Some of my comics came in late last week. So here are some more reviews
DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #36
The aftermath of the war between the House of Secrets and the House Of Mystery continues with part of the DARK team trapped billions of years in the future, with a kind of anti-time force about to consume creation. There they find a magically mutated Felix Faust who both threatens and protects them. He is both the main villain and the main hero of the story. To understand how, you'll have to pick it up. There was some good thematic development along the lines of creation an destruction AND redemption. It almost qualified for an extended review. I liked this issue, though it was dull in parts. Felix Faust was the most interesting character in the issue. A good book, but one that did not include my favorite character, Deadman, in any capacity.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 4 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars
DC's BATMAN 66 #17
This was a rare swing and a miss for this comic. Nothing worked in this issue. The art was particularly bad. The story was a mess and there was very little to laugh about. The pacing was off and there was nothing original nor nostalgic. I was not happy with this issue.
Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 2.5 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 1 Star
Overall: 2 Stars
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Not Really Off Topic: Extended Review For Earth 2 # 29
The comic books these days seem to be getting very philosophical and theological. I guess there will be a series of NOT REALLY OFF-TOPIC reviews over the next few weeks. I'll have at least one more this week or next.
This is a review of DC's EARTH 2 #29. Earth-2 is still one of my favorite books, though its stock has dropped as it has become more and more all about Apocalypse and Darkseid's quest to take over Earth-2. This has caused the storytelling to get a little repetitive, but the art work and the character development is still very strong, and I like many of the characters the book deals with. This issue was particularly good, and it continues some very strong theological themes I've found in other Earth-2 books (see here: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2014/04/not-really-off-topic-review-of-earth-2.html).
The apocalyptic themes I have noted in other reviews of other Earth-2 issues are made plain and explicit here. This issue quotes from the Book of Revelation quite a bit. I find it quite satisfying that these themes are being made plain here. Earth-2's versions of Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon (who on Earth-1 are Robin/Nightwing and Batgirl respectively) are trying to keep their family intact and alive as the world is bombarded by the forces of Darkseid. Human beings, in this darkest of hours, are exhibiting the best and the worst human nature can produce, though more the latter than the former, as the heroes find out in this issue.
Grayson has already encountered quite a few Christians who believe what is happening to Earth-2 represents the End of Days. Now, he encounters satan worshipers who deliberately seek the favor of 'the beast' as they proclaim the failure of God and the triumph of the forces of evil. They see direct parallels between themselves and those who are said to 'worship the beast' in the Book of Revelation. They see power and control and they want to side with it, in the hopes that it will spare them.
Coercive power can inspire fear, and fear can lead to worship. But in the final analysis, that worship is misguided as the leader of these satanists soon learn. For that which has the power to destroy you quite often will, in the end. Those who worship coercive power, and worship themselves, are worshiping their own doom. They are simply feeding the crocodile, hoping that they will the last to be eaten.
As I aid in yet another review like this one (http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2014/01/not-really-off-topic-earth-2-19.html ), a dominant theme in EARTH-2 is 'hidden hope'. Hope, like the God it reveals, is something that at least always begins as something hidden. Our hopes explode, seemingly from nowhere. Hope is always God making a way where there appeared to be no way. Hope may seem weak in the world, but by its very nature, by the very invitation to look forward, it gives use the power to de-emphasize and marginalize the evil that so often seems dominant. Grayson and Gordon are, ironically, the very hope they seek to find in the world.
Grayson says at one point that given the cosmic scale of what is happening around him, his agnosticism is waning. And well it should. One cannot remain on the sidelines as cosmic scales of good and evil surround one. In Grayson's wavering agnosticism one is reminded of another Revelation passage:
Revelation 3:15-16: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
What hope does a world like Earth-2 have, surrounded by such terrible evil, if there is not some force for good of greater authority than Darkseid?
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars
This is a review of DC's EARTH 2 #29. Earth-2 is still one of my favorite books, though its stock has dropped as it has become more and more all about Apocalypse and Darkseid's quest to take over Earth-2. This has caused the storytelling to get a little repetitive, but the art work and the character development is still very strong, and I like many of the characters the book deals with. This issue was particularly good, and it continues some very strong theological themes I've found in other Earth-2 books (see here: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2014/04/not-really-off-topic-review-of-earth-2.html).
The apocalyptic themes I have noted in other reviews of other Earth-2 issues are made plain and explicit here. This issue quotes from the Book of Revelation quite a bit. I find it quite satisfying that these themes are being made plain here. Earth-2's versions of Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon (who on Earth-1 are Robin/Nightwing and Batgirl respectively) are trying to keep their family intact and alive as the world is bombarded by the forces of Darkseid. Human beings, in this darkest of hours, are exhibiting the best and the worst human nature can produce, though more the latter than the former, as the heroes find out in this issue.
Grayson has already encountered quite a few Christians who believe what is happening to Earth-2 represents the End of Days. Now, he encounters satan worshipers who deliberately seek the favor of 'the beast' as they proclaim the failure of God and the triumph of the forces of evil. They see direct parallels between themselves and those who are said to 'worship the beast' in the Book of Revelation. They see power and control and they want to side with it, in the hopes that it will spare them.
Coercive power can inspire fear, and fear can lead to worship. But in the final analysis, that worship is misguided as the leader of these satanists soon learn. For that which has the power to destroy you quite often will, in the end. Those who worship coercive power, and worship themselves, are worshiping their own doom. They are simply feeding the crocodile, hoping that they will the last to be eaten.
As I aid in yet another review like this one (http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2014/01/not-really-off-topic-earth-2-19.html ), a dominant theme in EARTH-2 is 'hidden hope'. Hope, like the God it reveals, is something that at least always begins as something hidden. Our hopes explode, seemingly from nowhere. Hope is always God making a way where there appeared to be no way. Hope may seem weak in the world, but by its very nature, by the very invitation to look forward, it gives use the power to de-emphasize and marginalize the evil that so often seems dominant. Grayson and Gordon are, ironically, the very hope they seek to find in the world.
Grayson says at one point that given the cosmic scale of what is happening around him, his agnosticism is waning. And well it should. One cannot remain on the sidelines as cosmic scales of good and evil surround one. In Grayson's wavering agnosticism one is reminded of another Revelation passage:
Revelation 3:15-16: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
What hope does a world like Earth-2 have, surrounded by such terrible evil, if there is not some force for good of greater authority than Darkseid?
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Not Really Off-Topic: Extended Comic Book Review For RED LANTERNS #36 *SPOILER ALERT*
This comic book is a part of the GODHEAD crossover, and it features the sole remaining Red Lantern Guy Gardner and the most recent human addition to the Green Lanterns, Simon Baz. I have chosen this comic for an extended review because it brings up a great many theological themes, many of which are prominent throughout the GODHEAD series.
The comic begins right where the last RED LANTERN left off, with Guy Gardner rising from the ashes of yet another New God attack. Simon Baz is right along side him, and the comic takes off from that point upon two important thematic paths. Each has some theological significance.
The first main storyline has to do with Simon's analysis of Guy's approach to the New God threat, which seems to be 'rush head long in and fight until you win or die'. Baz correct detects in Guy's attitude a death wish. Indeed, Guy sees this entire scenario as an opportunity to commit a kind of noble suicide. He has led a great many people into battle, only to see them all die as he survives. He believes this to be some kind of sick joke by a perverse universe, and he's going to thumb his nose at destiny by dying himself, in battle with a god.
Simon quotes the Koran as he tries to plead with Guy that life is a gift from God, and there is only one God (as Baz argues) and that not working to preserve that life is an affront to the meaning of life. I really like this exchange, and it brings up the central issue for me when it comes to God's existence.
I've seen people in religious debates get asked what it would take to change their minds. Is there anything, anything at all, that could convince you to change your religious or irreligious beliefs. In my case, there is such a way. If you can convince me that life is not worth living, that being (existence), life and consciousness are not inherent goods, however surrounded they may be by other evils, then you can convince me that there is no God worth worshipping.
The basic religious choice, it seems to me, is not whether God exists or not. It is whether the most sublime encounters with life itself are worth affirming. Is being better than non-being, inherently? Is life better than non-life? Is consciousness better than non-consciousness? These are the basic human questions. They lead inexorably to questions about the way we ENCOUNTER life. Are humor, play, joy, love, beauty...are these experiences worth trusting? Can you accept them as they come to you, alongside other forms of experience, like sense experience? If the answers to THESE questions are also 'yes', then and only then can you argue for a God worth worshipping.
But Guy doesn't even get that far. The responsibility of the power he has received, coupled with the great loss he has experienced as a result of that power has led him not to atheism but to maltheism. He is very much like Ivan Karamazov in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoevsky. He does not deny the existence of God or gods, he has rather chosen to 'give back his ticket'.
The High Father and the other New Gods seek what they see to be a good for the universe...for all universes...the defeat of Darkseid, the universe's ultimate evil. But they seek to accomplish this goal by using the very tools that Darkseid uses. For they want to use the Life Equation (contained in the White Lantern's ring), to mutate and control all life in the Earth-1 Universe, and use that Equation and those transformed beings to destroy Darkseid. They see this as a justified means, since it will save countless other universes from a similar fate under Darkseid's boot. They take up the very corrupting power that Darkseid seeks to destroy what they see as a greater evil.
Since these actions match up to the indifferent, harsh divinity that Guy Gardner has come to believe in, Guy identifies them as truly divine, since they live as he thinks the divine lives. His attack on them, then, is more than retribution or justice for himself and the other lanterns. He seeks to attack what he perceives the divine to actually BE.
This brings up the second story line, which involves the New God who attacked Gardner, Malhedron. He is a former servant of Darkseid who has come to serve High Father and the other New Gods. Malhedron sees that the power of the life equation has corrupted High Father, and that High Father's plan is frighteningly similar to the operation of Darkseid himself. He can see now that the line between good and evil becomes blurry where power is involved.
This is perfect illustration of the difference between the common conception of God and that given to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus rejects the tools of the enemy. His power is persuasive and loving, empowering and uplifting, rather than controlling or coercive. Jesus rejects the mantle of Caesar lest he become satan rather than the God He truly is. Gardner is wrong about what God really is, and Simon Baz is right that the New Gods, however mighty in coercive power, are in no way divine. Gardner's suffering is sad, but much of it is the result of his own misuse of free will. He cannot blame God for the path he took. That he was called to duty and justice does not imply that all his uses of his own power were in line with God's will.
Gardner's pain is only God's 'fault' to the degree that God has created a universe of freedom rather than control. Freedom is good, despite the costs. Life is good despite the evil that may arise within it. That Gardner has mistaken the New Gods for true gods is a perfect illustration of his mistake. He derides and hates the freedom he has been given, and sees responsibility and choice making as a burden. Thus he truly hates the life he has been given, and probably truly hates God, but not for the reasons he thinks.
Simon's simple faith that despite life's difficulty God still cares is not a specifically Christian faith, as he is a Muslim, but it comes far closer to the truth. God grants the world freedom, and us freedom, that is just what it means to exist. The choice is not between a perfect life and a life of freedom but a life of freedom and no life at all. Existence is self-creation. That is just what being is.
So thematically, this book had it going on. Aesthetically, it also is very strong. The only negative aspect was the end. It is too abrupt and there is not enough action where there should be. But that is a minor problem in an otherwise amazing issue. The art is good, the pacing is a little off, but the storyline and dialogue are what really drive this issue.
Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3.5 stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars
The comic begins right where the last RED LANTERN left off, with Guy Gardner rising from the ashes of yet another New God attack. Simon Baz is right along side him, and the comic takes off from that point upon two important thematic paths. Each has some theological significance.
The first main storyline has to do with Simon's analysis of Guy's approach to the New God threat, which seems to be 'rush head long in and fight until you win or die'. Baz correct detects in Guy's attitude a death wish. Indeed, Guy sees this entire scenario as an opportunity to commit a kind of noble suicide. He has led a great many people into battle, only to see them all die as he survives. He believes this to be some kind of sick joke by a perverse universe, and he's going to thumb his nose at destiny by dying himself, in battle with a god.
Simon quotes the Koran as he tries to plead with Guy that life is a gift from God, and there is only one God (as Baz argues) and that not working to preserve that life is an affront to the meaning of life. I really like this exchange, and it brings up the central issue for me when it comes to God's existence.
I've seen people in religious debates get asked what it would take to change their minds. Is there anything, anything at all, that could convince you to change your religious or irreligious beliefs. In my case, there is such a way. If you can convince me that life is not worth living, that being (existence), life and consciousness are not inherent goods, however surrounded they may be by other evils, then you can convince me that there is no God worth worshipping.
The basic religious choice, it seems to me, is not whether God exists or not. It is whether the most sublime encounters with life itself are worth affirming. Is being better than non-being, inherently? Is life better than non-life? Is consciousness better than non-consciousness? These are the basic human questions. They lead inexorably to questions about the way we ENCOUNTER life. Are humor, play, joy, love, beauty...are these experiences worth trusting? Can you accept them as they come to you, alongside other forms of experience, like sense experience? If the answers to THESE questions are also 'yes', then and only then can you argue for a God worth worshipping.
But Guy doesn't even get that far. The responsibility of the power he has received, coupled with the great loss he has experienced as a result of that power has led him not to atheism but to maltheism. He is very much like Ivan Karamazov in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoevsky. He does not deny the existence of God or gods, he has rather chosen to 'give back his ticket'.
The High Father and the other New Gods seek what they see to be a good for the universe...for all universes...the defeat of Darkseid, the universe's ultimate evil. But they seek to accomplish this goal by using the very tools that Darkseid uses. For they want to use the Life Equation (contained in the White Lantern's ring), to mutate and control all life in the Earth-1 Universe, and use that Equation and those transformed beings to destroy Darkseid. They see this as a justified means, since it will save countless other universes from a similar fate under Darkseid's boot. They take up the very corrupting power that Darkseid seeks to destroy what they see as a greater evil.
Since these actions match up to the indifferent, harsh divinity that Guy Gardner has come to believe in, Guy identifies them as truly divine, since they live as he thinks the divine lives. His attack on them, then, is more than retribution or justice for himself and the other lanterns. He seeks to attack what he perceives the divine to actually BE.
This brings up the second story line, which involves the New God who attacked Gardner, Malhedron. He is a former servant of Darkseid who has come to serve High Father and the other New Gods. Malhedron sees that the power of the life equation has corrupted High Father, and that High Father's plan is frighteningly similar to the operation of Darkseid himself. He can see now that the line between good and evil becomes blurry where power is involved.
This is perfect illustration of the difference between the common conception of God and that given to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus rejects the tools of the enemy. His power is persuasive and loving, empowering and uplifting, rather than controlling or coercive. Jesus rejects the mantle of Caesar lest he become satan rather than the God He truly is. Gardner is wrong about what God really is, and Simon Baz is right that the New Gods, however mighty in coercive power, are in no way divine. Gardner's suffering is sad, but much of it is the result of his own misuse of free will. He cannot blame God for the path he took. That he was called to duty and justice does not imply that all his uses of his own power were in line with God's will.
Gardner's pain is only God's 'fault' to the degree that God has created a universe of freedom rather than control. Freedom is good, despite the costs. Life is good despite the evil that may arise within it. That Gardner has mistaken the New Gods for true gods is a perfect illustration of his mistake. He derides and hates the freedom he has been given, and sees responsibility and choice making as a burden. Thus he truly hates the life he has been given, and probably truly hates God, but not for the reasons he thinks.
Simon's simple faith that despite life's difficulty God still cares is not a specifically Christian faith, as he is a Muslim, but it comes far closer to the truth. God grants the world freedom, and us freedom, that is just what it means to exist. The choice is not between a perfect life and a life of freedom but a life of freedom and no life at all. Existence is self-creation. That is just what being is.
So thematically, this book had it going on. Aesthetically, it also is very strong. The only negative aspect was the end. It is too abrupt and there is not enough action where there should be. But that is a minor problem in an otherwise amazing issue. The art is good, the pacing is a little off, but the storyline and dialogue are what really drive this issue.
Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3.5 stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars
Monday, December 1, 2014
Is This Heresy?
I kinda sorta believe that THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV should be added as another book of the Bible. If it is not scripture, it is only a wisp away from it.
I'm writing a Bible study on THE LEGEND OF THE GRAND INQUISITOR from BROTHERS K right now. That freaking book is the closest thing I can find to a proof that God exists.
I'm writing a Bible study on THE LEGEND OF THE GRAND INQUISITOR from BROTHERS K right now. That freaking book is the closest thing I can find to a proof that God exists.
A Bit of Christmas Humor (Hat Tip: Kevin Tones)
This was mostly his idea, I just kind of tweaked it.
Guest Post By Kevin Tones: INTERSTELLAR Review (Not Really Off-Topic) *WARNING: SPOILER ALERT*
I really liked my friend Kevin Tones' review of INTERSTELLAR, I'm going to make a quick remark at the bottom, denoted by italics.
INTERSTELLAR: Review WARNING: Loaded with SPOILERS
If you are someone who cries easily, I would not recommend this movie. Nor would I recommend it to anyone with children, beloved spouses or a heart. It is brutally gut wrenching in many places and I was crying quite easily at several points.
This is a story about saving our children. Though it is set in a cataclysmic milieu it is that simple of a story: what would a father do to save his kids? I was impressed though with a film that was willing to tell such a terrible story. This was Christopher Nolan spending some Hollywood-capital to make a great movie, not just another block-buster. Bravo on him.
Also I loved how time and again, Nolan emphasized how small we are, and our petty interests, compared to the universe at large. Here were massive planets, going about their business paying no mind whatever to these tiny things going by. Nolan captured the immensity of space rather well in this film. This sets up beautifully the metaphysical ideas about love which later are so critical to the story.
Also I think Matthew McConaughey should be up for an academy award on this. He does spectacular work in this film.
Setup: The human race on Earth is doomed, no hope whatever of survival and yet several souls do go out to try and purchase some hope, however desperate. As I said, this is a story about saving your kids. In the end that is what drives the main protagonists, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Prof. Brand (Michael Caine). Cooper wants to find a safe place to bring his daughter, Brand wants to send his daughter to a place where she has a chance of living.
The whole world is becoming smaller; fewer crops, fewer opportunities for people; corn and subsistence farming is all there is. This is a place where American schools seize upon the Moon Landing hoax idea and run with it as an actual propaganda effort, not a real engineering feat completed at a particular time in a particular place. The reason is to keep people from thinking too far ahead and to focus only on survival. “Caretaker Generation” is the term used. The short time we get a glimpse into this twisted system is chilling. That is when I realized just how desperate and hopeless things had become. The human race had burned its ships on a pyre of blighted crops.
I do find it hard to believe that a government that would stoop to such methods would keep NASA going, however clandestinely. It argued for a second government, a fragmented one. My speculation only from limited data in the story.
For all that the story had a feeling of truth to it. Prof. Brand is willing to sacrifice his humanity by telling a monstrous lie in order to buy some hope for humanity. That is the story on the surface. Yet we find he is buying it as much for his daughter as for anyone else. He is not as altruistic about preserving future generations as he plays early on.
The monologue by the nearest thing to a villain, Dr. Mann(Matt Damon) was spot on: the human ability to sacrifice only can reach so far. Most will sacrifice for immediate family, grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren, yet the ability to see remote posterity as truly human and important falls off after that. There are some who can make that leap. One might call it a curse really.
This whole idea echoes something C. S. Lewis pointed out in The Abolition of Man; that people can only love their more immediate progeny and not that far out. He points out that some philosophers advocated mad policies for children, based on plans for deep posterity, and these were roundly ignored by mothers and nurses who simply cared to raise healthy decent people. I interpreted Lewis’ idea as this: if someone is focused on only deep posterity, but does not care deeply about someone around them now, they should be treated carefully. I would say even, do not trust them. For they have lost a part of their humanity that grounds them.
At first glance it appears Professor Brand is able to make this leap, to care about posterity so much that he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness and child. In reality he was no less frail and fallen as Mann. (irony & pun fully intended) Brand sends his child out into the far reaches because he loves her and knows if she remains on Earth she is doomed. This is one critical point in the movie
Love as a real, tangible force is the other major point in the film. Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway) explicitly cites love as the real power and motivation out there. She makes a plea to go in one direction based on Love and a hunch. Turns out her suggestion was the right one. That was the one planet that could sustain human life. Love does win out in this. Love is what motivates the action and allows the action to succeed throughout the film.
There is a great deal in this movie and I’d love to chat about the robots and what their existence shows but for now I’ll get to the ending and start the larger debate.
The ending is where things all come together and frankly, I see it as intentionally ambiguous. During Dr. Mann’s monologue he tells Cooper that when he dies, he will see his kids. Why he would know this, or point it out to Cooper is not explained. And this gets forgotten as Cooper and the robot fall into the singularity.
After Cooper enters the singularity he is brought into a tesseract to be able to communicate, however clumsily with his daughter Murphy Cooper (Jessica Chastain at this point). Here is the story coming back to itself, where Cooper is able to reach across time and space to give Murphy the key to solving the equation of gravity. That part seems to indicate Cooper did live past the event horizon. However as the Tesseract comes apart and all fades to white, Cooper asks, “What’s next?”
Christopher Nolan seems to be demanding the audience get in the game at this point. Cooper wakes up in a hospital on Cooper Station (named for his daughter) and proceeds to find out that humanity has somehow gotten off Earth. Or at least some fraction of humanity.
I noticed all things he saw were things he’d already seen throughout the movie. Cooper even says he wants to see where they are, not just preserve what was. It sounds like he is speaking out about the waste of bringing his home to a space station as a museum of sorts. I think it is Nolan telling us that this is not real.
My reasons for thinking Cooper did not survive the singularity.
0. I’m just wired to think that way.
1. There is a hangar with concrete in it. Why in the world would you use reinforced concrete in a space ship? It looks a good deal like the NASA bunker which is something he had already seen, several times before.
2. The ships they were flying when he left, nearly 100 years previously, are the same they are using now. That is amazingly unlikely. It set off in my head a thought that this was all a dying dream.
3. Also if they solved the gravity equation enough to get folks off Earth, why not artificial gravity? Cooper station produces gravity through spin just like the ship they took outbound.
4. The ship he takes to head out and be with Dr. Brand, could not make the journey to the planet she is on. Simply not enough supplies and no means for a cryo-sleep. Essential if he is to get there alive.
5. When he comes to see his daughter and all of her kids and grandkids are there, they do not interact with him. He is not only their great-grand-sire, he is a hero of their youth. Yet no one shakes his hand. Also they leave and return to the room rather quickly for such a gaggle of folks.
Likely when I do longer viewings I will find even more stuff.
My conclusion is that after the tesseract Cooper dies and the epilogue is only his mind creating a fantasy before he fades.
I have to say that I'm impressed by this analysis. But I disagree with Kevin's assessment of the ending. I think that Nolan was trying to make a more straightforward statement that life is something that can be affirmed. Nolan's attempt at this is clumsy, and he's used to being more ambiguous about that, so I'm not surprised his skill at presenting it properly was limited.
However, if we for the sake of argument take Kevin's analysis to be correct, I don't see why we should see the ending as some fantasy Cooper makes up before he fades to nothing. It could just as easily be something like Heaven. The film borrows heavily from 2001, but more from the book than the film. And an ending with Cooper in a kind of Heaven would match up well to the book. Though not the film.
If you are someone who cries easily, I would not recommend this movie. Nor would I recommend it to anyone with children, beloved spouses or a heart. It is brutally gut wrenching in many places and I was crying quite easily at several points.
This is a story about saving our children. Though it is set in a cataclysmic milieu it is that simple of a story: what would a father do to save his kids? I was impressed though with a film that was willing to tell such a terrible story. This was Christopher Nolan spending some Hollywood-capital to make a great movie, not just another block-buster. Bravo on him.
Also I loved how time and again, Nolan emphasized how small we are, and our petty interests, compared to the universe at large. Here were massive planets, going about their business paying no mind whatever to these tiny things going by. Nolan captured the immensity of space rather well in this film. This sets up beautifully the metaphysical ideas about love which later are so critical to the story.
Also I think Matthew McConaughey should be up for an academy award on this. He does spectacular work in this film.
Setup: The human race on Earth is doomed, no hope whatever of survival and yet several souls do go out to try and purchase some hope, however desperate. As I said, this is a story about saving your kids. In the end that is what drives the main protagonists, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Prof. Brand (Michael Caine). Cooper wants to find a safe place to bring his daughter, Brand wants to send his daughter to a place where she has a chance of living.
The whole world is becoming smaller; fewer crops, fewer opportunities for people; corn and subsistence farming is all there is. This is a place where American schools seize upon the Moon Landing hoax idea and run with it as an actual propaganda effort, not a real engineering feat completed at a particular time in a particular place. The reason is to keep people from thinking too far ahead and to focus only on survival. “Caretaker Generation” is the term used. The short time we get a glimpse into this twisted system is chilling. That is when I realized just how desperate and hopeless things had become. The human race had burned its ships on a pyre of blighted crops.
I do find it hard to believe that a government that would stoop to such methods would keep NASA going, however clandestinely. It argued for a second government, a fragmented one. My speculation only from limited data in the story.
For all that the story had a feeling of truth to it. Prof. Brand is willing to sacrifice his humanity by telling a monstrous lie in order to buy some hope for humanity. That is the story on the surface. Yet we find he is buying it as much for his daughter as for anyone else. He is not as altruistic about preserving future generations as he plays early on.
The monologue by the nearest thing to a villain, Dr. Mann(Matt Damon) was spot on: the human ability to sacrifice only can reach so far. Most will sacrifice for immediate family, grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren, yet the ability to see remote posterity as truly human and important falls off after that. There are some who can make that leap. One might call it a curse really.
This whole idea echoes something C. S. Lewis pointed out in The Abolition of Man; that people can only love their more immediate progeny and not that far out. He points out that some philosophers advocated mad policies for children, based on plans for deep posterity, and these were roundly ignored by mothers and nurses who simply cared to raise healthy decent people. I interpreted Lewis’ idea as this: if someone is focused on only deep posterity, but does not care deeply about someone around them now, they should be treated carefully. I would say even, do not trust them. For they have lost a part of their humanity that grounds them.
At first glance it appears Professor Brand is able to make this leap, to care about posterity so much that he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness and child. In reality he was no less frail and fallen as Mann. (irony & pun fully intended) Brand sends his child out into the far reaches because he loves her and knows if she remains on Earth she is doomed. This is one critical point in the movie
Love as a real, tangible force is the other major point in the film. Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway) explicitly cites love as the real power and motivation out there. She makes a plea to go in one direction based on Love and a hunch. Turns out her suggestion was the right one. That was the one planet that could sustain human life. Love does win out in this. Love is what motivates the action and allows the action to succeed throughout the film.
There is a great deal in this movie and I’d love to chat about the robots and what their existence shows but for now I’ll get to the ending and start the larger debate.
The ending is where things all come together and frankly, I see it as intentionally ambiguous. During Dr. Mann’s monologue he tells Cooper that when he dies, he will see his kids. Why he would know this, or point it out to Cooper is not explained. And this gets forgotten as Cooper and the robot fall into the singularity.
After Cooper enters the singularity he is brought into a tesseract to be able to communicate, however clumsily with his daughter Murphy Cooper (Jessica Chastain at this point). Here is the story coming back to itself, where Cooper is able to reach across time and space to give Murphy the key to solving the equation of gravity. That part seems to indicate Cooper did live past the event horizon. However as the Tesseract comes apart and all fades to white, Cooper asks, “What’s next?”
Christopher Nolan seems to be demanding the audience get in the game at this point. Cooper wakes up in a hospital on Cooper Station (named for his daughter) and proceeds to find out that humanity has somehow gotten off Earth. Or at least some fraction of humanity.
I noticed all things he saw were things he’d already seen throughout the movie. Cooper even says he wants to see where they are, not just preserve what was. It sounds like he is speaking out about the waste of bringing his home to a space station as a museum of sorts. I think it is Nolan telling us that this is not real.
My reasons for thinking Cooper did not survive the singularity.
0. I’m just wired to think that way.
1. There is a hangar with concrete in it. Why in the world would you use reinforced concrete in a space ship? It looks a good deal like the NASA bunker which is something he had already seen, several times before.
2. The ships they were flying when he left, nearly 100 years previously, are the same they are using now. That is amazingly unlikely. It set off in my head a thought that this was all a dying dream.
3. Also if they solved the gravity equation enough to get folks off Earth, why not artificial gravity? Cooper station produces gravity through spin just like the ship they took outbound.
4. The ship he takes to head out and be with Dr. Brand, could not make the journey to the planet she is on. Simply not enough supplies and no means for a cryo-sleep. Essential if he is to get there alive.
5. When he comes to see his daughter and all of her kids and grandkids are there, they do not interact with him. He is not only their great-grand-sire, he is a hero of their youth. Yet no one shakes his hand. Also they leave and return to the room rather quickly for such a gaggle of folks.
Likely when I do longer viewings I will find even more stuff.
My conclusion is that after the tesseract Cooper dies and the epilogue is only his mind creating a fantasy before he fades.
I have to say that I'm impressed by this analysis. But I disagree with Kevin's assessment of the ending. I think that Nolan was trying to make a more straightforward statement that life is something that can be affirmed. Nolan's attempt at this is clumsy, and he's used to being more ambiguous about that, so I'm not surprised his skill at presenting it properly was limited.
However, if we for the sake of argument take Kevin's analysis to be correct, I don't see why we should see the ending as some fantasy Cooper makes up before he fades to nothing. It could just as easily be something like Heaven. The film borrows heavily from 2001, but more from the book than the film. And an ending with Cooper in a kind of Heaven would match up well to the book. Though not the film.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)