The Washington Post's foreign policy hack David Ignatius wrote a column which is mostly about the new film Gravity. Here are some relevant excerpts. There are no spoilers, not that it would matter.
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How terrible.
Imagine being a 15 year old kid. Not really a geek or a nerd, but a normal kid of above average intelligence and maybe some mechanical/mathematical ability, growing up somewhere in Colorado, who -- correctly -- thinks space exploration is amazing, and who maybe fantasizes about being an astronaut or a spaceship engineer, even if he wouldn't come out and admit it. Now he's really looking forward to seeing this new movie in 3D. He doesn't know exactly what's in it but he knows it's about space travel so it has to be cool.
So what happens is that he goes to the theater with his buds, and for an hour and a half or two hours or however long this nightmare lasts, this freak Cuaron shits in his eyes and in his soul.
He gets treated to a female -- the most meaningless possible creature in all that relates to space, having no possible interest or relation to it -- saying "I hate space".
He gets treated to a vision of space as a terrifying physical emptiness that embodies the despair and emptiness that are the essence of all life, according to the deepest conviction of the monsters responsible for this.
He gets treated to a "talky" film where the characters "are really just trying to fill the terrible reality of silence". Seeing a hoary imitation of a Beckett play is not what you bargain for when you're this kid out to get a little space treat, but it is what you get.
And of course this fool Ignatius and others like him think all of this is "marvelous". They think this is what "real art" is all about.
What does this kid feel when he walks out of the theater? He can't put it into words, maybe he says, yeah it was cool, pretty weird. Really makes you think. What is he going to say? But what he feels is that something is wrong. He feels strange. Maybe he loses some morale. It seems that space and space travel, which he knew, in the purity of his masculine mind, to be the most amazing thing in the world, are not all they're cracked up to be. After all the people who made the film are intelligent adults who understand the world, and clearly they know something he doesn't.
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The sci-fi films that America produced in the 1950's were incredible, some of the strongest, most beautiful, and innocent creations of the human spirit of any time. If you haven't seen any, you should. "Forbidden Planet" (1956) is a great one to start with.
The love of space and space exploration is maybe the single purest and most hopeful expression there is of the masculine spirit -- maybe more essentially masculine than the love of ass, and I'm not joking. In the imperative to explore and conquer space using science and technology the masculine mind sees the perfect embodiment of the voyage of the human mind through the material world, the endless and endlessly enticing perspective of progress and victory.
But to the nihilists that have come to dominate the intellectual and spiritual life of this time, space is of course the perfect embodiment of the emptiness that they know to be the truth. Its endless and to them self-evidently pointless extension is just an added insult to the injury of the knowledge of "meaninglessness" here on the warming earth. And so in their hatred, they put a woman there and make her chatter.
And now that has to be your entertainment for the night.
*************************
I understand why this is, and I know it won't always be this way. But in the meantime, I wish I could slap this freak Cuaron's mug, and destroy all digital and physical copies of this wretched film so that it wouldn't poison the hearts of good space-loving kids in this and other countries.
Quote:Quote:
“I hate space,” says the character played by Sandra Bullock in the new movie “Gravity,” and you can understand why: It’s an empty void, filled with the wreckage of failed satellites and derelict space stations, a beautiful nothingness where human beings float helplessly, praying for some way to get home.
Quote:Quote:
I won’t spoil the plot by telling you what happens to Bullock and the other characters in Alfonso Cuarón’s marvelous film. But let’s explore the dark vision this film captures so well: the terrifying sense of drifting untethered in the cosmos, tumbling out of control, turning desperately to support systems that fail, one after the other. The astronauts keep calling “Houston,” but the reassuring voice of control that brought space travelers home in “Apollo 13” isn’t there.
“Gravity” is a talky film, but as New York Times critic A.O. Scott has noted, the garrulous characters are really just trying to fill the terrible reality of silence.
Quote:Quote:
What sparkles in this shutdown season is the prominence of foreign-born directors in making the few memorable Hollywood films that break through box-office formulas to create real art. Cuarón, a Mexican director who earlier made “Children of Men” and “Y Tu Mamá También,” is an obvious example
*************************
How terrible.
Imagine being a 15 year old kid. Not really a geek or a nerd, but a normal kid of above average intelligence and maybe some mechanical/mathematical ability, growing up somewhere in Colorado, who -- correctly -- thinks space exploration is amazing, and who maybe fantasizes about being an astronaut or a spaceship engineer, even if he wouldn't come out and admit it. Now he's really looking forward to seeing this new movie in 3D. He doesn't know exactly what's in it but he knows it's about space travel so it has to be cool.
So what happens is that he goes to the theater with his buds, and for an hour and a half or two hours or however long this nightmare lasts, this freak Cuaron shits in his eyes and in his soul.
He gets treated to a female -- the most meaningless possible creature in all that relates to space, having no possible interest or relation to it -- saying "I hate space".
He gets treated to a vision of space as a terrifying physical emptiness that embodies the despair and emptiness that are the essence of all life, according to the deepest conviction of the monsters responsible for this.
He gets treated to a "talky" film where the characters "are really just trying to fill the terrible reality of silence". Seeing a hoary imitation of a Beckett play is not what you bargain for when you're this kid out to get a little space treat, but it is what you get.
And of course this fool Ignatius and others like him think all of this is "marvelous". They think this is what "real art" is all about.
What does this kid feel when he walks out of the theater? He can't put it into words, maybe he says, yeah it was cool, pretty weird. Really makes you think. What is he going to say? But what he feels is that something is wrong. He feels strange. Maybe he loses some morale. It seems that space and space travel, which he knew, in the purity of his masculine mind, to be the most amazing thing in the world, are not all they're cracked up to be. After all the people who made the film are intelligent adults who understand the world, and clearly they know something he doesn't.
*************************
The sci-fi films that America produced in the 1950's were incredible, some of the strongest, most beautiful, and innocent creations of the human spirit of any time. If you haven't seen any, you should. "Forbidden Planet" (1956) is a great one to start with.
The love of space and space exploration is maybe the single purest and most hopeful expression there is of the masculine spirit -- maybe more essentially masculine than the love of ass, and I'm not joking. In the imperative to explore and conquer space using science and technology the masculine mind sees the perfect embodiment of the voyage of the human mind through the material world, the endless and endlessly enticing perspective of progress and victory.
But to the nihilists that have come to dominate the intellectual and spiritual life of this time, space is of course the perfect embodiment of the emptiness that they know to be the truth. Its endless and to them self-evidently pointless extension is just an added insult to the injury of the knowledge of "meaninglessness" here on the warming earth. And so in their hatred, they put a woman there and make her chatter.
And now that has to be your entertainment for the night.
*************************
I understand why this is, and I know it won't always be this way. But in the meantime, I wish I could slap this freak Cuaron's mug, and destroy all digital and physical copies of this wretched film so that it wouldn't poison the hearts of good space-loving kids in this and other countries.
same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...