Revolver

Guy Ritchie’s 2005 Revolver is the third crime film genre to focus on professional criminals but instead of focusing in the typically East End of London like his previous films; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. All three starring Jason Statham. With Revolver Ritchie takes us on different path of the crime film genre in a philosophical view focusing on the concept of a revenge seeking confidence trick but centring on the Human Ego. Revolver is pretty well known for being a love it or hate it film but in my personal opinion it’s a film for a very VERY narrow audience. Though the films genre is crime film after watching and re-watching and analysing it in several different views I honest feel Revolver is a fantastic interpretation of the two philosophers theory’s; Friedrich Nietzsche’s Superior man also known as The Superman and Sigmund Freud’s Ego and the Id. Using these philosophers and their ideas it is fantastic example of how Jason Statham (Jake Green) transforms Ray Liotta the anti-protagonist (Dorothy Macha) from a superior being to nothing.

Friedrich Nietzsche believes when we are born we are genetically subjected to becoming superior; that the idea of wishing success for other people rather than your own is a lie, every person has the need of becoming the greatest and seeing others in pain gives us slight joy and seeing pity is a sign of weakness. That men and woman should have their own moral values and decide how to live their own life. The constant thrive of overcoming ourselves and that every person should become a "ubermensch” meaning a superior being or superman. That a God did once exists but now is dead and now we are the Gods. To become a God a man or woman has to discover the perfect form of themselves and they must fight to achieve this and only in this journey of inner perfection and self-righteousness that we can truly become the masters of the universe.

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on” Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power 1910

Sigmund Freud’s “Ego and the Id” tells us that subconsciously we tell ourselves to forget and this is our ego’s way of coping with past or present traumas. I’d like to think that subconsciously we see our ego as a protector. That our ego shows no bounds that to point blame is our ego’s way of protecting ourselves. Our ego cannot comprehend that there is something greater than our own values, which is why people will do whatever it takes to protect our own interest. So to protect our ego the ego itself will create an external enemy for us to blame and in doing this actually creating a real enemy. No matter what that thought in your mind says your ego will always have someone to blame.

“The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id."
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 1932 

One of the most powerful scenes in Revolver is when Macha faces Green right after Green finally sees his on internal enemy known as the ego and finally kills his ego freeing him. But as the lift doors open we see a very distraught Macha pointing a gun at Green. However even though Macha has a gun and can kill Green at any moment his presentation of what he is wearing is that he is just simply naked. A symbol of being half naked or completely naked is vulnerability despite the fact holding a gun which is a fantastic juxtaposition of power. In the end Jack Green and the audience no longer fear Macha completely destroying his ego. From the transformation of a big time corrupt casino boss to a man crying and whimpering constantly “Fear Me” is one of the most beautifully constructed transformation to a villains defeat.

 

The Road

Staring Viggo Mortensen simply known as the father and his son Kodi Smit-McPhee. John Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic drama is a film adaptation of Prize-winning novel of the same name by author Cormac McCarthy. The Road is a brilliant dark melancholic vision of a dying or perhaps already dead planet Earth, a world slowly becoming inhabitable for; plants, vegetation, farm stock and even human life. The father and son journey through an unforgiving world of a population of few that has driven them to lawlessness and cannibalism. Hillcoat not only brilliantly captures the dying planet through stunning cinematography of beautiful landscapes that truly does juxtaposition of the term beautiful being that the landscapes in the entire film is dying that sets the melancholic mood of a dark gloomy grey skies and the atmosphere filled with dust and ash.

We never truly discover how the planet became a ravaged landscape of; falling trees, burning fields that fill the air with ash and the blue skies and white clouds are replaced with a depressing grey sky with smoke. All that we know the father and son are in between the lines of a dying planet and the cannibalistic rednecks that only seem to only prolong their deaths. The only thing we know that the two are heading to warmer south unknowing what truly awaits them there. The only glimpse of their past we see is the memory of the father in a series of flashback that seem to haunt him.  A time just after the devastation revealing that the man had a wife and his son was born months just as civilisation collapsed. Years went by and his wife became ever so disconnected and living in a world knowing her days were numbered she eventually committed suicide, leaving the father and son to fend for themselves.  

The Road is truly one of my favourite post-apocalyptic films out there today. Its dark vision, melancholic atmosphere and performance of the father and son are incredibly powerful. The journey the father and son take shows us how utterly hopeless this journey down south is and yet they still press on. Armed with only a pistol with two bullets, the clothes they’re wearing and a shopping trolley with the few scavenged food they find. The close the encounter of the cannibals always leads to the father pointing the gun at his son sparing him from possible rape and torture makes the film excruciatingly tense to watch. Hillcoat truly does capture the journey of the father and son not through focusing on the world and how it became so shattered but rather focusing on the voyage of survival and how day by day they try to reach their hopeless destination.

The Truman Show

 

The Truman Show is one of the most captivating films to watch and to analyse. In my opinion also it should be recognised as one of the most expensive art films rather than typically labelled as a comedy, drama and Sci-Fi. At the first Andrew Niccol’s The Truman Show the film was foreseen as too dark and that the director Peter Weir and other producers wanted the film to be seen as more as comedy. Niccol’s vision for Truman’s life and journey was that it wasn’t meant to be a funny. For someone to say that The Truman Show is great comedy is just utterly rubbish and in all honestly it should be taken out of the comedy genre. The Truman Show isn’t a depressing film but somewhat a journey into self-discovery and discovery of knowledge of beyond Truman’s hometown Seahaven.

 

Seahaven is a utopia dedicated to cater under Truman. Everything in this domain is designed to perfection and is a fine representation of the perfect world. However in this perfect world there is no escape. All the actors, product placements, weather and buildings are all placed there for a specific reason. To help create the illusion of a place we all wish to live in. But knowing from an external point of view we see The Truman Show only as a reality TV show and we only see the real world when they are watching the show. We have no knowledge where these people come from, who the president is or even what year it is.  The only world we the viewers and the people watching the Truman Show are always focused on is Seahaven. When we watch films we know what city there in from the iconic shots such as; Big Ben is London, The Ethel Tower is Paris and the White House is Washington DC. But Seahaven is a fantasy utopia, so how do we straight away feel that we want to live in Seahaven without even knowing where the hell it is. It’s the symbolism implanted in our heads that lure us into this world. The Picket Fence’s we see are the symbolism of the American Dream. This is seen in other films such as both of Sam Mendes Revolutionary Road, American Beauty or David Lynch Blue Velvet.  The picket fence is the symbol of the middle class suburban life; A life of family, peace and beauty. From an external point this is implanted to make us feel at ease however internally there is more to see from the naked eye. Within this perfect American Dream it is actually a lie within itself.

The utopia surrounding Truman is an entire world revolving around his life to capture every human emotion and behaviour. Putting him in situation we’re rest of the world will see how he will act. In this giant dome it is not the world but the universe revolves around him. Christof is not only just the director of the Truman Show but he’s architect that laid down the path of Truman’s life. He is the creator of the utopia Seahaven and he alone decides what lies ahead of Truman.  “I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life. The world, the place you live in, is the sick place. The entire dome is at the hands of Christof and that he has all control and all power of not just Truman but the crew and the actors. Christof tells the crew what and what not to film and tells the actors word by word what to say. If we look at this in a religious view he is God and I wouldn’t say Truman is the son of God but rather representing the beginning of human kind; Adam and Eve. One can even say that Truman represents Adam and Eve. Just like them they were given knowledge. The name Lucifer comes from the Latin word for 'light-bearer'. In a parallel theory between the two stories one can when Truman finally discovered the truth that this world is actually a lie and he wants to escape Christof tries to stop his creation from escaping. The last scene when Truman is just about to leave the world and Christof is looking down on Truman is another fantastic example of another Religious analogy with Moses and God in the Book of Moses. 

 

8mm

8mm is one of the most underrated and fascinating Joel Schumacher’s films, a journey of a Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) who not only delves into the world of snuff films but takes us into a voyage of human sexual obsession. The films core structure is a mystery thriller about a discovery of 8mm snuff film of a young girl being brutally beaten and killed in a recently deceased wealthy and powerful mogul safe. The widow wanting to know the truth of her deceased husband’s film is a fake or real she hires Welles. But as Welles digs deeper and deeper into the film Welles road now takes him into the underworld of illegal pornography.

What I enjoyed most about 8mm was visually seeing the character development and journey of Tom Welles. 8mm is a fantastic film to show Welles character arc. As the story slowly unfolds and as he explores deeper into the underworld of illegal pornography, we begin to see the human dark obsessions and fantasies that some of us so desires. With Welles character we see a transformation of a respectable family man journeying so deep into this film that he himself becomes part of it.