May 10, 2004

Saw The Seagull’s Laugh a little while ago. Noteworthy if for no other reason than being the first Icelandic movie I’ve ever seen, it’s interesting as a weird little slice into life in a postwar Icelandic village, and the study of a mythologically witchlike character (appropriately named Freyja) and her machinations. In fact, I suspect there are a lot of mythological references that I’m just not catching (there’s something about Freyja’s red hair pinned to the wall that seems especially freighted with symbolism).

Robot Stories was a special AFS showing at the Arbor, and I’m glad I caught it. A tetralogy of related shorts that dealt with serious science-fiction questions, questions of the edges of what is humanity. These are rarely addressed in SF movies–in AI the last time I saw, though perhaps less successfully because of the Spielbergian cruft.

The second of the four in this film was out of place and the weakest of the lot; the others looked at how we relate to machines, and at what point machines become people. Or people become machines. And a host of related questions, many of which have been taken up many times in SF literature, but which a good movie shows in a new perspective. If your consciousness is downloaded to a computer shortly before you die–and continues to be aware, present, and involved in the world–are you dead? And if you had a spouse, are the two of you still married? And if you are, is that a good thing? This movie evoked these questions in me, in some cases with a single silent shot.

Gwen picked out Of Freaks and Men to rent the other day. I usually don’t blog renters, but this is worth a mention.

It’s a strange movie, occupying a quiet space somewhere between David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch–there was a lot about this movie that reminded me of Dead Man: the lush black-and-white cinematography, the understated violence, the lumbering pace, and Putilov’s suit. Except this is Russian. A lot of class-struggle satire that would probably be more acutely relevant to someone who had lived through communism.