Reviews

Reviewed by Mitchell Rhodes Non-Spoiler, Spoiler Alert Cloud Atlas makes spoiler alerts redundant. There is nothing that I, or anyone else for that matter, can write to spoil the plot. Does God or karmic flow have a plot? You don't watch Cloud Atlas, as much as you witness it. So the more you assume the role of a non-judgmental god or perhaps karmic flow itself, the better this film will play. Getting quickly to a place where temporal composition holds little meaning and where and all phenomena can be view as one thing, the better.

It may take ten, or so, minutes to adjust to the unusual structure, genres changes and spiritual dialectic of the film. At least it did for me. There are quick edits between six different story lines, each with it's own genre that occur in different timelines. The genres and timelines line up like this: historical narrative (1849), romance (1936), mystery/action (1973), comedy (2012), sci-fi thriller (2144) and post-apocalyptic (2321-2346).

If that doesn't cause sufficient confusion, then having the same actors play different characters in each of the story/time lines, while representing the same reincarnated 'soul' character or karmic flow, just might.

Once you've settled into the role of universal witness, the film's other elements will emerge with greater efficacy. And there is a $h*t load of them to try and follow. It's as if the writer and then directors took everything that holds some meaning and controversy and jammed it into the film. Does this make the film too ambitious? As god-witnesses, no, as human beings, sitting in a theatre munching on popcorn and sipping sugary drinks, perhaps.

Admittedly there are at least a dozen ways to slice this film into themed categories. If forced to do so, I'd unpack the film this way: spiritual/philosophical, contemporary, reflective. And yet, no matter which way the film is broadly analyzed there is a plethora of specific elements that emerge. And with only one screening under my belt, I'm confident I've missed most of them. No doubt there are many others waiting to be discovered upon subsequent screenings.

Spiritual/Philosophical Elements Concepts from the "Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying" play strong throughout this film. The character, Somni-451, says, "As one door closes another one opens." This is true not only in life, but also in death. If you don't recognize certain truths as an opportunity for change and progress you are relegated to repeat the same mistakes (as certain 'soul' characters do over and over).

If Universalism exists at all, it exists within the context of love and justice. This axiom runs as an undercurrent throughout the film.

Allain Badou, the French contemporary philosopher, puts forth the idea of an Event—a breakthrough or rupture in the phenomenal realm. Events that are strong enough in both cause and effect sow the seeds for revolution. We witness such an Event in the Korean story/time line set in 2144.

"Your life is not your own, your life belongs to others." This line from the film puts forward the Lacanian psychoanalytic concept of the big Other and the role that language has in creating the symbolic order. In the story/time line set far in the future—language has transformed into some hybrid. It's difficult for English speaking viewers to fully understand the dialogue in this sequence. And that's the point here—to reveal and experience the role that linguistics plays on our relationship to the symbolic order. Especially in our understanding of how it's only possible to develop meaning in relationship with others.

The words of American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, might be used to sum up the entire spiritual/philosophical elements of the film: "Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we are saved by love." Amen.

Contemporary Elements Issues such as ethics, the stranglehold that Big Oil has on society, the consequences of greed and consumerism in the context of unfettered capitalism and the dangers associated with cloning and by extension GMO foods will be easily recognizable, in the film, by anyone who pays even the slightest bit of attention to current events.

In the 1973 the story/time line, we discover that a nuclear disaster was covertly perpetrated by the oil industry. Done so in order to create fear, toward nuclear power, among the citizens of the world and keep them committed and dependent on fossil fuels for meeting their energy needs. Might this be a not-so-hidden reference to Fukushima? Reflective Elements Cloud Atlas engulfs us in benefits of spirituality while explicitly presenting the dangers of our capitalistic dogma—presenting quite clearly what might unfold, in the future, by holding such values. And yet, each of us paid over $12 to see the film while the studio, producers, writer, and directors all desire for the film to make tens, if of not hundreds, of millions of dollars in profit.

On a Meta level, what message do we inherently take up from this? Capitalism's pervasiveness and its resiliency to bring everything into its fold—spirituality, revolution, war, peace, hate, love? After all, there are profits to be made in each one of those things.

Would you kill yourself? For a Looper this is not a theoretical question nor is it a consideration of suicide. Rather, it's a decision that comes with the job. Will you kill your future self? If a Looper chooses to answer no, there are dire consequences, both personally and for the integrity of the causal relationship between the past, present and future. For audiences, the central question of the film might provide deeper contemplation: Would you kill your future self? And then by extension: Are we already doing so? Abe, the crime boss sent from the future says, "This time-travel $*** fries your brain like an egg." Indeed! The pretzel logic of time-travel plays a key role in the various plot twists.

In 2044, in an unnamed city in Kansas, there are skyscrapers as high as NYC, motorbikes that fly and cars that appear retrofitted to run on something other than gasoline. The transactional currency of choice: silver and gold bullion.

Organized crime controls the city, which is filled with poor, desperate people. There are also rich junkies who get their narcotic fix by putting a few droplets into their eyes. Such people protect themselves, and their property, from the hordes of vagrant poor by shooting them, apparently without consequence.

This fictionalized version of the future might give pause and allow other thoughts and questions to surface. What might the consequences of our actions, in current reality, be on our future? In 2074 time-travel has been invented and outlawed. The mafia uses it to send their marks into the past to be executed by Loopers. Organized crime has been mysteriously and single handedly consolidated, on a worldwide scale, by someone called, Rainmaker. And the order has been given to "close the loop" by sending all Loopers back in time to be killed by their past selves.

Joe, a Looper, is the main character of the film. His future self, old Joe is sent back, thirty years from 2074, to be assassinated by his younger self. However, old Joe out foxes the younger Joe and escapes. This puts the integrity of the timeline in jeopardy and the rules are clear on this. If old Joe isn't found and killed, then Joe must be killed and his silver confiscated.

In Rainmaker's attempt to close the loop on old Joe, his henchman kill old Joe's wife, the love of his life. To keep his peaceful, serene and cherished lifestyle, in rural China, in tact, old Joe plans to return to 2044 and kill the Rainmaker, who, at this time, is a child.

Old Joe has information narrowing the Rainmaker to one of three boys. When the Joes finally meet face-to-face, the older one tries to convince his younger self that killing the boy Rainmaker is a necessity. As Abe's posse closes in, old Joe provides Joe with information as to the whereabouts of one of the boys—escaping, again, to take care of the other two.

In each of the scenes where old Joe murders the young boys, the audience gasps in horror. Might these gasps also represent the horror upon realizing the consequences of our own current actions? Things we do everyday without consideration that these actions have on the lives of children around the world. Like old Joe, our prime importance is to preserve our cherished and comfortable lifestyle.

By 2044 some humans have developed telekinesis, the ability to move small objects with the mind. The information that Joe has been given leads him to a boy that possesses an evolutionary leap in these abilities. When this young boy gets frightened or angry, in the wake of his uncontrolled telekinesis, people might accidentally be killed.

The young boy believes that his mother died in such an incident and that the woman whom he calls Sara only pretends to be his mother. Sara is actually his mother but abandoned her son by giving her newborn to her sister so that she could continue to live in the city and work as Looper call girl. When her sister died, Sara came home to the farm to raise her son.

For a short while, Joe ends up living with Sara and her son on the farm and comes to know their story. He doesn't buy into old Joe's plan. In fact quite the opposite, he becomes their protectorate. This sets up a showdown, completing the loop, so to speak.

The payoff is at once surprising and satisfying and delivers a deeper message.

By 2074, the Rainmaker has gained control of his abilities. It's his childhood experiences that enable him to unleash terror onto the world without a guilty conscious. Might the young boy, and future Rainmaker, represent all the world's frightened and angry children? Might his telekinesis represent our ever-expanding technology? Frightened and angry children become frightened and angry adults while, at the same time, possessing technology with vast destructive capabilities.

Such perspectives give deeper meaning to Looper's ending. There are actions to be taken that try and preserve a comfortable future, for us personally, while disregarding the wider consequences for the collective—actions of old Joe. There are actions that attempt to provide a better future for all the children of the world, which potentially avoids creating a future Rainmakers. Such actions might require the annihilation of our present way of being in the world, represented in the film by Joe's actions to close the loop.

Looper provides an opportunity to understand, and to reflect upon, the direct causal relationship between the past, present and our role in creating the future. The choices that we make and the actions that we take, presently, even without time-travel, inherently turns each one of us into a Looper. Will you kill your future self? Are you already doing so?

Take This Waltz Written and Directed by Sarah Polley Staring: Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby and Sarah Silverman

Reviewed by: Mitchell Rhodes

Take This Waltz debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011, and I've been waiting to see it ever since. Finally, it's been released in Canada, and I saw it Friday, June 29 at the AMC Forum in Montreal.

In my opinion, Polley's breakthrough as an actor came in the Adam Egoyan film, The Sweet Hereafter (1997). Her directorial feature film debut, Away from Her (2006) received critical acclaim and many awards. I saw a screening of that film at the Vancouver International Film Festival with Polley inconspicuously standing at the back of theatre, presumably gauging the audience's reaction. She humbly accepted my congratulations at her effort and I've been a fan ever since.

Polley's sophomore directorial offering feels more like a first film because it plays as if it's deeply personal. She also brings Toronto to life with bright-saturated colours and beautiful street and beachfront settings.

The expressed theme of the film is exploring the gap—that potentially terrifying space between things, places, or more importantly commitment and relationships. This theme arises again and again throughout the film.

Whether it's between Geraldine's (Silverman) sobriety and drunkenness or Margot's (Williams) neurotic fear of changing planes between two connecting flights (requiring wheelchair assistance even though she's not disabled) or the anxious and confusing space that exists between the love of a husband, Lou (Rogen), and the love of a new potential romantic and erotic partner, Daniel (Kirby), we are always in the gap—never firmly on one side or the other.

Spoiler Alert #1

If I have one complaint about the film it's the shallow aspect of Lou, Margot's husband. Lou's devotion to chicken recipes (he's writing a cookbook) and his cutsy-wootsy routine both romantically and in the bedroom makes it all to easy to predict and then justify Margot's decision to leave him even though she remained sexually faithful up to that point.

Good writing/directing takes characters to the "end of their rope" and I'm not convinced that Polley takes Margot or Lou to such places. Perhaps it's Polley's real life divorce in 2008 that blocked her from doing so; letting this film play the way it felt for her rather than doing what best suited the characters in their circumstance. Polley vehemently denies any connection between this film and her real life and so we'll not stoop to speculative gossip here.

At a deeper philosophical level the film represents the pervasive human condition of union and separation expressed in the context of love—Oneness versus duality. Is love something you 'fall into,' if you are lucky, or does it take knowledge and effort? Is love simple, it's finding the right object (person) that's difficult? Or is love about faculty—an ability and capacity to love oneself and thus others as well?

As Margot is "falling in" love with Daniel, the object her love, a pivotal scene takes place on a Scrambler ride to the tune of Video Killed the Radio Star. The slow motion, the lights, the music, and the audience's point of view on the characters all create the impression of closing the gap. Then the ride abruptly ends. The music stops, the lights go up and in the faces of Margot and Daniel we see terror—a gap even bigger than before.

(Spoiler alert #2)

The film begins and ends with the same scene. It's with Daniel. Until this point, and without our knowing it, the entire film is a flash back. The audience has been in the gap with Margot along. And yet there is more. In the film's final scene we see Margot again on the Scrambler— this time she rides alone.

Is this scene is based in reality or is it Margot's fantasy or a daydream? Ultimately, that's not important. What's important is whether Margot has found the capacity to love herself and others. Or, is she back to where she began, where we began—in the gap? It's ambiguous and left for you to decide.