Corrida (Estonia, 1982)

Synopsis

Osvald and Rita, a successful academician with his young wife and former secretary go to live away from city sprawl on a small island and enjoy their idyllic marriage.

Suddenly, a young man Tarmo appears from the sea.

Rita suggests from the outset that he's her ex, and the handsome Tarmo begins to capture her fancy, much to Osvald's chagrin.

The ensuing bad seas trap the three on the island, and both Tarmo and Osvald and Rita are aware of the situation between the three.

Constrained in one place, Tarmo and Osvald become in time more acquainted with one another: Tarmo shows that he's familiar with Osvald's work, but also critical; while Osvald realises that Tarmo is intelligent, he does not let Tarmo know this, and chooses to taunt him back.

Still harboring feelings for Rita, and believing that Osvald stole her from him, Tarmo encourages Rita to bring out her youthful streak in order to woo her to his side.

Rita's is only able to interpret Tarmo's encouragement of youthfulness in one way, but begins instead to let out her primal self, which turns for the worse.

Alone with Osvald, Tarmo lets slip that Rita has a child from before their marriage, and confides further that he doesn't know if he wants to raise another man's child.

Rita's deteriorating conduct has turned her restless, then uncontrollable, cruel and indifferent.

Tarmo sees that Rita is unable to handle herself in a critical situation, and realizes that she's not intelligent enough to do so in the first place, and therefore not really worthy of his attention.

Having made up his mind, Tarmo leaves the island.

(In the interim, Tarmo and Osvald appear to have resolved their dispute, as Osvald is more willing to put up with the restless Rita than Tarmo, who, as a young man, has more choices before him.)

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The Great Gatsby and critique of the rich

This was a reply to a slightly-unrelated IMDb reply post, which eventually transformed into something resembling a review.

I see the the critique of the old money in almost every part of the film in the portrayal of the vile, overbearing racist of Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), and the evident misplacement of evil and wrong betwix him and the kind Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio). — In which Gatsby was not inherently evil, but ran a 'wrong' business; whereas Tom ran the 'right' business, and was almost the manifestation of evil.

The main point of the critique shows through in the latter part of the film in the hotel room conflict between Tom and Gatsby. The criticism of the rich need not necessarily be told to the viewer outright, but subtly shown through a series of events and decisions of each participant.

Vertigo. Review. Analysis.

Reaction and reply to this IMDb post
Agree about the time capsule effect; pity they didn't show the trolleybuses.

I just saw the movie a few hours ago and thought it this way:

Judy Barton somehow decides to start dating Scottie, afraid that Scottie — having recognized Barton — has already put all the pieces of the puzzle together, while in fact he has yet not. This probably hints to the less sophisticated background of both, despite Scottie being a detective and Judy being part of an elaborate plan.

Were the actor playing Scottie different than John Ferguson, who was 49 at the time, the interpretation of the film could have been different, too. — Such that if the actor were much younger and more handsome, it would have been much more plausible to believe Judy's claims of loving Scottie in the final scenes of the movie. This also applies to the relationship between Midge and Scottie, where in some scenes Midge plays the mother figure.

Hitchcock was therefore correct to complain about mis/casting an older guy, despite 'early retirement' at 49 (going on 50) still sounding about right in 1958.

Midge is clearly smarter than Scottie and knows what Scottie is looking for in a woman (a mother-like figure, that is). Scottie hasn't so far taken the bait from Midge, and it is likely that he innately knows that she knows what he wants and so would feel uncomfortable to progress from friendship to something else, as Midge's play would feel unauthentic just because she knows and that Scottie knows that she knows.

The other reason could be that Midge is far too independent; Scottie wants to dominate, but knows that Midge wouldn't let him. Scottie is also old-fashioned, as he doesn't know much about women's wear.

This is when Scottie, after meeting "Madeleine", sees in her exactly what he wants to see: a young and pretty woman with the look and mannerisms of a lady, reasonably independent, but apparently subservient on an interpersonal level. Here we see how Scottie exercises his right to dominate by saving "Madeleine" from drowning, by taking care of her, and so on.

Scottie has become completely obsessed with Judy/"Madeleine".

As Judy and Scottie keep on dating, Judy realizes that Scottie doesn't know about the ruse and lets her guard loose. She chooses to be with Scottie with designs for a better life with him (We see from Judy's family photos that she seems to be from modest surroundings in the state she grew up in).

Maybe she'd thought that Scottie, almost 50 and still not married yet, might be gay and is perhaps looking for a beard. This is alluded to in "Madeleine"'s question about why he hasn't been married yet.

At the time of the ruse, Judy as "Madeleine" was willing to appear subservient, as she was instructed to be like that by Elster. Scottie falls for it.

I remember Elster at the beginning of the movie had no intention to go and wanted to stay with his enterprise. In the scene where Judy has walked up the stairs of the church tower and Elster throws his real wife down, Judy screams and Elster realizes that this could give away the charade, which causes him (uncharacteristically) to part ways with the city and his company as soon as possible. Scottie only attributes this to Elster's grief.

Once Judy has fulfilled her role as "Madeleine", she doesn't need to appear subservient and we get to see a decidedly more independent Judy than Scottie ever thought. It's hinted about when she decides to leave Scottie's home on her own, instead of letting Scottie bring her to Elster.

The masks start falling when Scottie demands Judy to be more like Madeleine and Judy thinks that Scotty is on to something; and while she plays along out of fear of discovery, she is also pushing back, because Scottie 'doth protest too much.'

The masks fall futher after the detective in Scottie has realized that Judy was in on the charade and when Scottie takes Judy to the murder site.

Several scenes follow where Scottie is overly dominant with Judy, short of being violent. It shows why Scottie is unable to have steady relationships with women, and how this is the real reason for his being unmarried.

Scottie forcibly takes Judy up the tower while overcoming his fear of heights, tells all to Judy and forces her to confess. Judy, trying to save herself both from the situation and to tame the much too overbearing Scottie, expresses the words of love to him, but is startled by the nun, who I think was there all along, who heard everything and only used the excuse of having heard voices to appear as if she just arrived.

Whether Judy was startled or felt no other way than to fall to her death is a matter of debate.

The reason why I think the nun heard everything was because after Judy fell to her death, the nun started pulling the bell ropes and so ringing the bell right away. — A person who just woke up usually takes some time to wholly wake up, so I understood that the nun was completely alert by the time Judy's confession escaped her lips.

The ending is left a bit open, because Scottie could be implicated in Judy's death. His saving grace is the nun, who apparently heard everything... but chose not to reveal this.

Or, if the nun really heard "some sounds," and only witnessed Judy fall down, then Scottie would be in a difficult position. Scottie would think that the nun would tell and would want for the nun to be silent. The old and wise nun probably knows this, too (by way of having observed Scottie's mannerisms with Judy), and rings the bells as soon as possible to make sure Scottie doesn't get any chance to impove his position on account of another person's life.

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In a later post, I added this:
I remember the "gay old bohemian days" phrase was uttered by Midge's librarian friend.

If we allow ourselves to assume that Scottie might be gay, then the librarian friend somehow recognizes this in Scottie, but Scottie dismisses it, because he doesn't know it yet himself. We might see it when Judy (perhaps still as "Madeleine") and Scottie stroll in a park full of young people being together and cuddling. I then saw a cut to Scottie and Judy, where Judy seems to wistfully look at the young people with want, but Scottie appears conflicted — almost wanting to be there, too, but restraining himself.

Then what I forgot to add to my original writeup is this point:

While Judy is actually more independent and despite that still willing to be with Scottie for various reasons, then by very the end of the film she sees her decision backfire, as Scottie becomes more dominant. By the time Judy actually realizes this and starts pushing back, it's too late to break free, as Scottie is almost violent and takes Judy out of the car to the church tower.

Scottie's demands on Judy to be like "Madeleine" is an exercize of a series of warning signs, which Judy doesn't recognize.

So, if the actor playing Scottie were younger, I'd more readily believe Judy's love for Scottie, while with the current version of her "love" might more than anything be for reasons of fear.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The need to be loved.

This was in reply to a comment on IMDb. I posted it here first, because forums on IMDb sometimes tend to be cleaned up from threads.

I'd assume the makers of androids managed to gather and digitize some amount of brainwaves from humans, which data were then either constricted, or made free within certain baseline contexts (such as love, as in the case of David, or only a simulation of it, as it was with Gigolo Joe).

What you might be asking for is either the level of self-awareness of androids, or the extent to which their programming was free enough to be unpredictable in their actions to explore that self-awareness.

The movie offers what I see to be a dichotomy between the unique David's apparently self-serving and self-aware purpose of [wanting to be] "a real boy, so Mother can love me", that of needing to be loved; and the other less self-aware androids' selfless purpose of service to others. And how all this correlates with the human condition, which can vacillate around variations of these options: Most (well, nearly all) of us want to be loved, but what is the extent of service we are willing to give to others?

The story reveals that several androids became increasingly self-aware and were through various misshaps (intentional or otherwise) forced to become "free agents", but the hardware and programming of the less fortunate ones was limited; imagine people from the autistic spectrum, where their social skills are to some extent or other known to be less adaptive.

Here, Gigolo Joe was one of the few lucky ones to be not just self-aware but also reasonably adaptive. While David was all those things more by an order of magnitude, then the differentiator between David and Joe were experience, skills (both social and practical), heritage, and purpose. What held Joe back were heritage and somewhat constricted social skills which gave him so easily away; while David was aided by the 'more human' fortune of being in these respects a clean slate, and importantly, having an existential and non-materialistic purpose towards the person he related to.

David's primary uniqueness stood in having a (self-aware) purpose, wherein he was not aware of the fact that his being was there to satisfy a very similar (if not exactly the same) human desire — out of which happiness could ultimately be derived. Whereas Gigolo Joe knew precisely what women wanted, and even what would happen to humanity in the longer term.

The juxtaposition of the two shows the differences in how they sought to derive happiness from others. Incidentally, the happiness that either were wired to seek was also different.

While thinking more of it, the future androids in their evolution seemed to have found that very fine balance of satisfying the needs of one (David) and the many, without putting said needs into conflict with one another. This would follow how the early androids' relation to others, despite their being hardwired for service to others, was more, well, binary.

What was lacking in androids, both past and future, was consciousness, or how we humans understand it. Suppose the evolved androids finally managed to reach a level of primary consciousness, but not the subconsciousness, as some cosmological lore has it that in humans this is connected to upper densities of existence. (Not that real-life academics would take seriously or even corroborate, so you can consider it as crackpot science. I might as well add that religion often falls into that same place.)

That is why human consciousness was envied by future androids, so they needed David.

Revolution OS

Film review

Ahh, the good times :-)

This film was made during the dot-com boom, and, per release information on IMDb, first screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2001.

Only in its end titles does the film show the first casualties of the dot.com crash (a second release of the film was in 2002), so this documentary really well reflects the spirit of the times, just as the original series of "Star Trek" was the best science fiction in 1960's.

Despite its shortcomings of appearing propaganda-like (see some of the more balanced IMDb reviews) and not the most stellar music editing, I still kinda like the documentary, as it was filmed during a time when life seemed really nice: The dot com crash had yet to happen, and 9/11 hadn't happened yet... And so the times were quite a bit more hopeful than in the years that followed.

Alas, many of the companies mentioned aren't there anymore: VA Linux, Cygnus, Netscape, and many-many others. Not long after, Corel stopped making Linux. Sun Microsystems was purchased by Oracle. Red Hat is still here, but it's not exactly in the desktop business. Netscape itself was purchased by AOL, and subsumed into it, and then not much is left of it. Netscape's move to open-source its Communicator suite (which included the Navigator browser) was indeed pivotal, as it laid the ground for Mozilla and eventually Firefox.

Nobody at the time saw the emergence of Google. Or that the principles of this freedom would lead to Lawrence Lessing to found the Creative Commons movement, which gave additional impetus to found Wikipedia. Incredible.

I somehow failed to notice at the time how even the modern men's haircuts and hair styles were different back then, short of being less astute. I guess since these styles were ubiquitous, then nobody really noticed S:)