Yep...I have seen the film. Not sure I have seen the light!!! As in the "You really must take responsibility for your own actions..even if I am not" league!!
What I got from the film was that it was pretty damn good. Leonardo Di (never quite sure how to spell his name) acted his part brilliantly. No surprise for me cos I really rate him.
I liked the way it reeled me in, not sure till quite a ways into the film that the main character is in some kind of psychotic self denial. I did clock early on that he was carrying a lot of psychological and emotional baggage but I thought it might have been to do with interrogation. As in he having been involved in interrogating Natzis and then having to see first hand, the horrors of the holocaust (as an American Army man). Got that one wrong! Oopsie!
Was scared to bits by the Lighthouse (The grand finale of the Big Brother House) and the atmospherics got to me too. I felt alot of the supsense that went with 'Blair Witch Project' only the quality of this film was heaps better and more substantial.
I think, wherever there are gaps or uncertainties in films, people (me included) fill them in with what we want them to be. For example at the end of the film, my view is that he realises he has been in denial about his past, as well as the violent side of his character (although I am not sure if that violence was a pre-disposition or in direct response to his wife killing his children) and prefers the labotomy option to having to live with the reality of what he has experienced, done and feels. Craig (who watched film with me) thought that he hadn't got the remotest idea and still thought that it was all a conspiracy against him.
Am suddenly wondering what it was that prompted me to write this post. Well, I am getting sick to death of people and their social engineering/control talk...using the media to tell other people how they should be living their lives whilst in the next breath proclaiming themselves too sick. For what, to be taken seriously? Is that a kind of sickness? To think that you have authority and and the right to moral control but then to start saying that when it comes to them, they are 'exempt'? Is it a twisted belief that they can save people...or more that they are trying to save themselves at other people's expense? Whatever, I am highly scepticle of anyone who claims to be representative of me, whilst never actually asking me what I think, feel, experience (trying to super-impose what they believe I should be feeling etc on me). The reason this is so important now is that social engineering is much more of a reality and when it comes to responsibility.....I fear people will be made to be responsible for their illness (blamed for having illness) and when they don't cut it, in this brave new world...they will be subject to a different kind of labotomy. Extermination of a sorts...just like in the film. The guy didn't cut it...it was 2 strikes and out.
Big Brother, who on one hand is believing themselves generous and compassionate.... on the other...imposing their morality on someone to the point of extinction. Well, that was my take on the film and is my take on what is happening now with more to follow.
The propoganda seeds are being sown. We all belong in a Big Society. Big Brother has told us that. Now it is how society is manipulated to believe that there is an ideal type ...a uniform type...and only they belong. Faulty goods are not allowed (particularly with mental illness) and will be blamed, bullied and driven out (of their minds, communities and homes). Ultimately, mental illness will no longer exist..it will be those who can 'fit to type' and the mentally ill will be deviants who must be punished. Paranoid maybe? But time will tell.
As for the Shutter Shed. It's about me reality checking and downsizing accordingly. Metaphorically speaking and who knows what on the literal level.
I don't think it will be a case of even having 2 strikes. 1 strike and then fekked!!!
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Can't believe so many of the critics panned 'Shutter Island ' as it's a great movie that has a vintage Hitchcock feel to it. It's not really a modern film and from outset it's cinematically dense and symbolically loaded and if you can genuinely suspend belief - and it seems a lot of the pro reviewers couldn't or wouldn't - the clichéd ' seekers marooned at asylum/haunted house in violent storm' storyline fragments and gradually reveals a deeper and more harrowing internal narrative, logic and mythology that was challenging enough anyway to keep me ruminating over what the movie is actually about long after the final credits rolled. Maybe I'm just slow and stupid lol.
ReplyDeleteTo me it's a Greek tragedy that explores the dark places beyond good and bad and right and wrong and I share your take on the ending Manders but I'm still mentally screening the movie backwards for insights .
I thought DiCaprio stormed his part too, last movie I saw him in was Revolutionary Road, which also touched on strong mental health themes only he played such a deliberately passive wooden character in that film as all the drama, violence and tragedy is invested in the questions an intense young man with schizophrenia raises about suburban reality and , ultimately Kate Winslet's character who gets driven over the edge because nothing actually happens in her life. Two films to watch back to back there , definitely.
Wonder what Sue Baker of Time to Change would make of these two films as her org paid some shrink to draw up a history of stigma in cinema . Baker and her clones would definitely be raving over the storytelling aspect but like you I also think the role of the institution , its dark past and control over Di Caprio 's character is pretty fucking morally challenged too as what Andrew Laeddis finally does is make the only free and certain conscious choice he can . Baker would rather be funded for making decisions on our behalf. There's a cultural literalness about these people that gives me the creeps. They're dangerous as they've assumed the power of the institution and it's like no-one's noticed because our word counts for so little unless its mouthed through them.
oops Blogger just told me comment had too many characters so sorry if its posted twice or scrambled
ReplyDeleteHave still to watch 'The Reader', Norm. Got to pick my moment lols
ReplyDeleteI have to ask why Sue Baker would decide that a shrink is the best person (make that type of person) to be picked to talk about stigma in in the cinema. I think it would have been better if'Time for Change' asked people who are directly affected by it to comment or did a consensus, gathering views across the board. Would certainly be more reflective, I think.
Back to Shutter Island, I am still trying to work out how Leonardo's character could speak fluent German...or whether that was just part of his delusion.
Also I think his character showed quite a bit of compassion. Which, if I read the film properly, wasn't given any credence, by the head shrink, when he made the final decison.
As for him not being there for his wife. I have Bipolar and am acutely aware that people have made concious decisions to keep away from me because of my illness. This was obviously specifically focussing on him but what about her? He kept away cos he couldn't handle her but it seemed that everyone else did as well and ultimately it ended in tragedy for their children, her and him.
There is only so much time in a film to get all the relevant stuff in but a film that looks at mental illness and isolation in more depth would be a good thing. If people want to really tackle prejudice then they need to be alot more honest about it's causes and more so people's fear of mental illness and dealing with people who have it...and I am talking as much about people who work for the government and in care services as I am the public at large.
'The Reader' is an excellent movie , it mixes stolen forbidden love and the trial of a murdering fascist to emotionally , morally, and legally question personal and collective responsibility and the human need for, nature and limits of reconciliation . It's disturbing to watch because the viewer is drawn into sympathising with a monster who, by the end of the movie is unmasked for who she really is - most of us under the wrong circumstances.
ReplyDeleteThe film 'Sophie Scholl - the Final Days ' based on transcripts from 21 year old Sophie's trial offers a pretty fucking bleak insight into the mass appeal of conformity and social amnesia . Sophie , her brother Hans and their friends were caught distributing leaflets of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance movement at the University of Munich .
Hans took full responsibility to spare his sister but Sophie refused to let him carry the can and readilly admitted her responsibility for distributing the anti-Nazi leaflets insisting it was her moral duty to resist the Nazis and denounce their crimes against humanity. Her defiance enraged the regime. The Scholl's and their friends were subjected to speedy apublic showtrial , found guilty and beheaded by the Nazis .
"We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience."