What’s it about?
After an overdose, a young man named George Orr is told to report to “voluntary therapy” with a dream specialist named Haber. The overdose was an attempt by Orr to self-medicate and to eliminate all of his dreams, since whatever he dreams becomes true as soon as he wakes up. Haber at first doesn’t believe the story, but after placing Orr in hypnotic sleep and suggesting a couple dreams to him, he starts to believe as well.
Haber doesn’t want to cure the condition, however. Instead, he wants to use Orr to improve the world -- suggesting dreams to him where the weather is sunnier, where overpopulation is solved, where there is no war, where racism doesn’t exist, and so on. But as Haber’s requests become more ambitious, the unintended consequences of the changes to the world become more horrific. And soon the continued existence of humanity is in doubt.
Is it any good?
Back in the days when I used to read a lot of contemporary science-fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin was one of my least favorite writers. I used to groan every time I saw her name on the cover of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine -- I knew I would read her story, and I knew I would hate it. Of course, that was many years ago when I was a teenager, and my tastes have changed considerably since then. I haven’t read Le Guin lately though, so I don’t know what I would think about her now.
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is of course one of Le Guin’s most well-known and popular novels. This made-for-TV adaptation from 1979 was produced by the American public television network PBS, and despite being a low budget job with no name actors, it’s pretty riveting nonetheless. No matter what I might think about Le Guin’s writing, it’s certain that her ideas are very interesting.
In a lot of ways, the premise of the story is almost exactly like all those old fairy tales of wish-granting genies and leprechauns and talking fish. Every time Haber tells Orr to dream a new “improvement” for the world, it’s obvious that things are gong to go wrong. But instead of a malicious genie twisting words to create an ironic punishment, it’s presumably Orr’s subconscious that solves overpopulation by unleashing a plague on the world or that solves racism by making everyone a uniform grey color. (It’s probably noteworthy that Haber doesn’t consider the second result a flaw -- he in fact praises Orr for finally getting it right.)
It’s always tempting in these stories to think that we can do better than the stupid protagonists who don’t know how to phrase a wish properly. I’m no more immune to that temptation than anybody else -- several times during the movie I wanted to point out the obvious omission that would result in unintended disaster. But THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is not entirely -- or even mostly -- about word games. How can you solve overpopulation without eliminating a lot of people, after all? Presumably you could raise new continents or make deserts habitable, but such huge geological changes would have even more unintended consequences than simply killing off six billion individuals of one species.
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is really about what exactly constitutes a problem. Are overpopulation and war and racism really problems that need to be solved? Or are they simply conditions that need to be endured? Can they even be solved without changing something fundamental about the world or mankind? The movie doesn’t necessarily give any answers -- nobody makes a speech at the end about anything and there isn’t a final wish that makes everything perfect. Instead, the movie just invites the viewer to think about things differently. Given that any human “solution” to any “problem” would be imperfect and unequitable, are there some conditions that we’d be better off just accepting and living with?
I don’t want to say much more about the particulars of the story, since this is a very good movie and I would definitely recommend it. The picture quality of the DVD I watched is pretty bad in some places, but that’s apparently the result of the original materials all being lost and only secondhand tapes remaining. (It’s never unwatchably bad though.) This is also a low budget production, so some of the special effects are distracting. Others are obviously cheap but still extremely effective. Considering that the end of the movie features an alien invasion apparently portrayed by a single alien costume, it comes off surprisingly well.
There is some suggestion in the movie that Orr’s dreams may have the ability to change reality because everything -- all of “reality” -- is in fact a dream that he is having as he dies. There is only a hint of this, however, and after raising the possibility the movie moves on without really returning to it. I think it’s a pretty intriguing explanation, and makes perfect sense with the mechanics of how Orr’s reality-changing abilities work. But naturally, it would be pretty depressing if that were the “official” explanation, so I don’t mind that it’s seemingly not what is supposed to be happening.
Showing posts with label wish fulfilment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wish fulfilment. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
1979: STALKER
What’s it about?
A recently released ex-con, a writer, and a scientist meet in a grimy, run-down town planning to penetrate a forbidden area nearby called “the Zone”. This Zone is purportedly an area of great danger that was cordoned off after a meteor impact. Inside, there supposedly exists a room that has the power to grant the innermost wish of anyone who visits it, but the dangers of the Zone are so great that it is virtually impossible to reach except with the guidance of a “stalker”.
The ex-convict is just such a stalker -- and, in fact, he has seemingly been in prison for violating the cordon around the Zone. He leads the other two past the police patrols and into the Zone, which appears to be a decaying wasteland full of human detritus overgrown with plants and mired in vast bogs. Once inside, the stalker emphasizes the arbitrary nature of the Zone, claiming it is full of shifting traps and that a single wrong step can result in death. As they approach the wish-granting room, the appearance of weapons in the possession of the men become a point of contention and threaten the continued existence of the wish-granting room.
Is it any good?
I’ve never heard a kind word about STALKER, except perhaps that it looks nice -- which is a comment that people make when they want to damn a movie with faint praise. (“What did you think of the picture?” “Oh, the cinematography was nice...”) The biggest complaint is that STALKER is boring, and it’s not especially easy to refute that charge. It was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, after all, and his SOLYARIS (1972) is also well-known for creeping into the final frontier at a glacier’s pace.
But frankly, I can’t say that I was ever actually bored by STALKER -- at least not until the very end. I did select a slow and slightly hungover morning for my viewing since I expected a meditative pace, but I don’t think my indulgent mood was entirely responsible for the fact that I actually liked this flick a lot. But if you plan to watch it, I would still recommend going in with an expectation that you might be bored.
The beginning of the movie follows the stalker (he never has a name) as he prepares for his journey into the Zone. At this point, we know nothing about what the Zone is -- only that the stalker’s wife is on the point of despair when she discovers that he wants to return. I can’t even recall when exactly the idea of the wish-granting room is introduced. At first, the motivations of the other characters seem predictable -- the scientist seems to want to research the Zone and the writer claims he is seeking “inspiration”. But eventually it becomes clear that their real motivation is to seek help in the form of granted wishes.
The beginning of the movie is shot in high contrast black and white. I don’t usually talk about this kind of film school stuff, but the shots are also very long in duration and have very deep focus. Those three things combined give them an artificial quality, as though you’re looking at a moving miniature diorama rather than actual locations. I actually thought at first that the live-action film may have been combined with animation or miniature photography to get some of the effect, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The look of these black and white sections is so striking that it’s almost a shame when the movie switches to color when the three men enter the Zone. It's kind of a reverse of the WIZARD OF OZ (1939) effect -- the black and white sections are actually more distinctive and more visually striking than anything in the color sections.
I’m not going to try to convince anybody who thinks otherwise that STALKER is exciting, but at the very least I hope that we can all agree the beginning is pretty engrossing. The scenes of the stalker and his wife and the stalker and his two clients very naturalistically relay information about the Zone and the intentions of the characters. The three men then begin the long process of evading the patrols that are supposed to keep the curious out of the Zone. There’s not much action or violence here, but the infiltration is clearly fraught with danger and is plenty suspenseful.
It is true that we never learn very much about the characters themselves. I wouldn’t exactly say that they are archetypes since they do have their own idiosyncracies, but for the most part they are ciphers. The characters rarely talk about themselves -- instead, they talk about each other, repeating rumors or taking stabs at psychoanalyzing each others’ motives and histories. They clearly don’t like each other that much, and the two clients obviously resent the stalker’s role as their leader and the way he asks them to put themselves in harm’s way to advance their progress.
This dynamic is probably my favorite thing about the movie and is what sustained my interest during the long still sections where nothing is actually happening. At the beginning -- when the dangers are familiar things like guards and guns -- the three men seem more willing to work together to stay alive. As they progress further into the Zone, however, the lack of obvious threats allows the clients to openly question the authority of the stalker. At one point they are a mere 200 yards from the wish-granting room, but the stalker insists that they must take a long and arduous detour despite the absence of any visible threat whatsoever.
In fact, there is some suggestion that the stalker is either inventing the stories of danger himself or that he is simply following a ritual that he has been taught by others. Despite the many times when the stalker explains that they are coming to a very dangerous part of the journey, nothing sinister ever happens. Even when the clients disobey the stalker (for instance, when the professor returns for a knapsack he left behind, or when the writer pushes on ahead in a wrong direction instead of waiting for the others) they don’t appear to suffer any ill effects. The stalker simply says they were lucky, or that the Zone has allowed them to break the rules.
This is not to say that nothing out of the ordinary happens. At one point, they pass by rocks that are glowing red with some kind of energy. Likewise, they are interrupted by a ringing telephone deep within the Zone where nothing should work. And a chamber close to the wish-granting room is full of odd, unexplained hummocks of dirt. To be sure, none of these things are proof that what the stalker says is true. But they are odd enough to keep the possibility alive, and both of the clients seem to largely accept the stalker’s version of reality in the end.
I’m a big fan of movies about interpersonal dynamics of groups under stress or individuals in conflict who have no outside authority to rely on, which is probably why I enjoyed myself with this one. The conflicts that arise in STALKER all seem plausible and realistic to me -- and, in some ways, the stress of the situation is only exacerbated by the absence of visible threats. It’s no wonder the clients begin to chafe under seemingly dictatorial thumb of the stalker. And yet, if there’s nothing to fear, then what should it matter who goes first in the long creepy tunnel? Likewise, if you don't believe in the threats, then how can you justify believing in the wish granting room? If you're in the mood to meditate on questions like these, STALKER sets up a lot of them but never answers any.
In any event, I enjoyed myself watching STALKER -- though it does slow down a bit at the very end when even minor characters (like the stalker’s wife) are given a chance to explain themselves at length. The final scene -- in which the stalker’s daughter apparently moves objects with her mind -- also seems to have no bearing on the rest of the movie, except as an unequivocal demonstration that perhaps something weird did happen after all.
A recently released ex-con, a writer, and a scientist meet in a grimy, run-down town planning to penetrate a forbidden area nearby called “the Zone”. This Zone is purportedly an area of great danger that was cordoned off after a meteor impact. Inside, there supposedly exists a room that has the power to grant the innermost wish of anyone who visits it, but the dangers of the Zone are so great that it is virtually impossible to reach except with the guidance of a “stalker”.
The ex-convict is just such a stalker -- and, in fact, he has seemingly been in prison for violating the cordon around the Zone. He leads the other two past the police patrols and into the Zone, which appears to be a decaying wasteland full of human detritus overgrown with plants and mired in vast bogs. Once inside, the stalker emphasizes the arbitrary nature of the Zone, claiming it is full of shifting traps and that a single wrong step can result in death. As they approach the wish-granting room, the appearance of weapons in the possession of the men become a point of contention and threaten the continued existence of the wish-granting room.
Is it any good?
I’ve never heard a kind word about STALKER, except perhaps that it looks nice -- which is a comment that people make when they want to damn a movie with faint praise. (“What did you think of the picture?” “Oh, the cinematography was nice...”) The biggest complaint is that STALKER is boring, and it’s not especially easy to refute that charge. It was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, after all, and his SOLYARIS (1972) is also well-known for creeping into the final frontier at a glacier’s pace.
But frankly, I can’t say that I was ever actually bored by STALKER -- at least not until the very end. I did select a slow and slightly hungover morning for my viewing since I expected a meditative pace, but I don’t think my indulgent mood was entirely responsible for the fact that I actually liked this flick a lot. But if you plan to watch it, I would still recommend going in with an expectation that you might be bored.
The beginning of the movie follows the stalker (he never has a name) as he prepares for his journey into the Zone. At this point, we know nothing about what the Zone is -- only that the stalker’s wife is on the point of despair when she discovers that he wants to return. I can’t even recall when exactly the idea of the wish-granting room is introduced. At first, the motivations of the other characters seem predictable -- the scientist seems to want to research the Zone and the writer claims he is seeking “inspiration”. But eventually it becomes clear that their real motivation is to seek help in the form of granted wishes.
The beginning of the movie is shot in high contrast black and white. I don’t usually talk about this kind of film school stuff, but the shots are also very long in duration and have very deep focus. Those three things combined give them an artificial quality, as though you’re looking at a moving miniature diorama rather than actual locations. I actually thought at first that the live-action film may have been combined with animation or miniature photography to get some of the effect, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The look of these black and white sections is so striking that it’s almost a shame when the movie switches to color when the three men enter the Zone. It's kind of a reverse of the WIZARD OF OZ (1939) effect -- the black and white sections are actually more distinctive and more visually striking than anything in the color sections.
I’m not going to try to convince anybody who thinks otherwise that STALKER is exciting, but at the very least I hope that we can all agree the beginning is pretty engrossing. The scenes of the stalker and his wife and the stalker and his two clients very naturalistically relay information about the Zone and the intentions of the characters. The three men then begin the long process of evading the patrols that are supposed to keep the curious out of the Zone. There’s not much action or violence here, but the infiltration is clearly fraught with danger and is plenty suspenseful.
It is true that we never learn very much about the characters themselves. I wouldn’t exactly say that they are archetypes since they do have their own idiosyncracies, but for the most part they are ciphers. The characters rarely talk about themselves -- instead, they talk about each other, repeating rumors or taking stabs at psychoanalyzing each others’ motives and histories. They clearly don’t like each other that much, and the two clients obviously resent the stalker’s role as their leader and the way he asks them to put themselves in harm’s way to advance their progress.
This dynamic is probably my favorite thing about the movie and is what sustained my interest during the long still sections where nothing is actually happening. At the beginning -- when the dangers are familiar things like guards and guns -- the three men seem more willing to work together to stay alive. As they progress further into the Zone, however, the lack of obvious threats allows the clients to openly question the authority of the stalker. At one point they are a mere 200 yards from the wish-granting room, but the stalker insists that they must take a long and arduous detour despite the absence of any visible threat whatsoever.
In fact, there is some suggestion that the stalker is either inventing the stories of danger himself or that he is simply following a ritual that he has been taught by others. Despite the many times when the stalker explains that they are coming to a very dangerous part of the journey, nothing sinister ever happens. Even when the clients disobey the stalker (for instance, when the professor returns for a knapsack he left behind, or when the writer pushes on ahead in a wrong direction instead of waiting for the others) they don’t appear to suffer any ill effects. The stalker simply says they were lucky, or that the Zone has allowed them to break the rules.
This is not to say that nothing out of the ordinary happens. At one point, they pass by rocks that are glowing red with some kind of energy. Likewise, they are interrupted by a ringing telephone deep within the Zone where nothing should work. And a chamber close to the wish-granting room is full of odd, unexplained hummocks of dirt. To be sure, none of these things are proof that what the stalker says is true. But they are odd enough to keep the possibility alive, and both of the clients seem to largely accept the stalker’s version of reality in the end.
I’m a big fan of movies about interpersonal dynamics of groups under stress or individuals in conflict who have no outside authority to rely on, which is probably why I enjoyed myself with this one. The conflicts that arise in STALKER all seem plausible and realistic to me -- and, in some ways, the stress of the situation is only exacerbated by the absence of visible threats. It’s no wonder the clients begin to chafe under seemingly dictatorial thumb of the stalker. And yet, if there’s nothing to fear, then what should it matter who goes first in the long creepy tunnel? Likewise, if you don't believe in the threats, then how can you justify believing in the wish granting room? If you're in the mood to meditate on questions like these, STALKER sets up a lot of them but never answers any.
In any event, I enjoyed myself watching STALKER -- though it does slow down a bit at the very end when even minor characters (like the stalker’s wife) are given a chance to explain themselves at length. The final scene -- in which the stalker’s daughter apparently moves objects with her mind -- also seems to have no bearing on the rest of the movie, except as an unequivocal demonstration that perhaps something weird did happen after all.
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