Tonight's movie at CSUN was cancelled. Professor Tim sent out an email this afternoon, explaining that he had a pressing matter to attend to. He said it was unrelated to the current troubles involving the Cinematheque, and that he will try to reschedule the film we were going to see. I hope he can reschedule it. I am really enjoying these films by Andrzej Wajda.
I watched a movie at home instead : "Passengers" (2016), a modern CGI decorated sci-fi, where everything looks ultra slick and futuristic, but you can't tell if the sets are real or if they are computer generated.
I am generally not a fan of this kind of science fiction movie, simply because I don't like computer generated images. They don't look real, and after a while, all movies that use CGI tend to blend together. All the effects look the same and thus interchangeable from movie to movie.
Having said that, "Passengers" was not bad, because it had a lot of heart.
Humble hunk Chris Pratt is a "passenger" in hibernation aboard a serpentine, pretzel-like spaceship, bound for some planet waaay out in the boondocks. Earth has become overcrowded, etc. The standard explanation. There are 5000 people on this ship, all in a state of suspended animation. They are asleep in their pods because the trip to this planet takes 120 years. But there is a malfunction that causes Pratt's pod to open prematurely. He wakes up to find himself alone in his wakefulness, and worse - the ship is still 90 years away from it's destination.
What is he gonna do? He is the only one awake (i.e. alive) on the spaceship, and he will die of old age before the ship reaches the new Home Planet. In the meantime he will live his life in solitary confinement in the cold, sterile environment of the ship. He has no human contact. His only conversations are with the various robots on board, in particular an android bartender played by the excellent Michael Sheen, whose calm, understanding but programmed "personality" provides Pratt with some solace, for a while. But after a year of being alone, he starts going crazy.
Pratt is a mechanic by trade, though, and after finding some tools and maintenance manuals in one of the crew quarters, he figures out how to operate many of the systems on the ship. One thing he figures out is how the hibernation pods work. He discovers how to open them, which would begin the process of reawakening whomever was inside.
He is so hungry for human contact and companionship that he begins to contemplate the notion of waking another passenger up without their consent, which they cannot give. He swears to himself, and to Arthur the android bartender, that he will never actually do this, because it would condemn the newly awakened passenger to the same fate he must endure : to live out their life inside the empty spaceship and then die of old age. Pratt tells himself he must never do this to anyone.
But he has discovered Jennifer Lawrence asleep inside one of the pods, and so......
Of course he awakens her, after much deliberation. Then he keeps it a secret, allowing her to believe that her pod malfunctioned just as his did earlier. The secret becomes the turning point for the plot, but only for a little while, because Pratt and Lawrence wind up having bigger fish to fry. The ship begins to break down electronically, and from there the human connection between the two of them becomes more important than ever.
If you take away the space ship and all of the CGI, most of the movie is a dialogue between the two lead actors, a lot of philosophy about life and doing what makes you happy. About the fate of two people who found each other (even though she does not yet know the secret). It's a love story, because without that factor the movie would not have worked. The surroundings are too sterile. But because of the casting choices of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, it does work, albeit with a less than fully satisfying finale.
Still, I give it a Thumbs Up - keeping in mind the type of movie it is, a modern CGI computer-looking film - and I give it the Thumbs Up because of the exploration in the dialogue of the effects of loneliness on a human being, and the consequences that result when a person, out of loneliness, makes a captive out of another person, but in this case the captive becomes a partner.
There are all kinds of moral issues going on here, but because they are set against the background of empty space and an exploding spaceship, it is a little hard to give them the weight they would deserve in a story of more Earthly concerns. See "The Strawberry Blonde" which I reviewed the other night, for example, a complicated love story set in 1890s America here on Earth, and compare it to "Passengers" which is really just a love story set in the future against a sci-fi background.
For me, the old style works better. But all in all, for this type of film, "Passengers" was pretty good, mostly because of the acting and the philosophy. ////
Elizabeth, I hope your screening went well tonight. I'll bet it did! I am gonna guess that the theater was sold out, and that you got a good reponse too, so post any news that you have. Congratulations in advance! :)
I am back at Pearl's and back in work mode.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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