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Reviews
Ascension (2014)
*SPOILER ALERT* A Nice Concept Trashed Thru Bad Writing
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
I was all excited about Ascension (as much I ever get about TV). There was good online buzz and I've read about the Orion nuclear-powered spacecraft concept since the 70s.
It's a cool idea. Detonate nukes behind a huge pusher plate clamped to the back of a space craft and, voilà, you get instant velocity. Repeat for increasing degrees of acceleration.
Take a handful of historical facts - In '62 Orion was an ongoing NASA research program, the US had developed all sorts of nuclear propulsion projects (nuclear-powered bombers, nuclear ramjets), and you had the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's easy to imagine JFK deciding the US needed a "failsafe" for preserving the population.
From that premise, spin a yarn about how JFK redirected defense dollars towards building a generation ship based on Orion. You could go further and have LBJ and Nixon continuing the program - LBJ out of devotion and Nixon due to paranoia. That buys more time for technology to advance. It wouldn't have been hard for the US to do more space launches than we actually did. We had Saturn Vs by '68 and they were building something even bigger, IIRC, when they canceled Apollo.
Draw the thread out and you could build a generation ship in orbit and then launch it without fanfare by sometime in the early 70s. That even allows for 10 more years of tech development.
Does Sy Fy do any of that? No. Sy Fy took an intriguing idea and mucked it up.
Do we get drama in the form of man-vs-nature (i.e. space) or man-vs-machine (i.e. the ship). No, we get man-vs-man in the form of a hackneyed murder mystery. This is a sad variation on the lifeboat episode framework - characters (we don't know) are trapped in a confined space, working against time. But Sy Fy doesn't pull it off.
Let's talk about the nitty gritty bits.
First, why is there prostitution? Let me get this straight, you have 600 people to rebuild all of civilization but you decide to pimp out bits of your limited gene pool. That will really be good for their psyches. Aren't there more useful and rewarding purposes that these woman could be put to? Doctors, mechanics, engineers, and so on. Moreover, we are supposed to accept that on Ascension prostitution (promiscuity for pay) is accepted but promiscuity-for-love is not; people have to marry who they are told. Really?
Also, what's with the whole ruling council idea. Why isn't this set up like a navy ship? A nuclear powered carrier has a crew of thousands. Why not replicate that system for a mere 600? Would you really want to introduce politics into a life-or-death situation. The ship is literally being propelled by detonating nuclear bombs against it. Sounds dangerous to me. And I'm supposed to say, let's have them solve crises by putting everything to a vote. I think you'd want a clear chain of command in a situation like that, not a rats nest of political intrigue.
We're also asked to believe that NASA built a ship that is wholly unprepared for zero-g. Where's all the internal padding? Where are the internal hatches to secure compartments in case of a hull breach? Where are the hand-holds? How come nothing is secured?
And the list of failings goes on.
- The crew has a caste system divided between upper and lower decks. Hollywood executives may see the world solely as haves & have-nots, but it's insane to think someone would build a generation ship that had so much deliberately embedded social friction.
- A murder of someone we don't know and an investigation by people who could have been replaced with cardboard cutouts without the viewing audience noticing. Sy Fy should watch "Life on Mars" reruns to see how to do this kind of thing right.
- Stocking expensive wine but no guns. Why would you bring lots of glass bottles of a substance with no relevance to survival? And who goes to an alien planet out of fear of losing their home world BUT doesn't have enough fear of the unknown to bring along weapons. I'm not even talking about fighting sentient aliens. What if there are big scary predators on your new planet? Man invented weapons because the human body comes without any. Russian Cosmonauts reportedly stored survival rifles on the ISS all the way up to a year or so ago and nobody has ever been shot on the ISS.
- Anachronisms abound - computer tablets before, IIRC, the invention of LCDs, video cards, stun guns, multiculturalism, and so on.
- No radio contact with earth. Why? It's inexplicable. Who cares about time delays, you'd still beam messages to and from such a spacecraft.
Finally, the big reveal: they are not actually in space. So, we are to believe that the US put a bunch of people on a ship that is actually a hoax and let them die in on-board fires and commit murder for fifty years just to study human nature? What a crock.
And, if they are not really in space, then they are just sitting in studio set. If they are sitting on terra firma and not in space, then there is no science, just fiction. It's all just a Potemkin Village.
If this is the best Sy Fy can do, then it's no wonder their brand is fading. Put Ascension where it belongs: in the hell of failed TV pilots.
French Postcards (1979)
A great, emblematic movie...that is if memory serves
I would definitely recommend this movie, if - and it's a big "if" - it is the one I am thinking of. I carefully researched this issue before posting and I am 90% certain this movie is the one I think it is since no others seem to fit the bill - ensemble cast, plot about American students studying in France, personal development.
I had HBO as a teenager growing up in the 80s and remember watching an oddly engaging romance film (my normal fair back then was "Mad Max" and "Commando") about a troupe of US college students studying abroad and going through a series of personal contortions that held lessons on maturity. In 1989-1990, I actually went on a one-year study abroad myself and as I experienced life in Luxemburg, which is where I went, I kept remembering this movie.
In a broad macro way it captured much of what I felt and perceived to be going on in my life and that of my fellow. There were romantic entanglements within the student body and with the locals - though there was certainly no "The Graduate" Mrs. Anderson-type of thing - and personality clashes and blossoming friendships. I have vivid recollections from my time abroad of seeing and experiencing events that caused my mind to hearken back to this movie repeatedly.
The fact that this movie is so intertwined with my experience is, actually, what speaks out to me most. For me, the movie somehow captured the oddity of the overseas experience; that going far away from home forced us closer to ourselves. It prompted honest and clear introspection and, through that process, maturation. Time and again, I participated in or witnessed deep heartfelt and thoughtful conversations about personal development and insight that were almost entirely absent from what I had seen stateside. We discussed the ugly and the beautiful in people and saw both. Oddly, it built a durable sense of comradeship such that many of the friendships that began in Lux, as we called it, endured through the remainder or college and beyond.
It is seemingly odd to attach so much meaning to a movie I saw only once and have never seen again but, actually, I think it is remarkable. I will say this, the movie put a lens on my experience that was very helpful to me.
Putting aside the falsities that are inherent in any fictional enterprise, there is some essence of the truth of the overseas experience that is captured by this film that makes it worth viewing. Perhaps, it is the drama. That is what stands out. Passionate discussions in bars while surrounded by people who, to you, are speaking a foreign language.
"French Postcards" could be viewed as an existential allegory. We are separate and alone to a degree even in the midst of a crowd while simultaneously - in contrast to existentialism - the mere fact we are engaged in a dialog with another is proof that we are not alone. It is proof of a duality of aloneness and comradeship that makes up a person's life.
Now that I got that off my chest, I want to get on Amazon or Netflix and see if I can lay hands on a copy to confirm the truth of my lamentations.
Atonement (2007)
Great - Many Will Love It But I Never Will
This was a well-wrought film. The actors, pacing, and dialog all worked to create believable and engrossing relationships and interpersonal dynamics. In relative terms, the film is faithful to the book.
** Warning Spoiler Coming ** I have two gripes. One is with the logic of the movie and the other is with its central point.
My first problem is the reasoning of the police and relatives that a man could rape a girl and then set out and find the two boys and hike back. There's absolutely no thought given to the fact that the protagonist is last seen marching off into the dark with a flashlight to find the two missing boys, Briony heads out in a different direction, stumbles upon what she thinks is a rape scene (with the protagonist walking away), and yet, somehow, the protagonist goes off to find the missing boys. The movie glosses right over this incongruity. Yet, I think in any court that was at all honest and mindful of the facts, a reconstruction of the time line would have called into question the protagonist's ability to have even been around to commit the crime he was accused of.
The biggest problem with the movie is that the title is unexpectedly ironic. There is very little atonement in the film. Sure, Briony becomes a nurse and tends to the wounded. But, the action she had to atone for didn't involve hospitals it involved stealing the chance of love away from her sister and she and her sister's mutual heart-throb. We, the audience, are supposed to just accept that by being a nurse and by writing a happy ending, Briony has made up for her sins. Maybe I am just too much of an old testament type, but she sent a man to jail and denied love between two people at a time - WWII - when there was little joy or hope to be had. Dunkirk was one of England's darkest hours. To atone for what she did, she need to make up for her specific misdeeds. If I mistakenly break my mother's favorite lamp, I buy her a new lamp and tell her I am sorry. I don't wait a decade and write an email admitting my sin then send it out on a listserv.
It was utterly unsatisfactory to have Briony say she gave them the happy ending in her novel that she denied them in life. She waited until she was on her deathbed to admit openly that she had erred. How incredibly cowardly; "Well, now that the truth cannot harm me, I will come forward." What balderdash. I love words. I am using them now, but I do not believe they can ever supplant our actions in their import.
Rarely has a movie ending filled me with such revulsion. How utterly remorseless of the filmmakers, to create a train crash and shine a light on it until the bitter end. What are we to learn from this? I certainly found nothing redeeming in Briony. She needed to go tell the authorities of her mistake, she needed to own up to what she did. Instead, we are supposed to accept that the few pages of fantasy in a book she wrote literally decades after the death of the affected parties is somehow a form of atonement. If it is, it is in gesture only. It is a one-calorie soda when you really need an energy drink.
I left depressed and unsatisfied. I could take no solace from the ending and it bothers me that this is so well liked. I appreciated the reviewer who said the power of the story is that it shows the power of words to hurt and their power to heal. But, while that sounds nice, that is not borne out. I would buy it if Briony had spoken truthfully to those in power. I would have even been okay if she fessed up and the authorities turned her away. But to do nothing is just contemptible. And, to me, her nursing of others almost smacks of conceit and condescension. It is a way for Briony to feel better about herself without ever having to do the really difficult part, which is to go to her parents and the police and admit her mistake.
The best things I learned from this movie were: 1) I am that most derided of film-goers, the one who always wants a happy ending, 2) never again let my wife pick the movie (at least without checking moviespoiler.com to see if I'll like it), and 3) I genuinely hate tragedies, which I have known since I read Macbeth in high school.