philosophy in film

Imagine this…

You are an ex-cop. An ex-cop because you were once involved in investigating a murder that ended your career. You botched the investigation. You were shamed and humiliated. And it is a particularly egregious experience because you are brought up in a culture where shame and humiliation are especially hard to bear.

So, you’ve lost your job and your self-respect. You’ve become an alcoholic and a “security guard”

But now, years later, out of the blue, the same identical murder occurs again. A body has been chopped up and the limbs begin to show up across the whole province in various coal plants.

Cue both the anti-hero and the femme-fatale. Him, he may or may not be someone to root for. Her, she may or may not be involved in the crimes.

One reviewer describes it as “an intriguing combination of neo-noir and Chinese realism”. And another as a movie “that has a pace more similar to an art-house film than a crime-thriller.”

A truly grim, cold, frozen, dark rendition of the “human condition”. But one that unfolds in a country [and in a culture] with its own at times “inscrutable” idiosyncrasies. Still, the common denominator applicable to countries and cultures around the globe is how a set of circumstances can be set into motion based on what at the time seems to be “no big thing”: a damaged leather jacket. The human-all-too-human rendition of the “butterfly effect.” Only with two chopped up corpses. Besides, as one reviewer put it, “the plot takes a back seat to atmosphere as the audience is immersed in a bleak, nihilistic vision of modern China.”

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Coal,_Thin_Ice
trailer: youtu.be/P7iwTGvpdus

BLACK COAL, THIN ICE [Bai Ri Yan Huo] 2014
Written and directed by Yi’nan Diao

[b]Coal worker: I heard they found body parts in another coal stack.
Coal worker: It can’t just be one body.
Coal worker: Hey, did they find the head?
Coal worker: Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they can identify it.
Coal worker: I heard it was a naked woman and the security guards found a breast at the coal depot.

Boss [to Zhang]: Since you transferred to our security team, you’ve been hung over every day. You think being shot in the line of duty merits special treatment?

Detective [showing Wang and Zhang photos of severed limbs]: These are photos from the recent murder and the 2001 case. Both victims were romantically linked to this woman.

Detective: Someone’s leaving.
Wang: It’s her.

Wang; Hey, Zhang…remember that coal scale operator?
Zhang: Liang Zhijun?
Wang: That’s his wife. Wu Zhizhen, the laundry shop clerk. So, counting Liang Zhijun, she’s connected to the murders.
Zhang: Seems that way.
Wang: Every man she is with ends up dead.

Wu: Quit following me.
Zhang: Next time let’s go skating outdoors.
Wu: What?
Zhang: Ice-skating.
[Wu seems wary, says nothing]
Zhang: Actually, I don’t know how to skate.
Wu: No matter. I’ll teach you.

Wang: I should have never let you in the car that day. This is no way to get sober. Steer clear of her.
Zhang: Who says I want to get sober? I’m just looking for something to do…so that my life is not a total loss.
Wang: What…you think anyone ever wins at life?

Man [from a distance]: Where do you think you’re going?! You haven’t returned your skates!

Voice [over a PA system]: Paging Comrade Liang Zhlin. Please come to ther broadcast booth. Someone is looking for you. Paging Comrade Liang Zhlin.

Zhang: You know today I saw a man dumping body parts from a bridge over a railway juntion…parts of my friend and fellow officer are probably scattered all over the country by now. It reminded me of an unsolved case…body parts turning up in coal stacks all over the province, on the same day. Remember that…in 1999.
[Wu says nothing]
Zhang: But who could cover that much ground on a single day? You know what I think?
[Wu says nothing]
Zhang: It had to be the coal scale operator. Every truck passed through that weighing station that day. It was the only point they all had in commpon. If he loaded the body parts on trucks during the night shift, by they next morning they would be all over the province…or burned to ashes in furnaces. Wasn’t your husband Liang Zhlin a coal scale operator?
Wu [weeping]: In 1999, he accidently killed someone during his first robbery. He decided to fake his own death, using the victim’s corpse as his stand in. That way you’d never find him. He managed to fool all of you, but then he could never reappear.

Wu [to Zhang]: He’s been hiding all these years, spying on everything I do. It’s like living with a dead man. I wanted to escape him, but I couldn’t. He killed every man who ever loved me. Who could I tell? He’d kill me if I talked.

Wu [in a ferris wheel to Zhang]: There is no performance.
Zhang [pointing towards the Daylight Fireworks Club]: Look over there…What do you see?
Wu: the Daylight Fireworks Club.
Zhang: I want you to take the innitative, and tell me the whole truth. Better me than the police.

Wu: I’ve got to go open the shop. Want to meet again tonight?
Zhang: Yeah, sure. The same place?

Wu [in police car]: I killed him.
Detective: How?
Wu [weeping]: I couldn’t afford to replace his coat. So he made me go to a hotel with him. It wasn’t just once.
Detective: Was Liang Zhijun involved?
Wu: No. He sacrificed everything for me, became a living dead man. But I betrayed him.

Detective: Did you help to chop up the body?
Wu: No.
Detective: Do you know where he dumped it?
Wu: No.[/b]

The movie begins with a girl being kidnapped. A car pulls up and the driver asks her for directions. Out of the blue she is grabbed by a man and forced into the car. The car drives away. We don’t know who the girl is, who took her or what happened to her.

Then the film switches to the present. To Emelie [posing as Anna] being driven by the father to the home where she will be babysitting his three children.

We know that there is a connection between these two events. But we really know nothing for sure.

One thing though: Those of us who have had traumatic experiences in the past take that into the future. We see people behaving as they do here and now but [often] we have no idea about the parts there and then. We can only imagine Emelie’s own trajectory.

And then there’s the part about freedom. Freedom within the family dynamic. On the one hand the parents are always there constraining what the kids can do. Here though the new babysitter comes along and the sky is the limit. Practically nothing is taboo. Thus the kids come to learn all about that [at times] deeply problematic line between order and chaos. Or, perhaps, between “civilization” and the “law of the jungle”?

Aside from the ending, it’s a pretty good film. On the other hand, the very last scene is, well, intriguingly unexpected.

IMDb

Emelie’s middle name is Medea. Medea was a Greek heroine who killed her own children.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emelie_(film
trailer: youtu.be/XZoLut2Ti0U

EMELIE [2015]
Directed by Michael Thelin

Dan: Yeah, well, our kids, they tend to be more energetic. They’re good kids, great kids. They’re just…And then there’s…then there’s our oldest. He’s 11, he just started middle school. The stones are dropping. You know what I mean?
Emelie [as Anna]: It’s okay, I can handle an 11 year old.
Dan: Yeah, Maggie said you were quite the…child herder. You got a Facebook page and everything.
Anna: Did you see my page?

Fortunately for her he didn’t.

[b]Dan: Alright, listen up, you three. Anna here is in charge, okay? You be good and do what she says. Capiche?

Anna: Hey, guys. What if I told you that you don’t have to be a boy, or a girl, or a human, or really anything? You can be whatever you wanted. And all you had to do was pretend. Because pretending is this super power we all have. When we pretend, we can be anyone we want to be. When you get really good at it people won’t even know you’re pretending anymore.

Anna [taking Jacob’s comic book]: Lemur-boy? You ever read Death Vice?
Jacob: No. Mom and Dad say it’s too violent.
Anna: Well, your parents aren’t here right now, are they?

Joyce: I never feel great leaving them with someone we don’t know.
Dan: I thought Anna seemed like a very nice girl.
Joyce: Yeah, I noticed.
Dan: The kids are gonna be fine, okay? Jan Abbott said that Anna is great with her girls and we both know that they’re nightmares.

Sally: Were those Mommy’s good pillows?
Anna: Now this is pretending. Not some out-of-a-bag get-up your mom bought you.
Sally: He ruined Mommy’s good pillows!
Anna: Sometimes it’s okay to destroy things for fun.

Sally: Anna, we’re not allowed to play with this stuff.
Jacob: Well, Sal…Mom and Dad aren’t here, are they?
Anna: That’s right.

Christopher: Yeah, let’s play a different game.
Anna: Alright. How about hide & seek?
Jacob: No, no, I’m not playing. I’m not…I’m not playing. I don’t want to play.
Anna: Come on, Jake. Don’t you want to find me?

Anna [sitting on the toilet with her pants pulled down]: You found me. Jake? Jacob? Hey. Hey, will you find me a new tampon?
Jacob [who is 11]: A what?
Anna: I have my period. You know what that is, right?

Jacob [on a walkie-talkie]: Howie…
Howie: Yo.
Jacob: I think I just saw my first China hole.

Christopher: You’re the best babysitter.
Anna: Hey, what’s your favorite color?
Christopher: Black
Anna: Black? That’s my favorite color, too.

Jacob: Hey, Anna, wanna help me feed my python?

Jacob [after the python kills Sally’s hamster]: I’m sorry, Sal.
Anna: Don’t be sorry. Everyone dies at some point.

Anna: Kids, movie time.
Christopher: Come on. It’s movie time!
Jacob: What are we watching?[/b]

Cue Christopher:

[b]Christopher: Daddy’s naked!

Howie’s mom [on the walkie-talkie]: Go to bed, Jacob.
Jacob: Mrs. Parker, there’s something wrong with the new babysitter.

Anna [reading a bedtime “story” to Christopher]: And then one day mama bear made a mistake and her cubbie died. This made mama bear very sad. She missed her cubbie so much that her mind cracked. It didn’t break, it didn’t break. It just cracked.

Christopher: What happens next?
Anna: I don’t know. What do you think should happen?
Christopher: I want mama bear to find a new cubbie so that she can smile like that again.
Anna: She’s trying.

Jacob: Sal, what are you doing? Get into your pj’s.
Sally: It’s Daddy’s gun. The babysitter left it out.

Anna [texting on the phone]: “I found my cubby”.

Anna [to Jacob pointing the gun at her]: Who’s Emelie?

Anna [to Jacob]: Are you gonna shoot me? Shoot me. Shoot me!

Sally [to Christopher who now has the gun]: It’s not a toy, Christopher!
Anna: Hey, give me the gun.
Sally: No escape from Chase Hunter.
Anna: Give Mommy the gun…I knew it was you.

Sally: Is that Maggie at the door?
Anna: Yeah. And you like Maggie. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her, right?

Christopher [to Maggie]: Pythons prefer live prey.

Anna: Drink.
Jacob: Why is the juice dark blue?
Anna: It’s gonna give you good dreams. So drink.

Anna [to a drugged Christopher]: Time to go little Cubby.

Anna: I told you what would happen if you misbehaved.
Jacob: Where’s my sister?
Anna: I have her, but she’s not the one I want. Where is my little cubbie?
Jacob: He’s not your cubbie! He’s not your fucking cubbie! He’s my brother!
Anna: Do you want your sister to end up like your friend? Backyard. Five minutes. I’ll trade you Sally for Christopher.[/b]

There are generally two kinds of survivalists. The first lives in a society that is still largely intact and he/she chooses to live apart from it. There is always the option to return. The second however is embedded in one or another post-apocalyptic hellhole of a world. There’s no going back. There’s just survival itself.

The first wants nothing to do with others, the second may see others as a threat to their survival, but a part of them yearns for human companionship. Sexually and otherwise.

And, when survival itself is at stake, it’s dog eat dog. There’s only knowing what you have to do in order to survive. That is simply the reality.

Genes? Memes? Nature? Nurture? Whatever. The whole point is waking up the next morning.

Or, if there is to be any moral order at all to be had here, it can only be derived from a belief in God.

Still, it is one thing to survive when, for seven years, your whole world revolved entirely around yourself. But now, two more of your kind have come on board. And that changes everything. Might may well still prevail, but things can get considerably more complicated when other points of view come into play. He has something they want, but they have something he wants.

One of those films in which it seems the entire universe tumbles down to just a few human beings trying to interact in the least dysfunctional manner. You can’t help but to ask yourself: What would I do?

IMDb

There is no dialog until 17:05 in the movie.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(film
trailer: youtu.be/gsNfw-336Ok

THE SURVIVALIST [2015]
Written and directed by Stephen Fingleton

[b]Kathryn: My name is Kathryn. And this is my daughter Milja. Would you be able to spare some of your crop? We can offer something in exchange. We have legumes, rusticas, strong varieties. These could boost your yield.

Kathryn: Surely you can spare something. There’s more than enough.
Survivalist: That’s what they all thought.

Kathryn: How long have you been here?
Survivalist: Seven years.
Kathryn: Always alone?
Survivalist: I used to live with my brother. He’s dead.

Kathryn: I need to ask you something. Don’t come inside her.

Milja: It’s to shave you…

Milja: Do you have a toilet?
Survivalist: By the heaps. Use your nose.

Kathryn: Do you like her? Would you like to keep seing her?
Survivalist: The farm is small for a reason.
Kathryn: But we still found it. We could clear more land. More hands to manage it.
Survivalist: I’ve managed so far.
Kathryn: You’ve been lucky.
Survivalist: It wasn’t luck. Pack your things. Now.

Kathryn: He keeps the shells in his front trouser pocket.
Milja: I can reach them from the bed.
Kathryn: Will you have time to load the gun?
Milja: I’ll take it outside. By the time he reaches the door, I’ll be ready.
Kathryn: Try not to use both shells.

Survivalist: Where’s Milja?

Kathryn: Gone, is he?
Milja: Gone
Kathryn: Better this way than through the stomach.

Milja: You think he has a chance?
Kathryn: Well, no matter now.
Milja: He’s useful.
Kathryn: A third mouth. On a farm fit for one.
Milja: No harm in trying, then?
Kathryn: You’re getting sentimental.
Milja: You’re getting older. He was the one that found me.

Milja: How did your brother die?
Survivalist: He was careless.

Kathryn: How many are there?
Suvivalist: Six.
Kathryn: We have two shells and one bullet.
Milja: Enough for us.

Survivalist [watching Kathryn put berries in a trap]: Why are you wasting berries?
Kathryn: Some meat…with the protein we might make it.
Survivalist: The only thing I’ve caught in that walked on two legs.

Kathryn: There’s food enough for two. You could shave him tomorrow.
Milja: Not like that.
Kathryn: You have to do it. For both of us.

Kathryn: We’re leaving.
Milja: I’m not. It’s too late. You know it’s too late.
Survivalist: Did she poison us?
Kathryn: No…just me.

Kathryn [to Survivalist]: Don’t. Don’t waste the shell. Have you got your knife? I need you to do it.

Survivalist [to Milja]: Me and my brother used to raid camps. Stealing supplies. We would get in, get in before anybody knew we were there. One time, my brother saw this girl…he should’ve left her. But he couldn’t control himself. She screamed, we managed to get outside. They chased us. They were going to get the both of us. I did what I had to do.

Survivalist: Augustus. My brother’s name was Augustus.

Milja: What happens now?
Survivalist camp guard: They’ll be taking a vote. Shouldn’t be long. When are you due?
Milja: Six months, I think.
Guard: Do you know what’ll you call it?
Milja: If it’s a boy…[/b]

Hiroshima mon Amour

Survivalists do not look at concepts, they only understand pictures.

Mon Amour Hiroshima’s focal scene is about this crazy girl narrative of how, that admirable, idealistic young German soldier, her lover gets shot. She is using the bombing of Hiroshima as a bacground, for how can she help it.

She was young impressionistic, she was romantic not willin* to or able to survive to allow all the weight to allow to take on the wektscmertz of the world, after all, in her eyes the beauty of the world is as if dependent on her progeny, her fate, her destiny, her only way to see herself, in the most beautiful of all human beings, enslaving her into the eternal embrace of her being.

Nothing else matters.

The film was an afterthought, a codafix, hope someone understands.
.

Hiroshima mon Amour

Survivalists do not look at concepts, they only understand pictures.

Mon Amour Hiroshima’s focal scene is about this crazy girl narrative of how, that admirable l young German soldier, her lover gets shot. She is using the bombing of Hiroshima as a bacground, for how can she help it.

She was young impressionistic, she was romantic not willin* to or able to survive to allow all the weight to allow to take on the wektscmertz of the world, after all, in her eyes the beauty of the world is as if dependent on her progeny, her fate, her destiny, her only way to see herself, in the most beautiful of all human beings, enslaving her into the eternal embrace of her being.

Nothing else matters.

The film was an afterthought, a codafix, hope someone understands.
.

Most of us have mutiple personalities. They’re called personas and we use them discriminately in our interactions with others.

But then there are those alleged to actually have multiple personalities. Different folks with very different personalities floating around inside their head. But more or less on their own.

A clinical condition in other words.

Still, 23 separate personalities?! And how the hell exactly is something like that actually confirmed?

In other words, is it real? Well, here’s one take on it: psychologytoday.com/blog/sa … r-metaphor

Me? I’m just not sure. For one thing, to the best of my knowledge, regarding my own personas, I call the shots. Well, whatever that means with “I” being the embodiment of dasein.

As one reviewer put it, “Split, isn’t scary, it’s tense.” More to the point, you can only imagine trying to put yourself in this situation. You are dealing with a “frame of mind” that cannot be reasoned with. Not only that, but if the condition turns out to be legit, you can’t really even blame him for, among other things, making your life a living hell. And then, as this same reviewer noted, “…last but not the least, is the traditional ‘Shyamalan Twist’. Trust me, this time your minds will be blown when you come to the conclusion.”

Maybe.

Then there’s the murkier part that’s seems determined to suggest some “supernatural” element in all this. That way the sky is the limit as to where the plot can go. Your reaction to the film will depend in large part on what you believe or do not believe about “multiple-personalities” disorders.

Then there is Casey’s back story. The one with her Uncle. Another kind of beast entirely.

So, is this actually based on a true story?

Sort of: the13thfloor.tv/2017/01/23/s … uis-vivet/

Trust me though: the most riveting film – television miniseries – to go to in order to explore all of this is still Sybil. By far in my opinion.

Look for the link to Unbreakable.

And Nietzsche?

trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt4972582/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_(2016_American_film
trailer: youtu.be/84TouqfIsiI

SPLIT [2016]
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

[b]Marcia: Pardon me sir, I think you have the wrong car.

Claire: What the hell is going on? What are we doing here? What happened to my dad?
Casey: He’s out there.
Claire: Do you know what happened to my dad?

Kevin [one of the personalities, pointing to Casey]: I choose you first. It will only be a minute.
Claire [to Casey]: Pee on yourself. Pee on yourself.

Clair: Are you okay.
Casey: He wanted me to dance.

Claire: We just cried and screamed and we didn’t hurt him because we were afraid to get him upset. God, that’s victim shit. Jesus! We should fight him. We should drop a crazy-ass bomb on him.

Casey: I’ll let you know when I hear something that makes sense. We don’t even know what this is yet.

Dr. Fletcher: Well, we look at people who’ve been shattered and different as less than. What if…what if they’re more than us?

Casey: There’s a lady outside.

Patricia [one of his personalities to the girls]: Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him. He listens to me. He’s not well. He knows what you’re here for. He’s not allowed to touch you. He knows that.

Dr. Fletcher [to a colleague]: They are what they believe they are. The brain has learned to defend itself.
Colleague: You speak of them like they’re supernaturally gifted. Like they have powers or something. Karen, these are patients.
Dtr. Fletcher: They have been through trauma. And perhaps now they are capable of something we’re not. We have brain scans now. DID patients have changed their body chemistry with their thoughts.[/b]

So, have they?

[b]Dennis: Patricia has reminded me that I was sent to get you for a reason. That you are sacred food. And I promise not to bother you again.
Casey: Maybe he has a dog or something.
Claire: You think he’s gonna feed us to his dogs?

Hedwig: My name’s Hedwig. I have red socks. He’s on the move.
Casey: What?
Hedwig: He…is…on…the…mooove.
Casey: Who?
Hedwig: Someone’s coming for you, and you’re not gonna like it. You guys make noises in your sleep.
Casey: Tell us.
Hedwig: I’m not supposed to say; but, he’s done awful things to people and he’ll do awful things to you. I have blue socks, too.
Marcia: We’re his food?
[Hedwig shrugs]
Casey: How old are you?
Hedwig: Nine.
Casey: So you’re not the guy that took us?
Hedwig [scoffing]: No.
Casey: You’re… not the lady?
Hedwig: What are you, blind?
Casey: You don’t know how they think?
Hedwig: N-no, they don’t… they don’t tell me much. I just ate a hot dog.

Marcia: We heard something. We didn’t understand it, but now we do. Do you know what we heard?
Hedwig: What did you hear?
Marcia: Come here. I’ll whisper it to you.

Casey: He said something. He said something about making the room safe. This is all new drywall. What was unsafe?

Dr. Fletcher [on Skype]: One identity in an individual with Dissociative Identity Disorder can have high cholesterol. One. There have been cases where one identity is allergic to bee stings. The others are not.
Interviewer: Are there moments where two identities can coexist at the same time?
Dr. Fletcher: There are times when two identities can take the “light” or “the spot” or consciousness at the same time. This happened with a student that I was working with. And her left and right hand were taking notes in different hand-writings about separate things at the same time. The differences in the identities can be dramatic. As much as the difference between you and me and every person in that auditorium. The identities have different IQ’s. They have different physical strengths. One personality is a Russian weightlifter and can lift three times his body weight. Their ability to hyper-focus and have different experiences is astounding. Have these individuals, through their suffering, unlocked the potential of the brain? Is this the ultimate doorway to all things we call unknown? Is this where our sense of the supernatural comes from? It’s about depth.[/b]

Again: How much of this is actually true of DID patients

[b]Dr. Fletcher: The authors of Hooters play on our incessant need for fat and man’s incessant need to be in the proximity of augmented breasts. It’s like if Henry V ran a fast food franchise!

Dennis: The Beast, he’s coming for you. All three of you, you’re gonna be kept separate. You’ve got…You’ve got a crumb on your shirt.

Hedwig [after awkwardly kissing Casey]: You might be pregnant now.

Dr. Fletcher: This story of The Beast. One thing, Dennis, that may comfort you if you are confused is that you’ve met the other alters. You’re all in a room in chairs, right?
Dennis: Yeah.
Dr. Fletcher: But you never met The Beast. Because he doesn’t reside with the rest of you. Because he resides in the train yard, as the story goes, because Kevin’s dad left on a train. But the fact is, you and Patricia have never met The Beast. Have you?
Dennis: No.
Dr. Fletcher: That’s because he’s not an alter. He’s not the 24th identity. He’s a fantasy.

Dennis: You wrote about a woman in Germany who’d been blind for 10 years. And then, it was discovered that she had DID. Then three of her identities developed sight. And you speculated that her optical nerves regenerated because of her beliefs.
Dr. Fletcher: What are you trying to say?
Dennis: There are things, Dr. Fletcher, that all of us would find hard to believe.
Dr. Fletcher: Are you trying to tell me there’s a 24th identity?
Dennis: You protect the broken. When you said that you thought this situation was extraordinary, I knew you can maybe understand.
Dr. Fletcher: Understand what?
Dennis: The Beast is real. He’s just emerged.

Dennis [to Dr. Fletcher]: The Beast is a sentient creature who represents the highest form of humans’ evolution. He believes the time of ordinary humanity is over. I hope this makes you feel calm. You will be in the presence of something greater. I was gonna ask for your last shirt, but I won’t. Because tonight is a sacred night. It’s almost over.
Dr. Fletcher: What does that mean? I don’t understand. He can’t be real. There must be limits to what a human being can become.

Claire [looking up at Dr. Fletcher]: Are you real?

Kevin [speaking in video recording]: The Horde keeps obsessing about the ones who haven’t suffered. I don’t know where they’re going with this, but it scares me.

Caire [to The Beast]: Kevin Wendell Crumb. Kevin Wendell Crumb. Kevin Wendell Crumb! Kevin Wendell Crumb! Kevin Wendell Crumb!

Kevin [to Claire]: There’s a shotgun I bought. It’s in the bottom cabinet, hidden behind things. The shells are in my uniform closet out in the service hall. Kill me.

The Beast [beckoning from the darkness]: We are glorious! We will no longer be afraid. Only through pain can you achieve your greatness! The impure are the untouched, the unburned, the unslain. Those who have not been torn have no value in themselves and no place in this world! They are asleep!!

The Beast [looking at the scars on Csey’s belly]: You are different from the rest. Your heart is pure! Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Police officer [to Casey]: Your uncle’s here. You ready to go?

Newswoman [on TV]: The suspected murderer Kevin Crumb suffers from the controversial psychological disorder DID. The rumors coming out of the scene are almost unbelievable. There are conflicting stories if the suspect is alive or dead after sustaining two point-blank gunshots. Reports even indicate one of his personalities is an amalgam of the various animals in the Philadelphia Zoo where he worked. The press is already referring to the alleged attacker by a dark name leaked by a source close to the case. Because of his many personalities, he is being called…The Horde.[/b]

Cue Bruce Willis. And Mr. Glass.

Imagine Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? as a sci-fi horror comedy flick. Of course, for many, racism itself will always be construed as a horror story. For some, the horror story. But there are any number of contexts in which that can play out.

On the other hand, in America, given its history, race almost always hovers over eveything. One way or another it is going to be staring you down. What to say, what to do…here and now? there and then?

But this?!

We’re all gonna be judged. But there is never a one size fits all reaction. What may be “politically correct” for some is anything but for others. So, for many, it’s like walking on pins and needles. Or navigating a minefield. In other words, though America goes through periods of optimism when it is thought that race will [at last] sink farther and farther into the nasty past, it comes roaring back as virulent as ever. Trumpworld being just the latest incarnation. And then the even more convoluted reaction to race from the “liberals”. Or, as one reviewer suggested: “Get Out is a stinging criticism of the white liberalism that carries itself as empathetic towards blacks, but that empathy only extends as far as white control. Peele isn’t taking aim at Neo- Nazis and other whites who would angrily shout the n-word. They’re a lost cause. Instead, he’s looking at those who profess their lack of racism, but only do so if they can maintain their dominance over black people in the most insidious manner possible.”

Okay, but this?!

Then the part about hypnotism. What to take seriously and what not to. What to take literally and what to only imagine metaphorically as a commentary on human interactions in a world where race [among other things] revolves around choosing behaviors only more or less thought through. Or only more or less your own.

Unless of course I’ve got it all wrong.

Look for the Sunken Place.

IMDb

[b]On the Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 Horror Movies list, extraordinarily, Get Out (2017) is ranked at the top due to the largest amount of positive film reviews and the film’s growing prestige.

Regarding the meaning of The Sunken Place, creator/director Jordan Peele said, “The Sunken Place means we’re marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.”

Daniel Kaluuya was given the lead role on the spot after nailing his audition. Jordan Peele said Kaluuya did about five takes of a key scene, in which his character needs to cry, and each was so perfect that the single tear came down at the exact same time for each take.

At a Vanity Fair screening of the film writer/director Jordan Peele explained that he wrote the screenplay during the first term of President Barack Obama, when racism was believed to be a thing of the past. He thought there wouldn’t be much interest for his movie in such an optimistic climate, so he wrote it mainly for himself. But with the increasing discussion regarding violence against African-Americans and the coming of the Black Lives Matter movement in later years, he knew the time was right to make the movie.

Movie critic Armond White is the only known professional movie critic that gave this film a negative review, thus lowering its excellent Rotten Tomatoes rating from 100 percent to 99 percent. He claimed that it was produced for a liberal agenda and referred to it as a “get whitey” film.[/b]

trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt5052448/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Out_(film
trailer: youtu.be/DzfpyUB60YY

GET OUT [2017]
Written and directed by Jordan Peele

[b]Chris: Do they know…do they know I’m black?
Rose: No. Should they?
Chris: It seems like something you might want to mention.
Rose: "Mom and Dad, my uh, my black boyfriend will be coming up this weekend and I just don’t want you to be shocked because he’s a black man. "
Chris: You said I was the first black guy you ever dated?
Rose: Yeah, so what?
Chris: Yeah, so this is uncharted territory for them. You know I don’t want to be chased off the lawn with a shotgun.
Rose: You’re not going to. First of all, my dad would have voted for Obama a third time if he could have…they are not racist.

Dean [poining to a photograph]: Here, you’re going to love this. My Dad’s claim to fame. He was beat by Jesse Owens in the qualifying round for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Those were the ones where …Owens won in front of Hitler. Yes, what a moment, what a moment. I mean, Hitler’s up there with all his perfect Aryan race bullshit. This black dude comes along and proves him wrong in front of the entire whole world. Amazing.
Chris: Not great for your dad, though.
Dean: Yeah. He almost got over it.

Dean: I know what you’re thinking.
Chris: What?
Dean: Come on, I get it. White family, black servants. It’s a total cliche.
Chris: I wasn’t going to take it there.
Dean: Well you didn’t have to, believe me. Now, we hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents. When they died I just couldn’t bare to let them go.

Rose: Oh God, the party.
Chris: How bad can that be?
Rose: They’re so white. Like so white.

Missy: Want to know how it works?
Chris: You dangle a pocket watch in front of people’s faces? Is that it?
Missy: You watch a lot of TV.

Missy: How do you feel now?
Chris: I can’t move.
Missy: You can’t move.
Chris: Why can’t I move?
Missy: You’re paralyzed. Just Like that day when you did nothing. You did nothing. Now…sink into the floor.
Chris: Wait, wait, wait.
Missy: Sink. Now you’re in the Sunken Place.

Chris: They working you good out here, huh?
Walter: Nothing I don’t want to be doing.
Chris: I didn’t get to meet you yet, up close. I’m Chris.
Walter: I know who you are. She is lovely isn’t she?
Chris: Rose? Yes, she is.
Walter: One of a kind. Top of the line. A real doggone keeper.
Chris: Right.
Walter: I’m sorry about last night. My exercise. I did not mean to scare you. And did it work?
Chris: Did What work?
Walter: You were in Mrs Armitage’s office for quite some time.

Chris: I think your mom hypnotized me last night.
Rose: What? When?
Chris: I went out for, I went out for some air last night and I run into her and I can barely remember any of it but now the thought of a cigarette makes me want to throw up.
Rose: Oh my God.

Jim: [to Chris]: Fair skin has been in favor for the past what, couple of hundreds of years… But now the pendulum has swung back. Black is in fashion.

Chris: What the fuck?
Jim: Ignorance.
Chris: Who?
Jim: All of them. They mean well, but they have no idea what real people go through.

Chris: Shit ain’t fait, man.
Jim: Oh, you got that right. Shit ain’t fair.

Chris: I got hypnotized last night.
Rod: Nigga, get the fuck outta there!

Chris [on the phone, after telling Rod Missy hypnotized him]: I know she caught me off guard, right? But it’s cool because…I’m cured. It worked!
Rod: Bruh, how you not scared of this, man? Look, they could have made you do all types of stupid shit. They have you fuckin’ barking like a dog, flying around like you a fuckin’ pigeon looking ridiculous. Or… I don’t know if you noticed, white people love making people sex slaves and shit.
Chris: Yeah, I’m pretty sure they are not a kinky sex family, dawg.

Hiroki: Do you find that being African-American more advantage or disadvantage in the modern world?
Chris: A tough one. Yeah, I don’t know, man.
[he beckons to Andre]
Chris: They were asking me about the African American experience. Maybe you can take this one.
Andre: I find that the African-American experience for me has been for the most part very good. Although I find it idifficult to go into detail because I haven’t had much desire to leave the house in a while.

Rod [on the phone with Chris talking about Andre]: : Sex slave! Oh, shit! Chris, you gotta get the fuck outta there, man! You in some Eyes Wide Shut situation. Leave, motherfucker!

Dean: What is your purpose, Chris?
Chris: What?
Dean: In life. What is your purpose?
Chris: Right now it’s finding those keys.
Jeremy: Fire.
Dean: It is a reflection of our own mortality. We are born, we breathe and then we die. Even the sun will die someday. But we are divine. We are the gods trapped in cocoons.

Rose [to Chris]: You were one of my favorites…[/b]

Then things really get weird…

[b]Roman [on a television screen to Chris bound to a chair]: Is there anything more beautiful than a sunrise? I am Roman Armitage and if you’re watching this, you’re probably wondering what’s going on. There’s no need to worry. Let’s take a walk. You have been chosen because of the physical advantages you enjoyed your entire lifetime. With your natural gifts and our determination we could both be part of something greater. Something perfect. The Coagula procedure is a man-made miracle. Our order has been developing it for many, many years … and it wasn’t until recently it was perfected by my own flesh and blood. My family and I are honored to offer it as a service to members of our group. Don’t waste your strength. Don’t try to fight it. You can’t stop the inevitable. And who knows? Maybe one day you will enjoy being members of the family. Behold. The Coagula.

Rod [to Detective Latoya and two other detectives]: Then he sent me some weird pictures. I’m like, “Ah man, that’s Andre Hayworth.” This dude’s been missing for 6 months, right? So I do all my research, you know, 'cause as a TSA agent…I-I go do my…my detective work, right? And I start putting pieces together. And see, this is what I came up with. They’re probably abducting black people, brainwashing them and making them slaves…or sex slaves. Not just regular slaves, but sex slaves and shit. See? I don’t know if it’s the hypnosis that’s making 'em slaves or what not, but all I know is they already got two brothas we know and there could be a whole bunch of brothas they got already. What’s the next move?

Detective Latoya [to Rod]: Oh, white girls, they get you every time.

Rod [on the phone]: So last time I talked to Chris, he told me your mama hypnotized him.
Rose: Rod, just stop. I know why you’re calling.
Rod: Why is that?
Rose: It’s kind of obvious, don’t you think? What? That there is something between us.

Roman [on the television screen to Chris still bound to the chair]: Hey, Chris. How’s it going, buddy? You can answer, there is an intercom in the room.
Chris: Where is Rose?
Roman: Oh, You dirty dog. You’re one of the lucky ones, trust me. Jeremy’s wrangling method sounds much less pleasant. I’m supposed to answer any outstanding questions or concerns you may have so far. Apparently our common understanding of the process has a positive impact on the success rate of the procedure. You could give a shit, right? Okay, just let me just tell you what it is? Phase one was the hypnotism. That’s how they sedate you. Phase two is this. Mental preparation. It is basically a psychological pre-op.
Chris: Pre-op?
Roman: For stage three. Transplantation.

Chris: Why us? Why black people?
Roman [chuckling]: Who knows? People want to change. Some people want to be stronger … faster … cooler. Black is in fashion. But please don’t lump me in with that, you know I could give a shit what color you are. No, what I want is deeper. I want your eyes, man. I want those things you see through.
Chris: This is crazy.
Roman: Okay, I’m done.

Dean: Jeremy…?

Rose [to Walter]: Get 'em grandpa…

Rod: I mean, I told you not to go in that house.
Chris: How you find me?
Rod: I’m T.S…motherfuckin’…A. We handle shit. That’s what we do. Consider this situation fuckin’ handled.[/b]

Relationships.

Tragedies can make or break them.

Depending in part on how far along the relationship is when the tragedy occurs. In some instances, it can even strengthen them. But one size will never fit all the different sets of circumstances that might come into play.

Here the man is somewhat of an oafish brute. He participates [with relish] in what might be seen as the human equivalent of cock-fighting. He stumbles through life “emotionally handicapped” and those around him often suffer the consequence. Though from his frame of mind, “he means well”. The woman is nothing at all like that but she suffers a terrible accident and loses both of her legs. So both are challenged but in different ways.

It’s how life works. You go about the business of being yourself when out of the blue something happens. Everything changes. Then you are either up to the task of handling it or you are not. It’s just that some will find themselves up to the task only by recognizing the need to reconfigure themselves from the inside out. Then it’s only a matter of recognizing how self-conscious you become about the changes. And how others then react to that. And, legless or not, there’s still that pervasive gap between love and lust.

And then the part that will rile many animal rights folks. The controversy surrounding the captivity of orca whales. Using them to “entertain the masses”. The irony here in particular revolving around this:

Marion Cotillard is an environmental activist and unabashed animal lover and has been a spokeswoman for Greenpeace. The idea of a movie where whales are kept captive in tanks for the amusement of the public was against everything she stood for.

As “conflicting goods” go, this one can rouse emotions to fever pitch. But it’s largely in the background this time around.

And then the special effects. Today, if the character has lost both legs, that’s how we see her. No need to imagine what that might be like. You can actually see it what it is like in scene after scene. We know she’s just acting like someone who lost her legs. But up on the screen, she has no legs. At least not from the knees down.

And just as someone physically whole might wonder which would be worse, being blind or being deaf, so too here you find yourself wondering whether being legless or armless is the greater burden. Or the greatest challenge.

Look for the remnants of the class struggle.

IMDb

[b]The title “Rust and Bone” refers to the taste of blood in the mouth when, upon a blow to the face, the lips are crushed against the teeth.

The film received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 65th Cannes Film Festival.

Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Marion Cotillard’s performance in the film, describing it as “simply astonishing” and said that “Marion has created a character of nobility and candour, seamlessly melding herself into a world we could not have known without her”.

Within minutes of her arrival for the first day of rehearsal at the Marineland in Antibes, in the South of France, Marion Cotillard was required to watch the whales perform for a crowd. “I was jet-lagged and sensitive,” she recalls. A female trainer assigned to work with her on her character asked what she thought. “I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to be honest - I hate this situation. I hate to see animals doing clown things. I think it’s horrible’”, she remembered. [/b]

trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt2053425/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_and_Bone
trailer: youtu.be/Jg7skcyYolU

RUST AND BONE [De Rouille et D’os] 2012
Written in part and directed by Jacques Audiard

[b]Anna [Ali’s sister]: She remembered his passport!
Ali: She didn’t remember anything. It was already in there. She forgot about it, that’s all. When they went to Amsterdam, they’d use the kid to smuggle dope…
Anna: You got to be kidding!
Ali: That’s what she told me.

Ali: You don’t dress like that just to dance.
Stéphanie: How am I dressed?
Ali: I don’t know… Look!
Stéphanie: Yeah? So what?
Ali: You’re dressed like… a whore.
Stéphanie: Excuse me?
Ali: Are you dressed like that?
Stéphanie: That’s enough.
Ali: It’s no surprise that the guys…
Stéphanie: Shut up.

Ali: Is that you in the photos with the orcas?
Stéphanie: Yes.
Ali: Is it your job?
Stéphanie: Yes.
Ali: I’d never have imagined!
Stéphanie: Why? Can’t a whore train orcas?

Stéphanie [crawling on the floor in the hospital]: My legs! What did you do with my legs?!!

Stéphanie [on phone]: Ali?
Ali: Yeah, it’s me. Who’s this?
Stéphanie: Stéphanie. Remember me? We met at the Annex. The fight, the ice.
Ali: Yeah, Stéphanie. I remember. How are you doing?
Stéphanie: Did you hear what happened?
Ali: Yeah, I saw it on T.V.
Stéphanie: So, how do you think I’m doing?

Technician: Two casts for two prosthetic devices. To get you walking. After the sockets, we’ll choose the knees. Hydralic, pneumatic, electronic.
Stéphanie: Electronic knees?
Technician: You don’t have to think. It positions itself.
Stéphanie: Do the feet move?
Technician: No they don’t. They’re carbon blades. Flexible, but don’t move.
Stéphanie: So, I’d walk like a robot?
Technician: No, just fine. There are feet, not covered by insurance, that can give you heels 1 to 2 inches high.

Stéphanie [after Ali brings a toy truck into the van]: What’s this?
Ali: It’s for my son.
Stéphanie: You have a son?

Stéphanie: Are you seeing anyone? A girlfriend?
Ali: No.
Stéphanie: You have no one?
Ali: They’re not girlfriends.
Stéphanie: What are they? Quick fucks? A lot of them? You mind talking about it.
Ali: I couldn’t care less.

Ali: And you?
Stéphanie: Before? I was with Simon.
Ali: Is that all?
Stéphanie: There were others, but not that many. I was very…I like being watched. I liked turning them on. I liked getting them worked up…But then I’d get bored.
Ali: And now?
Stéphanie: Nothing.
Ali: No more desire?
Stéphanie: I never said that. Sure, I feel desire…Let’s change the subject.

Ali: Do you want to fuck?
Stéphanie: Huh?
Ali: You want to know if it still works? So, let’s fuck!
Stéphanie: Just like that?
Ali: Yeah!
Stéphanie: I don’t know if I can do it just like that.
Ali: When you feel like it, tell me.

Stéphanie: Do you mind if we don’t kiss?
Ali: No problem…breasts okay?

Stéphanie: And your night?
Ali: Normal.
Stéphanie: You think it’s right talking like this? I asked you how it went with the girl and you answer “normal”.
Ali: What should I say?
Stéphanie: Nothing. Normal to pick up a bimbo when you’re with me. What would you say if I did it?
Ali: Nothing.
Stéphanie: Really?
Ali: You’re being a pain. What’s the problem?
Stéphanie: What am I to you? A friend? A pal? A buddy like Faoud and all the others. You fuck your buddies?..If we continue we have to do it right. Let’s show some manners…some consideration. You’ve always been considerate of me. Is that a plan? We continue, but not like animals.

Anna: All the shit he left. His message said Strasbourg. God knows if he’s still there. He never called you?
Stéphanie: No.
Anna: Did you try the gym?
Stéphanie: They have no idea.
Anna: I’d give you a number if I had it, even after all the crap he did. You believe me?
Stéphanie: Yes, I believe you.
Anna: Imagine! He left his kid. It all means jack shit to him.
Stéphanie: You don’t know him.
Anna: I don’t know him? What did you expect?
Stéphanie: I don’t know. Not this.

Ali [on the phone]: How are you doing?
Stéphanie: At this moment? In life? Or in general?
Ali: I wanted to say that…
Stéphanie: I’m not asking for anything. I’m hanging up. I’ll call you to ask about Sam. Give him a kiss?
Ali: Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!
Stéphanie: I won’t hang up.
Ali: For three hours… he was in a coma. For three hours, he was dead. I was scared of losing him…Don’t leave me!..Don’t leave me.
Stéphanie: I won’t leave you.
Ali [weeping]: I love you.

Ali [voiceover]: Twenty-seven bones in a human hand. Certain monkeys have more. Gorillas, 32. Five in each thumb. A man has 27. You break a hand, you break a leg…after a while calcium joins it back together. It may even end up stronger than before. But break a bone in your hand and you’ll see it never heals. You’ll remember it at each fight, with every punch. You’ll be careful. But one day he pain will come back. Like needles. Like broken glass. [/b]

Treasure!

Who doesn’t like the sound of that?

And who would pass up the chance to actually find some?

With it you have access to all the things that treasure can buy. And that doesn’t change just because you happen to reside in Romania. Especially in today’s world. There’s just no getting around the fact that for some many most of us, money [another word for treasure] is increasingly the center of the universe.

Still, your own individual reactions to it will always be predicated on 1] your situation and 2] your options.

For example, how badly do you need the money? Here one neighbor needs it “desparately”. The bank is after his home.

On the other hand, when they actually do find the treasure, it’s not exactly what anyone had imagined it would be.

In part the film revolves around the gap between the drama that builds as they get closer and closer to the treasure. And then when they actually find it we’re stuptified by what it turns out to be. Or, rather, some will be. But that is the whole point others will note. You’ll either get the gist of the satire here or you won’t.

Now, right from the start we are informed that this is a “comedy caper”. But it’s one of those comedies in which, by the end of film, it dawns on you that not once have you actually laughed out loud. Or even chuckled. As one critic put it, “if the humor were any drier, it would be dust.”

A whimsical glimpse into just how absurd the “human condition” can be.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treasure_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/ot_EibshNo0

THE TREASURE [Comoara ] 2015
Writen and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

[b]Adrian [neighbor]: I need to borrow some money.
Costi: How much?
Adrian: 800 euros. I can repay it in a month, maybe two.
Costi: I don’t have it…I’m struggling myself now.
Neighbor: I’m desparate. The bank’s going to repossess my house.

Adrian: I had a publishing house. It went bankrupt. It was going really well. Then the financial crisis hit, and it all went to hell.
Costi: A survey I read said that only 2% of Romanians read more than one book a year.

Adrian: There is a legend in my grandfather’s village. They say my great-great grandfather buried his treasure before the Communists came. I want to hire a metal detector guy to see if there is anything there. If you pay, I’ll give you half of whatever we find.

Wife: Where will you get 800 euros?
Costi: I have 300 in my account. If I don’t pay the bills this month, that’s another 200.

Metal detector company official: You know if you find old coins, you need to report them to the police.
Costi: Really?
Company official: Yes. They need to be inspected, and if they’re considered part of the national heritage, they remain state property. It’s no joke. You must report it. If the police catch you, they will send you to prison.
Costi: What if it isn’t coins.
Company official: It doesn’t matter. It could be crockery. You must report it. The police will send someone from the nearest museum to inspect what you find. If they consider it part of the national heritage they give you 30% of the total value.
Costi: And if it’s not of historical value?
Company official: They give it all back. But anything before WWII has historical value.[/b]

Cue Cornell:

[b]Cornell [to Costi]: I can come with you. It’ll only be 400 euros, plus money for diesel…Don’t worry about the police if you’re with me. I’ll scan the place, mark where something might be, and leave. We don’t know each other. If you find something, it’s your business.

Costi: The company said that if we find something, we need to report it to the police. And the state gives us 30% of its value.
Adrian: No, if we find anything, then we get in the car, drive to Bucharest and sell the gold to the gypsies. They melt it down, and nobody will know it used to be coins.
Costi: If we don’t report it, I’m not coming.

Wife: The Revolution of 1848 was started by the sons of rich landlords, who’d studied abroad and wanted to change Romania. If our neighbor is from one of those families, there’s a good chance there will be treasure.

Adrian: How far down can it see?
Cornell: 30 meters.
Adrian: 30 meters down? At 30 meters we should find something.
Cornell: Nails at least.
Adrian: At 30 meters, we’ll reach the Roman Empire!

Cornell: It’s there![/b]

He says this after every foot they dig.

[b]Costi: I told you he’s got money problems. They’re repossessing his house.
Cornell: We’ve all got problems. You’ve got problems. I’ve got problems. A man makes his own problems. They don’t descend down from Heaven…I’m going. If I stay, I’ll punch him.

Lica: What are these?
Adrian: They’re Mercedes share certificates.

Costi: They don’t count as national heritage.
Cop: I don’t know. We’ll see.
Costi: They definately don’t. Heritage artifacts must be connected to Romanian culture, connected to the country, to Romania.

Lica: They’re from 1969.
Costi: Where does it say that?
Lica: There, “issued in 1969”.
Adrian: Impossible.

Costi: Who could have buried them?
Adrian: The Communists?
Costi: How could the Communists have shares in Mercedes?

Adrian [using the calculator]: 78 shares X $15,075 a share = $1,I75, 850 euros.
Costi: That much?
Adrian: Yeah. Divided by 3.
Costi: Why 3?
Adrian: I’ll need to give some to my mother and brother. Listen, if he comes to you, tell him I just gave you 10 shares.
Costi: Why?
Adrian: He wouldn’t want to give you half of it.
Costi: Why didn’t he go look for it himself?
Adrian: Just say that and forget about it.
Costi: What could he do?
Adrian: He could sue us. The land’s in my mother’s name. They could accuse us of theft.[/b]

There’s just something about an autopsy that spooks me. There I am dead, lying on the slab. Someone is hacking me apart bit by bit. And, who knows, maybe it’s because my death was suspicious. They’ve got to figure out how I actually shuffled off this mortal coil before deciding if that was somebody else’s decision.

All the more mysterious here is the body of a woman that no one seems able to idenify. She was found half-buried at a horrific crime scene. How did she die? Why did she die?

And what must it be like to have a job that brings you into contact with dead bodies day in and day out? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. How does that make them different from the rest of us?

And death itself of course. Obviously the circumstances surrounding it can be more or less creepy. But: What to make of the very fact of it? What does it mean to be dead? How we we fit it into the profound mystery that can be life itself?

Which inevitiably brings us to the juncture that many “horror films” explore: the intersection of that said to be natural and that said to be supernatural. When does one become the other? How far are you willing to go in suspending your disbelief? Many prefer that one or another supernatural element be involved in films such as this because this makes it easier to imagine one or another rendition of life after death. Anything other than to be obliterated for all time to come. Still, to the extent that the supernatural is involved and you don’t believe in the supernatural, the less likely you are to be frightened by what you see. Why would you be scared by something you don’t even believe could ever happen?

Then [here] cue the Bible.

Also, there’s the part where the naked dead body is that of a beautiful young white female. Make of that what you will.

IMDb

[b]Stephen King said of the film, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe “Visceral horror to rival Alien and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone.”

The names “John Doe” or “John Roe” for men, “Jane Doe” or “Jane Roe” for women, “Johnny Doe” and “Janie Doe” for children, or just “Doe” non-gender-specifically are used as placeholder names for a party whose true identity is unknown or must be withheld in a legal action, case, or discussion

The director’s favorite scene to film was the scene in the elevator when they discuss the death of the mother. He said “I only placed the camera, and we watched a fantastic performance by Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch”. The scene he was most proud of as a director was the build up to the reveal of the symbols beneath Jane Doe’s skin, as stated at the festival Monsters of Film in Stockholm 2016.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autopsy_of_Jane_Doe
trailer: youtu.be/mtTAhXuiRTc

AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE [2016]
Directerd by André Øvredal

[b]Cop [on walkie-talkie]: Sheriff, you’ve got to get down here.

Cop [looking down at a half-buried corpse in a basement]: Who’s she?
Sheriff: Well, for now, she’s a Jane Doe. You got something?
Cop: Nothing was stolen. Not a scratch on the outside of the house either. Doesn’t look like someone broke in. To me, it looks like they were trying to break out.

Tommy: Open him up. Now you see here? Down below the occipital. A fracture. That explains the swelling in his brain. Subdural hematoma. That’s what did it. Not the smoke. Everybody has a secret. Some just hide them better than others.
Austin: Some people are better at finding them.
Tommy: You did good.

Emma: Can I see one of the bodies?
Austin: Well, no. No. You cannot see one.
Emma: Why not?
Austin: Because there’s…there’s some things you can’t un-see, okay?

Emma [looking down at a bell attached to a cadaver’s ankle]: What’s that for?
Tommy: To make sure he’s dead. There used to be a time it was hard to tell a comatose person from a dead one, so coroners tied bells to everybody in the morgue. So if they heard a ‘ting’, they knew somebody down there wasn’t quite ready to go.
Emma: So, why do you have one?
Tommy: Well, I’m…I’m a bit of a traditionalist.

Emma: Who shot him?
Tommy: Angle of entry suggests he did it to himself. Until we found strychnine in his system and judging by the progress it made through his bloodstream he was already dead by the time somebody blew his face off.
Emma: Why would anyone do that?
Tommy: You sound like your boyfriend. Leave the “why” to the cops and the shrinks. We’re just here to find cause of death. No more, no less.

Sheldon: Press is gonna need answers on this in the morning and I got nothing. Now they’ll buy a 10-79. I can give them a b and e gone haywire. But what I can’t sell is her.
Tommy: Time frame?
Sheldon: It’s gotta be tonight.
Tommy: Okay.

Tommy: Her wrists and ankles are fractured.
Austin: How do you break your wrists and ankles without any outward signs?
Tommy: Oh, I see it all the time. Simple fractures.
Austin: Simple? Uh-uh. Her joints are shattered.

Tommy: Well, you were right. Her waist doesn’t fit her frame. It’s not congenital.
Austin: Then what is it?
Tommy: Well, if you wear one long enough, a corset…
Austin: Didn’t those go out of style a couple of hundred years ago?

Tommy: The lungs severely blackened.
Austin: Wouldn’t have taken her for a smoker.
Tommy: She could smoke ten packs a day for 30 years wouldn’t explain this.
Austin: But that’s what killed her, right?
Tommy: No, this amount of lung damage though I’d expect the body to be covered in third degree burns. It’s like finding a bullet in the brain but with no gunshot wound.

Tommy: Imagine all this internal trauma was reflected externally. Shattered ankles and wrists fire-burned lungs, scarred organs. What would she look like?
Austin: She’d be mangled.
Tommy: Disfigured beyond recognition but she’s not. I mean, how the hell do you even do this? If you wanna kill someone you shoot them or poison them or drown them. A million easy ways. You don’t go to these lengths unless you wanna make them suffer.

Tommy [looking down at Jane Doe]: What happened to you?

Austin: Someone pulled out her tooth wrapped it in fabric and forced her to swallow it.
Tommy: And the drawing?
Austin: I don’t know. Religious? Possibly, uh, ritualistic?
Tommy: Well, let’s play that one out. Every ritual has its purpose. What MO have we seen so far?
Austin: First they bound her. Then they ripped out her tongue, poisoned her paralyzed her forced her to swallow the cloth. Then, uh, the cuts, the internal mutilation, stabs. Then as if that wasn’t enough, they burned her. Almost like a human sacrifice.

Tommy: You can’t kill someone this way without leaving a trace on the outside. She doesn’t even have a broken nail.
Austin: If we could just find out why she was tortured…
Tommy: Down here, if you can’t see it touch it, it doesn’t matter.

Tommy: Let’s get the fuck out of here.[/b]

Cue the ringing bell.

[b]Austin: It’s her.
Tommy: Oh, no, that’s not possible.
Austin: No, her body those things we found inside, those were impossible. Whatever the hell happened in here we are way past possible. It’s her.

Austin: When we cut into her she tried to stop us each time. It’s like there’s something she doesn’t want us to find.
Tommy: You wanna go back in there?
Austin: If we stay here, we’re dead. If we could just figure out how she died maybe we can figure out how to stop her.

Tommy [looking at a slice of her brain under the microscope]: That explains why we couldn’t find cause of death. She’s still alive.
Austin: Alive? We lit her on fire. We took out her heart.

Sheriff: What the hell happened here?
Cop: What do you want to do with her?
Sheriff: Get her out of here.
Cop: Already got a car waiting. There’s that, uh, funeral home over in Ruxton.
Sheriff: Get her out of my county. Take her over to VCU. Let Ward Lamon deal with her.[/b]

Cue the ringing bell.

Imagine that you commit a crime. But accidently.

Still, tell that to the criminal justice system. The next thing you know your own rendition of the white collar American Dream is in the toilet. You’re just one more prisoner now.

Or, as Bottles puts it: The fact is, we all started out as someone’s little angel. And a place like this forces us to become warriors or victims. Nothing in between can exist here.

Few actually imagine that something like this can happen to them. And, in fact, it almost never does. But there is no denying that something like this is never really out of the question. A series of events [only more or less in your control] starts you tumbling down the hill like that proverbial snowball. And once it gets started there no telling where or how it will end up.

Let’s put it this way. The man we meet before the accident is barely recognizable in the man we meet 10 years later. He’s in there somewhere though. At least that’s what most are hoping. But in prison there’s the “convict code”. You do what you have to do in order to survive. So, welcome to the world of “you’ve got no choice”.

Of course for most of us there’s no telling how accurately this depicts a prison existence. This one being Chino in California. We can easily imagine how it might unfold in this manner. But we don’t really know how likely it is.

And then the part about gangs. And all gangs are is an existential contraption that provide a set of rules [and a hierarchy] that you can anchor “I” to. You become “one of us”. And then it all begins to revolve around dealing with the folks who are “one of them”. And here race is almost always the bottom line.

This is a bleak portrait of just how far things can go in our nihilistic postmodern world. Still, while these folks will be object lessons for some and they will be role models for others.

Look for Jamie and Ghost.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_Caller_(film
trailer: youtu.be/QQxjyRr9k2E

SHOT CALLER [2017]
Written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh

Katherine: Honey, the light!!

And then, just like that, everything changes.

[b]Kutcher: You ready to catch some cockroaches?
Detective: Yeah. Bring it.
Kutcher: According to our CI, the Beast is doing an arms deal with this Southern Mexican in the next 48 hours. He’s ordered this guy, Jacob harlon, goes by the street name of Money, to handle things. Harlon hit the streets yesterday.
Detective: This Harlon validated?
Kutcher: No, but our CI says he’s a sleeper.
Detective: The beast? That dude’s been running Cali for the last 15 years… All from the fucking hole, too.

Detective: So, what’s the plan?
Kutcher: Harlon faces strike three. We nail that fucker, get him to flip on the Beast. Simple. Whole power structure comes tumbling down.

Katherine: Okay, so they accepted the house as collateral. So I can bail you out, get you outta there. Okay? What? Did something happen? What?
Jacob: I know this is gonna be hard to take but Steve got them to accept a deal. If I plead no-contest, they’ll agree to two years…
Katherine: No! No, we’re fighting this.
Jacob: If we do, I’m facing seven years.
Katherine: If we win this, you face none.
Jacob: Kate…Honey, I blew a point 0.10. I ran the red. I killed Tom.
Kate: It was an accident. It was an accident.
Jacob: I know.
Kate: I don’t care what Steve says. People don’t go away for accidents!
Jacob: Jennifer and Tina will never see Tom again. I’m responsible. Sixteen months, it’s nothing compared to what they’re going through.[/b]

So, what constitutes justice here?

[b]Jacob: Can’t wait for this cheese steak.
Howie: Used to come here a lot?
Jacob: It’s a short walk from my office.
Howie: Sorry, but I just can’t picture you in a suit. All Gordon Gekko and shit.

Steve: [on a prison phone to Jacob]: Look, man, I know you’re scared. All right? I would be scared. But you need to know this—all violent crimes, from domestic battery to capital murder, get housed together. It means you’ll be with the big boys. And they will test you, whether you like it or not. So you gotta stand up for yourself…because once you’re marked in there it will never end.

White prisoner [to Jacob]: You gonna roll with us or not?

Prison guard [to Jacob in the hole]: You throw any piss or shit I’ll leave you in here for the whole 30, no rec. Leave your dirties by the door.

Bottles: I’m Bottles.
Jacob: Jacob.
Bottles: Yeah, the stock broker from Pasadena. When you come to yard, chow, you take a shit, whatever…you stick to your own race. Why did you fight that Toad?
Jacob: He challenged me first.
Bottles: You gonna go around kicking it off with every buster that calls you out?
Jacob: I’m not looking for trouble, no. But I’m not taking any shit either.

Bottles: The only thing we got in here is our respect. The question is, what you gonna do when you’re out here slumming it with the rest of us? Cause the safety of these numbers comes with a price. There are no free rides here. Everyone puts in work, whether cliqued up or not.
Jacob: I understand.
Bottles: I’m not talking about helping us with our computer skills. You’ll get your fucking hands dirty like the rest of us. Or you can go back to seeing how that lone wolf bullshit works out for you, money man.

Jacob [sliding an envelope across the table in a restaurant]: This is for you. They’re signature cards to your new checking. Have them notarized, then get them back to me. There’s 178 grand in there.
Katherine: I don’t know how you got that money, and I don’t care. You need to keep that. I’m not taking it.
Jacob: No, it’s yours now.
Katherine: I’m not taking your gang money!
Jacob: Just keep it down.
Katherine: Don’t tell me what to do. You don’t get to do that. I don’t hear from you for seven years. Nothing! I mean, how do you even now where I live?

Prisoner: There’s gonna be a balloon in your canteen. You’re responsible for it.
Jacob: What do I do with it?
Ptrisoner: Take it to yard tomorrow.
Jacob: How?
Prisoner: In your fucking ass, man. Make sure you lube-up, too. You don’t want this shit breaking off inside you.

Bottles [to Jacob on the yard]: I know you’re shitting bricks right about now. Trying to rationalize the morality. What will your family think of you? How will they judge you? All of that went through my head, too, when I first broke my cherry. And then I realized none of that matters. The only thing that matters is you getting home to your family in one piece…The fact is we all started out as someone’s little angel. And a place like this forces us to become warriors or victims. Nothing in between can exist here.

Jacob: Some things just don’t go back together again. They just don’t. You, your mom, are on your own trajectory now. I’m on another one.
Joshua: What, just wasting the rest of your life, dad?
Jacob: It doesn’t matter what I do! Your job is to take care of yourself and your mom.
Joshua: Look, I get why you pushed us away. It was to protect us. But, dad, you’ve done your time now. It’s over. Let us help you get back on your feet. Please.
Jacob: You wanna help me?
Joshua: Yeah, I do.
Jacob: Then stay away.

Bottles [to Jacob on the yard]: Iron up.

Judge: Mr. Harlon, with this court finding you guilty of assault by a prisoner with a deadly weapon I’m sentencing you to the middle term of four years. In addition, having been found guilty of committing this crime in association and for the benefit of a gang, I’m sentencing you to an additional five years to run consecutively. Penal code 667.5 requires that you serve a minimum of 85 percent of these terms. Both will run concurrently with your initial sentence.
Jacob [to Katherine]: It’s over. Forget I exist.

Prison official: You’ll be locked down 23/7 in the security housing unit with one hour yard time. Three showers a week. You will not be allowed in the same open area as any other inmate, outside your cellie. And there will be no warning shots. You cliqued up with anyone?
Jacob: No.
Prison official: Why participate in the riot?
Jacob: You know why. You got your rules and we got the gang’s rules. And theirs matter.

Ripper: Redwood, this is Money.
Redwood: Heard how you got down at Chino. So did the Beast.
Jacob: Appreciate it. He still in the hole?
Redwood: Four hundred yards to my six. Less nine years.
Jacob: Little different than the mainline?
Redwood: You could say that. Make no mistake, brother, they design places like this to break men like us.

Kutcher: You know, I can’t put my finger on it, Manny, but there’s more to this harlon guy.
Manny: What you mean, like a power play?
Kutcher: Phil says his wife and his kid show up to his motel, slams the door in their face. I mean, you talking about a guy with a perfect life, all right? A fucking envious life. He’s got not one prior. Can’t even fucking spell the word gangster, man. He gets fucked up on a dui manslaughter, kills his friend. Yeah, a dime will change you for sure, but a guy like that gets out, throws everything away? No.
Manny: Look, all I know is, once a dude gets institutionalized, anything is possible, man.

The Beast: Know who I am?
Jacob: Yes.
The Beast: They sent Redwood to death row after what happened. It took him four months to finally get that screw. Fuck 'em. These cops…they need to understand that we run the show. Some get it. Like Roberts. But the rest think the more they lock us down and isolate us it strips us of our power. They even think we closed the books. We’re a dying breed. They’re dead fucking wrong. We’re just real selective…Who we choose to call our brother. So the question is…are you ready?
Jacob: Yes.
The Beast: What I wanted to here.

Beast [on cell phone]: You know shotgun? He just sent word to me about a heavy shipment of guns a youngster smuggled back from Afghanistan. He wants permission to go to Herman Gomez to offload them for a million five to their cartel connections. And he’s out, too. Just like you’ll be in 30 days. I’ll get word to Herman you’re handling the deal for us. And fuck our usual cut. Shotgun just bought himself a full partner on this.
Jacob: I’ll be on parole though.
The Beast: The fuck’s that got to do with anything? Well, 10 years you think the fucking honor of being one of us ends at the gates? It ends when you’re six feet under. Until then, you will keep earning for your brothers. I understand that before you say another fucking word think of your family in this decision.
Jacob: Excuse me?
The Beast: Did I stutter?

Jacob: How many guns did you tell shotgun you had total?
Howie: Same as I told you!
Jacob: You lie to me again, I’ll blow your fucking head off! How many?
Howie: Two. Two thousand AKs. Shotgun, right before I met you, Shotgun said that if I said anything about the extra guns, he’d green-light me, Money. You gotta believe me.
Jacob: Where are they?
Howie: Shotgun’s dead, isn’t he?

Jacob: I already pleaded guilty to the guns. Let me do my time like a man.
Kutcher: You see, that’s what I don’t get. I’ve been around long enough to know when a con’s making moves simply to survive or when it’s that rare breed that relishes in the power. But that’s not you. Not by a long shot. Why you throwing your whole life away? Look, I don’t know what they’re holding over you but I can offer you something better. Something real. No bluffs, no bs. You give me the Beast and everyone involved and you walk. I mean it. No protective custody, no reduced sentence. Out.

The Beast: I gave you a gift…and you spit in my face. How does it feel to be the walking dead?
Jacob: No different than the last 10 years.
The Beast: We’ll see about that when your old lady and kid are lying in blood and you get to live with knowing you’re the cause.

The Beast: You knew they’d put you back here. That’s why you led the cops to the bust…to get to me. Well played. Let’s get down, wood.

Jacob: We’re gonna get a few things straight here. I’m already doing life without so I could give a shit about additional time. But I’m not sitting on death row waiting to be put down like some animal. So you write it up that he attacked me with the blade first. In return, your arrangement with us stands…including the monthly deposits into your account. Reason I can guarantee these terms is I’m running the show now. Say it.
Corrupt prison guard: You’re running the show.

Kutcher [after Jabob leads him to the last of the AKs]: You gotta be shitting me. I still don’t get this guy. But I fucking like him.

Joshua [in a letter to Jacob]: “Mom told me you’ve gotten life without parole now. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why any of this has happened but I wanted you to know that I’ve accepted reality which is why I will do what you’ve asked me in your letter. I’m moving on with my life, dad. I will learn from your mistakes and I will always be mom’s protector. But most importantly I want you to know that I’ve forgiven you. Your son, Josh.”[/b]

Shakespeare? Nope. It has nothing to do with that Lady MacBeth. On the other hand, the relationships between men and women down through the ages will always revolve around certain commonalities. So, sure, look for them.

Clearly, the manner in which we discuss and debate gender roles in the post-modern world today may or may not, in turn, have much in common with the manner in which they were construed [and then pursued] back in, say, 19th century rural England.

Yes, there are still folks who insist we can brush aside all of the conflicted historical and cultural narratives and get to the one and the only truly correct manner in which rational men and women are obligated to behave.

Of course back then there was as well a particular emphasis placed on class. The lady of the manor was just not permitted to engage “the help” other than by way of ordering them about in the task of sustaining her privileged lifestyle.

And it was unthinkable that a “proper” young lady would concern herself with sex in such a way that it did not revolve entirely around doing her duty in order that heirs could be propagated in order to pass this privileged lifestyle on to the next generation of the high and the mighty.

In other words, this is a subject that has been explored [over and over and over again] in any number of films.

But then this part:

“The interesting thing is how Katherine evolves from victim to culprit. She seems to have learned from her husband how to use and misuse power. The lack of social conscience of which she at first is a victim, becomes a driving force for her own behaviour. Her selfishness and lack of morality is so extreme that, in the end, she betrays innocent servants.” IMDb review.

Yes, she is somewhat of a sociopath. A “disease” as Sebastian puts it.

Then consider the plight of poor Anna. Born a woman. Born black. And then bred to be just one more obsequious servant. And mute too.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Macbeth_(film
trailer: youtu.be/2Z0N8ULhuUA

LADY MACBETH [2016]
Directed by William Oldroyd

Alexander: You ought to keep to the house.
Katherine: But I don’t mind the fresh air.
Alexander: You’ll be more comfortable in the house.
Katherine: I like the fresh air. I like being outside…
Alexander [abruptly]: Take it off. Your nightdress, take it off.

She does…standing naked in the bedroom. But you won’t believe what happens next. At least I didn’t.

[b]Boris: You will wait up for your husband.
Katherine: I am perhaps a little overtired, sir.
Boris: You will wait up, Katherine.
Katherine: I will try, sir.
Boris [to Anna]: Sit with Mrs Lester, see that she doesn’t fall asleep.

Alexander: Stop smiling. Take your nightdress off. Face the wall.
[he unbottons his pants]
Alexander: Face the wall!
(He masturbates]

Boris [to Katherine]: I leave for London this morning. You’ll be on your own for a while. Perhaps you will find that your energy is restored after a little of your own company, and when your husband returns you can resume your duties with more rigour, madam.

Katherine: Anna?
Anna: Ma’am, if I can explain…
Katherine: What was his name? The one that called you a pig, what was his name?
Anna: Sebastian, ma’am.
Katherine: Is he new?
Anna: Yes, ma’am. He’s the new groomsman.

Sebastian: Aren’t you bored, Katherine?
Katherine: You can’t call me that. Get out. Get out!

Father Peter: You must be anticipating the return of your father-in-law, Mrs Lester. And your husband.
Katherine: I must.
Father Peter: It is not good to be without company for too long. The decline in your health…
Katherine: My health?
Father Peter: Your absence from church, madam. No doubt brought on by their absence.
Katherine: No doubt.
Father Peter: Perhaps a little more time spent indoors, Mrs Lester. I understand you’ve been taking the air. Perhaps a little more solitude and reflection will do.

Anna: Mr Lester wouldn’t be happy if he knew what was happening in his absence.
Sebastian: And what’s been happening in his absence, Anna?
Anna: The dogs, sir.
Sebastian: Thank you, Anna. I’ll look into that.

Boris: Do you not think it necessary to keep an account of what happens to my property in this household? All my property. Am I to assume you drank it?
Anna: No, sir.
Boris: And yet you can offer no other explanation.
Anna: No, sir. Get down.
Anna: Sir?
Boris: On your hands and knees. You behave like an animal, and I’ll treat you like an animal.
[Katerine who drank it all with Sebastian sits there and says nothing]

Boris: You are entirely without shame.
Katherine: I have nothing to be ashamed of.
Boris: Do you have any idea of the damage that you’re capable of bringing upon this family? You have failed miserably in all of your marital duties, more specifically, to provide your husband with a legitimate heir.
Katherine: Where is your son? Where is he? He has made that impossible.

Katherine [to Anna]: Run to the village for a doctor.

Katherine [to Sebastian lying on top of her]: He’ll not return for the funeral. He said as much. He won’t come back. He hated his father. He hates me. Perhaps he just won’t come back.

Katherine: She won’t speak. She’s mute.
Sebastian: What if it comes back?
Katherine: It won’t.

Alexander: So…you have become a whore in my absence, Katherine. You think me to be stupid, perhaps. But perhaps you had no idea that your whoring had been noticed. You seem surprised. And surprised that the news of you opening your legs and your cunt for any worthless dog should have reached my ears, but then you opened your legs so very wide, Katherine. And you’ve acted so very shamelessly and so very stupidly. And you’ve begun to smell, Katherine. You’ve gotten so fat and foul-smelling, it was inevitable that the whole county would hear of your behaviour. My father bought you, along with a piece of land not fit enough for a cow to graze upon. I do not like being talked about, madam. I do not like being laughed at. I do not like owning a whore. You will alter your behaviour, madam.
Katherine: And how will I alter my behaviour, sir?
Alexander: You will never see that man again. He will be sent from this house and you will remain here, indoors with your prayer book.[/b]

And then out of the blue: Agnes and Teddy

[b]Katherine: She has papers.
Sebastian: She’s forged them, then. You don’t think that every man and woman in the county with half a brain and an empty pocket isn’t coming up with a similar scheme?
Katherine: She has legitimate papers.
Sebastian: I thought you said he couldn’t fuck you.
Katherine: He couldn’t.
Sebastian: Or wouldn’t.

Sebastian: Get off me.
Katherine: I need to talk to you.
Sebastian: Go back to your house and your little master.
Katherine: Please come inside.
Sebastian: I can’t…If I come inside, then we’re found out. And if we’re found out, then I’ll hang. While that boy’s here, I’m out here. That’s the end of it. Get out!

Maid: Ma’am.
Katherine: What is it?
Maid: I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s the boy. We can’t find him anywhere.

Agnes: Who are you? How dare you walk into this house and give orders? Get out.
Sebastian: I saved him!
Agnes: Get out!

Sebastian: I will not stay here and be humiliated for the sake of that boy. I will not!
Katherine: Tell me what to do. I will do anything.
Sebastian: It’s too late.
Katherine: What? What do you mean?
Sebastian: I stood in front of him, Katherine. At that waterfall, that…perfect drop. One step behind him. And I…It’s too late.
Katherine: It doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be if you trust me.

Katherine [to Sebastian after smothering Teddy]: It is done.

Doctor: Could you have been asleep longer than you thought? Might someone have taken the opportunity to come in? There were bruises…
Katherine: From the waterfall.
Doctor: They weren’t there before.

Sebastian: We killed the boy.
Detective: I beg your pardon, sir. Who are you?
Sebastian: She killed him. She held a pillow over his face and I held his legs. She killed Alexander Lester. She killed Boris Lester, poisoned him with mushrooms and let him die. She killed that boy. She killed that boy so that we could be together. And I thought I loved her. She suffocated me. She suffocated me and she hounded me. And then she never let me be. She’s a disease.

Detective: Mrs. Lester?
Katherine: He’s lying. Anna…He and Anna did it. For whatever reason of their own.
Sebastian: You bitch. You bitch!
Katherine: Everyone knows that she picks the mushrooms and he follows her to the woods every morning. Perhaps they were found out and threatened with separation. My father-in-law beat him within an inch of his life the day before he died. And that boy…That boy was like a child to me. Anna will say if otherwise. I did nothing.[/b]

Cue Anna…still utterly speechless.

Consider…

Unless you believe in a God that judges you worthy of immortality and salvation, you’ve got only limited options in dealing with the oblivion that seems to be an inherent component of death.

Of course if you’ve got the money, the possibilities increase. For example there’s this option: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics

And who hasn’t imagined what it might be like if someone were to have this done, be reanimated off in the distant future, and make the necessary adjustments to a whole new life in a whole new world. What might that be like? How much of who you once were would be in sync with all of the changes that have unfolded over years. And, in this case, the year is 2084.

One of those films that is bursting at the seams with all manner of provocative conjecture. What if this, what if that. A whole new world in which to speculate about right and wrong, good and bad.

Love and lust.

What would you think, feel, do? After all, do you really imagine it will be the same reaction as Marc’s?

Then it all revolves around whether the plot and the characters either enhance the experience for you or encumber it with the sort of miscues that prompt you to imagine how much better it could have been. And the general consensus among the critics is that it could have been better indeed. For example, by scaling back on all those [at times] god-awful flashbacks.

Still, the subject itself is no less fascinating.

As for the science on display here, how realistic is it? You tell me.

IMDb

[b]Oona Chaplin, who plays the character of Naomi, is the granddaughter of legendary actor Charles Chaplin.

The urban legend suggesting Walt Disney was cryopreserved is false; he was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realive
trailer: youtu.be/Z9-xnelobwo

REALIVE [2016]
Written and directed by Mateo Gil

[b]Marc [voiceover]: Imagine, you were born… totally aware and conscious of everything around you. Conscious you were coming out of someone else’s body, joint to it by a bloody cord. That you are completely covered in blood. Conscious of the dry air entering your lungs for the first time; the sharp sounds in your ears; the blinding light in your eyes. Conscious that your bones are unbearably soft and your life is so fragile, it could disappear at any moment. That’s what being resurrected is like.

Victor: Good morning, Miss Mansfra. Welcome to Prodigy. Where humanity’s greatest dream is coming true. Are you aware that our team of top international scientists has developed the world’s most advanced regeneration program? We’re the only ones capable of regenerating up to 65 percent of the human organism. Prodigy Health Corporation… The only company in the world that can bring you immortality. Because immortality is only a question of time.

Victor: That’s a scanned map of Lazarus with an accuracy almost to the cell. We use it to study the primary difficulties and to make decisions before the big surgery. Like what proportion of the body can be reanimated and what proportion must be substituted by bionic parts and organs developed in our laboratory.

Marc [voiceover]: Why does time pass so slowly when we’re children? Why does the future seem like a huge endless eternity? Why do we never feel anything that intensely again? Only the pain…

Doctor: Our worst-case prognosis has been confirmed. It’s too late to operate. All that we can do right now is try to slow its spread with treatment. At this point, radiotherapy and co-adjuvant chemotherapy is still the most effective option.
Marc: How long have I got?
Doctor: Based on our experience with this type of tumor, you’ll be able to live, more or less comfortably for about a year.[/b]

Cue the options.

[b]Marc [vocieover]: You can’t imagine all the things that need to be done to dismantle your life. And prepare everything for when you are gone…Telling the people you love. Deciding who not to tell. Managing all the concern you will awaken. Telling your mother. Explaining to her that she’s going to outlive you. Writing your will. Selling your properties. Emptying the house of your personal belongings. Looking at them for the last time. When you get rid of everything you ever were…what’s left?

Naomi [to Marc]: I want to be with you through this. I want to spend the rest of your life with you.

Marc: What do you guys think about cryonization?
Friend: Like Walt Disney, right?
Marc: Walt Disney didn’t have himself cryonized, but yes.
Friend: So what is it?
Friend: Basically, after you die, your body gets put into a capsule with um, liquid nitrogen? Am I right? In hopes that someday, medicine might be able to cure whatever disease you have or just to live longer.

Marc: Let me show you something…this article is seven years old now. They extracted the heart matrix out of a dead rat and inject its stem cells into it. A few days later, the heart started beating. And this is just the beginning. I mean, since then, they’ve even managed to fabricate simple human organs. They’ve even transplanted some of them successfully. There’s a revolution coming. At some point in the not-so-distant future, they’ll be able to manufacture organs specifically created to suit each patient. I mean, imagine, I could just simply replace my pharynx with a new one.

Charles: Look man, the truth is, I still don’t trust it. All the websites I’ve seen look like they belong to a cult or something. There’s no guarantee. Did you know that in 1979, they found the bodies of nine people that have been cryonized? In a cemetery, here in California, thawed, 'cause the company was cutting costs.

Naomi [to Marc]: Why do you think that anybody from the future would want to bring you back to life? Or anybody else for that matter? The world is gonna be totally overpopulated. You’ll be like a man from the 19th century. I mean, what’s the point of that? Unless they wanna use you as guinea pigs for science.[/b]

Then this part:

Charles: Everywhere I look, they say the body needs to be cryonized as soon as possible after you’re declared legally dead.
Marc: So your cells don’t deteriorate.
Charles: But no matter what they did, it would take several hours. Even a day or more to complete the process. The damage will be huge. Not to mention the harm caused by the disease and the treatment before you die.
Martc: Yeah. I’m not doing any more chemo. I already saw my father spend years of his life fighting his disease. Dying little by little. I won’t go through that. And as far as the time between death and cryonization…well, I have a plan to make sure that they get to me quickly and start pumping blood right away.
Charles: How… How will you do that? I mean you would have to know the exact circumstances of your death.
Marc: Yeah. Um, I’m gonna make sure they’re waiting close by and that I’m in good physical shape when the time comes. I gotta die before the disease gets a hold of me.

Bingo: Suicide. That’s the bet. Abandon the present for what may or may not be a future.

[b]Marc [voiceover]: Ladies and gentlemen of the future, it’s time to introduce myself. I’ll use the same words as Dr. West. My name is Marc Jarvis, And I am the first man ever to be resurrected. To summarize, this is what I am. 20 percent remains of vital organs and tissue recovered from my old body. Mainly the brain and the rest of the central nervous system. 65 percent cloned bones muscle, skin, nerve endings, and other organ remains. 10 percent bionic implants to reinforce the muscular, skeletal system and sensory organs. And 5 percent internal technology designed to regulate and monitor the correct functioning of the organism. On top of that, add a system of external connection. A detachable umbilical cord. A nearly constant means of connecting me to my new mechanical mother. Dr. West and his team have had to face innumerable problems since my reanimation. and their respective solutions have been insufferable. More surgery. Organ removal. Induced coma. External control of vital signs. The administering of drugs to prevent adverse reaction. More drugs to ease the effects of those drugs. And so on, and so on, and so on. All this resulting in a terribly fragile organism. Permanently on the edge of collapse. The Laboratory Man. Frankenstein’s monster…But there is another way to look at it. I was going to die. I was going to disappear. Forever. And I’m alive again. I’m alive. I’m alive.

Dr. Gethers: Actually, Marc, there is something you’ve never seen before. Technology’s biggest revolution since computers. We call it MW or Mind Writer. If you connect it to your head, it can extract images and sounds. With concentration and practice, you can record your thoughts. Nowadays, MW is used for everything. This is where the information is recorded. Then later, it is used to substantiate anything that has occurred, or to present reports and projects. Or to simply share experiences and connect with people. Or see what they’re doing behind your back. It’s also used to create art. You were an artist, weren’t you?
Marc: Yes.
Doctor Gethers: Apart from anything else, it would help us to get to know you better. And not only us, very soon, many people will want to know first-hand, how you feel. We want you to have something ready when we present you to society to the media and to our investors.
Marc: The media?
Doctor Gethers: A lot of people have paid good money for your resurrection. It’s important that the world meets you, Marc.[/b]

Of course: the ulterior motives of the reanimaters.

[b]Marc: You got a boyfriend?
Elizabeth: I think our notion of couples is not as defined as it was back in your time.
Marc: What do you mean?
Elizabeth: Well, let’s just say that romantic love has come under a lot more scrutiny. You were truly slaves to it back then. We don’t suppress much of our love anymore.
Marc: So what do you do in your spare time?
Elizabeth: Um, well, since I started working here, not very much, um I’m a big fan of Mind Writer, almost an addict. I watch series, I have dinner with my parents. I meet with my sex group.
Marc: Sex group?
Elizabeth: I’m lucky, it’s very complete. And I’ve got good friends there. I like you. If you want, we can have sex some time. Well, later on, of course. When your body feels strong enough.

Marc [voiceover]: Life. What do we expect from it? Certainly not this fragility. This half speed existence. We definitely don’t expect a medical history full of afflictions and minor defects. A propensity for thrombosis. Numbness in the extremities. Involuntary movements. Loss of equilibrium. Scaling of the skin. Irritation of conjunctive tissue. Respiratory insufficiency. Cardiac insufficiency. Incontinence. Impotence. You don’t expect so many limitations so soon. You never expect this invincible fatigue which eventually becomes like a fog. Covering everything…And if deterioration, fatigue and despair do arrive, you at least expect to keep your memories. What if What if your memories were erased as well? What will become of me now that my memories are fading?

Dr. Serra: I don’t mean to trivialize this, Marc, but nowadays, memory loss is not considered a serious problem. Mind Writer allows us to recover memory with a 100 percent accuracy. In fact, millions of people all over the world lead completely normal lives without actually remembering anything.

Dr. West: Don’t you realize the importance of our achievement? It’s a giant step in the history of medicine. You’re that giant step, Marc. You’d better prepare yourself. You’re gonna be the most famous person on the planet.

Marc [voiceover]: I don’t know if any of you, maybe some of the oldest, have seen any films about Jesus Christ. I remember being struck once by Lazarus’ attitude in the first moments after he was revived by the Messiah. He looked deeply confused. Like he knew he was morally corrupt. As if he hated Jesus for bringing him back to life.

Dr. West: A large part of the success of your reanimation was due to the fact that you interrupted your life while still in very good physical shape. That’s why you were selected.
[he motions towards a room filled with tanks]
Dr. West: There they are. You spent a while here too, you know.
Marc: What will happen to them?
Dr. West: Well, it’s hard to say. Apart from the medical risks involved in each individual case, the time and resources required for reanimation are still quite high. Consider that we’d have to create organs and specific technology for each one of them. Like we did with you. And an enormous team of humans would have to be mobilized.
Marc: Then most of these people will never be reanimated?
Dr. West: Reviving cryonized people are so expensive at the moment that someone would have to have a special interest in them. And be willing to pay for it.[/b]

No getting around that. No matter how far into the future.

[b]Marc [voiceover]: What was it? Where did it come from? The need to constantly be seeking some unknown source of fulfillment. The hunger for experiences in life that always made me wanna be everywhere except where I actually was. Life seemed like it was always just around the corner. Or in some brief moment passed that only remained in memory. Never here. Never now. It was a promise always perceived intuitively.

Elizabeth: What about being straight with him? It might help him. You know, let’s explain to him that his neurons aren’t dying and his memories aren’t being erased for no reason. That we do know the cause. Let’s explain to him that he’s boycotting himself.
Dr. Serra: Elizabeth, even if Marc were able to understand, he wouldn’t be prepared to take control. And the process might even accelerate if you attempted to throw in the towel and give up altogether. That’s not the real issue here. Marc’s decision is what matters. He isn’t here by chance. He chose to stop living so he could have another life. Well, he certainly feels very guilty about Naomi. No wonder. He sacrificed a remarkable woman for an inadequate dream. Marc is an adult who made his own decisions and has to live with the consequences.

Elizabeth [to Marc]: The bosses gave me permission. We can have sex now. But softly. This pill is so you can maintain erection. And this is a desire stimulant. One for each of us. Everybody uses them. I always take them. They increase desire quickly and without side effects.

Marc [voiceover]: Before I died, I thought there was nothing after death. Now, I’m sure…Why do we yearn so desperately for life after death? What is it that we want? Perhaps reward for our grief. Or punishment for our sins. No. What we really expect to find is what we already know. What we once had…and lost. If there was something we would turn it into more of the same. The same chaos and the same beauty. The same reward for the same effort. The same tale by the same idiot.

Dr. West [to a gathering of potential donors]: Don’t worry, we won’t be asking you to take out your wallets. You’ll gladly hand them to us. Because the future of medicine is in our hands. Because immortality… is only a question of time.

Dr. West: Listen, not a single day goes by, not a single moment that I don’t remember those people. I recite their names to myself every morning. At first, I was so tortured by each failed reanimation, that it made me wanna quit the project. I’d prepared my resignation over and over again. But at the same time, each failed attempt brought us closer to our goal. Every time, it made more and more sense to try again. Did you think reanimating you would be the result of some miracle? The suffering of those people became a living hell for me. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I lost my family when they found out about it. But that was the risk I had to take to get as far as we have. To bring you back to life, Marc.

Dr. West: I have done everything I can to treat you and ease your pain, Marc. I can’t give you a better life than the one I already have. And you know what? Maybe that’s the part you can’t take. That the life I gave you isn’t the one you were expecting. You wanted paradise for a few thousand dollars, and I only gave you the life you already have, with all its defects and all its limitations.

Marc [voiceover]: Can a man be alive only in his mind? Live only based on memories?

Marc [voiceover]: Could I live in the past, going over and over it with Mind Writer, filling it in, polishing it, making things up, until it reaches perfection? I don’t know. There’s only one thing I can see clearly now. Life is nothing more than a state of matter, like a gas or a liquid, a form of molecular organization, and there’s nothing transcendent or divine about it. Its only objective is to perpetuate itself through motion, change, adaptation. Life isn’t worried about any species, much less any individual. We’re nothing more than the chunks of mud it uses as a vehicle. Life is what’s scary, not death. That it’s always on the verge of extinction. That it exists wherever it shouldn’t. And the soul, you may ask. What about the soul? Well, maybe the soul is the bit that gets lost when you freeze the meat and then thawed out again.

Marc: All I need is the name of the product and the necessary dosage.
Elizabeth: My job is to assist you in life, not to help you end it.

Marc [after drinking the poison]: Remember. Two calls. Yes. First the cyronics lab and one to 911. And cardiac…cardiac massage. Gently.
Naomi: Right.
Marc: Don’t wake me up again.

Marc [voiceover]: Poor Dr. West. Lazarus wants to return to obscurity. He was right. Just like I wasn’t ready to die, I wasn’t ready to live like this, either. Like most people from my time, I can’t accept anything less than the young, free and sensual world of the advertising Olympus I’d grown accustomed to. The frozen shop window existence. A heaven for skeptics. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the future… I hope this will help to clarify my final wish To be nothing again. To disappear. To finally rest in peace. Although, I have a suspicion. It’s possible that you might never see this recording. It’s possible that Prodigy Health Corporation, after investing so much into Project Lazarus, after putting so much time into me, might not permit this failure…[/b]

It’s a comedy, but one packed with just enough “social references” to make it a clear reflection on how bizarre and fucked up our post-modern hashtag world can be.

At least from the perspective of an “unhinged stalker”. And while Igby goes down to find this all out, Ingrid goes west.

Among other things, we discover what it means to be “Instagram-famous” in a world where pop culture, mass consumption and celebrities are now the new Gods. Think Frank Zappa’s “plastic people” on steroids.

Social media it’s called. Loved by some, loathed by others, it’s everywhere. Indeed, it might even be argued [by me for example] that any number of folks right here are hell-bent on turning ILP into just another rendition of it. Philosophy for the chattering masses. A gab fest for folks who [apparently] have nothing better to do.

It really does come down though to how seriously you take it. Some will completely ignore it of course while others will argue that to the extent we do ignore it, it just grows and grows and grows. And that this will certainly come to have ominous political implications. In Trumpworld, for instance.

Which is all basically ignored here. Well, unless you read between the lines.

IMDb

Bill Murray is listed in the Very Special Thanks section of the credits. In the commentary, Aubrey Plaza says that while she and Murray were filming A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, he gave her his dark blue sweater when she became ill. She wears it in the bank scene and the tropical restaurant scene.

wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Goes_West
trailer: youtu.be/xP4vD1tWbPU

INGRID GOES WEST [2017]
Written in part and directed by Matt Spicer

[b]Charlotte [voiceover]: Is this real? Hashtag no filter. The couple that yogas together, stays together. Prayer hands emoji. A perfect day for a perfect wedding. Hashtag perfect so glad I married this weirdo. Fluttering heart emoji. Getting the band back together. Hashtag all the line. Yup! That’s how we roll. Princess emoji. And the festivities begin. Twin hearts emoji. Fairy tale wedding. Hashtag about last night. Happy to be sharing this day with all my favorite humans. Hashtag blessed. The couple that yogas together stays together. A perfect day for a perfect wedding. Princess emoji. Yup! That’s how we roll. All my favorite humans. Hashtag blessed. Hashtag all the line. Hashtag about last night. Hashtag perfect. Fairy tale wedding. Hashtag blessed.

Ingrid [in a mental institution]: “Dear Charlotte, I want you to know how sorry I am about what happened. I think having this time apart has been really good for me. I’m learning how to be present… How to live in the moment…”

Ingrid: Do you take cash?
Dan: Are you an escort or something?
Ingrid: No.
Dan [looking into her bag filled with money]: Fuck! Are you a drug dealer?
Ingrid: No.
Dan: Okay, for real what you do? You got a backpack full of money. Suspicious.
Ingrid: Yeah, if you really wanna know, my mom just died and left me a bunch of money.

Waiter: What’s your biggest emotional wound?
Ingrid: What?
Waiter [pointing to a sing on the wall]: It’s our question of the day.
Ingrid: Oh.
Waiter: Mine’s actually my relationship with my dad.
Ingrid: I’m good, thanks.

Ezra: Maybe, you’re confusing her with one of your insta-fans.
Taylor: He’s just giving me shit because I happen to engage with people on social media like the rest of the known universe, and my husband has a chronic case of technophobia. He still uses a flip phone.
Ingrid: No!
Taylor: Yeah.
Exra: Stop. Stop. I just prefer to keep certain parts of my life, private. That’s it. That’s all.

Indrid [to Ezra]: Do you take cash?

Ingrid: Dan’s gonna kill me.
Taylor: Okay, you need to relax, it’s just a scratch. And I bet he won’t even notice it.[/b]

Cut to the “scratch”.

[b]Taylor: I’m sorry, I’m like, talking at you. You probably think I’m awful.
Ingrid: No. You’re perfect.
Taylor: Yeah, perfectly fucked up.
Ingrid: No. You are, by far the coolest, most interesting person I’ve ever met. I’m serious.

Dan: Is there anything else I need to know about Ingrid?
Ingrid: We might have done all of the cocaine that we found in the…

Ingrid: Can we please just start over and pretend it never happened?
Dan: Like a reboot?
Ingrid: Okay! Yes. Like a reboot.

Ingrid: Why do you like Batman so much?
Dan: What’s not to like about Batman?
Ingrid: I’m sorry, it’s just, i don’t understand. He’s just another superhero like spiderman or superman.
Dan: That’s where you are wrong. Batman is the world’s greatest detective. Nothing radioactive bit him. He’s not from another planet. He’s just like you or I. All Batman’s powers come from within him. He had enough will and enough focus to make himself greater than what he was.

Ingrid: Fuck me, Bruce. Fuck me, Bruce.
Dan: Tell me Gotham needs me.
Ingrid: Gotham needs you. Now.

Ingrid: Also, no Batman talk.
Dan What am I supposed to talk about? I don’t know these people.
Ingrid: Something cool, like food or clothes or Joan Didion.

Nicky: My sister says you’re obsessed with Batman.
Dan [awkwardly]: Yea-- yeah.
Nicky: Wow, get the fuck out! Oh, god, why didn’t you tell me? I fucking love Batman!!

Ingrid: You okay?
Ezra: I’m not an artist. I’m a fucking charlatan.
Ingrid: No, you’re not. Your paintings are awesome.
Ezra: You’re my only sale.
Ingrid: But Taylor said they were really popular.
Ezra: She would say that, wouldn’t she? Yeah. Everything’s the best, with her. “Have you been to this new restaurant? It’s the best!” “Have you tried these… These new clothes are the best!” “It’s the best! It’s the best! It’s the best!” It’s not the fucking best. It’s fucking exhausting.
Ingrid: You know what, I actually kind of know what you mean. When we were in Joshua tree, she told me this secret, and she told me not to tell anyone. But I walked in on her telling Harley the same, exact thing earlier.
Ezra: What secret?

Ingrid: Taylor has a plan to buy the house next door to you guys, and turn it into some hotel slash store. And she wants to call it “desert door.”
Ezra: Desert-- desert door?
Ingrid: Yeah. It’s a reference to her favorite book, you know, The Deer Park.
Ezra: The Deer Park is my favorite book. Taylor’s never even read it.

Nicky: You’re fucked. I’m gonna make a deal with you. I’m not gonna give you your phone back. But I’m willing to rent it out to you. For a very small fee.
Infrid: How much?
Nicky: Five thousand a month.

Ingrid ]to some kids in a parking lot]: Excuse me.
Kid: Yeah?
Ingrid: I’ll give one of you 200 bucks if you punch me in the face. I’m serious.

Taylor [on the phone to Ingrid]: Um, this is gonna sound weird, but have you heard from Nicky at all?

Ezra [on the phone]: Nicky told us everything about the phone, the kidnapping. If he hadn’t tried to blackmail you, you’d be in jail right now. You understand?
Ingrid: Ezra, wait.
Ezra: Don’t call here again.

Taylor [phone voice]: Hey. You’ve reached Taylor. Leave a message.
Ingrid: Hey, it’s me, again. Remember me, Ingrid? Ingrid, patron of the arts. Ingrid, with the truck. Ingrid, who saved your fucking dog’s life. The least you can do is pick up your fucking phone, you bitch!!

Ezra [on the phone]: Listen to me, you psycho. If you don’t stop this shit right fucking now I’m calling the fucking cops. Do you understand? It’s three in the fucking morning. Just leave us the fuck alone!!

Ingrid: Why are you acting like that? It’s just me, Ingrid.
Taylor: I’m sorry. Are you…are you actually insane? 'Cause you do know Nicky almost died because of you, right?
Ingrid: I thought we were friends. We had so much fun together.
Taylor: Oh, my god. Ingrid…we were never friends because everything about you is such a fucking lie. You just are some weird freak that found me on instagram. And that’s basically all this has been.
Ingrid: Everything about me is a lie.
Taylor: Okay, well…what?
Ingrid: Everything about you is a fucking lie. It is. Your brother is a drug addict. Your husband is an alcoholic who fucking hates you. And you pretend to be some cool L.A. chick, but you’re full of shit. Ezra told me everything. He told me that when you moved here, you were lame and basic, and you had no friends. You were just like me.

Taylor: You know what, Ingrid, um…I was, uh, actually never like you…because you are a sad and pathetic, and very sick person, and you need professional help.
Nicky: Game over.

Ingrid [making a suicide video]: Hey guys! It’s me, Ingrid. I’ve never done this before, but…I didn’t have anyone else to talk to so I figured, why not. I just wanted to tell you guys that basically everything I’ve posted in the last couple of months is a total lie. I haven’t been living, some like, glamorous life in L.A. I’m just…a loser. I’m pathetic. And I know there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t know how to fix it, and I don’t know how to change. And I just… Don’t think I can change. So maybe I’m just…maybe this is just who I am. And maybe I’m just tired of trying to make people like me. I’m tired of pretending like, someone I’m not. And I’m tired of being alone. And I’m just…just tired of being me so…I just…feel like… If you don’t have anyone to share anything with, then what’d the point of living? Yeah, so I guess I’m just making this video… So you guys can see the real me. At least once.[/b]

Then she swallows the pills.

[b]Dan [to Ingrid recovering in the hispital]: Your little suicide video went viral. Your face is all over the Internet. Look at them. Thousands, and thousands and thousands. You’re an inspiration, babe. You have a hashtag. “Feel better soon”. “Praying for your recovery” “You’re too good to do that to yourself” “I gotta tell you, you’re fucking beautiful” “you’re a hero”.

Ingrid [voiceover]: Hashtag I am Ingrid.[/b]

It again.

And, of course, it comes at night. So, it’s only a matter of imagining whether or not it can come out at night when you’re around.

Can you imagine yourself in a situation more or less like it?

Clearly, to the extent that you can, it becomes all the more frightening. And given the potential for catastrophic world wide epidemics that pop up in the news from time to time — ebola, sars, bird flu etc. – there’s really no telling what is down the pike.

The plot is familiar. A small group of people [a family in this case] are in full-fledge survival mode. Then out of the blue they have company. Outsiders. What to do? Not only do they now have the outbreak to deal with, but must come to terms with any and all of the changes that the new arrivals bring with them. Who to trust? What to believe?

And, of course, this: What is the right thing to do? A whole new world, a whole new perspective on virtue. The age-old dilemma in films of this sort: there’s what you want to do; there’s what you have to do. And then the part in which the reality you construct inside your head may or may not be in sync with whatever is in fact really going on. But, as we all know, our behaviors are invariably predicated on what we think we know is real. So, in the end, it often comes down to being able to demonstrate to others why they should think what you do. In other words, being right may or may not save the day.

So, what’s scariest of all can sometimes be not what you see, but what you don’t see. Or what you can’t see.

Lots of ambiguity here. What’s real? What’s not? Here is one attempt to explain it: youtube.com/watch?v=h1fkRM8D0-A

IMDb

[b]The painting featured in the movie at the beginning is titled “The Triumph of Death”.

The cast and crew of the film signed a non-disclosure agreement that forbids them ever revealing what “comes” at night.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Comes_at_Night
trailer: youtu.be/6YOYHCBQn9g

IT COMES AT NIGHT [2017]
Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults

Sarah: Can you hear me? Dad, can you hear me?
[Bud nods a weary yes]
Sarah: You don’t need to fight it. You can just let it all go. Everything’s okay.
[cue Sarah speaking with a mask on]
Sarah: I love you, dad. I do. I’m so sorry. Oh, god…

Is this “it”?

[b]Paul: He has to be involved…in everything from now on…everything. If he’s not, then we’re doing him a disservice.
Sarah: I don’t care, Paul…he’s 17. He shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have seen that.

Paul: He’s gonna be fine. Everything’s gonna be okay.
Sarah: You don’t honestly believe that? Do you?[/b]

We don’t.

Paul: I just wanna talk. And I want honest answers. If you give me honest answers, then this water yours. Understand? Why’d you break into my house?
Will [tied to a tree]: I promise…I promise you, I… I didn’t think anyone was in it. There’s no lights, and things boarded up. It looked abandoned from the outside.
Paul: What were you looking for?
Will: Water…supplies, anything. My family… I have a family… My wife and our boy in the woods.

And on and on: Trust him? Believe him?

[b]Paul: Do you have any idea what’s going on out there?
Will: No. As soon as people in the city started getting sick, we got out, got as far away as possible. If there’s a grid left, I don’t even know how to be on it.
Paul: So you’re out there driving 80 miles, and you didn’t see anything?
Will: No. We didn’t see anything or anyone.

Will: Look, look at my eyes. I’m telling you the truth. I never would’ve broken in like that if I thought the house was occupied, but I was desperate. I got no hard feelings at you. You did what you had to, you had to protect your family. But if you can spare some water for my family, i can trade for it. Got food.
Paul: How much?
Will: Got plenty to trade for.
Paul: I’m asking how much?
Will: Two goats, six chickens, and some canned food as well.
Paul: Are the animals healthy?
Will: Yes, sir. I promise you, if you need food, I have it. My family is all that matters to me. I know you can understand that. You’re a good person. You’re just trying to protect your family. But don’t let mine die cause of it. Help me, and I can help you.

Sarah: I think if he does have a family out there that we should consider bringing them back here.
Paul: That’s a big jump. Everything he said could be a lie.
Sarah: I know that.
Paul: I know that you want to believe him.
Sarah: Is that wrong?
Paul: We just gotta be smart about it, we can’t be emotional…
Sarah: I’m not being emotional. He knows where we live now. We can’t just let him go. The more people we have here, the better we can defend it. He found us, other people will too. They could bring the animals here. We wouldn’t have to just trade for them. It’s the smartest option.

Paul [to Sarah]: I’m not bringing anyone back here until I know they’re not sick. It took bud less than a day to show signs. I’ll wait there three to be certain. You be strong. Don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. And if I don’t come back…don’t come looking for me.

Paul: Good people, huh?
Travis: Yes…I like them here.
Paul: Just keep it in perspective, okay? I don’t need to tell you but…you can’t trust anyone but family. As good as they seem. Just don’t forget that, okay?
Travis: Yeah.

Paul: I think Will and I should be the only ones who go outside for a while. We don’t know what made Stanley sick, it coulda been an animal, another person, anything. Travis…you didn’t go inside the room before we got there, correct?
Travis: Positive.
Will: You just opened the door, you didn’t go in?
Travis: I didn’t touch the door.
Paul: What?
Travis: It was already open.
Sarah: The door was open when you got there?
Travis: Yeah.
Sarah: Then who opened the door?

Paul: Travis…come here. I just want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you’re…telling the truth. You didn’t touch the door?
Travis: No.
Paul: Okay, did you touch him? Andrew? Did you touch him?
Travis: Yeah, I mean…yeah. I held his hand and I…and I brought him to his room.
Paul: And you weren’t wearing gloves and mask, right?
Travis: I mean, dad…why would I wear them inside the house?

Paul: What’s going on?
Travis: It’s Andrew. I think he might be sick.
Paul: What? What are you talking about?
Travis: He was crying and I was listening in the attic. They said they need to leave.

Travis: What do you want to do?
Sarah: We don’t have many options.
Travis: What does that mean?
Sarah: If they want to leave, they’re gonna want to take our food and water.
Travis: No, why can’t we give them what’s fair, and take them back to the house they were at. Sarah: Where do you think they’re going if they run out?
Paul: You haven’t seen people when they get desperate.
Travis: They wouldn’t come back here and put us at risk like that.
Sarah: We don’t know that.
Travis: Come on!
Sarah: We don’t know these people. We don’t know if any of what they said is even true. This is the man that tried to break into our house.
Travis: Cause he was trying to get food and water for his family. Dad would’ve done the same thing. I don’t think we could take the chance. I don’t think we can risk it.
Travis: You don’t get it. If they’re sick…then I am too.

Will [pointing a gun at Paul who’s wearing a gas mask]: Why is your mask on? Nobody’s sick here. Take it off. Take the fucking mask off!!

Will: Listen, Paul, I’m sorry, okay? We appreciate everything that you’ve done, but we want to leave. We’re all packed up. I know how you are. But if you go near my wife or my kid, I’ll end your fuckin’ life. Listen…we just want what’s fair. We want enough food and enough water, then we’re gonna go, and you’re never gonna see us again.

Paul: Stop! I said stop!
[Paul shoots and kills Andrew]
Kim: No! My baby! My baby! Nooooo! You killed my baby! You wanna kill me? Kill me!
[Paul shoots and kills Kim]

Sarah [looking down at Travis who is clearly infected]: Oh, Travis. Travis, it’s okay, sweetie. You’re gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay…you can go. You can go.[/b]

I love Westword on HBO for it’s philosophy elements.

Imagine…

You are a doctor at a small clinic. One night the door bell rings. You decide not to see who it is. But the next day you find out the woman who rang the bell is found dead. Was she murdered? You feel guilty. You might have saved her life. You are now determined to find out all that you can about this woman.

In other words, something happens and things changes. Do one thing, one set of consequences, do something else and an entirely different set of consequences.

These things happen all the time to us. In contexts more or less dramatic. The dots get connected. But how much understanding of the relationships do we really have; and how much control do we have over them?

And then the question of identity. Who is this young woman? What happened to her? Why was she at the clinic? And then this: Will she be put in a box and buried in a potter’s field…without so much as a name to put on the marker?

We do know that she is an immigrant. And a sex worker.

And here the two worlds collide. The world of the caring and compassionate and civilized doctor and the world of what can only be described as the underbelly of society. And here we bump into any number of scumbags willing to exploit any number of desperate victims. You wonder if, as part of the civilized world yourself, you would go this far.

To make a difference as they say.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Girl
trailer: youtu.be/4TYCCPYdGTw

THE UNKNOWN GIRL [La Fille Inconnue] 2017
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

[b]Jenny [a young doctor]: I want you to learn one thing, just one. Learn to make a good diagnosis. If a patients suffering moves you, you make a bad one.
Julien [an intern]: I couldn’t help it.
Jenny: A good doctor has control over his emotions.

Jenny [after the intern turns in response to the door bell]: Don’t go, we’ve run over by an hour…Someone who comes this late doesn’t care how tired we are.
Julien: Maybe it was urgent.
Jenny: Then they’d have rung twice. Don’t let patients tire you, or you won’t make a proper diagnosis.

Jenny: Was it something serious?
Ben [police detective]: I woman was found dead by the river, near the building site.

Detective [after Jenny watches a video of an obviously frightened young black girl ringing the clinic buzzer and pounding on the door]: Do you recognize her?
Jenny: No…She’s so young.
Detective: What could have made her come back to ring the bell?
Jenny: Maybe the light from the waiting room.
Detective: We thought maybe she had been there before.

Jenny [to Julien]: I felt like you did when the bell rang. I wanted to open the door too…but I don’t know what happened. I stopped you from going just because you wanted to. To get the upper hand.[/b]

Yes, the complexities embedded in consequences.

[b]Doctor Habron [to Jenny]: You couldn’t know, but you should have let her in.

Jenny: I can’t accept the idea they’ll bury her with no name. No one will know it’s her in the ground. If I’d opened the door, she’d be alive, like me.
Doctor Habron: True, but then again you’re not the one who killed her.

Jenny [to Bryan]: Imagine your mother is found dead, far from here, without any ID on her. They’d bury her but couldn’t let anyone know. You’d never know. You’d keep waiting for her to come home…Had you seen that girl before?

Jenny: Trust me. I won’t tell any one.
Bryan: Not my mom or my dad?
Jenny: No one.
Bryan: I saw her. She was sucking off an old man in a camper van.

Mr. Lambert: I have nothing to say to you.
Jenny: Did your son tell you not to talk? I just want to know that girl’s name, nothing else. I swear I won’t tell anyone. I can keep a secret. I’m a doctor. I beg you, Mr. Lambert. I beg you. If you were in the van and she said something that might tell me her name.

Jenny: You can still change your mind. Remember your first day? You said you always dreamed of being a doctor.
Julien: When I saw that kid having his fit, shaking all over…I saw myself when my dad hit me. All I got from him was beatings. I wanted to be a doctor to treat him or to treat myself, I don’t know. Or to be a better doctor than ours who thought I bruised myself playing.

Father of Bryan: Yoy saw Bryan and hasseled him again about that girl. Please stop seeing him and talking to him.
Mother of Byran: His indigestion is back.
Jenny: I met him by chance. I wanted to see his friend.
Father: I told you he had nothing to do with it. We’re changing doctors as well.
Mother: I understand that girl is haunting you. As you said, you feel guilty. But you can’t make our son sick over it.

Jenny: Did you go back to check her?
Bryan’s father: No. I thought that she had just fainted…that she’d wake up.
Jenny: The autopsy says she didn’t die from impact, but from blood lost while unconscious.
Bryan’s father: You mean I let her die? Is that it? Who do you think I am?! Don’t look down at me! I can’t sleep because of that girl. She’s in my head all the time…If you’d opened your door, it would never have happened.
Jenny: She’s in my head all the time too.

Jenny: I won’t tell anyone. But you have to tell the police.
Bryan’s father: No. I can’t. Everyone will know. I’ll lose my job. I’ll go to jail. I’ll lose everything…Why would I ruin my life?
Jenny: Because she’s asking us to.
Bryan’s father: Who?
Jenny: The girl.
Bryan’s father: She doesn’t care. She’s dead.
Jenny: If she was dead, she wouldn’t be in our heads.

Cybercafe cashier [after a long pause]: Before going to the police I wanted to thank you for coming to the cybercafe and showing me the photo…the photo of my sister. Because you came, I felt ashamed and made up my mind. I was afraid my guy would put me back on the streets. He gave me a fake passport so the police wouldn’t know he made Felicie work. She wasn’t 18 yet.
Jenny: Her name was Felicie?
Cybercafe cashier: Yes. Felicie Koumba.[/b]

“Inspired by actual events”.

Then it depends on how far back you go. You can go all the way back to the white Europeans “discovering America” and then, over the course of the centuries, reconfiguring any number of “Native American” communities into reservations.

Then any number of conflicting political narratives will start in on grappling with the consequences of that.

On the other hand, there is always the intersection between this and the actual lives individual men and women go about forging in the course of sustaining themselves from day to day. What parts are embedded historically in the inevitable political baggage and what parts are really only your own damn fault?

And this is basically the party line embedded in the liberal and conservative narratives. Folks are either the victims of society and in need of our assistance or they are refusing to take responsibility for their own lives. Their own choices. Their own behaviors. It always seems to be either one or the other. And hardly ever a complex intertwining of both.

Here though the chararacters are portrayed as “fully developed human beings rather than as stereotypes.” And that does introduce complexity into the plot. And that introduces ambiguity. And then there’s the character embedded in the land itself. The reservation. What might be called the “outback” in other places. And It is far, far removed from what an FBI agent stationed in Las Vegas is used to.

Look for the chaos [and sometimes the utter confusion] entangled in “jurisdiction”.

IMDb

[b]During the course of the shoot, writer-director Taylor Sheridan was visited on set by some Shoshone tribal leaders who astonished him with the revelation that, at that very time, there were 12 unsolved murders of young women on a reservation of about 6,000 people. Due to a 1978 landmark government ruling (Oliphant v. Suquamish), the Supreme Court stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian land. If neither victim nor perpetrator are Indian, a county or state officer must make the arrest. If the perpetrator is non-Indian and the victim an enrolled member, only a federally-certified agent has that right. If the opposite is true, a tribal officer can make the arrest, but the case must still go to federal court. This quagmire creates a jurisdictional nightmare by choking up the legal process on reservations to such a degree, many criminals go unpunished indefinitely for serious crimes.

The quote that concludes the film (“While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.”) isn’t entirely true. There is one more demographic that the FBI has always refused to compile statistics for: missing children. [/b]

trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt5362988/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_(film
trailer: youtu.be/zN9PDOoLAfg

WIND RIVER [2017]
Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan

[b]Wilma: Don’t let Casey out of your sight on the Rez, okay?
Cory: Like I said, I’m gonna leave him with your folks while I scout.
Wilma: You know what I mean.
Cory: Yeah, I do. I won’t.

Cory: Put your hand upon his nose. Let him smell you and breath you. Let him know you. He will love you forever. Hey…so what do you think of that, son?
Casey: That was pretty cowboy, huh?
Cory: No, son. That was all Arapahoe.

Cory [to Dan his father in law]: That’s what the tracks say. Momma’s teaching her kits how to hunt. She’s teaching 'em on livestock. Momma just got her whole family killed.

Ben [to Cory of Jane]: See what they sent us?

Cory: She ran until she dropped…here. See the pool of blood where her face hit the snow? Now it gets twenty below here at night. So if you fill your lungs up with that cold air. When you’re running…it could freeze em up. Your lungs fill up with blood, you start coughing it up So…wherever she came from, she ran all the way here. Her lungs burst here. She curled up in that tree line drowned up in her own blood.
Jane: How far do you think someone can run barefoot out here?
Cory: Oh…I don’t know. How to gauge someone’s will to live…especially in these conditions? But I knew that girl. She was a fighter. So no matter how far you think she ran…I can guarantee you she ran farther.

Randy [the M.E.]: This is very prosecutable as a murder. Clearly she wouldn’t have been running through the snow if she hadn’t been attacked, but I can’t list the cause of death as a homicide.
Jane: And I can’t get an FBI team to the reservation unless it’s listed as a homicide. I’m not here to solve this. I’m here to obtain a cause of death and then send a team here that can.
Randy: Look, present the rape, present the assault and I’m sure…
Jane: Those aren’t under the jurisdiction of the FBI. Those fall to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Jane: I don’t mean to offend you. I’m trying to understand the dynamic here, Mr. Hanson.
Martin [father of the victim]: Why is it that whenever you people try to help us, you always insult us first, huh?

Cory [who had lost his own daughter]: I went to a grief seminar in Casper. You know that? The counselor came up to me after the seminar…sat down next to me. He said something that stuck with me. I don’t know of it’s what he said. Or it’s how he said it. He says, I got some good news and I got some bad news. The bad news is you’re never gonna be the same. You’ll never be whole. Not ever again. You lost your daughter. Nothing’s ever going to replace that. The good news is as soon as you accept that and let yourself suffer you’ll allow yourself to visit her in your mind. You remember all the love that she gave. All the joy she knew. The point is, Martin you can’t steer from the pain. If you do you’ll rob yourself. You’ll rob yourself of every memory of her. Every last one. From the first step to her last smile. You kill 'em all. Just take the pain, Martin. Do you hear me? You take it. It’s the only way to keep her with you.
Martin: I’m just tired, Cory. I’m just so tired of fighting this life.

Jane: Shouldn’t we wait for back up?
Ben: This isn’t the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you’re on your own.

Chip: She said “was”…what did she mean by was? What Did She Mean By Was. WHAT DID SHE MEAN BY WAS?!!
Cory: She means I found her raped and killed right over there, son.

Jane: The two we have in custody say anything?
Ben: They ain’t the talking kind, Jane. These kids…they expect to go to prison. Hell, I think they look forward to it. You know? Three hots, and a cot, and free cable? Anything is better then being here the way they see it.

Cory: I’m not going to stand here and tell you that life’s fair, 'cause it ain’t. To either of us. But you know, what do we go? This land is all we got left.
Chip: What is this “we” shit…? Only thing native about you is your ex-wife and a daughter you couldn’t protect.

Chip: You think this is who I wanted to be? I get so mad. I want to fight the whole world. You got any idea what’s that feel like.
Cory: I do. I decided to fight the feeling instead. Know why? Cause I figured the world would win.

Cory [to Chip]: You gonna lecture me about protecting people? While you deal the shit that’s killing em? Unlike most people, you had every chance to get the hell out if that’s what you wanted. You got the Army. You got College. Whatever is your choice. Look what you choose. Look what you chose. God damn you.

Cory [to Ben]: We don’t catch wolves looking at where they might be. You look where they’ve been. They’ve been right here.

Cory: That’s a picture of my daughter Emily. She passed three years ago.
Jane: I’m sorry.
Cory: You want to know how, don’t you?
Jane: I do, but…
Cory: Makes two of us.

Jane: Go get him.
Cory: I won’t bring him back. You have to know that.
Jane: I do. Go get him.

Cory: Do you know where we are?
Pete: No.
Cory: Gannet Peak. Highest mountain in Wyoming. On the hottest day in August, still there’s a foot of snow. Today, too cold to snow.

Pete [to Cory]: What the fuck? Where the fuck are my boots?!!

Cory: Hey, I need you to be honest with me, right? You get drunk, get lonely. Then what you get? You did it. Just be man and say it. Say, “I raped her.”
Pete: I raped her. I raped her…yeah!
Cory: Her boyfriend…when he got in your way did you beat him to death?
[Pete nods]
Cory: Look a nod’s not gonna cut it, ok? I need you to say it.
Pete: We beat him. We made him dead.
Cory: Okay. I’m gonna cut you lose. You’re free to go.

Cory: I’m a man of my word. You have told the truth. Let me give you a chance. Let me give you the same chance that she got.
Pete: What chance did she get?
Cory: If you can make it to that highway, you’re free man.
Pete: Where is the highway?
Cory: You know how far that drill camp was from where I found Natalie’s body? 6 miles, bare foot.

Jane: You saved my life.
Cory: No. Jane, you’re a tough woman. You saved your own life.
Jane: We both should be honest. I got lucky.
Cory: Ah. well, luck don’t live out here. Luck lives in the city. Don’t live out here. It lives whether you get hit by a bus or not. Whether your bank is robbed or not. Or someone’s on the damn cell phone when he comes up to a crosswalk. That’s luck. Out here you survive or you surrender. That’s determined by your strength and bare spirit. Wolves don’t kill the unlucky deer. They kill the weak ones. You fought for your life Jane. And now you get to walk away with it.

Cory: What’s with the paint?
Martin: It’s my death face.
Cory: Is that right? How would you know what that is?
Martin: I don’t. Just made it up.

Martin: I heard about what happened. I heard there’s one still missing.
Cory: No. No one’s missing.
Martin: How did he go out?
Cory: With a whimper.[/b]

Nothing new here. Tough guy loses his job. His marriage is shaky. He gets tangled up in the dope business. Something goes wrong. He ends up in prison. The prison is bursting at the seams with enemies. The cohorts of the enemies outside the prison kidnap his wife. He’s then forced to either do their bidding or she dies. Or so it seems.

Just don’t expect much more. It creates a world – a descent into hell – with characters that are larger then life. Caricatures some will call them. But it’s a world so far removed from the routines that most of us experience from day to day, it can’t help but fascinate us. Well, some of us. It’s then only a matter of wondering how far removed it is from “the real thing”.

Anyway, the bottom line in films of this sort generally revolves around your reaction to the tough guy. The so-called “anti-hero”. He either resonates with you or he doesn’t. You’re either plugging for him or you’re not. He either is or is not in possession of a “moral compass”. And, given that it received a 92% fresh rating on 75 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, he certainly resonated with most of the critics.

As one critic put it: “A grade-A piece of meathead cinema.”

It’s yet another peek into a world that revolves entirely around a set of rules. The rules convey a narrative that swallows whole all the rules that you once abided by in the “free world”. Everything is taken seriously. Do or die. And you are ever and always expected to abide by the convict code. As though it is not even be possible to imagine living any other way. Only here the lone wolf reconfigures all the rules.

In any event, your “identity” outside the walls simply dissolves into that which everyone around expects of you. Only [again] not so much here.

Bottom line: Once they get to Redleaf it is a totally improbable plot. And then in Cell Block 99 it is all but unbelievable. But only if that matters to you.

IMDb

[b]Vince Vaughn put on 15lbs of muscle and trained as a boxer for 3 months prior to walking on set. Vaughn himself stated that this made the fight choreography much easier to learn.

Upon first arriving at the prison, two separate prisoners make reference to a prison in Austria. They are most likely referring to Justice Center Leoben which has been recognized as one of the “nicest” prisons in the world due to its modern and luxurious architecture and furniture.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brawl_in_Cell_Block_99
trailer: youtu.be/7FnAhrJDTqs

BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 [2017]
Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler

[b]James: Bradley? You okay?
Bradley: South of okay, north of cancer.

Bradley: I’m gonna call Gil.
Lauren: You’re gonna be a drug dealer?
Bradley: No. I’m gonna drive packages for a friend.
Lauren: You said you would never work for Gil.
Bradley: So we’re both breaking promises today. I want us in a better home than this shithole. With kids and happy. I’m tired of getting the goddamn skim milk and hoping that luck brings out the cream, 'cause it won’t, not ever.[/b]

There’s a story behind that.

[b]Prostitute: Hey, Johnny rebel.
Bradley: Howdy.
Prostitute: You gonna give me a sample this time?
Bradley: Talk to your boss.
Prostitute: Come on. Let me earn it direct. I promise I can put a great big smile on each of those nuts.
Bradley: No, thanks. They don’t want anyone to see their braces.

Gil: How’d the transaction go?
Bradley: Never a problem with Cuz.
Gil: Yeah, I like that nigger. Or is it… is it “nigga” with an a at the end, when you’re saying it nice?
Bradley: Don’t think someone like you can say that word any way polite.

Bradley: Sounds like he brought amigos.
Gil: Mexicans ain’t comfortable being by themselves. You know how they grow up. Five to a bed. 10 beds per adobe.

Detective: Every once in a while, I see a man in that chair who could just as easily be on this side of the table, a man principled, who had a run of bad luck and just went the wrong way.
Bradley: I’m not gonna talk.

Detective: I know that this is your first offense, but you’re looking at four years, maybe five. Do you know that drug traffickers actually serve those sentences?
Bradley: I’m aware that the system is harder on guys that distribute drugs than it is on men who commit acts of violence against women and children. Do you think that’s fair?
Detective: You ever see a man with meth mouth? Hmm? You ever see the 14-year-old girl who’s addicted…
Bradley: I’m not gonna argue with you, Larry. I’m not gonna give you any info. I know what I did, and I know what the sentence is gonna be. It’s done.

Irving: Next.
Bradley: Bradley Thomas.
Irving: I recall…Well. That’s better. Best to remain civilized, Mr. Thomas. Even in a prison. Enjoy your stay.

Bradley [pounding on the wall]: Seven fucking years!

Bradley: Who are you?
Placid Man: Sit down, Mr. Thomas.
Bradley: Where’s Dr. Pelman?
Placid Man: Remain calm. If you call any attention to us, I will leave. And you will regret my departure for the rest of your life. Nod that you understand.
[Bradley nods]
Placid Man: My employer sends his regards.
Bradley: You work for Eleazar. Why are you here?
Placid Man: Your betrayal cost my employer $3.2 million. I’m here to settle that matter.
[he shows him a cell phone photo of his wife bound and gagged]
Placid Man: There is an abortionist from Korea. He works for my employer. He claims that he can clip the limbs of a fetus yet leave the child in such a condition that it will live to be born. This little operation will only happen if you don’t pay your debt to my employer.
Bradley: How?
Placid Man: There is a prisoner who my employer wants dead. He is serving a life sentence at the Redleaf Detention Center.
Bradley: I’m in the Fridge for seven years. How in the hell am I supposed to choke out some guy over in Redleaf?
Placid Man: Redleaf is maximum security. Show the staff here that you have to be transferred. [/b]

We know where this is going.

[b]Prison guard: Why the hell did you do this?
Bradley: Didn’t like my prison shoes.

Warden: Mr. Thomas. Look at me. The Redleaf Detention Center is classified as a maximum-security facility. But there’s another term I prefer…one that I think will give you a clearer picture. Minimum freedom. If you make trouble, your minimum freedom will get smaller. So small that it becomes microscopic. Do you understand?
Bradley: I do.
Warden: Put a “sir” on that.
Btadley: I do, sir.

Warden [Bradley]: The guards here aren’t like those faggots over there at the Fridge. You can test us if you want to. Prisoners are expensive, and we’re only too happy to help the state balance its budget by deploying some cheap lead.

Warden: Bad news, Mr. Thomas. Our examination room is under renovation. So you’re gonna have to strip out here. Wilson. Give Mr. Thomas a full cavity inspection.

Bradley: Who do they keep in Cell Block 99?
Derrick: Child molesters, rapists, guys with death sentences…psychotics.

Warden [to Bradley]: You just lost your minimum freedom. You’re going to 99.

Warden: I suspect that Amnesty International would frown upon the contents of this room. Cell block 99 is the prison within the prison. You will stay down here until you’re sorted out. Or carried out. Stand him up. For the next month, you’ll wear this. Turn it on. Each time you misbehave, you earn five points. Each point gets you one of these.
[Bradley is zapped with electricity]
Warden: You currently have 25 points. These shall be dispensed to you over the coming week. When you are eating, when you are sleeping, when you are pissing, and when you are shitting.

Lauren: Who’s there?
Placid Man: My employer has asked me to take a few more pictures.
Lauren: Is that him?
Placid Man: That’s the abortionist. He is here to perform a preliminary examination.
Lauren: No. You can’t. You can’t. This a baby girl you’re talking about.
Placid Man: It is lamentable that she didn’t have smarter parents.

Eleazar: Your heroics cost me $3.2 million, as well as my freedom for an undetermined period of time, and because of you, my sister is now a widow. Her husband was Pedro whom you shot in the back.
Bradley: Let my wife go. You and I can settle this however.

Eleazar [to his thugs]: Kill Mr. Thomas and I’ll double your wages.
Bradley: Have them kick in for your funeral.

Eleazar [on the cell phone]: If you do not hear from me in 10 minutes, commence the abortionist. If you have not heard from me within the hour, dismantle the mother and flush her down the toilet.

Bradley: Tell me your code or it’s the other leg.
Eleazar: 7-7-7.

Placid Man: What a mess…

Warden: What’s going on in there?
Bradley: I’m executing Eleazar…They say the head stays alive for a little while after it’s been cut off. I hope so.
Warden: Put your hands on your head and turn around.
Bradley: 78 days. [/b]

Two reactions:

1] would that it could be like this today
2] may it never be like that again

And look at Detroit today. Now that big chunks of the automobile industry [and heavy industry in general] has shifted manufacturing abroad, all the jobs that once afforded working class folks [with high school diplomas] access to unions and the middle class, are gone. And we know what has taken its place.

And yet in other respects things were far worse back then. At least for many in the black communities.

And in particular with respect to the police department. In other words, as bad as some folks think things are now, things were once considerably worse. Or so it certainly seems here.

Then between the protests on the street, the haggling behind the scenes [between the powers that be], the rioting and the looting, the line between the personal and the political gets increasingly blurred. And it is here that films of this sort tend to jump the shark. They can’t decide whether to focus in on the dramatic – historical – events unfolding all around them, or zoom in instead on the “personalities”.

And then, finally, there’s the part that revolves around that which the film depicts and that which actually occurred 50 years ago. It said to be a “dramatization” of the actual historical events. As one reviewer puts it: “I would give this movie a 10 as a propaganda piece, zero as a documentary…”

In other words, there is no way in hell that folks are not going to take out of this film what they first put into it: their own political prejudices.

IMDb

[b]Survivor Julie Hysell was on set throughout most of the shoot. Vietnam vet Robert Greene was still alive, but the producers couldn’t reach him.

Director Kathryn Bigelow was inspired to unearth this event by the Ferguson (MO) riots (Aug. 2014) where a black man was fatally shot by a white police officer.

The raid on the “Blind Pig” was due to pressure and repeated demands from black Baptist ministers, who hated blind pigs for drawing money to liquor and prostitution that should have gone into collection plates. The ministers urged the white mayor, Jerome Cavanaugh, to shut down the illegal clubs.

Once a proud Polish community, Hamtramck is now a Muslim one. The Poles have been replaced with Yemenis and Bangladeshis. Hamtramck now has the first Muslim-majority city council in the U.S.[/b]

trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt5390504/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_(film
trailer: youtu.be/LyAga-jz38Q

DETROIT [2017]
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

[b]Title card: The Great Migration set in motion before World War I would spur some 6 million African Americans to leave the cotton fields of the South for the lure of factory jobs and civil right in the North. After World War II, white Americans began their own migration to the suburbs, drawing money and jobs aways from increasingly segregated urban neighborhoods. By the 60’s, racial tensions had reached a boiling point. Rebellions erupted in Harlem, Philadelphia, Watts, and Newark. In Detroit, Aftrican Americans were restricted to a few overcrowded neighborhoods, patrolled by a mostly white police force known for its aggression. The promise of equal opportunity for all turned out to be an illusion. Change was inevitable. It was only a matter of how, and when.

Frank [black police detective]: They’re taking them out the front.
White cop: Shit…

White Cop: We had to use the front door.
Frank: Shit!
White Cop: Make it a public display.
Frank: I almost feel bad for them. We gotta get out of here. Quickly.

John Conyers: I know you’re angry. I’m angry, too. This city has problems, especially with the policemen. We have problems. However change doesn’t happen overnight. But change is coming. Let’s work together!
Protester: Nah! Bring Stokely Carmichael down here! We don’t wanna hear from your ass!
Conyers: Look here. This is what I need you to do! I need you to not mess up your own neighborhood. This is your home!
Protester: Yeah, burn it down!
Conyers: Burning it down is not the answer!

Newscaster: Here in Detroit, a city of war where snipers hide on rooftops, the violence continues. US Army paratroopers, National Guardsmen, state and local police are continuing the fight against a handful of snipers. On the city’s west side, a 150-block area is off-limits to everybody. This is no man’s land, an area of destruction and devastation.

Lyndon Johnson: There is no American right to loot stores or to burn buildings or to fire rifles from the rooftops. That is crime. And crime must be dealt with forcefully and swiftly, and certainly under law.

Protest leader [mocking LBJ]: LBJ tell you that, “Violence never accomplishes anything…my fellow Americans.” Don’t you see, the real problem with violence is that we have never been violent. We have been too nonviolent!

Newscaster: 1,100 National Guardsmen have been rushed into as many areas as they can cover, protecting police. Looters carry off thousands of dollars’ worth of goods with a gay sort of leisure. Many negro shop owners put up sign reading “Soul Brother” to avoid damage. But the fire bombers and looters are indiscriminate.

Detective: That guy you shot at didn’t make it home. Ambulance found him bleeding out under a car.
Krauss: Are we sure it’s the same guy?
Detective: He’s the only Virginia Park shooting today. You carry a shotgun, he had shotgun wounds. You wanna play ballistics?
Krauss: Jesus Christ, I’m sorry.
Detective: That’s it?
Krauss: What else?
Detective: You shot him in the back.
Krauss: Right. He was… He was running away from me. Where else do you want me to shoot?
Detective: My point was him being no threat to you.
Krauss: In hindsight, but I’m thinking…why is he running away from me…if all he did was steal some groceries? What if he killed somebody in that grocery store? He’s avoiding the police. What do you assume from that?
Detective: You don’t assume. If he had a weapon in his hand, that’s another story. We don’t shoot for robberies.
Krauss: Detective, you know it’s a war zone out there, right?
Detective: Yeah. 10th had to shut down.
Krauss: They’re destroying the city. We’re facilitating that with the message we send…which is that it’s okay, go ahead, burn down your houses, rob a store. It’s total chaos. And where does that lead us long term, Detective?
Detective: All right, kid. Thank you.
Patrolman: Anytime.
Detective: I’m recommending murder charges. You go back to work, wait to hear from the DA.
Patrolman: Yes, sir.
Detective: And kid…calm down out there.

White national guardsman: It’s good to have some quiet. We were at Black Bottom earlier today. We actually took sniper fire. Had one, right by here.
Melvin [black security guard]: Ain’t no snipers here, man. Just you and me and the people partying in that motel.
National guardsman: How long do you think this is gonna last?
National guardsman: Yeah, how long till these negros people quit? What do you think?
Melvin: How the hell am I supposed to know?

Krauss: What’s the deal with the girls?
Cop: I found them with the big nigger down the end.
Krauss: Same room? You find anything?
Cop: Nothing.

Krauss: I’m just gonna assume you’re all criminals. Because if we’re honest, you probably are. So let’s hear it. Let’s fucking hear it! Pray! Do it loud!

Lee: They’re gonna kill us, man.
Melvin: Why? You gonna be crazy?
Lee: They the ones that’s acting crazy. They lost their mind when they seen a couple white girls in a room with a black man.
Melvin: They’re lookin’ for a sniper, okay?
Lee: But Carl wasn’t no sniper, man.
Melvin: So if a guy goes for your gun, you gonna let him have it because he’s black? Come on!
Lee: A cop has a shotgun like yours, right? You hold that tight with two hands. How you even gonna try to take that?

Sergeant [from Michagan State Police]: What’s going on?
Cop: I gotta tell you, Detroit PD is going nuts in there.
Sergeant: What do you mean?
Cop: Looks like they’re terrorizing suspects, beating and so forth, trying to get a confession.
Sergeant: Well, that’s not correct, they got their civil rights.
Cop: That’s what I’m saying. Don’t look right to me.
Sergeant: All right. Let’s let them have the case. I don’t wanna get involved in any civil rights mix-up, you know? Let’s go.

White cop [to Karen and Julie]: Why you gotta fuck them, huh? What’s wrong with us?

Krauss: We’ve got all the time in the world. We are gonna get to the bottom of this. So think very carefully about how you answer our questions, or you’re gonna end up like your friends in the next room. How long you been pimpin’ out these young girls, huh? Destroying their bodies and minds.
Greene: I just met ‘em. I ain’t pimpin’. I just got back from the war.
Krauss: You’re a veteran?
Greene: Yes, sir.
Krauss: Fuckin’ stupid do you think I am? You wear army green, you try to be a fucking serviceman. We don’t need pimps in the army. Probably drove a fucking supply truck.
Greene: I was airborne.

Krauss: Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?
Karen: You’re the one checking out my tits.
Krauss: You’re having sex with niggers.
Karen: It’s 1967, asshole. Honestly.
Krauss: It doesn’t bother you? The Afro Sheen in their hair? The way it smells?
Karen: You’re on some trip.
Cop: You think you can come into my city and pimp out a bunch of young girls?
Greene: I said it wasn’t like that.
Krauss: I don’t care if you were in the army. I’ll drown all you pimps in the river until the city’s clean.

Demens: So that’s done.
Krauss: Good. Great job.
Demens: I didn’t think I could do it, but I did it. Boy, I feel funny.
Krauss: Yeah. It’s the right thing. He’ll talk now.
Demens: What do you mean?

Krauss: You shot him, Demens!
Demens: Yeah, I got him.
Krauss: Jesus Christ, Marty. We weren’t actually shooting the other guys. We’re playing with them.
Demens: What do you mean? Playing. Playing what?
Krauss: A game. A game to get them to talk, scare the shit out of 'em. Interrogation tactics. Fuck.

Krauss [to Demens]: Listen to me. Oh, fuck. He grabbed your gun, all right, and you warned him, okay? And you were forced to shoot him, okay? Line of duty. Get your fucking story straight. Oh, fuck. Hey, get your head straight. I’m serious.

Detective: You need to think real hard. You need to answer me.
Melvin: All due respect, I am telling the truth. I’m not lying. I told you what I saw. I saw these kids…the police shot them.
Detective: Melvin. We’re here to help you, okay?
Melvin: Yes, sir.
Detective: Melvin, do you wanna go home?
Melvin: Yeah.
Detective: Can we let him think about it?
Detective: Yeah. You think about it, okay, Melvin?

Krause: Remember what I told you, and this whole thing’s gonna blow over. All right? You did nothing wrong.
Demems: I think I gotta say somethin’.
Krauss: Hey. You made…Demens. Something that took one minute should not define your entire life. You understand? You made a mistake. You say what you need to say, and you move on. That’s how you get out of this thing. All right?
Demens: All right.

Newscaster: During the week of rioting in Detroit, three negros were shot to death in a motel room. Police and the Guardsmen had raided the motel, searching for snipers. Later, witnesses to the shootings said the three negros had been lined up and shot in cold blood by the officers. Today, two police officers were arrested and charged with the murders of two of the negros shot in the motel. The officers, one with two years’ service, the other with four and with no previous misconduct charges, were ordered held without bail. They pleaded not guilty. Their attorney said the arrests were a shame and a pity.

Newscaster: In the Algiers Motel case, both the prosecution and the defense in their opening statements reminded the all-white jury of the racial violence that seared Detroit two summers ago.

Defense lawyer: Have you ever had trouble with the law?
Lee: I’m not on trial here.
Defense lawyer: No need to introduce a new crime, sir. Just the ones already known. Or maybe you can start by telling us, how did the night begin? Party? A few drinks?
Lee: Man, why? Why y’all talking about me at all? Man, y’all see a black man in court and assume I’m the one on trial. Man, they killed my friends, man! They beat us! Lined us up and abused us and y’all doing the same thing! There’s no justice here, man. Go fuck yourself.

Judge: These policemen were owed an obligation. Advising them that they had a right to remain silent, they had a right to counsel, and that anything they said could be used against them in a court of law. I don’t think these defendants, because they’re police officers, have any right to expect anything more from us, but they have a right under the Constitution not to settle for anything less. I therefore rule the statements inadmissible.

Krauss: Wasn’t that just a load of bullshit.
Melvin: You know as well I do, those kids shouldn’t have been killed like that.
Krauss: Yeah. It’s a shame. Should’ve complied with a lawful order, and relinquish their weapons. But you’re a solid guy though. Really.

Judge: Has the jury reached a verdict in this matter, with regard to the charges of murder in the first degree and assault?
Head juror: We have, Your Honor. On the assault, not guilty. As to the murder charges, not guilty.

Title card: The facts around the murders at the Algiers Motel on July 25th, 1967 were never conclusively established in a criminal proceeding. As a result, portions of this film were constructed and dramatized based on recollections of the participants and available documents.[/b]