The Sci-Fi List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Rayon Vert]

The Man from Earth (Schenkman 2007). (1st viewing) Colleagues of various academic disciplines show up to a professor’s home for a farewell party and he reveals to them he’s actually a Cro Magnon man who’s lived for 14 000 years, never ages, and relocates every ten years so people don’t realize it. It’s a conversation-only chamber piece where the psychodrama is about the different reactions, mostly of disbelief and suspicion. This gets a 7.9 rating on IMDB and it’s an interesting premise. Most of the film is this guy fielding all these questions based on their academic fields of expertise about his experiences and “lives”, which provoke a lot of historical and philosophical/religious discussions. I wished one of those “lives” wasn’t what it was because that does make the story less believable for the viewer (as well as the colleagues!). It’s a good enough film but I don’t quite get the fuss.


The Abyss (Cameron 1989). (revisit) I noticed this time there’s a nice kind of Hawksian group vibe among the drillers, especially in the early scenes, who are dedicated to their work, have fun and like each other, and to a degree Mastrantonio’s character fits the bill of a Hawksian woman as well. It’s a messy movie, though, where the strengths lie in the several very suspenseful sequences, which are often impressively staged. It’s striking how the aliens don’t figure much in the movie, and aren’t that crucial to the narrative, until the end; so that much of the time the “sci-fi” resides more in the near-miraculous death-defying mini-missions that make up the film. To be hypercritical, there’s something just a little bit narratively unsatisfying on how segmented the different sequences are, rather than feeling more integrated into a larger, continuous whole story. But I’d say that’s more so the fact, and therefore more problematic, with the way the aliens are almost shoehorned into the film at the end. Cameron is going for his own Close Encounters beatific aliens trip, but it doesn’t feel like a journey we’ve been progressively going towards unlike the Spielberg, and it comes off as more corny as well. It’s a shame that’s the memory the film leaves you with, overshadowing the effective thriller parts that make up most of the movie.


The War Game (Watkins 1966). (1st viewing) Completely unsparing pseudo-documentary about the escalation to nuclear war, the nuclear attacks on Britain, and the realities during and after for its citizens. The film focuses on precise details on what all this entails, in terms of health, survival, social order. You notice also the stabs at the establishment as well, like the religious figures’ statements on the use of nuclear weapons, the lack of information the citizens possess regarding the consequences of nuclear bomb explosions, and how social-economic disparities come into play for sheltering against the attacks. Some powerful images of the impact of the explosions and the firefighters battling the firestorms, although during them you wonder what’s happening to the cameraman!


Sputnik (Abramenko 2020). (1st viewing) Slight shades of Alien in this Russian film about a cosmonaut carrying a parasitic alien organism inside him after crashing back down into Soviet Kazakhstan in 1983 following an orbiting space accident. He isn’t aware he’s carrying this creature, which leaves his body at night when he’s sleeping. Oksana Akinshina plays the psychiatrist that’s sent to the locked down government facility where the cosmonaut is being quarantined in order to try and separate the two (!). She and the team gradually discover a strange symbiotic relationship is existing between them. This was a lot better than for whatever reason I was expecting. There’s a nicely paced, atmospheric mystery that progressively generates further revelations in what’s going on and the film manages throughout to blend rather successfully a serious drama along with the thriller and slightly more gory horror dimensions. So that it sits in a strange but interesting and fun place between something like a more sophisticated sci-fi entry like Arrival and a B-film horror piece. This actually makes my list, as it stands right now, so it’s recommended if that sounds up your alley. Shout will release this in February but it’s available on Amazon Prime.


Marooned (Sturges 1969). (1st viewing) Before Gravity there was Marooned. (Cuaron stated it was an influence, and then on top of that he quoted it in Roma.) Just as they are about to return to Earth, three orbiting Apollo mission astronauts (Gene Hackman one of them, and definitely not your stoic professional best suited for the job!) undock from the space station and get stuck in their tiny capsule because of a mechanical failure. NASA could theoretically try and send a rescue flight, but not before the 42 hours of oxygen they have left. And of course there’s a hurricane coming to Cape Canaveral. (It’s actually a darkly funny bit when the U.S. President says to the top NASA administrator, played by Gregory Peck, to try anyway because not doing anything will kill public support for the NASA program!)

It’s typical of these types of 60s and 70s disaster rescue films to not be the best paced, which is definitely the case here. Also, unlike Gravity, most of the focus is down below and the efforts to come up with something. I must say that despite the lags, suspense does nevertheless eventually build effectively, and there are twists in the story that help foster it as well. And even in its period stylings, there’s things to like (for my taste anyway), such as a scene that goes on for something like 10 minutes that amazingly is nothing but controllers relaying technical signals to one another - it’s almost abstract cinema at that point!

The film does focus back on the astronauts more towards the end, and things get surprisingly anguishing and emotional, which is where there’s more of a substantive connection to Gravity, and the story darker than you would have foreseen. So I ended up liking this quite a bit despite the obvious flaws (which means it’s my favorite John Sturges so far). Hopefully this comes out at some point on blu-ray. (It’s also available to see on Amazon prime. Not the greatest IMDB rating, but lots of 5-star reviews on Amazon that I find myself in some sympathy with.)

[domino harvey]

The Man from Earth (Schenkman 2007). (1st viewing) Colleagues of various academic disciplines show up to a professor’s home for a farewell party and he reveals to them he’s actually a Cro Magnon man who’s lived for 14 000 years, never ages, and relocates every ten years so people don’t realize it. It’s a conversation-only chamber piece where the psychodrama is about the different reactions, mostly of disbelief and suspicion. This gets a 7.9 rating on IMDB and it’s an interesting premise. Most of the film is this guy fielding all these questions based on their academic fields of expertise about his experiences and “lives”, which provoke a lot of historical and philosophical/religious discussions. I wished one of those “lives” wasn’t what it was because that does make the story less believable for the viewer (as well as the colleagues!). It’s a good enough film but I don’t quite get the fuss.

This is a film I've never heard about outside of Reddit, where it is disproportionately popular. I assume it's streaming free on some service and that's how so many people have seen it? It is bizarre that such a no name movie has such a cult following

[domino harvey]

Also, did you watch the director's cut of the Abyss? That's like one of the most infamous and drastic director's cuts out there, as it adds in an entire big budget special effects subplot inexplicably cut from the original release

[Rayon Vert]

You're right, it's free on Amazon Prime. Here's the trailer for the film, btw. A sequel The Man from Earth: Holocene was apparently released in 2017, which doesn't at all have the same fan base. It was supposedly (Wiki) uploaded by the creators themselves as a legal download on piratebay.

And yes I did watch the director's cut of The Abyss, which is the one I'd seen before. I've seen the film probably a few too many times which dimmed the impact.

[senseabove]

This is a film I've never heard about outside of Reddit, where it is disproportionately popular. I assume it's streaming free on some service and that's how so many people have seen it? It is bizarre that such a no name movie has such a cult following

If I say that the only people who ever bring it up when they find out I like movies are software engineers, does that help explain its niche?

[therewillbeblus]

Silent Running (Trumbull 1972). (1st viewing) Slightly odd in the way it travels from its own original environmental focus to the plight of the lonely protagonist at the end, although that shift makes the film less predictable. Still I was only starting to warm up to it a bit at the end, in part due to the bit involving Lowell’s relationship with the drones, despite its manipulative sentimentality. I’m afraid I didn’t find most of this very good at all in terms of execution, including Dern’s overacting at the beginning, though I may be missing something because this film seems to have its fans.

Put me in the head-scratching camp for this one's cult status. I've now seen it twice and it only gets worse, though I must be missing something because the movie doesn't even make sense to me

Spoiler

First, Dern murders his fellow crew mates (G-rated family fun!) choosing plants and animals over human beings, okay, but then he seems to be manipulating mission control on a one-way track to.. where? And why did the orders call for a destruction-and-return? Are we supposed to assume it's a surrender to suicide that Dern is rebelling against? I don't think so, that doesn't follow any logic, but perhaps we're supposed to remain as in-the-dark as the state Dern plants (sorry) himself in- It seems as though he's repelled by what he can't- or rather refuses to- understand, and this hostility mirrors his inability to part with his ethos.

I can sorta appreciate this as an exercise in solipsism if I believed that was the intent, but there seems to be too great an allegiance to Dern's protagonist that contrasts with the repetitive self-delusion, outward deceit, and immorality, seemingly unaware of this discrepancy of characterization.

[Rayon Vert]

I wish I could join you in trying to answer those questions, TW, but the film was so unmemorable to me my memory of it has already started dimming too much! Maybe someone else can take you up.

[therewillbeblus]

I hope they stay rhetorical questions because that ambiguity is the only thing keeping this at barely two stars for me.

I also watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was an absolute blast. What starts as a gonzo blend between film noir, superhero fantasy, science-fiction, and historical mysteries, melts its influences into a gorgeous flamboyant action-adventure in the footprints of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The introduction of Law has him emerge as a non-powered superhero-pilot a la Batman/Bruce Wayne before shifting into Sam Spade's office and routine, seemingly shot-for-shot with Maltese Falcon's beginning, and ultimately reveals himself to be a bizarro-Indiana Jones. Paltrow and Law even have the central dynamic from Raiders down pat, and the last act leans full-tilt into the writer's room proposition- "what about 'Indie meets Star Wars'?" Still, for all its homages, the film creates a unique energy with its own internal logic of magical realism in form and content, that doesn't bother to proactively explain the quizzical comic-book-inspired variables, instead flooding us with phantasmagoria simultaneously with plot and world-building. I admired this admittedly risky approach, because Conran so clearly comprehends his own vision and the skills of film language, that he can communicate the eccentric through familiar methods and allow the haze of intriguing acclimation to his atmosphere and ideas take hold with confidence. The throwbacks to classical cinema are delightful, and it's hard to imagine any decently-budgeted film made today getting away with some of the stuff this one did not too long ago. A lock for my list, if only because it shows the possibilities of novelty when coating grounded tributes in sci-fi imagination.

[Michael Kerpan]

Does Mandalorian count for this list?

[domino harvey]

Nope

[Rayon Vert]

Empire of the Ants (Gordon 1977). (1st viewing) Another ecokill pic for AIP by Bert I. Gordon and again very loosely adapted from H. G. Wells. So like Them! it’s mutated giant ants again, but this time the radioactivity comes from a toxic spill. Joan Collins brings clients to an island to sell them worthless swampland where they encounter the creatures. Basically the whole film is just one attack after another and characters feeling through the woods. Gordon uses the same mixture of process shots, miniaturization of sets, and silly props for the effects. Food of the Gods was a fun bad film, this is just completely mindless and terrible and no fun whatsoever.


Interstellar (Nolan 2014). (1st viewing) Talk about a jump into hyperspace of film quality. I was expecting this to be spectacular and mind-blowing and it was. I don’t find anything much to express apart from inarticulate gushing. For reasons I can’t quite put my figure on, maybe the last ten minutes or so were a little less satisfying,

Spoiler

maybe because things are wrapped up so nicely whereas the preceding chapters were confronting us with such bleak developments,

but it’s hard to find completely satisfactory ends to ambitious sci-fi films like these, and really that was the only slight drop of excellence through the whole thing for me. Just an amazing story, as imaginative and layered as Inception, that kept upping the ante in terms of dramatic and suspenseful twists. McConaughey was terrific and makes us forget his role in the previous, in some ways similar wormhole movie Contact! Great use of complicated ideas made understandable, and keeping it human throughout, and incredible visuals of course - really the spiritual heir to Kubrick’s 2001 on that type of scale. A little more action-heavy towards the end, and less of a singular, all-enveloping mood, but this makes my top ten easily nevertheless. I don’t expect that another film on my watch list from here on out will top it.


Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer 1966). (1st viewing)

Defecting from behind the Iron Curtain, scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) has discovered the secret of miniaturizing any object for an hour at a time. After landing in Washington D.C., his motorcade is attacked and Benes develops a life threatening brain clot after the car crashes. In order to save his life a top secret team of scientists recruit CIA agent Grant (Stephen Boyd) to lead an expedition into Benes's body and surgically remove the clot from the inside. With only an hour to save his life, the team fights a race against time to make their way through the patient's body and into his brain.

I’ll correct this otherwise accurate synopsis to make it a bit more logical: the Americans already have the ability to miniaturize for an hour’s time, which is why they can go ahead into the Soviet defector’s body, whom they want to save because he’s found the secret to do so without any time limits. This had a fairly lavish $6 million budget and won Oscars for art direction and special effects. Quite a few notable actors here too, including Donald Pleasance, Arthur Kennedy and Raquel Welch in her first role. It’s a well-liked film generally but I was pretty bored apart from the colors - kind of like psychedelic family fare. I think this premise works better with a comedic approach, which is what Dante’s Innerspace did. (Bit of trivia: Jerome Bixby co-wrote the story this was based upon, and four decades later he wrote the screenplay for The Man from Earth.)


2046 (Wong 2004). (1st viewing) Contemporary auteur filmmaking is in general a blind spot for me, and Wong is no exception. Before starting I made sure to read the detailed plot summaries of all three films in the trilogy to understand what was at stake and the echoes here to the previous films (which turned out also to be very helpful to get not get lost in this more complicated one). A profoundly engrossing and melancholic film as we follow the sexual odyssey of this romantically traumatized man (in this way a bit like the last Kubrick film). Zhang Ziyi’s character and performance is truly heartbreaking. I’m looking forward to seeing it again eventually in the context of the oeuvre (though not it would appear with the help of Criterion…). As good as this is, though, I can’t in all good faith add it to my list as I really don’t think it belongs here. It’s a psychological drama about eros and the sci-fi storyline is an extremely small part of the film (18 minutes total) and is entirely contained within Mr. Chow’s writing, and therefore his imagination; I don’t see the film’s concerns being sci-fi in the least.


Stargate (Emmerich 1994). (1st viewing) Speaking of wormholes... I think I’d only seen the beginning of this film before. Anyway this is all kinds of dumb and clichés but I shouldn’t be too critical because it’s going for a very lightweight, schlocky Star Wars-type of adventure feel (the humor, the action, the anthemic Williamsesque theme), and if you lower the bar for that level it’s not completely awful, just mediocre. Looking at Emmerich’s résumé, he’s mostly specialized in these big blockbuster action sci-fi flicks, but has he actually made a good one is the question.


Young Frankenstein (Brooks 1974). (revisit) I actually prefer this to the original Universal movies, and besides it’s got the best bits recreated together, and it manages to capture their look, using the original lab equipment props - beyond the laughs it’s quite a visually beautiful film as such. I’m always taken aback, though, on how consistently funny this film and how marvelous each of the scenes are. All the actors (so many of them now sadly passed on or afflicted) give wonderful performances, but Wilder is absolutely otherworldly here, and it’s incredible how he can rise so fully to such hysterical intensities of emotion.

[therewillbeblus]

Interstellar's ending bothered me the first time I saw it, but revisits helped me appreciate how its intimacy fits with a spiritual experience of broadening our definitions of existential importance by recontextualizing time. Definitely check out Ad Astra and Solaris (2002) as equally compelling philosophical space films before writing off new list-bumpers!

[Rayon Vert]

Escape from New York (Carpenter 1981). (revisit) I never could get behind the love for this film but it’s definitely decent as a stylish action B-film. I guess it’s like a cyberpunk western, with the faces of Borgnine and Van Cleef fitting in. Maybe the other notable thing is that it’s got actors from each of Carpenter’s previous films, including the ones for television!


Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve 2017). (1st viewing) Mixed feelings about this one. Overall a good story and the pace fits the emphasis on the mystery but beyond that I felt it lacking in terms of energy and aliveness. The length then became a problem because of that and my interest definitely started lagging in the last couple of reels. I read Gosling got a lot of praise here but I didn’t find him that appealing, though granted he’s playing a replicant and dampened his expression to a degree, which perhaps explains why I felt the way I did. As in Arrival, Villeneuve’s fondness for the desaturated gray look also takes me out of it a bit (although I find it more problematic in the earlier film, as it’s more pervasive and takes away some of the intended realism).


Tenet (Nolan 2020). (1st viewing) Ah yes, the good ol’ temporal pincer movement... My reaction is about the same as what appears to be the majority of the voices in the film’s dedicated thread. My main problem is what Colin said in regard to the action scenes that didn’t come off as thrilling, which is something I noticed as soon as they started. Maybe beyond the editing there’s something in the “inversion” concept that’s just harder to make work on a visceral excitement level, rather than just on cognitive process - “oh, that’s clever... what actually is happening here?... Oh yes, I get it now”. I’d find myself frequently thinking of something less intellectually complicated like Edge of Tomorrow, which by comparison was so much more kinetic, thrilling and entertaining. By the time we get to that big blue/read team operation I was pretty checked out. Also, despite all the thought put into in the sci-fi concepts, nothing ever felt here as impressive and awe-inspiring to provoke the kind of “wow” reactions I got throughout Inception and Interstellar. The scenes I enjoyed were more in the build-up, the character exchanges and the more ordinary thriller moments that didn’t involve quantum physics and time travel. And I quite liked Washington as an actor as well. But then that whole villain who wants to destroy the world also added an unfortunate touch of silliness to the whole epic.


Children of Men (Cuaron 2006). (revisit) I didn’t remember this containing so much action, and quite thrilling as well. It still stands up extremely well and it’s one of the best dystopian films - certainly very believable. It’s always rewarding watching Owen’s character (perfect casting!) go through that arc.


Kingdom of the Spiders (Cardos 1977). (1st viewing) Maybe my standards have really been brought low watching these, but I actually found this not that bad at all, surprisingly given the similarity of the title to the rancid Empire of the Ants of the same year. But actually this isn’t an AIP production and there aren’t any of those awful effects since the tarantulas stay life-size. This isn’t a mutation but a massive migration caused probably by the effects of pesticides killing the spiders’ regular food sources, and they start combining together and attacking cattle in rural Arizona. When the humans start freaking out and going on the offensive, the spiders strike back. This has William Shatner and Woody Strode and the acting is definitely on a higher level than in most of these films. And some not terribly original but nevertheless effective suspense scenes. A cheap and quick ending, though. (It definitely seems like some animals were hurt here, because you see tarantulas getting squashed by the tires of sheriff cars and getting stomped on.)


The Martian (Scott 2015). (1st viewing) Yeah I thought this was very wonderful on the whole, with the highs being very high. Hollywood fare for sure, but very well done. You expect a Cast Away in space once it’s set up, but the character surprises you by instantly being brass balls and even funny about it all (although you can sense there’s some desperation underneath), which gives it a different flavor. The film did threaten to become a little too cute at times with the humor and the music, but in the end not creating any fatal damage to the ship so to speak. I’m sure comparisons can be made to a lot of other films, but having seen Marooned so recently, this definitely felt in part like an update, not only in the general situation but in specifics like

Spoiler

the rush to get an impossible rescue in on time and the way another nation comes in to save the day, not to mention the NASA director’s concern above all with keeping the program afloat.

An extremely easy and high list-maker. After this project is through, though, I think I’ll be done with films featuring air locks for a while.

[Dr Amicus]

The Abyss is a strange one in that the final section of the theatrical cut only makes conceptual sense IF you aware of what has been cut out. It's one of my favourite Cameron films, not least because I first saw it in the Odeon Leicester Square where it looked absolutely remarkable - one of the most extreme sense-of-wonder visual experiences I've had in SF cinema. I don't think either cut is perfect, the Director's cut makes far more sense but adds a bit more swimming around aimlessly (IIRC). It seems to me that the SF film that it actually owes most thematic links to is

Spoiler

The Day the Earth Stood Still - in both, humanity is being judged and potentially found wanting by alien peacekeepers.

Fun fact about Fantastic Voyage, a film I haven't seen in ages - the novelisation was done by Isaac Asimov (my teenage self found it perfectly readable) who in the 80s wrote a supposedly more scientifically accurate sequel - now where's the fun in that?

Chappie (Blomkamp, 2015) - probably the most underrated of Blomkamp's three films, my guess is that it is clearly part 1 and the later parts (wiki says it was planned as a trilogy) were never made so it feels the payoff is missing. Anyway, clearly in conversation with SF's past, most obviously Robocop (there is even an Ed-209 equivalent) with more than a little ET / Short Circuit. It's all a bit unstructured - again, this was intended to have sequels and there is a lot of set up - but there is so much to admire here that I don't really mind. Dev Patel makes for an engaging (human) lead and Sharlto Copley does wonders as the title robot-with-AI who goes on a Number-5-Is-Alive awakening - the twist here that he is "raised" by gangsters rather than suburban middle-class Americans makes for an opening up of the genre. The added Expert Commentary about the importance of Chappie is another sign of the unfilmed sequels, but it is at least a sign that this is being taken seriously. As it stands, it's the weakest of Blomkamp's films to date, but still intriguing and has a shot at my final list.

Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987) - A film I didn't like too much the first time I saw it (I think I was being deliberately contrarian as my friends loved it), but it soon grew on me and this will be definite top 10 placement for me. Especially in the extra-gory director's cut, this is gloriously funny amongst the ultra violence as the excesses are clearly marked as excess in a way the theatrical cut doesn't quite manage. As perfect evidence that SF is rarely about the future and really about the present - how 1980s are the corporate politics and the boardroom scenes? Not quite Greed Is Good, but pretty close - and Miguel Ferrer's character is the archetypal yuppie chancer. From what I remember of the sequels, 2 is more explicitly religious (there is a lot of Catholic imagery I seem to remember) but three is largely unmemorable - I have the old region 2 boxset of the trilogy so hope to rewatch before the deadline.

Edge of Tomorrow / Live Die Repeat / Whatever (Liman, 2014) Retitled (seemingly) at whim for different platforms, this was the second underperforming Cruise SF film in two years following the interesting curiosity Oblivion (which I watched earlier in this project). This is altogether more successful as Cruise's PR agent is assigned to the beach landings in an SF retelling of D Day (very Private Ryan), gets killed and finds himself in Groundhog Day as he keeps reliving the day until he (inevitably) gets killed. Answers start coming about a third of the way in courtesy of Emily Blunt, and then the film manages to very cleverly find variations on it's theme to keep it going over the almost 2 hour running time. This does mask not a small amount of convention - Cruise starts off as an unlikable POS, especially as, echoing Blackadder Goes Forth, he gets assigned to the initial landing and does his best to wheedle out it, but of course becomes a hero as the film progresses - and the ending doesn't really go against expectations but it is still one of the best new watches for me so far.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm glad somebody finds some merit in Chappie, which is one of the most painful films I've ever sat through. I can't remember explicitly why but I do remember the casting of Die Antwoord's duo didn't help things

[Mr Sausage]

Sound of my Voice (Zal Batmanglij, 2011)

The ambiguity here is of the gotcha style, where it skews one way before dropping a big hint at the end. Whether Maggie is from the future or not, she is a domineering, bullying, manipulative cult leader who is adept at coercive techniques but offers little in the way of revelation. I'm hard pressed to remember anything profound in what she says. Her "teaching" moments are either A. only worthwhile so long as you already believe her basic premise; B. more plainly demonstrations of her power to get people to do things they don't want to do; C. both. At least, I find it hard to extricate whatever of value she might've said from the ugly and toxic means it's bound up in, and can't help seeing whatever positives the group members took away as being better had somewhere else. On top of which, even if we grant that Maggie is from the future, it's hard to see her value. Perhaps the group she puts together is of the utmost importance later, in the future, but there's no way to tell. She sits in a room, says self-help truisms, wields authority, and is tight lipped on the more pressing issues. If she is genuinely from the future, she is less convincing and informative than actual delusional people. So you're left with very little, if she is a prophet from the future, and nothing at all if she's not. I don't think I liked the movie; I seem left mostly with irritation. Its ambiguities aren't productive; they feel glib and easy and that doesn't sit well with me given that they can seem to be mitigating the abuses on display. I don't know, what am I missing, therewillbeblus?

I did like that the film was something of a testing ground for The OA.

[therewillbeblus]

I appreciate your issues with the film, though I think that reading of 'unproductive ambiguities' is very much the point, for not leading into an expected ambiguity between revelatory profound options, but stripping everything away to a void of confusion, which has value precisely because it's an enigmatic detail that leads nowhere but doesn't support any of the judgments we've taken either.

Spoiler

I agree that it's difficult to view Maggie's value, purpose, or positive qualities from our contextual vantage point, but the ending seems less definitive as a "gotcha" and instead causes us to question our own restricted scope and limited tools to understand what's not known. I see it as a similar impact of questioning God and then being provided with an inexplicable scene that prompts us to sit with an inherent unknowability. The tools we're using to analyze the information we've gotten are useless because they're skewed to our biases, and so this process of viewer-frustration reminds me of Justin Theroux's character in The Leftovers' rigid atheism, refusing to surrender our definitive interpretations in the face of what cannot be described. The lack of clarity from the anti-'reveal' forces some humility by expanding the space of not-knowing that was becoming thinner and thinner throughout the film as we aligned with our leads and judged Marling's character in all the ways you have, and I did (who didnt?). I think this is all intentional on Marling's part, and it's a brilliant ride of setting up the viewer to pat themselves on the back, reinforcing us to use our schematic strategies to diagnose her, and then reminding us that these atheistic frameworks don't summarize people or events objectively the way we think, and gestures towards a free-floating space of strained agnosticism. It's not that the ending makes a case that we were wrong, but that if we might be wrong about one thing, we should accept that mystery may extend to other nebulous areas and maybe look in the mirror to examine our own biases and triggers for judging human behavior without all the information. That she "offers little in the way of revelation" with a lack of profound statements provides us with exactly the self-gratifying information we critically-thinking skeptics (the audience this was made for) feed off of in damning cult-personalities and blind-faith followers alike at once, and integral to the long wind-up before the pitch.

To answer your earlier question as best I can, Maggie is weeding out the skeptics because either a) if she's not from the future, they will only poison the environment with opposing toxicity, or b) if she is from the future, they won't be willing to do what needs to be done as the stakes inevitably get raised, as we start seeing at the end. However, where we differ here is that I believe asking these specific questions are pointless to take seriously and expect answers from, and are significant solely for the purpose of being self-conscious of why we're asking them. The film very complexly forces the viewer to challenge their own ingrained critically-thinking skills' utility and reframe them as possibly (not definitively) a barrier from a necessary surrender to, not exactly 'belief', but the uncomfortable state of agnosticism leaning toward self-doubt and welcoming the possibility that our frameworks for judging corporeal characterizations or spiritual realities are fruitless. If I believed that we were supposed to identify with and dissect Marling's character's psychology to access ourselves with empathy or surrogate involvement, these would all be problems for me. But her character exists solely to be gazed at and dissected from the removed stance of a skeptic infiltrating this group, noticing the culturally-informed red flags, foolishly digging into her impenetrable psychology, and then being reminded in one fell swoop not that we're specifically 'wrong', but that our certainty that we're right is problematic. The non-evidence is evidence of our ill-fitting frameworks, which is far more unsettling than any actual evidence that we were incorrect, because at least that would be tangible.

[Rayon Vert]

Mr. Sausage is really on point with what was bothering me about her character, though I still ended up liking the movie more than he did (not enough to make my list though).

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah same, but I think that's an intentional design of the film, for this character to challenge us in these ways as skeptics who are repelled by such figures and characteristics in real life, for a greater purpose of self-reflection and critical abandonment. It's an unorthodox strategy for summoning open-mindedness, because Marling isn't asking us to be open-minded toward anything in particular, which would be more comfortably directional, but just highlights the vastness of blind spots our close-mindedness handicaps us from seeing- triggering an awareness of the forces we can't adequately assess without revealing them to us. There's no safe haven to go to, nothing to find, and in that sense its cumulative tone mirrors the existential horror of most of my horror list!

[Mr Sausage]

Hmm. I think you and I share a lot of the same fundamental values, but we disagree heavily on their place in this film.

Spoiler

I agree that it's difficult to view Maggie's value, purpose, or positive qualities from our contextual vantage point, but the ending seems less definitive as a "gotcha" and instead causes us to question our own restricted scope and limited tools to understand what's not known.

I worry you think I was saying something like "definitively proves Marling is from the future" when I said the film "drops a hint". It's a "gotcha" moment not because it pulls a Fight Club, but because it witholds and witholds and then finally drops a kernel at the end to muddy the waters. It's an "...or was I?" technique for ambiguity. I don't mean this necessarily as a criticism. It's a description.

I see it as a similar impact of questioning God and then being provided with an inexplicable scene that prompts us to sit with an inherent unknowability. The tools we're using to analyze the information we've gotten are useless because they're skewed to our biases, and so this process of viewer-frustration reminds me of Justin Theroux's character in The Leftovers' rigid atheism, refusing to surrender our definitive interpretations in the face of what cannot be described. The lack of clarity from the anti-'reveal' forces some humility by expanding the space of not-knowing that was becoming thinner and thinner throughout the film as we aligned with our leads and judged Marling's character in all the ways you have, and I did (who didnt?). I think this is all intentional on Marling's part, and it's a brilliant ride of setting up the viewer to pat themselves on the back, reinforcing us to use our schematic strategies to diagnose her, and then reminding us that these atheistic frameworks don't summarize people or events objectively the way we think, and gestures towards a free-floating space of strained agnosticism. It's not that the ending makes a case that we were wrong, but that if we might be wrong about one thing, we should accept that mystery may extend to other nebulous areas and maybe look in the mirror to examine our own biases and triggers for judging human behavior without all the information. That she "offers little in the way of revelation" with a lack of profound statements provides us with exactly the self-gratifying information we critically-thinking skeptics (the audience this was made for) feed off of in damning cult-personalities and blind-faith followers alike at once, and integral to the long wind-up before the pitch.

The problem here is that I don't fit the implied viewer you're constructing. I didn't enter the movie as a skeptic because it's a movie and people can come from the future in movies. I was well aware that, however realistic the presentation, that presentation is only matching the limits of the POV characters, and that anything is possible and Marling could be from the future. I didn't share the perspective of the leads, not just for that reason, but also because their skepticisms are revealed early on to come from a much different place than mine--in the case of the guy, out of loss, trauma, and anger. I suppose the film is attempting a misdirection by having the rationalist submit and the former addict and party girl remain rational, but I expected this trajectory because, as a former addict, the girl would've had to've done a lot more self-analysis and soul searching to achieve sobriety, whereas the rationalist had never had to confront himself. Despite Maggie calling him "strong" for his repeated givings in, I thought the girl displayed more strength and more character (whether her actions helped fuck up the future or not).

But here's what troubles me: the authority inherent in obscurity. You say the film wants us to "examine our own biases and triggers for judging human behaviour without all the information". Ok, sure. But withholding information to get other people to suspend their judgement is a power move. Again, it's hard to see the value in this message when it's so inextricable from abusive, manipulative behaviour. And the claim that one has to have "faith" that all the ugly, abusive stuff is all for the greater good and will be understood in time is...well, it's also a form of gaslighting. Getting people to suspend their better judgement and do what you ask on the premise that all will be revealed in time is how morally normal people are induced to do heinous things. So, again, it's hard to take any profound message from the movie when it's so inextricable from the toxic. Any positive message is outweighed by the attendant negative one.

There is also an implied ends/means argument in the film, but it's a poor one because were merely invited to imagine the good "ends", whereas the "means" are on the face of it bad. One thing you should never do is submit to carrying out ends you aren't privy to through means that are ugly. Imagine Watchmen in which Ozymandias convinces the superheroes to destroy New York and murder hundreds but doesn't tell them or us why, just that we all gotta have faith. I mean, the thing's troubling even knowing the ends, let alone otherwise.

To answer your earlier question as best I can, Maggie is weeding out the skeptics because either a) if she's not from the future, they will only poison the environment with opposing toxicity, or b) if she is from the future, they won't be willing to do what needs to be done as the stakes inevitably get raised, as we start seeing at the end. However, where we differ here is that I believe asking these specific questions are pointless to take seriously and expect answers from, and are significant solely for the purpose of being self-conscious of why we're asking them. The film very complexly forces the viewer to challenge their own ingrained critically-thinking skills' utility and reframe them as possibly (not definitively) a barrier from a necessary surrender to, not exactly 'belief', but the uncomfortable state of agnosticism leaning toward self-doubt and welcoming the possibility that our frameworks for judging corporeal characterizations or spiritual realities are fruitless. If I believed that we were supposed to identify with and dissect Marling's character's psychology to access ourselves with empathy or surrogate involvement, these would all be problems for me. But her character exists solely to be gazed at and dissected from the removed stance of a skeptic infiltrating this group, noticing the culturally-informed red flags, foolishly digging into her impenetrable psychology, and then being reminded in one fell swoop not that we're specifically 'wrong', but that our certainty that we're right is problematic. The non-evidence is evidence of our ill-fitting frameworks, which is far more unsettling than any actual evidence that we were incorrect, because at least that would be tangible.

What frameworks am I being asked to question, the ones that tell me kidnapping children and submitting to abuse and coercion are so bad that it is irresponsible for me or anyone to submit to them on faith alone? That's the wrong type of framework to be attacking. I don't see the value of inducing people to question their frameworks and beliefs through a fictional situation where a man is induced to abandon his frameworks and beliefs in order to do dangerous, irresponsible things (whose justifying "ends" are up to chance).

This is a case where where the process outweighs the product. However good the end result may be in this or that situation, the behaviours Maggie induces are not what we should want for people. Even if submitting to the abuse and kidnapping the child (and let's say it was a full on kidnapping where the guy brought the kid to the basement), even if that was fully justified by the ends and it turns out to be crucial to saving the planet: the process that leads to it is uncontrollable and dangerous because morally and ethically fungible. That the end result is good rather than bad is up to chance. The guy can as easily be giving the kid to a cult to be sacrificed as giving her to her future daughter to help save the world. This is a situation where someone is willing to endanger other people on equivocal evidence. The problem here is precisely an unwillingness to actually judge for oneself, to think things through; it's doing things on the blind hope that the authority figures demanding it have everyone's best interests at heart. This is a dangerous mind-set because there's nothing correcting for the authorities having ugly motives. In contradistinction to how you see it, for me the situation in this movie is precisely where giving up frameworks is most dangerous. If anything, I'd say the most successful thing in this movie is how it shows the rational skeptic, because his skepticism is founded on emotional needs, is so easily won over to a competing framework by being emotionally fulfilled by its proponents.

So, yeah, sorry, your defense is as intelligent and eloquent as ever, but it just overlooks such crucial things to me. This film is not a good argument for faith or for questioning biases or frameworks. There is too much simultaneous abuse of power, and the ends/means argument is unfulfilled on one side. You're left with a situation where people are doing things and submitting to things they shouldn't in a situation that is unknowable. That's a bad place from which to encourage people to question their frameworks. Framework questioning ought to happen within debate and conversation, where everything is available to look through; this is a movie where that's not possible, where there is no debate, most is unknown, basic fact-finding questions are not tolerated (in the diagesis) and apparently beside the point (outside the diagesis). A situation like that doesn't so much allow you to reexamine and alter frameworks and biases; it's more likely to leave people unmoored. And why exactly are we questioning our frameworks here? To what end, or whose end? As a good in itself? But it's not a good in itself; as the movie shows, it can be used to get people to abdicate their basic responsibilities in deference to authority as easily as overcome personal biases and closed-mindedness. Oddly, if the film definitively came down on either side it would be in a better position to lead the viewer through their own mental habits. But within its ambiguity, so much seems misguided and irresponsible if it's making a statement, and empty if it's not (obviously).

[therewillbeblus]

Those are all very fair points, Sausage, and I actually agree with basically the entire body of your argument, but I don't see these in the same context as your thesis (that's not to say I don't see where you're coming from. I do, but that it's just not how I'm approaching the film). To that end, I don't think I'm overlooking aspects so much as seeing them differently, but maybe I'm failing to address something and I can't see it.. hopefully the following helps to clarify.

Spoiler

I definitely didn't think you were alluding to any proof, but my reading of the anti-'reveal' is less of a "or was I?" in its impact than it is a forced confrontation with our skeptical tools having their limits. I didn't mean to imply that you, or I, fit into a nice categorically homogenous box of the Skeptic Viewer. Naturally we can take leaps of faith in watching a movie. I didn't mean to imply that we were supposed to be drawn into the specific backgrounds of these characters as our surrogates either, I meant that we are approaching the material from their vantage point but with our own broad attitude of skepticism and also inherently searching for concrete truths (not between viewer and content through the screen, but between viewer and these types of people or situations in everyday life- the raw personal examples of events that rhetorically challenge our frameworks for assessing content). I think you're dead-on when you talk about the abuse and gaslighting, but that's what makes it tougher to swallow: If there was a 'pure' tangible outlet to consider that may invalidate all the red flags and the process of the setup we've been given, it would be an awful movie (not to mention fail to create the effect that I've taken from it) because it would a) be a big Fuck You to the audience and manipulative in disregarding all of our very fair methods for evaluation (and I do think the film is intentionally manipulative in provoking our methods of evaluation, but not to a definitive argument, which creates an effect rather than a thesis), and b) motion us toward this possibility of 'belief' - but I'm not so sure it does that.

I'm not interested in this film as viewed from the angle that we should resign our contextual DNA of critical thinking and just surrender, but I am interested in a reading where we're simultaneously right to question and despise what we see, and also wrong in thinking it's the whole picture. In this view, the abuse and manipulations are not mutually exclusive from other enigmatic options that can concurrently exist. So, I don't think it's making a profound point other than to provide a warm caring gesture to one side of our body that is repelled by this behavior and leave the other side cold and alone to a chilly breeze of unknown possibilities manifesting as threats to the warm side. The film isn't shunning skepticism- for, as you say, there are benefits and it's healthy and moral to have convictions, otherwise we're all blind followers with empty brains bowing down to people like this. It's forcing us to sit in a space that acknowledges that our personal schemas aren't omniscient blueprints for the whole objective truth.

Maggie's behavior may be immoral (to be reductive, your kidnapping point) but I don't think the film is arguing for us to adopt the mindset that she may be 'right' in an ethical sense. The possibility of her being from the future doesn't solve, or argue, anything that directly counters the information we've digested of her problematic behavior- but instead creates an entirely new dimension with an unknown set of rationales or ethics we cannot access. I don't think I've been clear about what I meant by "frameworks" - I'm not indicating that you should resign moral principles, or stop engaging in situations with any skepticism. I don't think the film is that didactic. Of course we should do the best we can by living in accordance with our moral principles, with the information we have on hand. But there's something horrifying, for me, about holding my beliefs- and having plenty of evidence to detest Marling's character, and believing I'd do the same thing in turning her in- alongside the possibility that there was some larger plan that "could" open the door for significance along another dimension we can't comprehend. As I said before, our frameworks for evaluating the scene are fair. However, the reminder that they are limited to one dimension (or several but not all) seems to be the point of the film. Not to argue to 'believe' as an alternative, not to trash our entire evaluations, not to mock our process. Just to cause that reflection on a road to nowhere. And as a guy who was raised in a home where my father preached a reductive version of "existentialism" as our religion, and taught me to live my life by "doing the best you can in any situation is the means of a good life", this reveal forces me to recognize that as still true, and also proposes that such an outlook, however great, may be partially blinded. To what? Anything noteworthy or important or even accessible? Who knows. But the sobriety that this simplification is not necessarily an absolute optimal path in every dimension is a bit unsettling to hold next to the belief that I'm still doing my best with the tools I have.

I think, similar to as in The Young Pope thread, I have a really difficult time explaining my worldview of peeling back onion layers of frameworks using language, because I'm essentially trying to explain a philosophy that is rooted in a nebulous spiritual experience, that is more of a feeling than a rational process. So I apologize if I'm not translating my perspective well, but the short version (however unhelpful it may be) is that my way of looking at the film is that I agree with all your well-articulated points, but that I believe they can be fair and there is room for another dimension to exist alongside such convictions. To me that's what the film is about, and I find it deeply moving, uncomfortable, challenging, and profound all at once. The sensation is profound, not any statement being made.
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Sorta unrelated, but I just finished an interview with Yvonne Rainer that gets at this feeling I'm trying to explain.. not exactly, but the Barthes third meaning stuck out:

INTERVIEWER
You essentially say “That which is subjective is also objective.” It seems to me that throughout your work, there is a desire not to collapse oppositions, but to bring them so close to each other that they throw sparks. Are those tensions inherent in the overall design of what you’ve done?

RAINER

Yes. Throwing off sparks, yeah. Susan Sontag put it very acutely, I think. She speaks of radical juxtaposition. And the theories of Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein also explore a collision of opposites. The notion of third meaning elaborated by Roland Barthes in relation to Eisenstein also comes to my mind: Barthes speaks of a meaning at once persistent and fugitive, apparent and evasive. He calls this “the obtuse meaning”, the third meaning that opens the field of meaning totally, infinitely.

INTERVIEWER

I would add that one can reasonably say that most things in art are unclear and that they are as unclear to the viewer as they are unclear to the author. To be articulate as an author is to address those complexities in the viewer with a kind of trust and involvement that viewers are not accustomed to be given. What you have done, to an amazing degree, has been being articulate about some things that are not clear, while being able to blend unresolved realities that are psychosexual, political, formal, and purely physical. All of these things are articulate, each in its own way, and, to the degree that they are simultaneous, they can be perceived in their own right but always in connection.

[Mr Sausage]

I appreciate your response and understand where it's coming from. I wish I could share it, but I just don't feel like the situation in the movie is a good space at which to come at these things. I think The OA was more successful at something similar.

But then maybe I'm the one missing something crucial and a rewatch will prove revelatory. I'll revisit the film maybe next year and see how I feel.

[therewillbeblus]

Likewise Sausage, I appreciate the process by which you're attending to some of the film's specifics in greater detail than my interpretation calls for, which makes us each perhaps a bit more sober or vigilant to different elements here and is consequentially coloring our perceptions. I'm definitely planning to revisit this film again with your criticisms in mind to see if I still land where I do on their emphases, and the implications of their service in the elliptical feeling I get.

[Mr Sausage]

I Origins (Mike Cahill, 2014)

Another probing of the rationalism/faith question starring Brit Marling. Perhaps because Marling didn’t help write it, the argument is laid out explicitly early on. I found the early interactions between Pitt and Marling more interesting in their mixture of personal and philosophical discussion than the indie-conventional Romance plot with its foreign magic girl trope. There’s an imbalance as only one of the pairings feels authentic. The other feels right out of the movies. I think perhaps where the film is strongest, tho’, is how it shows scientists able to see the poetry in science while at the same time being resistant to seeing the world in any poetic term lying outside of that framework. There is a pairing off of different ways of knowing, the empirical style and a more gnostic style, where hidden or secret knowledge is somehow just available to certain individuals. The magic girl frames this in scientific terms at one point, a genetic mutation towards second sight or a third eye. She’s framing it in the language Pitt understands to help him through the concept, but the movie later frames the transference of the soul in similar materialist terms. Concepts of science and faith, empiricism and gnosticism, materialism and spirituality are all bound up in each other. Towards what? Partly or even mainly to drive at the question of what we’d do if our innermost beliefs were fundamentally challenged. Does the plot of the movie offer such a challenge? There’s a lot in here, perhaps too much to be resolved. It’s a mess, but one that I enjoyed being mired in.

The movie also has the best use of the Vertigo shot outside the original. It’s the first movie I’ve seen that offers a genuine variation on the technique. It’s such a brilliant shot, combining two different uses of that effect (one destabilizing, one stabilizing but perspective reversing) bookending a Michael Bay-esque swivel around a character as a bus moves past in the background. It’s hard to describe, and it’s rather out of place in a mostly straightforwardly shot movie, but it’s beautiful and I wouldn’t be without it.

[domino harvey]

I finally got around to Gattaca and found it a disappointing crock too concerned with its own obvious discrimination bulletpoint parallels to have any real interest in what a world driven by outward perfection would look like. Only Jude Law comes close here to seeming like a real character, though he is saddled with some truly dumb screenwriting nonsense (particularly one scene wherein he climbs a large spiral staircase even though there is no reason he couldn't just sit on a couch downstairs). The film was jampacked with recognizable actors in roles big and small, but it was the minor bits that hit far more than anyone in the leads (an aged Ernest Borgnine is of course the perfect fit for his part as a lowly non-perfect janitor, and I have no doubt a film following him would be a hell of a lot better than this), though oof at Gore Vidal's line readings.The big problem here is every "perfect" character plays looking like a model as equivalent to being a lobotomized automaton, which is surely some sour grapes on the part of the perceived audience of have-nots who would flock to this while longingly peering out at people who look like Jude Law or Uma Thurman with jealousy and assurance that they're actually boring or dull to counteract their obvious beauty. It's worth noting that the writer/director of this went on to marry the model star of his followup, S1M0NE, so he's not exactly putting into practice what he presents here either!