Philosophy Now Forum

No way in hell is this movie for everyone. Simply put, some will be absolutely repulsed by the violence. And even though it can seem cartoonish at times [the gun with a thousand bullets] it is always pervasive and graphic. Consider: For the shootout at the beach house, 20,000 rounds of ammunition were fired. The final shootout at the church 40,000 rounds were expended. Body count: 120.

But it did garner a 100% fresh rating [on 34 reviews] at RT. That’s pretty impressive for film like this.

What we follow here is the relationship between the two main protagonists. They are more or less in the same ballpark with Lt. Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley. One is a cop and the other is a criminal. A professional hitman. A hitman being set up by a friend to be the target of another professional hitman.

He is also a hitman beginning to see how the times have changed for gangsters. There is no “code of honor” left to speak of. Now, it is pretty much every man for himself. This is clearly a major theme here. That, in the postmodern world, no matter which side of the law you are on everything seems to be sliding narcissistically into crass materialism. Money is God and all that matters is getting it.

Over time they both come to recognize enough of themselves in each other to forge a friendship…one you just can’t help but root for. They are after all – each in their own way – honorable men in an increasingly corrupt world. In fact, this is “male bonding” on a whole other level. Again, if you can get past the numbing brutality of the violence.

All of the guns in the film are real. Because of Hong Kong’s very strict gun laws, they had to be specially imported, and their use on-set was closely monitored. The gunfights in the streets of Hong Kong drew complaints from residents. Many local police officers are John Woo fans, and they usually let him keep filming. The shootout on the tram caused chaos in the Causeway Bay district; people thought a real robbery was going on. Woo had to talk to the Police Superintendent himself before he was allowed to resume filming. IMDb


The Killer [Dip Huet Seung Hung]

Fung Sei [in a church setting up a hit with Ah Jong]: Do you believe in God?
Ah Jong: No, but I enjoy the tranquility here.

Next up: the tranquiilty here?

Ah Jong [holding a gun]: Easy to pick up, hard to put down.

We'll need a context, of course.

Detective Ying: Any hospitals nearby?
Sgt. Chang: Think he has a conscience?
Ying: He won’t let that little girl die.

I guess he does.

Ying: Life’s cheap. It only takes one bullet. But he’s no ordinary assassin; I hope we’re just looking for one man. If I’m not mistaken, this man is not a cold-blooded murderer.
Sgt. Chang: It only takes one bullet, cold-blooded or not.

Unless, of course, you miss.

Ah Jong: I thought those I killed deserved to die. Now I believe everbody has the right to live.

Well, we’ll soon see about that.

Sgt. Chang [to Ying]: You can’t win all the time. But you can’t lose forever, either.

Like the song says, "even the losers get lucky sometimes".

Ying: Sometimes, I really do envy you your freedom. It’s something I don’t have. I believe in justice, but nobody trusts me.
Ah Jong: I have the same problem.
[pause]
Ah Jong: You’re an unusual cop.
Ying: Well, you’re an unusual killer.

Shades of heat, let's say.

Ying: Do all killers have a sense of honor?
Ah Jong: The world has changed. Honor is now a dirty word.

Let's make sure that's never the case here.

Fung Sei: Am I a dog?
Ah Jong. No, you are not a dog. You are a great man.
Fung Sei: We’re outmoded characters. We’re outcasts. I don’t want to die like a dog. But you see, I didn’t keep one last bullet.
Ah Jong: I have one.
[Ah Jong shoots and kills him: an honorable death]

Again, all you have to do here is to believe it.

Ah Jong [to Ying]: They aren’t just gonna let me walk out. I have no future! Can’t you see that? Walk out and tell 'em you’re a cop; see what happens to you! You think that’ll make any difference?

So, what do you think?

David Lynch

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

Start here: https://youtu.be/yKdztrUft-c?si=fkPOwUUMIW3nb9rk

Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.

Of course?

Everything I learned in my life, I learned because I decided to try something new.

And now, David?

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.

Cue Fred Madison.

There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery.

Pick two:
1] life
2] death

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me. But behind it you can rise out of that and see things the way the really are. That there is some sort of truth to the whole thing, if you could just get to that point where you could see it, and live it, and feel it … I think it is a long, long, way off. In the meantime, there’s suffering and darkness and confusion and absurdities, and it’s people kind of going in circles. It’s fantastic. It’s like a strange carnival: it’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of pain.

Next up: a lot of pain. Period.

wiki: Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.

That is what this film is described as. And it’s a good thing too because that is exactly what we get: sex and cynicism.

And [of course] the sucker that falls for it. Here though one of the cynics isn’t able to sustain it from beginning to end. For one thing, she falls in love with the sucker. And things then get complicated.

Not many critics liked this. On the other hand, only top 5 “top critics” at RT even bothered to view it. And only 10 critics altogether. Me, I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. But then few are more cynical than I.

I thought it was clever the way the mark was set up…then I came to like the mark. Like she did. But that’s the way it always seems to go though. Cynicism cuts both ways.


China Moon

Kyle: Boy, whoever did this fucked up all over the place. This is the Gong Show of murder.

Next up: the Gong Show of posters here.

Kyle: He hadn’t fucked up enough so he goes back into the bathroom and begins to clean the blood off the wall. I never heard of a rapist or robber who does your apartment afterward.

Admittedly, yeah, that is unusual.

Kyle: It was her husband. You find him and you find the gun. There’s no reason for him to throw it away. He’s done everything else wrong.

Case solved. Though little does he know that the next case is him.

Kyle: Murderers are dumb shits. They always screw it up sooner or later.

Boy, will that remark come back to haunt him.

Lamar: You see how nervous she was?
Kyle: Was she?
Lamar: Oh man, you could have bounced a golf ball off her.

You tell me.

Kyle [on phone]: Who called Munro from your room?
Rachel: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Kyle: You know. You put someone in there and you came up here to kill him.
Rachel: I didn’t.
Kyle: Tell me the truth goddamn it.
Rachel: Oh, please. I am. Nobody was there.
Kyle: Somebody is lying. This doesn’t make any sense.

The set up.

Lamar: Well, Kyle, you were right…sooner or later they all fuck up.

With a little help from him in particular.

Detective: Sorry Kyle you’re gonna have to come with us.
Kyle: What’s going on?
Lamar: You tell me. You’re the one who gave them the wrong gun.
Kyle: What are you talking about?
Lamar: Wrong serial number. You didn’t give him your gun.

Quicksand let's call it.

Captain: Smarten up, Kyle. You’re going to fry for this, and she’s going to walk. That must have been what she had in mind all along.

Oh, yeah. Right up until...

Kyle: So we were just a lie?
Rachel: It changed, Kyle. It changed after I met you. I came back from Miami to be with you.

She actually means it.

Rachel: Don’t look at me like that, Kyle, please. I’m not a stranger to you.
Kyle: Yes, you are.
Rachel: No. Don’t say that. I love you.
Kyle: Then why didn’t you tell me the truth?
Rachel: I would have lost you for good.
Kyle: You were just fucking me, weren’t you?! I was loving you and you were fucking me!

In the end they all get fucked.

Donald D. Hoffman

This critique also misreads the Copernican revolution. Yes, our perceptions misled us about our place in the universe. But its deeper message is this: our perceptions can mislead us about the very nature of the universe itself. We are prone to falsely believe that certain limitations and idiosyncrasies of our perceptions are genuine insights into objective reality.

Right, the very nature of the universe itself. Cue, among other things, lots and lot of clouds.

...as Einstein put it ‘Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live."

Does anyone here really understand the manner in which this distinction plays out "for all practical purposes" given the actual behaviors they choose?

Conscious realism makes a bold claim: consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and is properly described as a network of conscious agents.

Same thing? If you concur, please note how it plays out existentially in your interactions with others.

There are as many cubes as there are observers constructing cubes. And when you look away, your cube ceases to be.

Ice cubes? Skewb cubes? Rubik's cubes? Dice?

Nathan Seiberg of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton said, “I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated".

Click, of course.

Steven Pinker sums up the argument well: “We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness."

Let alone commune with correctness theoretically.

It might be argued there are two kinds of science fiction movies. First, there are those set so far in the future and involving technologies so far advanced it is very, very unlikely any of us now will be around to see it all unfold “in reality”. Our reality in other words. Then there are those films set “in the not too distant future”. Here the new technologies are [often] already unfolding “in reality” now. It is just a question of imagining their applicability a bit further down the road. Not down my road, I suspect, but maybe down yours.

Gattaca is more the latter.

GATC. Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine. Components of the DNA molecule. Figure out how they interact and then learn how to control them — how to manipulate them into replications more of our own choosing. It is going to happen. But who is going make the decisions? Or perhaps the moral objectivists will have by then taken their definitions down off the skyhooks and made them more readily applicable to the world we actually live in. One thing does remain largely intact though. It’s still a world overwhelmingly dominated by white males. Albeit right-handed white males.

Yep. I’m a lefty.

Here of course dasein too would have to make its adjustments. But only regarding the parts that really could by measured objectively. All the other parts were still as subjective as they are now. Unless there is gene for value judgments.

When Gattaca was first released, as part of a marketing campaign there were adverts for people to call up and have their children genetically engineered. Thousands of people called, wanting to have their offspring genetically engineered.

Many of the “futuristic” buildings in the film are actually quite old. Many of these represent a type of postmodern architecture called “brutalism”, which was popular in the 1950s. The two massive arches seen behind Jerome and Irene during their talk are actually the spillway of the Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles, which was built in the 1930s.

The icons used to denote a Valid versus an In-Valid have significant meaning. On the scanners, an infinity symbol appears next a Valid’s name, denoting their “infinite potential.” Next to an In-Valid’s name, a dagger appears. In taxonomy, a dagger next to a taxon indicates extinction. In addition, the dagger symbol resembles a cross, a reference to In-Valids being referred to as “God Children” IMDb


Gattaca

Title Card: “Consider God’s handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?” - Ecclesiastes 7:13

That's a tricky connundrum for some.

Title Card: “I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.” - Willard Gaylin

Cue the Pantheists?

Vincent [voiceover]: There is truly nothing remarkable about the progress of Jerome Morrow, except that I am not Jerome Morrow.

For one thing he had to grow a couple of inches. You might be wondering how.

Vincent [voiceover]: I was conceived in the Riviera.
[the camera pans down to reveal Vincent’s parents beginning to make love in the back of a Buick Riviera parked by the beach]
Vincent: Not the French Riviera, the Detroit variety. They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don’t say that anymore. I’ll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God’s hands, rather than her local geneticist. Ten fingers, ten toes. That’s all that used to matter. Not now. Now, only seconds old, the exact time and cause of my death was already known.

Which makes no sense at all [to me] once you go beyond medical afflictions.

Geneticist: You’ve already specified blue eyes, dark hair and fair skin. I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions - premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence and obesity–
Maria (interrupting, anxious): We didn’t want diseases, no. But we were wondering if we should leave some things to chance.
Geneticist: You want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built-in already. Your child doesn’t need any additional burdens. And keep in mind, this child is still you, simply the best of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

No, really, if that does become an option, let the deontologists among us provide us with the best of all possible worlds.

Antonio [father]: Listen, Vincent, you have to understand something. The only way you’re going to see the inside of a spaceship is if you were cleaning it.

Sure enough...

Vincent [voiceover]: I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.

Not unlike the Nazis?

German: You serious about this? I hope you’re not wasting my time.
Vincent: No, I…I’d give 100 percent.
German: That’ll get you half way there.

In other words, they have to make him taller.

Vincent [voiceover]: For the genetically superior, success is easier to attain, but it is by no means guaranteed. After all, there is no gene for fate.

Unless of course there actually is.

Vincent: Jerome, there’s more vodka in this piss than there is piss!

And that's a no-no.

[Vincent applies for employment at Gattaca. He has supplied a urine sample for analysis. When Dr. Lamar puts the sample into a genetic analyzer, the machine identifies it as “VALID”, “MORROW, JEROME”, “011010100-09564”]
Dr. Lamar: Congratulations.
Vincent: Well, what about the interview?
Dr. Lamar: That was it.[/b]

If you get his drift.

Vincent: They think I killed the mission director.
Jerome: What makes you think that?
Vincent: They found my eye lash.
Jerome: Where?
Vincent: In the corridor.
Jerome: Ah well it could be worse. They could have found it in your eye.

Now that's a good point.

Irene: I don’t even know who you are.
Vincent: I’m the same person I was yesterday.
Irene: I can’t hear any more of your lies Jerome…
Vincent: My name is Vincent, all right? Vincent Anton Freeman, and I’m a “faith birth” or a “de-gene-erate”, whatever you want to call it; but I am NOT a murderer!
Vincent: You’re a “God-child”?

That's what they called them of course.

Vincent: But we do have one thing in common, only I don’t have twenty or thirty years left in mine. Mine is already ten thousand beats overdue.
Irene: It’s not possible.
Vincent: Oh, and you are the authority on what is not possible, aren’t you Irene? They’ve got you looking for any flaw…after a while that’s all you see. For what it’s worth, I’m here to tell you that it is possible. It is possible.

Next up: what's possible here.

Vincent: [voiceover] For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess I’m suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving… maybe I’m going home.

And how comforting that must be.

Meaning

What would the world be...without money hung around our necks, hung around our very souls? Patrick deWitt

Communist?

“Dr. Hopkins told our class that we might never know what other people think and feel, but we used symbols that we generally agreed upon (language, mathematics, maps) for our meaning and purpose. We built rickety bridges over chasms of ignorance.” Bremer Acosta

Cue the clouds?

“I can’t not be who I am meant to be, can I?” H.C. Roberts

Clickless let's say.

“By extricating 'reality' from mind, materialism has sent the significance of nature into exile. With the pathetic grin of hubris stamped on our foolish faces, we carefully unwrap the package and then proceed to throw away its contents whileb proudly storing the empty box on the altar of our ontology. What a huge stash of empty boxes have we accumulated! Idols of stupidity they are; public reminders of a state of affairs that would be hilarious if it weren't tragic.” Bernardo Kastrup

Unless of course he's wrong.

“In a world where self-centered souls chase fleeting desires, dare to fight for something greater—something beyond yourself. Seek a purpose that calls you to stand for what transcends your own interests, and in doing so, you'll discover the true strength of your soul.” Blade Seventh

So, how's that working out for you?

“Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for a meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.” Marlen Haushofer

No, really, what does that even mean "for all practical purposes?"

Some people are weird. And, like Adam, I like weird. But some people are weirder than that. And, like Adam, I like them too. But some weird people are also dangerous. And I know from personal experience you can like them at your peril. Though the peril I encountered was not nearly in the same league with Adam’s.

Bottom line: Weird is just a whole lot more problematic than not weird. But then you take your chances with what passes for normal these days too.

Also, if one or both of your parents are weird it increases the odds that you will be too. The dangerous part can come from that as well. Fortunately, there are a lot more of these crazy bastards in the movies than there are out there walking among us. Unless, of course, it’s the other way around. Either way we live in a world now where every relationship is a calculated risk.

Or maybe this is all just a metaphor for love and friendship. The fantasy of being able to take the parts we love most about different people and putting them all together into that “perfect person”. Probably not though. Psychopaths are always so much more entertaining.

Bottom line: "At home, she designs her 'new friend', a life-sized patchwork doll made from the punk's arms, Polly's neck, Ambrosia's legs, Adam's hands, his girlfriend's ears, and Loopy's fur for the hair."


May

Young May: What’s wrong with my eye, mama?
Mama: Doctor says it’s lazy eye. But, we’re going to make you look perfect.

Praise the Lord!

Mama: I’ve always said, “If you can’t find a friend, make one."

Let's run this by Joeseph and Eve.

May [to Suzy]: I’ll bet you’re wondering what I’m making!
[pause]
May: Okay, I’ll tell you.
[giggles]
May: I saw someone today. A boy. You know how when you meet someone and you think you like them? And then, the more you talk to them, you see parts that you don’t like. Like that guy on the bench. And sometimes, you end up not liking any parts at all. But this boy is different. I like every part of him. Especially his hands, they’re beautiful.

Uh-oh.

Distraught Man in the Veterinarian Office: When I left for vacation my dog had four legs, okay? Then I came back - now he only has three. I mean I looked everywhere, I can’t find her leg. I mean, what do I do?

Take a wild guess.

May: I work at the animal hospital. And I sew.
Adam: Okay. Animal hospital.
May: Some people think it’s kind of gross.
Adam: I love gross.
May: Really?
Adam: Mm-hmm. Disgust me, please.
May: Okay. A couple of weeks ago, an old man comes in, and says his dog is dying. And he begs us to save it. A 90-pound black lab named Seymour. We take him in and run some tests, and find that he has a twisted bowel, and needs to be operated on immediately. So we shave Seymour’s tummy, we cut him open, and take out a piece of intestine about - about the size of a hot dog. Everything went smooth, but…when we went to sew Seymour back up, we realized we were out of the heavy sutures your supposed to use for large dogs. So the doctor decided that if we tripled up on cat sutures, that should do the trick. Well…a few days go by, and the old man calls up hysterical. The sutures had burst while he was at work, and by the time he got home, Seymour was sprawled out on the back porch with his guts spread all over the concrete, and the fence was soaked in blood all around the yard. It was a mess.
[Adam stares in disgust]
May: I had to sew that one back up.
[May giggles]

Don't be fooled by the giggling.

May: You don’t think I’m weird?
Adam: I do think you’re weird.
May: I knew that.
Adam: I like weird. I like weird a lot.

Next up: weird here.

Adam: Does this stuff freak you out?
May: Nothing freaks me out.
Adam: That’s right, it wouldn’t, would it?
[may picks up a knife and examines it]
Adam: You’re on to me. I’m a psycho.

Has May finally met her match?

Adam: Whoa! Jesus Christ! Who taught you how to kiss?!
May [at barely a whisper]: Suzie.

The doll in other words.

Polly [who is a lesbian]: Do you like pussy?
May [startled]: What?!
Polly: Cats? Do you like pussycats?

Good catch.

Adam [after showing May his gruesome cannibalism movie]: So, what’d you think?
May: It was sweet.
Adam: Sweet…
May: I don’t think she could’ve got his finger off in one bite, though. That part seemed a little farfetched.

It's finally starting to sync in, let's say.

Adam [after May bites down his lip…hard]: Ow! God damn it! What the fuck is that? Oh, fuck, I’m bleeding.
May [rubbing the blood on her face]: I know.
Adam: May, what are you doing? Please. I need a towel. I think…I think I’m gonna go.
May: What?
Adam: I’ll see you around.
May: But it’s just like your movie.
Adam: May, this is weird.
May: You like weird.
Adam: Not that weird.[/b]

Could things possibly get...weirder? As weird, say, as things are here?

[Adam leaves May’s apartment…then he hears distant whispering, then glass cracking, then glass breaking, then glass crashing to the floor, then May screaming]
May: I told you to face the goddamn wall!

Next up: facing the goddamn wall here.

Polly: Do you feel weird doing this?
May: I am weird.
Polly: I love weird.
May: Are you serious?
Polly: Yeah.
May: About me?
Polly: Dead.

May, you see, remarks that Polly has a beautiful neck.

May [to Blank after he finds Lupe]: So, are we like best friends now that you’ve seen what’s in my freezer?

Whatever you say, May.

Adam: Whatcha readin’ about?
May: Amputation.
Adam: Is that for work?
May: Nope. It’s just for fun.

Giggle, giggle, giggle.

Yuval Noah Harari

For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little...

Imagine that.

History cannot be explained deterministically and it cannot be predicted because it is chaotic. So many forces are at work and their interactions are so complex that extremely small variations in the strength of the forces and the way they interact produce huge differences in outcomes.

This part: https://youtu.be/eQj4e6VCL0w?si=VyEopgv_XPHYGKZM

The first principle of monotheist religions is ‘God exists. What does He want from me?’ The first principle of Buddhism is ‘Suffering exists. How do I escape it?'

Yet we still post here day after day.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.

Next up: bounded by philosophy.

Gautama's insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless. This is very clear when we experience unpleasant things, such as pain. As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied and do all we can to avoid it. Yet even when we experience pleasant things we are never content. We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify.

Bummer.

Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights.

New thread?

The human chameleon. He can be whatever he has to be in order to belong. And he must belong because the whole point of his existence is to belong. Belong to what? Well, to anything. But basically he is a reflection of the fact that one way or another every human aggregation, community, group etc. is able to find folks who actually don’t have to be chameleons at all. What most folks don’t think much about however is how under different sets of circumstances they may as well be. We all have the potential to reconfigure our persona such that it is seen as conforming. It’s only a matter of recognizing that potential as a crucial component regarding how we do come to acquire an identity. And why we are motivated to steer it in one direction rather than another.

Here is a man so lacking in an identity of his own he takes on the identity of practically anyone he might be around. And then they are able to react to him through the particular identity they have come to imagine is “real” instead. But then lots of us actually fantacize about becoming someone else. What would it like to be…

And this film takes the Marshall McLuhan moment from Annie Hall and expands on it all the more cleverly still. The film is made as though it were a documentary of events occurring in the 1920s and 30s. Allen then has contemporary intellectuals – Susan Sontag, Irving Howe, Saul Bellow, Bruno Bettelheim etc – commenting on it as though it were more anything but faux.

Oh, and interspersed between the intellectuals pontificating on the significance of Zelig are some really, really funny jokes.

Because it took so long to match Woody Allen to the old newsreel footage, Allen managed to film and complete A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Broadway Danny Rose, in the time it took to complete this. He later claimed that there is no mechanical way to ‘age’ film, so they would either scrunch the negative up, or stomp on it.

Cinematographer Gordon Willis has said of this film: “There was a point when I thought we were never going to finish, a point when I thought I was going to go nuts. I have never worked so hard at making something difficult look so simple”. IMDb


Zelig

[Zelig thinks he’s a psychiatrist.]
Zelig [to Dr. Fletcher]: I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women.

So, gentlemen, whose penis do you envy?

The Narrator: Who was this Leonard Zelig that seemed to create such diverse impressions everywhere? All that was known of him was that he was the son of a Yiddish actor named Morris Zelig, whose performance as Puck in the Orthodox version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was coolly received. The Elder Zelig’s second marriage is marked by constant violent quarreling. So much so that although the family lives over a bowling alley, it is the bowling alley that complains of noise. As a boy, Leonard is frequently bullied by anti-Semites. His parents, who never take his part and blame him for everything, side with the anti-Semites. They punish him often by locking him in a dark closet. When they are really angry, they get into the closet with him. On his deathbed, Morris Zelig tells his son that life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering and the only advice he gives him is to save string.

Of course, that might describe almost anyone these days.

Dr. Fletcher [putting Zelig under hypnosis]: Tell me why you assume the characteristics of the person you are with.
Zelig: It’s safe.
Dr. Fletcher: What do you mean safe?
Zelig: Safe. Safe to be like the others.
Dr. Fletcher: Do you want to be safe?
Zelig: I want to be liked.

Of course, that might describe almost anyone these days.

Socialist [speaking at large demonstration]: This creature Leonard Zelig personifies capitalist man. A creature who takes many forms to achieve ends…the exploitation of the workers by deception.

And, of course, to the capitalists, he's an insufferable Commie.

The Narrator: The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew, that could transform himself into a Negro and an Indian, saw him as a triple threat.

Got a few of them here, don't we?

Bruno Bettelheim: The question of whether Zelig was a psychotic or merely neurotic was a question that was endlessly discussed among his doctors. Now I myself felt his feelings were really not all that different from the normal, what one would call the well-adjusted, normal person, only carried to an extreme degree, to an extreme extent. I myself felt that one could really think of him as the ultimate conformist.

Just out of curiosity, who is the ultimate conformist here?

Zelig [as a doctor]: I have an interesting case. I’m treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities. I’m getting paid by eight people.

That ever happen to you?

Zelig [in a hypnotic trance]: My brother beat me. My sister beat my brother. My father beat my sister and my brother and me. My mother beat my father and my sister and me and my brother. The neighbors beat our family. The people down the block beat the neighbors and our family.

Not all that different from what goes on here. If on;y in a world of words.

Zelig [in hypnotic trance]: I’m 12 years old. I run into a Synagogue. I ask the Rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life… But, he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don’t understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me six hundred dollars for Hebrew lessons.

Being a Jew himself, he can get away saying things like this, perhaps?

The Narrator: That Zelig could be responsible for the behavior of each of the personalities he assumed means dozens of lawsuits. He is sued for bigamy, adultery, automobile accidents, plagiarism, household damages, negligence, property damages, and performing unnecessary dental extractions.

What did you sue him for?

Saul Bellow [interviewed after Zelig is spotted as a Nazi]: It made all the sense in the world because although he wanted to be loved…craved to be loved…there was also something in him that desired immersion in the mass and anonymity. And Fascism offered Zelig that kind of opportunity so that he could make something anonymous of himself by belonging to this vast movement.

Next up: Zelig in Trumpworld.

Zelig: I had never flown in my life and it shows what you can do when you’re a total psychotic.

Let's note the accomplishments from all the total psychotics here.

Epilogue: Leonard Zelig and Eudora Fletcher lived full and happy years together. She continued practicing psychoanalysis while he gave occasional lectures about his experiences. Zelig’s episodes of character change grew less and less frequent and eventually his malady disappeared completely. On his deathbed he told doctors that he had had a good life and the only annoying thing about dying was that he had just begun reading Moby Dick and wanted to see how it came out.

Just out of curiosity, which one of you is Zelig here?

Marshall McLuhan

I don't necessarily agree with everything that I say.

I know what he means. And then some.

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

If you get his drift, say?

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!

You tell me. Unless you prefer me to tell you.

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.

And whose insights and understandings might that be?

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot...for he sees what no one else does: things that, to everyone else, are not there.

Huh? As though if you can't see something it doesn't exist?

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.

That might explain Trump as much as anything else does.

Another superb “psychological horror film” in which the horror itself emanates from within the human mind. All the strange and twisted places it can go. All the strange and twisted places mine has never been.

Maybe someday [a la Total Recall] a technology will be invented that will allow us to become immersed in a frame of mind much like this. What must it be like to think these thoughts and to feel these emotions? Thoughts and feelings we can only try to imagine vicariously through experiences like this one. Sure, they would still be at a distance but not just something you are watching up on a screen. More like being immersed in dream able to recreate these mind-blowing realities virtually.

In reality tough, thousands upon thousands of children actually experience this trauma. One of their beloved parents is lost to them. The other parent finds someone to replace her [or him]. But the step-parent is simply no match for the one lost. Or may be implicated somehow in the loss. All sorts of emotional reactions can occur. Some of them twisted into really frightening consequences. But here again there are just too many possible variations to ever fully grasp it. And then, what here is real and what is only imagined to be real? But isn’t what is imagined real enough in the end?

Or is this just a “ghost story”? Nope. No way in my view.

You have to keep reminding yourself though that most families are not like this. Anymore than they are like mine. That, instead, this sort of dysfunction [with its inherent drama] is what sells tickets to the theater. After all, how entertaining can a “normal” family be?


A Tale of Two Sisters [Janghwa, Hongryeon]

Su-mi: Just get rid of Su-yeon’s closet.
Father: Su-mi, we agreed not to talk about that closet. You promised, right?

Of course, as I recall, she was just released from a mental institution.

Father: Su-mi I know you’re very angry with me. And I know I’m a bad father.
Su-mi: You’re not even a bad father.

Ouch.

Su-mi [seeing bruises on Su-yeon’s arms]: What is this? Who did this to you? Tell me, who did this? It’s okay, tell me. She did this, huh? She did this, didn’t she? Su-yeon what’s wrong with you? I told you to tell me everything! She did this, right? She did this, huh? Did she do this? Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!

Let's just say that some things here are not what they seem.

Eun-ju [step-mother]: Listen carefully. I’m your mother, got it? As much as you hate it I’m the only one in this world you can call mother, got it? Hard to handle, huh? That’s too bad. But that’s how the world is. The world isn’t as sweet as you picture it. Sometimes you have to bear the worst and live on. Like the way I’m bearing you two!

One of them is doomed.

Mi-hee: Honey
Husband: Yes?
Mi-hee: I saw something strange in that house.
Husband: What did you see?
Mi-hee: There was a girl under the sink.

You know the one.

Eun-ju [to Su-mi]: Do know what’s really scary? You want to forget something. Totally wipe it off your mind. But you never can. It can’t go away, you see. And…and it follows you around like a ghost.

Unless, of course, it's all in her head.

Su-mi: Do me a favor. Stay out of our lives. Now, can you get out of the way? I have to go.
Eun-ju: You…You might regret this moment. Keep that in mind!
Su-mi: What can be worse than standing here with you?

I can think of one thing.

This is America. So it’s probably not so much a question of, “is this based on a true story?” as it is “which true story is this one based on?” Or, maybe, “how many murders were commited to copy this one?”

And it is based on a true story. This one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of ... nee_Conrad

American youth? Let’s move on. To men like Feck? To kids like Tim?

But it’s always the Kims that bear the brunt of it. And the only hope for them is that somehow they are able to get out from under all these assholes. Because if they don’t the chances are they will just end up being assholes themselves one day.

Although it is a work of fiction, the movie was inspired by the actual murder of Marcy Conrad, who was killed by her boyfriend Anthony Jacques Broussard in Milpitas, California in 1981. Neal Jimenez read the story in the newspaper while visiting friends, wrote a script and turned it in to his instructor while he was an English major at Santa Clara University. Jimenez said “that the incident is merely the inspiration for the screenplay”.

Neal Jimenez based the characters on friends he went to school with in Sacramento, California.


River's Edge

Layne: Didn’t think you’d make it today. Where’s Jamie?
Samson: I killed her.
Maggie: What?
Samson: I killed her.
Maggie: You’re strange, John.
Tony: What’d you do, man? Sit on her?
Samson: They don’t believe me. Come on, I’ll show you.

There she is, just as he said she was.

Layne: Why did you kill her?
Samson: She was talking shit.

That'll do it for some.

Clarrisa: What’s going to happen with John and all that?
Lanye: Nothing’s going to happen. Tonight I’m going to tie up a few loose ends…
Carissa: That’s it? He murders Jamie and we just ignore it?
Layne: He had his reasons.

Cue dasein?

Det. Bennett: Did the sight of this dead girl move you in any particular way?
Matt: I don’t know.
Det. Bennett: Were you shocked, angry, saddened? Did the sight please you?
Matt: I don’t know how I felt.
Det. Bennett: You knew this girl?
Matt: Yeah.
Det. Bennett: How did you feel about her?
Matt: I don’t know.
Det. Bennett: Hey, I’m getting sick of “I don’t know”. Do you hear me?

He doesn't know.

Feck: I killed a girl, it was no accident. Put a gun to the back of her head and blew her brains right out the front. I was in love.
Samson: I strangled mine.
Feck: Did you love her?
Samson: She was okay.

Men!
Well, certainly some of them.

Madeleine [Tim and Matt’s mom]: You let them both get away?
Tom: Madeleine, I’ve got enough troubles of my own.
Madeleine: You don’t even care do you?
Tom: Look, you’re the mother here. I didn’t give birth to the monsters.

One of them for sure.

Tim [to his friend]: My fucking brother. Go get your Dad’s car. I know where we can get a gun.

They’re both about 12 years old.

Samson: I got this philosophy. You do shit. Then it’s done. And then you die.

Of course, there are other philosophies around.

Madeleine: I give up this mother bullshit, it’s not worth it! You’re all a mistake anyway!

That certainly explains some things.

Clarissa: I hear they’re having an open-casket funeral for Jamie. I think that’s in bad taste.
Tony [mocking the teacher]: “This whole episode is in bad taste. You young people are a disgrace to the human race. To all living things, to plants even. You shouldn’t be seen in the same room with a cactus.”

And now they're running the whole fucking country here.

Melissa Broder

I would say I'm less afraid of dying than I am of life.

On the other hand, she's still around. And then some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Broder

Was it ever real? The way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?

Yes.

What I wanted most was for this certified hot person to see a hotness in me, thereby verifying, once and for all, that I was hot.

So, is she: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=e ... =616&dpr=1

They say the perfect is the enemy of the good, that if you strive for perfection you will overlook the good. But I did not agree. I didn't like the good. The good was just mediocre. I wanted to go beyond mediocre. I wanted to be exceptional. I did not want to be medium-size. I wanted to be perfect. And by perfect, I meant less.

The more less the better?

We're going to spend the rest of our lives together in my head: a love story.

She's got a million of them.

What I have sought in love is a reprieve from the itch of consciousness -- to transcend myself and my human imperfections -- but this has yet to happen.

That ever happen to you?

Think Escape From New York set in Paris. But Snake Plissken is no Leïto. This guy is nothing short of dazzling. The “action” scenes are at times, well, mesmerizing. And even though the dystopian ghetto plot has been done over and over again he just brings something to it that all the others sorely miss: the poetry of motion. And Captain Tomaso isn’t so bad either. They come to share a bond not really all that different from the cop and the criminal in The Killer.

It is tantaumont to being a gymnast [or maybe an artist?] with the city’s buildings themselves becoming the “apparatus”. Prepare to be amazed. In part because, to the best of my knowledge, there are virtually no special effects involved. What you see them do is in fact what they are doing.

Other than that it’s the usual assortment of good guys and bad guys…and guys you think are one but then turn out to be the other. Cops and government officials for example. Corrupt? Oh, yeah.

Some people are just expendable. And rather than allowing them to intermingle freely with the rest of us, the powers that be [with plently of support from the citizenry no doubt] literally wall them up in a “ghetto”. But why stop there?

Look for the Yeti.


District B13 [Banlieue 13]

Title Card: Paris, 2010. Faced with rampant crime in certain suburbs, or barrios the government authorized the construction of an isolation wall around neighborhoods classified as high risk.

Next up: the equivalent of that here.

K2 [to Taha]: His sister Lola. Leito’s sister works at the supermarket. If we’ve got her he won’t stay in hiding for long.

You can say that again. Then double it.

Corrupt cop [to Leito]: You go into the cell…
[he turns to Taha]
Corrupt cop: …and you pick up your dope and clear out.
Leito: Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake! If you let him go, it’ll be worse than before.
Corrupt cop: It won’t be worse, 'cause we’re getting out. When the shit falls, we’ll be far away.
Leito: You won’t be here, but it’s still going to go on and you’re the ones who are supposed to stop it.
Corrupt cop: I’ll bet that you still believe that. The barbed wire and the walls. Did you forget all that? They’re going to put a lid on it and blow it all up.

Some things you forget...or else.

Damien: What’s inside the truck?
Kruger [Secretary of State]: An experimental scatter-type bomb sometimes known as a clean bomb. It’s a prototype based on neutron technology. Medium range about 8 kilometers. The waves are of short duration. They’re absorbed very fast. The risk of polluting the atmosphere is close to zero.
Damien: You’re worried they’ll move the bomb. Is that it? It wouldn’t be so clean in the center of town, would it?
Kruger: Yes, and that’s one of our primary concerns.

The neutron bomb. Remember that?
"A neutron bomb is a nuclear weapon that kills people but leaves buildings relatively undamaged."

Damien: Colonel, you know the way I function. I study the terrain for weeks and weeks then it takes me months to infiltrate.
Colonel: Damien, there are 2 million people living out there and maybe half of them are scum of the earth but the other half are entitled to our assistance. So you’re gonna change the way you operate unless you don’t care anymore about saving innocent people.

Doesn’t really matter. There’s more to this than meets the eye. In the interim: Damien, meet Leito.

Damien: But the bomb will kill millions.
Taha: Ah, but they should have thought of that. When they made it, for example.

Unless, of course, that's all they ever thought about.

Damien: I’ve got the bomb in front of me. I need the code.
Kruger: Where are you now?
Damien: The bomb’s in front of me with 3 and 1/2 minutes left. Give me the code, and we’ll talk later.
Kruger: Where are you? The exact spot.
Damian: On the roof of a building in Barrio 13. Do you want the weather forecast as well?!
Kruger: Good work, Tomaso. We’re all very proud of you.
Damian: Thanks, but time’s running out.

Isn't it always?

Leito [regarding the code]: B-13? Like Barrio 13?
Damien: Yeah.
Leito: Doesn’t it seem strange that the bomb’s code is Barrio 13…
Damien: Just coincidence.
Leito: Damien, wait! Hold on. If the bomb wasn’t scheduled to come here…why the hell does it have the same number as this barrio? Damien, listen. What if it’s the reverse?
Damien: The reverse of what?
Leito: You detonate the bomb with the code instead.

Yeah, what about that?

Damien: Why send me, then, if they wanted the fucking thing to explode in the first place Explain that!
Leito: So it blows up right here where they want the center of Barrio 13.

And then all of the other things they don't even know that they don't even know about.

Leito: Open your eyes, Damien! Nobody gives a shit about this barrio. Twenty years, and they can’t solve the problem. They built a wall around us and now they’re going to clean it out for good. How come there are no civil servants here? No post office or schools, and just by chance the police station was shut down.

Sure sounded suspicious to me.

Damien: It can’t be possible, Leito! You don’t kill two million people 'cause you can’t solve their problems!
Leito: No? They murdered six million because none of them were blond with blue eyes!

Let's run this by AI:
"While not the most common phenotype among Jewish people, it is entirely possible for Jews to have blonde hair and blue eyes, with this characteristic often attributed to intermixing with Northern European populations throughout history..."

Kruger: Barrio 13 is uncontrollable. It costs a fortune to the state. The taxpayers are worried. Worried, frightened, and fed up with paying for such scum!
Damien: So we clean it out with a bomb?
Kruger: Yes. It’s not very democratic, but it solves all the problems.

He wondered if this is where France is headed now?

Be careful who you fall in love with. Especially if you are from one side of the tracks and she is from the other.

And what can someone from the wrong side really know about someone named Tamsim? On the other hand, Mona seems a bit more manageable. And more down to earth. For one thing she is much less likely to live in a world that she makes up as she goes along. Not that Tamsim spins the yarn as a spider spins the web. She is just the proverbial poor little rich girl who is not getting the love she deserves from Mommy and Daddy. They are [predictably] self-absorbed assholes and leave her to her own devices. And then Mona comes along. And, in her own way, she too is off the beaten path. And particularly vulnerable now because she just lost her brother. To God. He suddenly discovered that he is born again. And, for Mona, nothing could possibly be more insufferable.

It’s not that Tamsim plays Mona for a sucker. I think the feelings she develops for her are largely genuine. But she can only be genuine up to a point. She is really from another world when push comes to shove. She goes to a boarding school and is considerably more sophisticated about the things that girls who go to boarding schools generally are—like intellectual and cultural pursuits. What is there really left to share once the novelty of being teenagers in love wears off?


My Summer of Love

Phil [speaking to the congregation while Mona listens in sullenly, scornfully]: I looked to the Pub and I thought, God what have I been doing? Thank you Lord. I now see what I can do. Our room is not a Pub, our room is a spiritual center where people can come and learn about Jesus Christ. Because we will give this valley back to Jesus Christ. Because people need spiritual fullfilment. They need to know that the Lord is there for them. They need an echo of it. They need to know their Lord. How great is the Lord? We’re gonna bring love to this valley. We’re gonna bring the name of Jesus Christ to the lost people of this valley. We will let them know that He is there for them!

And then when it all collapses...? Spectacularly let's say.

Tamsin [finishes playing the cello]: It was “The Swan” by Saint-Saens.
Mona: I live above “The Swan”. The pub.
Tamsin: You live in a pub?
Mona: Yeah.

Well, it used to be a pub.

Tamsin: Have you read Nietzsche?
Mona: Who?
Tamsin: Nietzsche. He was a great philosopher and he just believed that, you know, people, there are some people that are put on this planet who are made to succeed, who are just made to blossom. And it doesn’t matter how many lesser mortals suffer and get fucked over, it doesn’t matter, as long as they succeed. You know like Shakespeare and Wagner. And your brother with all that crap. I mean Nietzsche would string him up with all that stuff about God. God’s dead. This is what is real here
Mona: The here and now.
Tansim: Yeah, you should read him. I think you’d like him. Or Freud.

So, what would you recommend to someone on the "other side"?

Tamsin: So what are you gonna do with your life?
Mona: I’m gonna be a lawyer.
[pause]
Mona: I’m gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who’s like a bastard, and churn out all these kids, right, with mental problems. And then I’m gonna wait for menopause…or cancer.

So, what are you waiting for?

Phil: Why are you always trying to hurt me?
Mona: Cause I think you’re a fucking fake, that’s why.

Of course, he'll have to find that out himself.

Phil: What is wrong with you?
Mona: I just miss me brother.
Phil: I’m right here.
Mona: That ain’t you. It ain’t.
Phil: Oh no, this is me, this is the real me.
Mona: I want the old Phil.
Phil: Well that old Phil, he didn’t make me very happy.
Mona [weeping]: He made me happy. I love my brother, he used to be real. I haven’t got any family, me home’s changed, no one fancies me…
Phil [hugging Mona]: Oh, Jesus, watch over this child, watch over her…
Mona [revolted]: Oh no, fuck off! Fuck off!!!

And she means it.

Tamsin: What’s he making?
Mona: A cross. He’s putting it up at the top of the hill to cleanse the valley of evil.

How about if someone puts up a cross here?

Tamsin: You see that house there…and the posh Jaguar parked outside? It’s my dad’s car. And he comes here quite a lot, I think…cause this is where his girlfriend lives. And he is in there fucking her now. He has her bent over and he is fucking her in her ass.
[she starts crying]
Tansim: Oh man, you should see her. She’s just a dog, a fucking whore. She’s got blond hair and big tits and these high heels. She’s got no fucking brains at all. She’s got nothing.

Except holes?

Tamsin: This is Edith Piaf. I just adore her. She was this marvellous Parisian woman who had such a wonderfully tragic life. She was married 3 times & each husband died in mysterious circumstances. The last one was a boxing champion and she killed him with a fork. She didn’t even go to prison because in France crimes of passion are forgiven.

On the other hand:
Marcel Cerdan, the boxer, wasn’t Édith Piaf’s husband. He was her lover and the love of her life. He died in a plane crash and she never recovered from his death. She never killed anyone, let alone with a fork. IMDb

Phil [to the congregation]: …just fucking go…get out, get out, go! You bunch of fakes go…fuck off! Get out! Fucking move! Move it!!! Get out and take the fucking Bibles with you. You’re all fakers!!!

Yep, Mona was right.

Sadie: Excuse me…Can I have my top back, please?
Mona: You’re Sadie!!!

Tamsin's dead sister.

Tamsin: I’ve got to go back to school, Mona. You’ve always known that. Look, I couldn’t be myself back there in front of my mother. Anyway, I was just playing a part. That wasn’t even me. Come on, you know me. You know me. And don’t be upset about Sadie. Sadie was just… Sadie was just a bit of poetic licence. I mean, I am a fantasist. You can’t tell me we haven’t had fun.

That they did. But then this was the whole fucking point for Mona.

Tamsin [after Mona chokes and very nearly drowns her]: What the fuck are you doing?!! You’re a crazy fucking bitch!

I really thought she was going to kill her.