Philosophy Now Forum

Someone takes your child and the authorities return him to you. Only it is not your child they return. And the more you struggle to bring this to their attention, the more they insist you should just accept the child they gave you.

And the fact that all of this is based on a true story means you are hooked: What the hell is happening here?

It’s one of those films where something fortuitous happens that sets into motion a series of events that have enormous consequences. Jean can’t come to work. So Margaret asks Christine to come in her place. She goes but that means leaving her son alone in the house until the neighbor can stop by to check in on him. The rest [for them] is history.

Then it all comes down to this: Who is in on the fraud and who is not? Or is it even a fraud at all? And it is a really scary reminder of what those in position of “authority” can and will do if the stakes [for them] are high enough. And that never changes. Here the mother is deemed to be “mad” and put in a mental institution. And the more she struggles to expose the fraud the more it “proves” how dangerous she is. This is all straight out of Kafka. Everywhere you look another Nurse Ratchet on steroids. And that’s before we get to the flagrant police and government corruption.

And then how all of that is connected to all of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wineville ... op_murders

The title refers to a European folk legend. Supposedly, fairies, elves, trolls, or even the devil would occasionally steal young children from their cradles, and leave a false child - a “changeling” - in its place.

J. Michael Straczynski first learned of the story of Christine Collins from an unnamed source at Los Angeles City Hall. The source had stumbled across case files regarding the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders among other discarded documents scheduled for destruction. Straczynski took the files himself and became obsessed with the case, doing extensive research over the course of a year. Virtually every event depicted in the film appears as cited in legal documents, with dialog often taken verbatim from court transcripts. Straczynski wrote his first draft of the screenplay in only eleven days.

The fate of Sanford Clark, the 13-year-old boy who was forced by his uncle, Gordon Northcutt, to participate in some of the Wineville Murders, is not mentioned in the film. After leading the police to the bodies at his uncle’s farm, Clark was sentenced to five years at Whittier Boys School in California. A sympathetic L.A. District Attorney, Loyal Kelly, later had Clark’s sentence reduced to 23 months after the school reported that Clark showed promising job skills and a genuine desire to reform. Clark returned to Canada, where he served in the Canadian military during World War II, and later worked as a mailman for 28 years. He married, adopted and raised two children, and served local community causes throughout his life. Sanford Clark died in 1991. IMDb


The Changeling

Walter: I got in a fight with Billy Mankowski.
Christine: What happened?
Walter: He hit me.
Christine: Did you hit him back?
Walter: Yes.
Christine: Good. Rule number one: Never start a fight, but always finish it. So why did he hit you?
Walter: Because I hit him.

Oh...

Rev. Briegleb [to his congregation]: We are told that the Los Angeles Police Department is doing the best it can to reunite mother and child, and I am sure that is true. But given its position as the most violent, corrupt and incompetent police department this side of the Rocky Mountains, that’s not saying a great deal.

Think L.A. Confidential. The hush-hush parts

Capt. Jones: Mrs. Collins…listen to me. I know you’re feeling uncertain right now, but that’s to be expected…a boy this age changes so fast…but we’ve compensated for that in our investigation. We’re experts in child identification. There’s no question that this is your son.
Christine: It’s not Walter.
Capt. Jones: It’s not Walter as you remember him. That’s why it’s important for you to take him home, on a…trial basis.
Christine: A trial basis?
Capt. Jones: Once you’ve put him back in familiar surroundings, and given yourself time to recover from the shock of his changed condition…you’ll see that it is him. I swear to you, Mrs. Collins. I give you my word. Trust me…this is your son.

On the other hand, how far can she throw him?

Christine: He’s not my son.
Capt. Jones: Mrs. Collins…
Christine: No, I don’t know why he’s saying that he is, but he’s not Walter and there’s been a mistake.
Capt. Jones: I thought we agreed to give him time to adjust.
Christine: He’s three inches shorter; I measured him on the chart.
Capt. Jones: Well, maybe your measurements are off. Look, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.
Christine: He’s circumcised and Walter isn’t.
Capt. Jones: Mrs. Collins, your son was missing for five months, for at least part of that time in the company of an unidentified drifter. Who knows what such a disturbed individual might have done. He could have had him circumcised. He could have…
Christine: …made him shorter?

She's got him?

Christine: He’s not my son!
Capt. Jones: Why are you doing this, Mrs. Collins? Why are you doing this? You seem perfectly capable of taking care of the boy. Your job pays you enough to attend to his personal needs, so I don’t understand why you’re running away from your responsibilities as a mother.
Christine: I am not running away from anything! Least of all my responsibilities! I am even taking care of that boy right now, because I am all he has! What worries me is that you have stopped looking for my son!
Capt. Jones: Why should we be looking for someone we’ve already found?

Again: who is in on it and who is not?

Christine [to a sleeping “Walter”]: I was wrong to yell at you. You’re still a child, and I think you don’t really understand what you’re doing, the hurt you’re causing. Maybe this is all just some big game of pretend to you, but I need you to understand. Walter is…he’s all I have, he’s everything to me, and every day we lose because of this puts him further away from where I can help him. Whatever the police think, whatever the world thinks, we know the truth, don’t we? We both know you’re not Walter. Getting you to admit that may be the only chance I have to straighten this out before it’s too late. Maybe you’re afraid of getting in trouble, that you’re in too deep. But you’re not. You don’t have to tell me who you are, you just have to tell them who you’re not. Just… tell them the truth.

How would she know how "deep" he's in?

Rev. Briegleb [to Christine]: The police chief picked fifty of the most violent cops on the force, gave them machine guns and permission to shoot anyone who got in their way. He called them the Gun Squad. No lawyers. No trials. No questions, suspensions or investigations. Just piles of bodies. Bodies in morgues, bodies in hospitals, bodies by the side of the road, barely alive. Not because the police wanted to wipe out crime, they just wanted to get rid of the competition. Mayor Cryer and half the police force are on the take. Prostitution, gambling, bootlegging, you name it. When the gloves came off, pretty soon the rest of the department got into the brutality act. Didn’t want the Gun Squad to have all the fun, after all. The more they got away with it, the worse things got, because when you give folks the freedom to do whatever they want, as God saw in the Garden of Eden, they’ll do just that.

Uh, defund the police?

Carol: I heard them talking. You’re here on a code 12, police action. The doctors, the staff, they figure that if the police sent you here, there must be a good reason for it.
Christine: There isn’t a good reason for it. I’m perfectly sane and I will explain that to them.
Carol: Yeah? How? The more you try to act sane, the crazier you start to look. If you smile too much, you’re delusional or stifling hysteria. If you don’t smile, you’re depressed. If you’re neutral you’re emotionally withdrawn and potentially catatonic.
Christine: You seem to have given this a great deal of thought.
Carol: I have. Don’t you get it? You’re code 12. So am I. We’re here for the same reason: We pissed off the cops.
Christine: They can’t do that.
Carol: Are you kidding? Hey, everybody knows women are fragile, right? They’re all emotions, no logic, nothin’ goin’ on upstairs. And sometimes, like when they say something that’s a little, y’know, inconvenient…they just go fucking nuts, pardon my French. If we’re insane, nobody has to listen to us. I mean, who are you going to believe, some crazy woman trying to destroy the integrity of the force, or a police officer? Then once they get us in here, we either learn to behave, and shut up, or – or we don’t go home.

"The System" let's call it.

Dr. Steele: By signing, you certify that you were wrong when you stated the boy returned by the police was not your son. It further stipulates that the police acted properly in sending you here for observation and absolves them of all responsibility for…
Christine: I won’t sign it.
Steele: Then your condition is not improved. Sign it, and you can be out of here first thing tomorrow.
Christine: I won’t sign it! I was not wrong! That boy is not my son! And I am not going to stop telling the truth about this! And you’re not going to stop me, and the police aren’t going to stop me…
Steele: Mrs. Collins, you’re becoming agitated.
Christine: I will tear down the walls of this place with my bare hands if I have to, but one way or another –
Steele: Orderly! The patient is disturbed, hyperactive and is threatening the staff. See to it she is properly sedated.

Of course, we know what that means.

Det. Ybarra: Nobody can just up and kill 20 kids, okay?
Sanford: We did.

Trust him?

Dr. Steele: Six days, Mrs. Collins, and no progress. We may have to go to more…strenuous therapies. Unless you’re willing to prove you’re doing better…by signing this.
Christine: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Dr. Steele: Room 18.

Next up: Room 18 here.

Rev Briegleb [to Christine]: The Lord works in mysterious ways, Mrs. Collins.
Christine: Does he ever.

Well, where was the Lord when those 20 boys were being chopped into pieces by Northcott?

Christine: Three boys made a run for it that night, detective, and if one got out, then may be either or both of the other two did too. Maybe Walter’s out there having the same fears that he did. Afraid to come home and identify himself, or afraid to get in trouble. But either way, it gives me something I didn’t have before today.
Det. Ybarra: What’s that?
Christine: Hope.

Nope. She never stopped searching for her son. But she never found him.

Why am I so often drawn to films that depict just how utterly, utterly shallow Youth Culture in America is? Generations now deplorably hooked on the ravages of pop culture, mindless consumption and the worship of celebrities.

Well, it does make me feel rather smug and superior. Of course, how much different [really] was I in my own youth. A lot actually. On the other hand, I know that I was often hooked like everyone else on “stuff” the “cool” kids had. Like, say, Jack Purcell sneakers?

But, then, the crass capitalists have won, right? Let’s go shopping.

Of course, this is one of those films that teenagers are supposed to watch as an object lesson in how not to behave. And then react to it instead as an object lesson in how to behave. Only all the more cunningly. If all the more mindlessly. It’s amazing how some manage to combine the two.

It’s a monkey see, monkey do world. Or it is for a certain demographic.

Throughout the film, there is a very prominent ad that shows a woman’s white face, and underneath it are the words “Truth Is Beauty”. The eyes of this woman belong to lead actress Nikki Reed. Throughout the movie, as Tracy falls deeper into trouble, the face becomes more distorted and dirty. IMDb


Thirteen

Tracy [after inhaling a computer cleaning aerosol]: Hit me. I’m serious, I can’t feel anything, hit me! Again, do it harder! I can’t feel anything, this is so awesome! Do it harder! Oww! I can’t feel anything! This is so awesome! I hear this little “wah-wah-wah” inside my head.
Evie: That’s your brain cells popping.
Tracy: Do it.
Evie: You want me to do it?
Tracy: No, no, no. Hit me! Harder! Punch me! Hit me really hard. Really.
Evie: Okay. I’m gonna punch you.
Tracy: Okay! Go!
Evie [after really hitting her]: Oh, shit! Oh! Oh, fuck!

That ever happen to you?

Tracy [on the phone in a tattoo shop]: Mom, do you know the difference between point-slope form and slope-intercept form? See, that’s why I need to be here at the library. They have tutors.

Skin deep, let's call it.

Tracy [in the afterglow of sex with Javi]: We are so perfect for each other. You know, if everybody married someone from a different race, then in one generation there would be no prejudice.

Nope, not yet.

Luke [as underage Evie tries to seduce him]: No. Bad. Danger, Will Robinson, danger.

Penny too, right?

Tracy [to Melanie]: Would you like me to model my new thong? Perfect for pooping on the go!

Anytime, anywhere...

Tracy: No bra, no panties. No bra, no panties.
Melanie: Stop it.
Tracy: No bra, no panties.

Uh, no pubic hair?

Brooke [to Melanie]: They cut off my ears.

No, it’s not what you think. Plastic surgery? Oh, then it is what you think.

Melanie: How do you explain $863 in your purse?
Tracy: What do you expect me to say, Mom? We jacked it, okay? It’s not like your broke ass ever has any money to give me!

So, who won?

Brooke: We’re moving to Ojai, so you won’t be seeing Evie again. Ever. You’re really cruel, Tracy. I mean, I’m sure you can be a sweet kid when you want, but right now you’re a really bad influence. I mean, you cheat, you lie, you steal…
Tracy [shouting in disbelief]: Oh my God! Are you kidding me, who do you think I learned all this shit from!!
Melanie: Tracy was playing with Barbies before she met Evie!

Like that's a good thing?

Brooke [to Tracy]: Did she teach you to beat the crap out of her as well? Don’t even start with me, I’ve seen the bruises, little one!
Tracy: What the hell did you tell her Evie?!!

Uh, not the truth hopefully.

Tracy [to her Mom…but basically to the whole fucking world]: Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Next up: Marlyn Manson?

Marshall McLuhan

A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.

Actually, I didn't know that.

The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.

Things intellectuals say, right?

Art is the sole means of grace in our fallen state.

Things intellectuals say, right?

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

If not over and over and over again.

The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.

In other words, if you let them.

"The Stars Are So Big, The Earth Is So Small…Stay As You Are"

Magoo?

There is racism so flagrant and blatant you know exactly where you are. Then there is racism that pervades all the rest of the world. Which is worse is sometimes hard to say. Unless you are smack dab in the middle of the first kind.

When you are you can sometimes run into the controversy that surrounds “taking the law into your own hands”. Is that ever justified? Or is it more that once you go down that road the rule of law itself comes into jeopardy? Suppose two racist scumbags brutally rape and nearly kill a ten year old girl? Suppose you’re the father. You find them and then kill them. Justice served?

This illustrates quite clearly just how cloudy things can become when you talk about “conflicting goods” out in the real world. There just isn’t a one-size-fits-all resolution to be found.

After all, what is a just punishment to fit this crime? And this ain’t exactly unfolding 100 years ago.

Of course this one of those films where virtually all the folks in position of power are white. And the one needing their help is black. You hardly ever see films where it is the other way around, do you? What does that say about race in America still today?

This is also about having the balls to “buck the system”. And it’s not just you in the crosshairs. It’s your loved one and your family too. Magnified all the more when it is about race in the “deep South”. And it don’t get much deeper there than Mississippi.

The ending? Well, let’s just say some might call it a liberal fairy tale.

Paul Newman turned down the role of Lucien Wilbanks because he found the film’s message distasteful.

Like John Grisham’s novel, the movie was very controversial, and was widely accused of condoning murder. IMDb


A Time To Kill

James: She looks a little young.
Billy Ray: You know I always say if they’re old enough to crawl, they’re in the right position.

Sounds like something the Billy Rays of this world might say.

Sheriff [to James and Billy Ray]: We’ll go to the courthouse, the judge will set your bail…then we’ll come back, nice and peaceful. If I get any trouble outta you guys, I’m gonna integrate this jail.

I think they get the point.

Lucien: [to Jake]: Bear in mind that Mr. Hailey is guilty as sin under our legal system. It does not permit vigilante violence…and he took the law into his own hands. He murdered two people. Two people who raped his 10-year-old daughter.

That's a tough one.

KKK Grand Dragon: Now, you tell me…who’s that n*****’s lawyer?
Freddie: Local boy. His name’s Brigance. He’s got a pretty good reputation.
KKK Grand Dragon: He got family?
Freddie: Yes, sir. He has a wife and a daughter.
KKK Grand Dragon: Good.

If you get his drift.

Jake: There ain’t nothin’ more dangerous in this world than a fool with a cause…

Here? Let's name names.

Jake: Mr. Vonner, in short…you have the opportunity to work on a case that matters. Let me get this straight. You want me to put aside my empty, soulless, shady astonishingly lucrative, divorcee practice come work with you on an unwinnable, lose-all-my-friends case because it matters? It’s a novel idea, I know.
Harry Rex: No way. Never. You presumptuous little shit.

Too close to call?

Ellen: You are opposed to the death penalty.
Jake: Why?
Ellen: You’re not?
Jake: I’m in favor of it. I’d like to go back to hangings if we could.
Ellen: You’re kidding.
Jake: No. The only problem with the death penalty is that we do not use it enough.
Ellen: Have you told Carl Lee this?
Jake: The men who raped his daughter deserved the death penalty, not Carl Lee.
Ellen: How do you decide who dies and who doesn’t?
Jake: Simple. You take the crime and you take the criminal. Now, say a crack dealer guns down an undercover cop. You strap him to a chair and turn it on.
Ellen: For some reason, I thought you were a liberal.
Jake: I am a liberal. What I am not is a card-carrying A.C.L.U. radical. I don’t believe in rehabilitation. I believe in safety. I believe in justice.
Ellen: I see. Well, let me ask you something. Ever seen an execution?
Jake: Not that I recall.
Ellen: I suggest you go watch a man be executed. You watch him die, watch him beg, watch him kick and spit the life out of him…until he pisses and shits and is gone. Then come back and sing this crap about justice…
Jake: Spare me your Northern liberal cry-me-a-river, we-are-the-only-enlightened-ones bullshit.
Ellen: I’m sorry, yes, you are the enlightened one. That’s why you brought me to this diner in this black neighborhood. So you can convince me you’re this JFK-meets-Christ white boy. Is that it? Or is it because you’re a repressed, hypocritical provincial who didn’t want to be seen around town with a woman like me. Yes, siree, you sure are enlightened. I’m terribly sorry, I’ve made a mistake. I thought you were one of the good guys.

So, is he?

Carl [looking at the all-white jury]: That’s a jury of my peers…?

Down there it was.

Ellen: So…was he crazy when he did it?
Jake: No, he wasn’t crazy. He told me he’d do it. I tried to tell myself he wasn’t serious. I think I really wanted him to do it. I came home that night and looked at Hannah. She looked so tender. All I could think about was all the monsters out there…and any one of them can come steal her innocence. Take her life, if they want. Yeah, I wanted those boys dead. You’re goddamn right I did. I guess I helped kill them.

Cue Kant?

Ellen: I keep thinking, what would Jake do? What would my father do? What would Lucien do?
Harry Rex: Well see, there’s your problem. What you should be thinking is, what would Harry Rex do?
Ellen: What would Harry Rex do?
Harry Rex: Cheat. Cheat like crazy.

Sometimes, well, there you go.

Jake: Should he be punished for shooting you?
Deputy Looney: No, sir. I hold no ill will toward the man. I would have done it.
Jake: What do you mean by that?
Deputy Looney: I don’t blame him for what he did. Those boys raped his girl…I got a little girl. Somebody rapes her, he’s a dead dog. I’ll blow him away like Carl Lee did.
Jake: Should the jury convict Carl Lee Hailey?
Judge: Don’t answer that question.
Deputy Looney: He’s a hero.
[he turns to the jury]
Deputy Looney: You turn him loose. Turn him loose! Turn him loose!

So, is he?

Freddie Lee: You can’t blame a n***** for being a n*****, no more than you can blame a dog for being a dog. But a whore like you, co-mingling with mongrels, betraying your own. That makes you worse than a n*****. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll leave you tied up here naked. First, it’ll just be bugs eating at ya. One day, maybe two. That sun’s gonna be cooking you. And animals… they’re gonna pick on your stink. They’ll come looking for something to eat.
Ellen: Carl Lee Hailey should’ve shot you too.

To say the ;east.

Carl: Jake, I can’t do no life in prison. You got to get me off. Now if it was you on trial…
Jake: It’s not me, we’re not the same, Carl Lee. The jury has to identify with the defendant. They see you, they see a yard worker; they see me, they see an attorney. I live in town, you live on the hill.
Carl: Well, you are white and I’m black. See Jake, you think just like them, that’s why I picked you; you are one of them, don’t you see? Oh, you think you ain’t because you eat in Claude’s and you are out there trying to get me off on TV talking about black and white, but the fact is you are just like all the rest of them. When you look at me, you don’t see a man, you see a black man.
Jake: Carl Lee, I’m your friend.
Carl: We ain’t no friends, Jake. We are on different sides of the line. I ain’t never seen you in my part of town. I bet you don’t even know where I live. Our daughters, Jake; they ain’t never gonna play together.
Jake: What are you talking about?
Carl: America is a war and you are on the other side. How’s a black man ever going to get a fair trial with the enemy on the bench and in the jury box?. My life in white hands? You Jake, that’s how. You are my secret weapon because you are one of the bad guys. You don’t mean to be but you are. It’s how you was raised. n*****, negro, black, African-American, no matter how you see me, you see me different, you see me like that jury sees me, you are them. Now throw out your points of law Jake. If you was on that jury, what would it take to convince you to set me free? That’s how you save my ass. That’s how you save us both.

That and the script.

Jake [in his summation, talking about Tonya Hailey]: I want to tell you a story. I’m going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they’re done, after they’ve killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she’s pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don’t find the ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she’s white.

That'll work for some, but not for others.

Jake [to Carl]: Just thought our kids could play together.

Yep, the script.

Nature

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.' Sylvia Plath

Next up: that fucking bell jar.

“...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” Vincent van Gogh

Uh, fame and fortune?

“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.” William Shakespeare

Uh, let's not go there?

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.” George Carlin

Do they know that?

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.” Anne Frank

Many loved her but, come on.

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
Margaret Atwood

Is it Spring where you are?

As a personal prejudice, I don’t like football. Professional, college, high school. In so many ways it embodies things I have come to believe are fucked up in America: violence and brutality, the sports mania, crass commercialism, that “winning is the only thing” mentality.

I ask myself why and I’m immediately transported back to the Summers I spent in Miners Mills – the northern most tip of Wilkes Barre. It was really like growing up in a small town. As Fall approached, the only thing the boys were talking about was the high school football team. And most everyone else too. I just didn’t get it. There were so many other things more worth engaging instead.

Of course, with sports everything is black and white. You’re good or you’re not. You win or you lose. The numbers, the stats. And there are hard and fast rules for just about everything. A whole lot less ambiguity and uncertainty, in other words.

And then there is high school football in a small town in Texas. Here it is all about this:

Coach: Gentlemen, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now.

Like I said, I just didn’t get it. And still don't. Somehow, in the midst of all that was pushing me to get it back then, I wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t buy into it. Dasein. But I guess this film does speak volumes about places like Texas. Or places like this in places like Texas.

Not that there isn’t the way other folks look at it. All their own prejudices. What other way [really] is there to think about it? But basically it is just one more existential narrative drummed into the heads of some – and then how they come to embody it as though it were some essential truth or something. As though “winning State” was a matter of life or death.

Watching this film was [to me] something akin to listening to this: https://youtu.be/nAB4vOkL6cE?si=giAzl7O8mFWQN5ip

Except in the song…no football. Small town, big dreams though. Then one day you’re left with just remembering them.


Friday Night Lights

Radio sportscaster: Jerry, there’s a lot of talk that Coach Gaines, with that $60,000 a year salary…
Jerry: I know where we’re goin’ with this.
Radio sportscaster: He makes a little bit more than the principal of the school.
Jerry: I read the book… Just last week, I was readin’ this book about Babe Ruth, and they asked him if he deserved his salary…and he said, “Hey, you know…” They said, “You make more than the president.” He says, “Well, you know, can the president hit a baseball?”

Probably not. On the other hand, a golf ball...?

Radio Listener: There’s too much learning going on at that school.

If you get his drift.

Boobie: I get straight A’s. I’m an athlete.
Reporter: In what subject?
Boobie: Hey, there’s only one subject. It’s football.

Me? Soccer and lacrosse. Only they were always only two of many, many other subjects.[/i]

Brian [to Mike]: Remember every minute of it right now. You’re 17, but it goes fast. Don’t sleep. Don’t waste a second of it. ‘Cause before you know it, it’s done. Nothin’ but babies and memories. You hear me? Babies and memories.

See? The River.

Signs plastered on practically every business in town: CLOSED. GONE TO THE GAME

Think The Last Picture Show.

Boobie: Can a M.R.I. fix your knee?

Probably not, I'm figuring.

Coach [to Mike]: Now I’m gonna assume that by now you’ve learned that the world’s not fair…and sometimes you get the short end. That’s all you get. And if you don’t do something personally to fix it, that’s all you’re ever gonna get.

Let's definitely not go there.

Coach [to Mike]: It took me a long time to realize that, uh, there ain’t much difference between winnin’ and losin’, except for how the outside world treats you. But inside you, it’s about all the same. It really is. Fact of the matter is, I believe that, uh, our only curses are the ones that are self-imposed. You know what I’m sayin’? We, all of us, dig our own holes.

Right, like American culture plays no part at all in this.

Charles Billingsley: You just...you ain’t gettin’ it. You don’t understand. This is the only thing you’re ever gonna have. Forever, it carries you forever. It’s an ugly fact of life. Donnie, hell. It’s the only fact of life. You got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.

Repeat as necessary.

Boobie: Now what we gonna do? I can’t do nothin’ else but play football.
Uncle: Hey, hey. Don’t worry about that.
Boobie: Don’t worry about it? I can’t be doin’ nothin’ else. I can’t do nothin’ else but play football. Why? We practiced and we practiced.
Uncle: It’ll be okay.
Boobie: You told me we were gonna go to the pros. What the hell am I gonna do without my knee?!

Use the other one?

Carter coach: Let’s discuss officials.
Permian Coach: I think the simplest thing to do is get a zebra crew outta some neutral place like San Antonio, or somethin’.
Carter coach: Now are these zebras gonna be white or black?
Permian coach: Well, as far as I know, zebras are white and black.
Carter coach: What are we talkin’ about here? How many black stripes these zebras got?
Permian coach: I believe a zebra’s got about the same amount of black ones as he does white ones.

Has this ever actually been pinned down?

Coach: Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It’s not about winning. It’s about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn't let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn't one more thing you could’ve done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you’re perfect!

Unless, of course, they don’t win. For example, over and over and over again.

Fear of being alone. Fear of death. Fear of dying alone. What is to be done? Let’s ask Frank. Or maybe Jim Cunningham.

This is a weird world. We just live in it. For a couple of hours.

First [it seems] we start with every family in suburban America: the parents and the kids are at war, most of them are on one or another [legal and/or illegal] drug, most of them have one or another mental affliction, most of the time they communicate through layer upon layer of alienation and angst. So the whole point then is to come up with some way to figure out what this all…means. And eveything is here. The philosophy of time-travel, the tangent universe, daylight hallucinations, the living receiver, God…and lots and lots of New Age bullshit. You name it.

But at least they never have to worry about, say, subsisting from week to week on one or another increasingly problematic paycheck.

Or you can think about the film this way. Imagine a lifeline. At one end are the nilhilists and at the other end are the objectivists. Now, where would YOU place Donnie Darko along it?

This is really a work of science fiction…set in the present. Not many or those. What’s it all mean? Mostly this: Why this and not that? Why me and not you? Why now and not then? Well, like so many other things it depends on the parts you pick to put in the “big picture”; and the order that you choose to put them in.

That and the script.

Look for everything you need to know abnout the Smurfs. Or the really important stuff.


Donnie Darko

Elizabeth: You can go suck a fuck.
Donnie: Oh, please, tell me, Elizabeth, how exactly does one suck a fuck?

You first.

Samantha: Is there any way that we can make money from this? Couldn’t we get on television if we sue the airline?

The bottom line these days.

Ms Pomeroy [regarding a Graham Greene short story]: Donnie Darko, perhaps, given your recent brush with mass destruction, you can give us your opinion?
Donnie: Well…they say it right when they are ripping the place to shreds. When they flood the house. That like…destruction is a form of creation. So the fact that they burn the money is… ironic. They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart. They want to change things.

And still not be a sociopath?

Roberta [whispering slowly into Donnie’s ear]: Every living creature…on this earth…dies alone.

Which, of course, does not mean you can't die surrounded by family and friends.

Gretchen: My mom had to get a restraining order against my stepdad. He has emotional problems.
Donnie: Oh, I have those, too. What kind of emotional problems does your dad have?
Gretchen: He stabbed my mom four times in the chest.
Donnie: Oh.

Oh, and then some, let's say.

Donnie: Smurfette doesn’t fuck.

And then this part...

Donnie [matter-of-factly]: First of all, Papa Smurf didn’t create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel’s evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village. But the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gang-bang scenario - It just couldn’t happen. Smurfs are asexual. They don’t even have reproductive organs under those little white pants. That’s what’s so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What’s the point of living…if you don’t have a dick?

Let's run that by, well, you know.

Rose: Kitty, do you even know who Graham Greene is?
Kitty [scoffs]: I think we’ve all seen “Bonanza.”

Kitty. A character who looks exactly as she sounds.

Donnie: I just don’t get this. Everything can’t be lumped into two categories. That’s too simple.
Kitty: The Lifeline is divided that way.
Donnie: Well, life isn’t that simple. So what if Ling Ling kept the cash and returned the wallet? That has nothing to do with either fear or love.
Kitty: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
Donnie: Well, yeah… OK, but you’re not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You’re just lumping everything into these two categories…and, like, denying everything else. People aren’t that simple.
Kitty (not knowing how to argue with him): If you don’t complete the assignment, you’ll get a zero for the day.

Next up: those not knowing how to argue with me here.

Principal: Donald…let me preface this by saying that your Iowa scores are intimidating. So…let’s go over this again. What exactly did you say to Ms. Farmer?
Kitty [interjecting]: I’ll tell you what he said. He told me to forcibly insert the Lifeline exercise card into my anus.

Right, like that might actually not be appropriate.

Rose: I don’t think telling any woman to forcibly insert an object into her anus is something that should go without consequence.
Edward: I think we should buy him a moped.
Rose: I think we should get a divorce.

I'm with Ed myself.

Donnie [at the school assembly speaking out against Jim Cunningham]: You want your sister to lose weight? Tell her to get off the couch, stop eating Twinkies and maybe go out for field hockey. You know what? No one ever knows what they want to be when they grow up. You know, it takes a little, little while to find that out. Right, Jim? And you kid. Yeah, you. Sick of some jerk shoving your head down the toilet? Well, you know what? Maybe you should lift some weights or take a karate lesson. And the next time he tries to do it, you kick him in the balls.

You know, being practical.

Dr. Thurman: Do you feel alone right now?
Donnie: I’d like to believe that I’m not…but I’ve just never seen any proof. So I just choose not to bother with it. It’s, like, I could spend my whole life thinking about it…debating it in my head. Weighing the pros and cons. And in the end, I still wouldn’t have any proof. So…I don’t even debate it any more. Because it’s absurd.
[pause]
Donnie: I don’t want to be alone.

Let alone dead and gone?

Prof. Monnitoff: Well, you’re...you’re contradicting yourself there, Donnie. If we were able to see our destinies manifest themselves visually, then we would be given a choice to betray our chosen destinies. And the mere fact that this choice exists would make all preformed destiny, uh, come to an end.
Donnie: Not if you travel within God’s channel.
Prof. Monnitoff: Um, I’m not going to be able to continue this conversation.
Donnie: Why?
Prof. Monnitoff: I could lose my job.

Especially these days, right Elon?

Edward [to Donnie]: …what you gotta understand, Son, is that almost all of those people are full of shit. They’re all part of this great big conspiracy of bullshit. And they’re scared of people like you, because those bullshitters know that you’re smarter than all of them. You know what you say to people like that? Hmm? “Fuck you.”

You know, if that is actually an option.

Donnie: Why should I mourn for a rabbit like it was human?
Karen: Are you saying that the death of one species is less tragic than another?
Donnie: Of course. The rabbit’s not like us. It has no history books, no photographs, no knowledge of sorrow or regret. I mean, I’m sorry, Miss Pommeroy. Don’t get me wrong. You know, I like rabbits and all. They’re cute and they’re horny. And if you’re cute and you’re horny, then you’re probably happy that you don’t know who you are or why you’re even alive. You just wanna have sex as many times as possible before you die. I just don’t see the point in crying over a dead rabbit, you know, who never even feared death to begin with.

Rabbits and death. A new thread?

Gretchen: Hey. What’s going on?
David: Horrible accident. My neighbor, he got killed.
Gretchen: What happened?
David: Got smushed by a jet engine.
Gretchen: What was his name?
David: Donnie. Donnie Darko.
Gretchen: Hmm.
David: I feel bad for his family.
Gretchen: Yeah.
David: Did you know him?
Gretchen: No.

The twist we all saw coming.

Abortion

“I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” Ronald Reagan

No, really, think about that this time.

“How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?” George Carlin

Coincidence?

“I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we've fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don't believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-long poverty shows us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we've made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.” Caitlin Moran

Hypocrisy, let's call it.

“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.” Dorothy Parker

They don't make many like her these days.

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” Sarah Palin

They still make many like her these days.

“The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that prevents teenage pregnancy.” Sonya Renee Taylor

Straight to Hell for the lot of them.

Dirty pretty things. That might conjure up all manner of conficting images and reactions. Especially when you make them applicable to people. Here what is pretty seems rather obvious. Some just are. And it seems to go beyond just proclivity. But what makes them dirty [or not dirty] can never be more than that. However much some will protest that this is simply not true. Simply. That’s the key word of course.

Here some are not only deemed dirty by others but dirty enough to be taken full advantage of. They are exploited and abused because they have no one really to turn to for recourse. They are not “legal” citizens, in other words. And even though they may have been, say, a doctor where they came from here [in London] they do whatever it takes to survive from day to day, from week to week.

Some, however, are exploited and abused more than others. As Okwe learns when he discovers what has blocked up a toilet: a discarded human heart. It seems he works in a hotel where very strange things take place in the wee hours of the morning. And the hotel manager is smack dab in the middle of it.

It’s a shitty world.


Dirty pretty Things

Juliette [to Okwe]: Can you believe it? One of the fuckers wanted to put me on his Visa card! Oh, my bloomin’ feet! Lucky I don’t work standing up!
[Okwe looks at her blankly]
Juliette: What? Don’t they have hookers where you come from? Where are you from? Somewhere with lions, I bet.

You'll figure it out.

Juan: What’s this? Lunch?
Okwe: It was blocking the lavatory in room 510. It is a heart. A human heart.
Juan: What? What the fuck do you know about hearts, Okwe?
Okwe: Perhaps you should telephone the police.
Juan: Police? You think I should call the police?
Okwe: Senor Juan, someone is dead.
Juan: OK. You speak to them. You found it. You do the talking.

There's a reason for that.

Okwe: Guo Yi, today I also found something. In a lavatory, in one of the hotel rooms. Someone’s heart. A heart. A human heart. I’m only telling you because you are a rational man.

Obviously.

Okwe: Why would anyone do that to a human heart?
Guo Yi: These sound to me like questions. I don’t ask questions after eleven years here, and I’m a certified refugee. You’re an illegal, Okwe. You don’t have a position here. You have nothing. You are nothing…Stick to helping people who can be helped.

See what I mean about options?

Juan [to Okwe]: Stop acting like you’ve got a choice.

Next up: or else.

Okwe: Ask him which hospital they went to to have the kidney removed.
Girl [translating]: He says they didn’t go to a hospital.
Okwe: Ask him where they did this.
Girl: In a room.
Okwe: He had his kidney removed in the hotel, yes? How much did he get for risking his life?
Girl: He is English now.
Okwe: He swapped his insides for a passport?

Whatever works. Best, for example.

Sweatshop owner: If you want to go to jail, fine. If you can’t give me a good reason, I will call the lmmigration. I’m a good man, Senay. I know where to draw the line. I don’t want to take your virginity, Senay. I just want you to help me to relax. You have such a beautiful mouth, Senay.

Right, he's a good man.

[]bJuan [to Owke explaining his “business”]: You give me your kidney, I give you a new identity. I sell the kidney for ten grand, so I’m happy. The person who needs the kidney gets cured. So, he’s happy. The person who sold his kidney gets to stay in this beautiful country, so he’s happy. My whole business is based on happiness.

Just keep telling yourself that.

Guo Yi: Okwe, you didn’t know people sold their organs?
Okwe: Not here.
Guo Yi: What do you mean, “here”? Here in London, you think it doesn’t happen because the Queen doesn’t approve? I heard in London it’s ten grand for a kidney. For that, people take risks. If I had the courage, I’d sell my kidney. Just to get out of here.

That's why we have two of them. Praise the Lord!

Okwe: For America you would need a visa, Senay. Or maybe a European passport. Keep away from Senor Juan! Because you are poor, you will be gutted like an animal. They will cut you here, or they will cut you here! They will leave you to rot.
Senay: One of the laundry girls did it, and now she’s free.
Okwe: Others are dead, Senay.
Senay: So, they are free, too.

That is one way to look at it.

Juan [on the phone]: What do you think of the girl? She’s my next customer. Eight years old. She’s called Rima. Her family brought her over from Saudi Arabia, hoping for a miracle. If she doesn’t get a new kidney in the next few weeks, she’s going to die. The doctor we use is no good. If he fucks up again, there’ll be another heart down the lavatory. Okwe, are you still there?
[pause]
Juan: So, I’m an evil man, right? But I’m trying to save her life.

That's one way to look at it.

Senay: I bit, Okwe. At the factory. He said he would report me to immigration, and he made me suck. But today I bit. I bit. I bit.

Good for her!

Juliette: So, what did happen?
Senay: Before, I was a virgin.
Juliette: Jesus…
Senay: …Mohammed.
[they both laugh]

It’s not funny though.

The doctor: How come I’ve never seen you people before?
Okwe: Because we are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms. And suck your cocks.

Jesus...Mohammed.

Okwe [calling his daughter]: Hello? Valerie? Yes, it’s me. At last, I’m coming home.

Alone?

The point isn’t about the sun dying now. The point is that sooner or later something “out there” or “down here” can [and eventually will] doom us all. The Big One.

Here though we can experience that vicariously. We can pick a character [the one that comes closest to us] and imagine our own reaction when we reach the precipice – the abyss – that separates being from nothingness.

Only here we can become heroes. We can postpone it. If not for ourselves for all the folks back home on Earth. But then they are confronted with that classic moral dilemma: Do this for these folks or do that for those folks. Only “these folks” are just a handful and “those folks” are in the billions. But “these folks” are near at hand and “those folks” are 90,000,000 miles away. And “do this” and your own life is put into jeopardy [or doomed].

After all, some will view the relationship between “saving myself” and “saving mankind” differently from others.

And then there’s the, “we only have enough oxygen left for ___ of us” dilemma. Who gets sacrificed for the good of the mission? And this seems to happen over and again.

They do what the script calls for. But we get the [hypothetical] quandaries nonetheless.

As for the technology and know-how needed to stop the sun from dying [a stellar bomb], well, it seems a little [as in enormously] farfetched to me. But how far into the future is this set? See the wiki article on the science involved.

To me, this one revolves in large part about making decisions based on the factors one has at his or her command – as opposed to all of the factors one would need to know in order to be absolutely certain. So here [from time to time] they go back and forth between “manual control” and “computer control”. But even the computer can only function based on what variables are inputted and what variables are not. A lot to think speculate about

Look for God. Although, as per usual, He is hard to actually pin down.

Then this part:

"The film's scientific content has been criticised by specialists. For example, the science periodical New Scientist said that the nuclear stellar bomb used by the crew would be woefully inadequate to reignite the dying Sun (billions of such devices would be required). The periodical found the film to be confusing and disappointing. Similarly, solar physicist Anjana Ahuja, a columnist for The Times, commented on the lack of source of artificial gravity on board the spacecraft, saying "Danny Boyle could have achieved the same level of scientific fidelity in Sunshine by giving a calculator to a schoolboy". Ahuja was, however, more positive about the psychological aspect of the film, joking that "the psychology of extended space travel is covered well, although we could have done with a space bonk". wiki



Sunshine

Capa [voiceover]: Our sun is dying. Mankind faces extinction. Seven years ago the Icarus project sent a mission to restart the sun but that mission was lost before it reached the star. Sixteen months ago, I, Robert Capa, and a crew of seven left earth frozen in a solar winter. Our payload a stellar bomb with a mass equivalent to Manhattan Island. Our purpose to create a star within a star.
[long pause]
Capa: Eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb. My bomb. Welcome to the Icarus Two.

What could go wrong?

Cassie: Kaneda, Searle, report to flight deck…We have an excess of manliness breaking out in the com centre.

Not unlike here, of course.

Trey: I’d need to look at all of it carefully, very carefully. But if I had to make a guess right now, I’d say we could adjust our trajectory. We could fly straight to them.
Mace: But we’re not going to do that. Just to make it absolutely clear there’s no way we’re going to do that. Do I have to spell it out for you? We have a payload to deliver to the heart of our nearest star. We are delivering that payload cause that star is dying and if it dies, we die, everything dies. So that is our mission, there is nothing, literally nothing more important than completing our mission. End of story.

Not quite:

Searle: There is something on board the Icarus I that may be worth the detour. As you pointed out, Mace, we have a payload to deliver. A payload, singular. Now, everything about the delivery and effectiveness of that payload in entirely theoretical. Simply put, we don’t know if it’s gonna work. But what we do know is this: If we had two bombs, we’d have two chances.
Capa: You’re assuming we’d be able to pilot Icarus I.
Searle: Yes.
Kaneda: Which is assuming that whatever stopped them wasn’t a fault or damage to the spacecraft.
Searle: Yes.
Mace: That’s a lot of assumptions.

Aren't there always?

Capa: It’s the problem right there. Between the boosters and the gravity of the sun the velocity of the payload will get so great that space and time will become smeared together and everything will distort. Everything will be unquantifiable.
Kaneda: You have to come down on one side or the other. I need a decision.
Capa: It’s not a decision, it’s a guess. It’s like flipping a coin and asking me to decide whether it will be heads or tails.
Kaneda: And?
Capa: Heads…

Either/or at least.

Cassie [to Capa]: It’s different being afraid that you won’t make it back home and then knowing that you won’t.

A hell of a difference.

Cassie: Are you scared?
Capa: When a Stellar Bomb is triggered, very little will happen at first...and then a spark, will pop into existence, and it will hang for an instant, hovering in space and then, it will split into two, and those will split again, and again, and again…detonation beyond all imaging - the big bang on a small scale - a new star born out of a dying one…I think it will be beautiful…No, i’m not scared
Cassie: …I am.

Some will be, some won't be.
Go figure?

Pinbacker [from recording]: I am Pinbacker, Commander of the Icarus One. We have abandoned our mission. Our star is dying. All our science. All our hopes, our…our dreams, are foolish! In the face of this, we are dust, nothing more. Unto this dust, we return. When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God.
Mace: Okay, that make sense to anyone?

On the other hand, what else is there?

Pinbacker [to Capa]: At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here…but stardust. The last man. Alone with God.

One man left. Unless of course it turns out to be one woman.

Capa: We’re screwed.
Kaneda: No we’re not.
[he grabs the space suit for Capa]
Kaneda: Or one of us isn’t anyway.

Decisions, decisions...

Capa: What are you asking? That we weigh the life of one against the future of mankind? Kill him.
Cora: Cassie?
Cassie: No.
Kaneda: Cassie…
Cassie: I know the argument. I know the logic. You’re saying you need my votes, I’m saying you can’t have it.
Cora: So what do we do?

Solution? Instead of a unanimous decision, it becomes majority rule. But it’s not like they all aren’t doomed anyway. They’ve got 16 hours [at most] to live — to deliver the payload.

Cassie [to Capa]: Finish it.

For all of them.

The past can somehow meet the present [or catch up with it] and out of this you’ll sometimes find yourself in troubled waters. When do you let go of the past? Should you let go of it? Can you let go of it? Will others let you?

And there is always more than one way in which to translate a relationship like this. Different perspectives as it were.

And this one involves the murder of a child. But we are only given pieces to the puzzle. What really happened? We get his version and then we get hers.

And much of this unfolds in a church. Which tends to always nudge us into speculating where one thing might possibly fit into all things.

It’s like this: He did something. It was a crime. And as a result of his doing it, a young boy died. It was not his intention that this be the case. But had he not done what he did the boy would not have died. Or almost certainly would not have. Or not on that day, or not in that way. He thought one thing but it was not what he thought. Then what he did was unmistakably his responsibility. Click, of course.

But it could have been the other way.

So, what does he owe to the parents of the child? What is the most meaningful [appropriate] thing for him to say to them? He tells them it was an accident. They want only to hear that he had drowned their son. Then he admits that he did. Did he? I still don’t think that is really clear.

Bottom line: What can be forgiven? Either with or without God.



Troubled Water [DeUsynlige]

Anna: It’s normal to feel guilty when something like that happens. If you want to talk…
Jan: When someone’s dead, there are no words that can help.

So, which words come the closest?

Anna [who is a minister]: Do you know the story about the miracle of Jesus walking on water?
Jan: I don’t like it. Believers float, but those who don’t sink.
Anna: It’s really about daring to believe in miracles. Two weeks ago we didn’t have an organ player and now we have a woman outside crying because of the beautiful music.

As though they are comparable? Then the part she and her young son know nothing about. And then this [inevitable] discussion:

Anna: God has a purpose for most everything anyway.
Jan: Or maybe you just like to bring in God when all other explanations fail?
[pause]
Jan: If God really has a purpose for everything, what about evil then? Is evil an act of God also?
Anna: Yes. People tell me things – things that they’ve gone through. And the pain they’ve expereinced. It can help them get on with their lives.
Thomas: Did you ever hand out forgiveness on God’s behalf, but condemn them yourself?
Anna: I don’t know if forgiveness is even that important. While some people never forgive anything, God forgives everything.
Thomas: If forgiveness isn’t important, what is?
Anna: Atonement, and to simply accept things as they are.

Or blah, blah, blah, as some insist.

Jan: So you never doubt?
Anna: I have doubts about a tie game. It’s either one or the other.

Unless, perhaps, it's neither one nor the other.

Sofia [to Agnes]: We don’t have a grave to visit either. Our oldest son might as well be dead. Sometimes he comes home completely exhausted. I pamper him and take care of him. I feed him. And as soon as I turn my back on him he steals from me. He’s like a stranger. He’s a drug addict. But he’s my boy. If he’d been dead, at least we would’ve had a grave to visit.

Family ties. Or, as often as not, what's left of them.

Thomas [to Agnes]: I thought he was dead when I carried him into the water, but he wasn’t. He looked at me. He stared up at me…and I let him go. It was me.

It's still all rather fuzzy though.

Thomas [to Anna, reciting her words back to her]: Please forgive me. God has a purpose for everything that happens. And evil too?

Unless, of course, He doesn't?

Intellectuals

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.” Albert Camus

If only on this side of the grave?

“My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'." Arthur C. Clarke

Though, as often as not, they don't even know it.

“Intellect is not wisdom.” Thomas Sowell

And, for some here, it's not even close.

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” George Orwell

And even then only up in the clouds.

“Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.” Viet Thanh Nguyen

And look where we are now.

“The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

You know, way back when that might have actually been true.

Once again: family obligations. In particular, this one: what do we owe to our parents? What do they owe to us? Where do we draw the line...morally?

Well…

For all practical purposes, in very, very, very different places. It is clearly rooted in historical and cultural traditions. But in the “modern world” where families have often become increasingly more atomized and alienated, it can often revolve [selfishly] around, “what’s in it for me?”

If taking care of Mom or Dad puts too big a crimp in our “lifestyle”, dump them on others?

Then there’s the part about getting old in a world that seems less and less inclined to esteem anything other than youth. The endless indignities. Or the part about what you might want to do and what you can actually afford to do. Lots of stuff here falls outside the scope of Obamacare. And in America especially we are more often than not on our own. Or certainly more so than in all of the other nations in the, uh, civilized world.

Oh, and Jon is a philosophy professor. He’s doing a book on Bertolt Brecht. Teaches the works of Sam Beckett. Wendy is an intellectual too. A writer. She just got a Guttenheim. Or she lied about getting one. We’ll see how that works out in the real world. However it might be scripted. Talk about theatre of the absurd: dementia, silent movies and white folks in blackface. A world that, in the end, is filled with “shit and piss and rotten stink!”

There is one scene where Jon is teaching his class about Brecht. He notes the distinction between what “dramatic theatre” wants and Brecht’s “epic theatre” wants instead. The former wants emotion, suggestion, sensation and plot. The later wants thinking, argument, reason and narrative. But with respect to what he is actually going though with his father, what does he get?


The Savages

Wendy [to Larry]: You know, I really don’t need to be hearing about your wife’s cervix right now.

Let alone all the other parts.

Wendy [on phone frantic]: Jon, it’s me. Dad has been writing on the walls with his shit!
Jon: He’s what?
Wendy: He’s writing with his shit, Jon — words!
Jon [still half asleep]: Wen, what the fuck are you talking about?

I thought it was rather clear.

Wendy: We’re gonna have to go to Arizona and find him!
Jon: We don’t have to go after him Wendy; we’re not in a Sam Shepard play.

You tell me.

Wendy [to Jon]: Maybe dad didn’t abandon us. Maybe he just forgot who we were.

Or pretends to.

Jon: What’s the matter?
Wendy [sobbing]: He didn’t – He didn’t even know where we were taking him.
Jon: He still doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where he is, Wendy.
Wendy: We are horrible, horrible, horrible people. We are horrible! Horrible! Just horrible. Horrible…

Like that still actually means something in today's world. Besides, they haven’t seem him in years and years and years. And when they were around him, he treated them like shit. He is being well cared for. How are they horrible some might ask?

Jimmy: Are you married?
Wendy: No… but my boyfriend is.

Postmodern love?

Jon: You stole pain killers from a dead woman?
Wendy: Mmm.
Jon: Do they work?

The bottom line let's call it.

Wendy: Are you Simone?
Simone: I am.
Wendy: I’m Lenny Savage’s daughter in B26. He has a big red pillow; it’s missing.
Simone: Did he have his name on it?
Wendy: And his room number.
Simone: What’s it look like?
Wendy: Big. Red. Pillow.

As opposed to the Big. Blue. PIllow.

Jon: Dad’s not the one that has a problem with the Valley View. There’s nothing wrong with Dad’s situation. Dad’s situation is fine. He’s never gonna adjust to it if we keep yanking him outta there. And, actually, this upward mobility fixation of yours, it’s counterproductive and, frankly, pretty selfish. Because it’s not about Dad, it’s about you and your guilt. That’s what these places prey upon.
Wendy: I happen to think it’s nicer here.
Jon: Of course you do, because you are the consumer they want to target. You are the guilty demographic. The landscaping, the neighborhoods of care; they’re not for the residents, they’re for the relatives. People like you and me who don’t want to admit to what’s really going on here.
Wendy: Which is what, Jon?
Jon: People are dying, Wendy! Right inside that beautiful building right now, it’s a fucking horror show! And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping, it’s just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die! And death is gaseous and gruesome, and it’s filled with shit and piss and rotten stink!

Aren't they all though?

I know a woman who is so obsessed with existential cruelty to animals that she delivers pizzas to earn enough money to rescue some animals from cruelty.

A news bulletin. There has been another shooting incident at a school. A university. There are deaths reported. Seventeen professors and students gunned down. It is the school that your son attends. Oh, know. Is he alright? Was he one of the victims?

And then the knock on the door. They inform her that her son is dead. But then, “Ma’am I’m afraid there’s more.”

It turns out her son – their son – is the shooter.

That’s the basic plot here. How do parents react to something like that? After all, many are going to place the blame at least in part on them. They brought him into the world, they raised him. So they must have done something terribly, terribly wrong.

And in this day and age! You can get it from every direction. The media. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. The whole fucking world can put you smack dab in the in middle of the bullseye. Until the next Big Story. It’s one thing when people you know turn on the spotlight. But when complete strangers start to judge you…

One thing seems certain: Here is family that [emotionally] seems to be on automatic pilot. They go through the motions of communicating but there is not really a whole lot they have to communicate. And Sammy seems to be desperately in need of someone able to do just that. Some of us no doubt might imagine what we might have said to him. How we might have turned him around.

Or maybe he was just plain crazy. We really never get to know enough about him to decide.


Beautiful Boy

FBI agent: At 7:15 this morning, your son Sam walked into a university building with two loaded weapons and opened fire on students that…
Kate [stunned]: What?!
FBI agent: Ma’am, I know this is difficult but there are questions we need to ask you.
Kate: LIAR!

No, not this time.

Kate [looking at all the media vans out on their lawn]: We just lost our son, what do they want from us?
Bill: We’re news.

To wit: https://youtu.be/bsRTsiKPI2M?si=i7hBf9xCFhI_iKZA

Kate: I mean how could he do it? Did we do something? Did we not do something? I mean how could he do it?
Bill: No. No. We gave him everything he could want.
Kate: But he was…he was such a quiet kid. He was lonely. He never played with the neighbor kids. I guess we should have known that he…
Bill: Why does it have to be our fault? Huh? We did the best we could.

Did they? And how exactly would someone go about determining this?

Man on television [while Bill listens]: …and I know some of you are thinking, “well, the parents are victims too.” No, they’re not. They raised this kid. And I don’t care if he’s a legal adult or not. It’s the parents who are ultimately responsible. And we should find them, whatever rock they are hiding under, so that grieving parents can take a crack at them. But here’s the real question, folks: Do they have any other kids that I need to worry about? Because after their track record with this little bugger, I don’t really want to meet the rest of the family. And I sure as hell don’t want the little psycho going to school with one of my kids."

Fair? Unfair? On the other hand, these days, what's the difference?

Kate [to Trish]: You don’t think if you force your son to eat carrots when he’s young it will turn him into a killer when he grows up.

Unless, of course, it's true.

Kate: There are worse parents out there. And their kids didn’t…Why did he?
Bill: I don’t know.

But then, suddenly, out of the blue:

Bill: It happened a long time before he got to college. And I…I don’t know how, but we did it. We messed him up. We, uh, maybe we didn’t give him any hope or, you know, we didn’t exactly show him how to be happy.
Kate: How can you say that?
Bill: He wasn’t well. He was depressed…and irrational…and angry.
Kate: Well, everyone gets depressed and angry, but that’s still no explanation. We don’t know why he did what he did. And I seem to be the only one concerned with asking why.
Bill: You keep asking why because…because you’re looking for someone to tell us that we’re not responsible.
Kate: And you keep avoiding it because you assume we are responsible.
Bill: Because he did it, Kate. He walked into those classrooms and…and he actually shot all those people…his teachers…his friends!
Kate [getting up to leave the room]: I’m not listening to this.
Bill: He’s a murderer! He’s a murderer, and it’s our fault!
Kate: SHUT UP! You should be defending him. You’re his father!
Bill: Well there is no defense for what he did!
Kate [shouting]: I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANYMORE!!
Bill: That’s right, you don’t know who I am. You never did. You never even tried to. You don’t know me and you sure as hell didn’t know your own son!
Kate: Do you want to know whose fault it is? It’s your fault! If you weren’t such an emotionally absent cliche of a father, this wouldn’t have happened.

Too close to call...for now. Then on and on and on they go. Culminating in...

Bill: I WISH TO FUCK WE HADN’T HAD HIM! I WISH TO FUCK WE HADN’T HAD HIM!!

And he them?

Sammy [voiceover]: As the boy and the girl ran out from the station wagon the beach was happy. It was happy to have their small footprints upon it, it was happy to have holes dug with plastic shovels, it was even happy to have paper wrappers blowing about after they’d gone. But the beach knew there would no longer be this to look forward to, no more careless play, only lonely snowfalls to mark the beginnings of an endless winter. The beach loved the boy and the girl, though had no way of telling them and it knew this was their last time together. Things would be different from now on, it didn’t know if they would be better or worse, but for certain things would change.

What’s this mean? And why end the film with it?