Roger Ebert Speculates about End Times
The wave of 2012 films is slowly rising and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening adds to the trend. His career has been controversial and Shyamalan tends to receive polarized responses from movie goers and critics alike (The Sixth Sense was immensely popular and hardly anybody remembers Unbreakable).
But in a recent film review of Shyamalan's latest film, a thoughtful Roger Ebert explains why this "end of times" film ends up feeling so relevant. Ebert writes, "For some time the thought has been gathering at the back of my mind that we are in the final act. We have finally insulted the planet so much that it can no longer sustain us. It is exhausted. It never occurred to me that vegetation might exterminate us. In fact, the form of the planet's revenge remains undefined in my thoughts, although I have read of rising sea levels and the ends of species."
For the full film review visit here.
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- 6-18-08
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Roger that
trust
Roger Ebert is my DJ, and I trust him with my movie-going LIFE!
I really miss old partner Siskel too. Not going to lie.
Adam Elenbaas
thinking vs consuming
It wasn't the "lack of bombs
tremendous film
I'm going to disagree. Tonight I went out with a close friend and put on my critical glasses.
The film, to me, is Shyamalan's best and also most relevant film ever.
The acting is not bad. The acting doesn't steal the show because that's the point---humans are not the show!
I think that the acting feels dry because the plot is not dialogue or character driven. Why? Because, again, we're not the point when nature reminds us that we live in a collective.
Nobody steals the show, but nobody acts down in this film.
The mood of the film is ho-hum because, as Ebert points out so accurately, the idea is that in the wake of real catastrophe people are half expecting it. Some people are shocked, some are terrified and some are just up to the same old shennanigans: quiet greed, etc.
I'll pick on your response a little bit more. The previews made you think it was going to be something mysterious...
Consider this. What is more mysterious than nature? This is the very point of the film, and it's second point is to suggest that we are not separate from that mystery. The acting reflects this. The pacing and plot suggests this.
And, I won't give away the ending, but the "reason" people are killing themselves is far more complex than I think you've taken time to reflect upon.
This is the best film we've seen to date in the popular media surrounding the kind of planetary shift in consciousness that we're witnessing right now.
As Ebert rightly points out, most people will not like this film because it is ho-hum, because it doesn't put humanity at the center in in the plot, and because it does not cator to what movie-goers expect, as you wrote, "Good shots, just inappropriate to the mood of the scenes."
The shots and the mood carry deeply important significance. And while I think this film may fly under the radar (I heard most people discussing how boring it was on the way out of the theatre), I think its significance on the subconscious of movie-goers will be tremendous in the coming years.
I was geeked about this movie. Subtle. Brilliant. Funny. Folkloric. And natural.
Adam Elenbaas
Landry, I feel the same way.
two thumbs up
further more i saw it as
Hope for Humanity, All of Humanity
The last comment irked me somewhat as it goes against the spirit of this community and the purpose behind what the organizers and readers of RS continue to meet and . It is not beneficial to imagine scenarios where people, regardless of their immoral, greedy, or destructive habits, just suddenly die off to let "more enlightened" souls create a utopian paradise.
When we envision such circumstances we unconsciously (and probably consciously) appoint ourselves judge and jury, condemning other people who still live their lives in what we feel are false pretexts, according to the laws of a society that still hold firm despite our highest protests. We reinforce our divides as humans as we pick and choose those who are worthy to be "saved" or self-proclaim ourselves as stewards for some world still waiting for a massive die-off of our population.
I reinforce the point I think we are driving at here everyday, which is live your life as an example for others to follow and do everything in your capacity to open yourself to love and understanding in dealing with people who haven't "woken up" yet. Only when one individual admires another does he begin to emulate that person. This does not transpire through force or slight or words and thoughts.
Here's a counter vision I have for our accelerating future. I dream of our societies (as in RS and other communities burgeoning all over the world) growing large enough to not only support ourselves, but act as pillars of light for other communities to learn from and grow from (albeit in their own fashion).
I want to continue to live in compassionate independence from those aspects of society not wholly in line with my evolving nature, but never severed from those still fashioned to the "old" way of life. I always want to be there for others along their own paths.
Agreed
If we don't carry everyone along with us, we all go down with the ship.
Exactly!
We are all in this together...
I think it is important to note that the "plague" in The Happening was equal opportunity in who was affected. It did not pick and choose. That is the way of nature. And because we are part of nature, we do not have the authority pick and choose who is worthy or not-worthy.
At first, I wasn't sure I liked this movie. But since I have seen it, something about it has resonnated. Yes, there are some inconsistencies. Some of the "science" in it is faulty. But, I don't think that was the point. The point, for me as I have been reflecting on it, is that life is temporary and everything can change in an instant. Appreciate life, care for those around you, not matter who it is. Life is valued in how it is lived, not for what you have at the end.
DoAn
Interstitial Artist
www.doanart.blogspot.com
hmmm
Agreed.
In the film, for example, at first large groups of people are picked off because of the high levels of perceived threats in masses of human beings.
Then, as the happening wipes out more and more people, smaller groups and finally individuals are targeted according to stress levels (anger, fear, aggression, etc).
Shyamalan hints at the idea that nature, the whole, is like calculus when it cleans itself of toxins. We know that the body works similarly to clean itself of toxins. It eliminates large groups of sick cells and then smaller and smaller isolated high threat level cells (according to some unbiased, impersonal and probablistic, energetic selection system).
There is one scene in particular where this isolated woman, living with nature, responds with great fear to the city people who find her home. She loves living on her own with nature, and she feels like the city people, although they are entirely peaceful and loving, are a huge threat to her health and to the stasis of her nature dwelling. Her fear of the "toxic city people" raises her fear level to a toxic level.
She dies alone in her garden.
I feel like there are such things as toxic people, but a person can only be toxic in the moment that they are toxic.
Afterwards, if we point towards the old toxic cell too aggressively, we become the manifestation of that toxic cell.
It's important to remember that we're all inside of one body.
Adam Elenbaas
One Organism
This was a rare movie-theater experience in the impact it had on the audience. The mood in the room seemed apprehensive and uneasy, similar to the mood of one of the crowds in the film, as if the threat were indeed real. After the movie ended, I overheard one girl say, "I don't want to go outside!".
As we saw in the climactic scene (slight spoiler ahead), no guarantees, but it's probably ok to go outside if you're a part of the cure, not the disease.