot shows Ryan in a fetal position in the Russian station, which is more or less the same position a fetus is in when in it's second trimester. When Ryan has decided to give up and commit suicide, it's like an attempted abortion. Ryan attempts to "abort" her own rescue mission after finding out the Soyuz has no fuel. At the end when Ryan finally does make it back to Earth, she has to strip down to her underwear as her space suit is drowning her. She takes her first gasp of air and drags herself out of the water into the earthy mud. Water is an elemental symbol for life and earth is the stuff we all came from originally (if you believe in the bible. I do for one). Ryan then then offers up her first ever prayer, "Thank you," to whatever deity she has now chosen to believe in, then gets to her knees, then to her feet, and then takes her first steps, reborn as a new person, facing a green wilderness of unknown possibilities.
Other thoughts: I enjoyed the references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Having there be no sound in space, the prevalent breathing sounds of the characters while in their space suits, effectively them fish out of water in the ocean of space. Even the fetal image of Ryan reminded me of the Star Child.
A bit of a reference to Alien with Ryan announcing over the headset that she was the only survivor of her crew, and the fact that she's a woman.
Gravity feels like a companion piece to Children of Men. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why.
I enjoyed the score, especially the rising musical Que associated with the menacing debris field. Reminded me of the Joker's theme from The Dark Knight.
I thought it was very silly having Ryan move around with a fire extinguisher. It reminded me of Wall-E.
I didn't particularly like the shot of the satellite burning up in the sky. Looked too much like the Columbia. Just a quibble but it made me cringe a little bit.