A hateful screenplay

"Hard choices" is a superb topic for a movie. But such a movie will be effective only if it is made with integrity, intelligence, and basic decency.

I wasn't impressed with the movie. The guy standing in the street with "The Box" in his hands, annoying. The point was already made. The foreshadowing moments being "replayed" again. The lady at the table with her husband having just pushed the button. And how the shape of a box interacts with life in general.

mrmultimedia wrote: "...Arthur won't be locked up, he'll be there to take raise Walter."



No, I didn't miss the "taken care of" dialogue. But Arthur WON'T be "there"...is it likely that law-enforcement would simply permit Arthur and Walter to go on living in their home, given that Arthur has murdered his wife?

Arthur, it's hinted, will have a new life as an Employee, running errands for the Employers, with regular nose-bleeds and worse a part of that new life. Is this going to be a happy existence for Walter?

I still say that the message (that all of this plus the murder of the boy's mother is preferable to life as a blind and deaf person), is a hateful one.

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Yeah, this hit the nail on the head. This is not an offensive film in any way, shape, or form for those who are not ardently searching for it. The original poster seems caught up in the politicial corectness of the film as opposed to its true meaning. To the people who agreed with the original poster; consider the very NATURE of this film. It is about the difficulty of defining what is moral and what is immoral; it is about the absurd and the conflict between free will and fate; it is about the possibility of redemption, or, perhaps, even salvation. It is not about bashing deaf or blind people, nor is it concerned with propogating misogony.

Call blidness whatever you will: malady, disability, handicap. It does not matter what it's called, because the bottom line is, no one would willing choose such a condition over sightedness. Correct me if I am wrong on this account, or on the same account regarding deafness, for that matter.

Norma demands that Arthur shoot her in the end because she literally cannot bear to live the rest of her life watching her son suffer "forever in darkness, and in silence," as Steward puts it. Richard Kelly is not mocking these people, nor condescending them; he was merely stating the ugly, absud fact that being suddenly stripped of one's vision and hearing would be a terrifying, deeply disturbing experience. Not everyone handles physical handicaps the same way. Beethoven went mad from deafness. Compassion is a two way street.

It goes back to the sarte quote There are two ways to enter the final chamber, either free or not free. She wouldnt have been free to live her life knowing that her child wouldnt see or hear, but would be free to see her give her son the best in life for a sacrifice that was her own failure (material gain). She ended up sacrificing herself for what she wanted the most anyway.

It was only an allegory of purgatory...that we all want to push that button even if it meant someone had to die...but the couple had the most regret (choosing to return the money, or reverse causality by there own choosing, rather than hide in material wealth).

The idea is that materialism means we ignore the obvious disintegration and mystery surrounding us...the conspiratorial aspect of the other people meant, others were aware as well, and also trying to reverse their inevitable fate.

Um, excuse me, stupid. You are missing the part where Norma begged Arthur to kill her to heal her son because she couldn't live with herself. And she believed that she and Arthur would meet again in the afterlife. Now if you still can't understand or pardon why Arthur did it then you clearly lack the emotions to relate to the motivation of the character.

“Bravo. Just watched this movie and every msg you just mentioned came through loud and clear. I understand the Pandora reference but where is the hope in this film. As you say blind and deaf people are not condemned to a life of pain. Terrible msg there. Great idea for a movie, that if you had the most selfish choice which would you make, but very poorly handled. Insultingly handled in fact.”

You’re making it sound as though the characters had several discussions about this, during which they had carefully considered all the aspects of their situation such as the future of their son, ways in which they could provide him with proper care etc. No, they were shocked, heart-broken after finding out what happened to their son, scared that he may get hurt while being locked up in the bathroom. Norma was crushed by the guilt of being responsible for it all. There was no ideology or arguments behind their decision, just pure emotion. Heck, they hadn’t even bothered to make the whole thing look like a suicide so that Arthur won’t go to jail. Not saying that after careful consideration and some time they would not have made the same decision. I don’t know what I would have done in Norma’s or Arhur’s place, just saying that a rushed choice made by two characters who were portrayed a capable of making bad choices should not be read as the film’s message about the way people should always behave.
Given that “The Box” tries to be this universal tale of guilt and redemption, their action’s should be interpreted as a redeeming sacrifice. Norma choose to die out of guilt. I don’t think we needed dialogue about this.

I have the same problem with some posters’ reaction to “Juno” . This one character makes a decision not to have an abortion. Doesn’t speak about ideology, religion, babies’ right to live; she’s mostly afraid of the surgery and people write “Pro-life agenda”.

I agree about the women thing. I was glad that the blond beauty Cameron Diaz is playing a seemingly perfect wife and mother, who is actually capable of murdering for money, while her husband hesitates. The second time, it can be interpreted as mere coincidence, the third and last time it became unintentionally funny. I couldn’t but think “Have you got some bad experience with women Richard Kelly?”

Fetishizing of physical deformity? No more than f. e. “The Dark Knight”. It merely has got characters who are disabled or deformed. It’s not like we got close-ups of Frank Langella’s face every time he was on screen.

But I see why someone would see the film as hateful. I found the ending sadistic. I think that movies such as “Saw”, which have a similar premise: “You are a flawed individual with a guilty conscience, so I, the morally superior being will subject you to a series of mental and physical torture and make you choose between the most horrible thing you can imagine and the even worse” know that they are stupid and people don’t go to see them for the their "deep, philosophical” ideas. Here they really try to make us think about something deep and timeless by torturing the characters.

Overall, cool premise, messy script and good production values: the music, the visual side, the acting. Gave it a 6.

I agree broadly with the OP - the morality presented is deeply flawed. Taken in the context of story, the specific actions and "punishments" devised by the entities giving the tests are so poorly-considered that it marks them as unqualified to be passing judgment on the behavior of any other species. They're unconcerned that the father will now have to live with having killed his wife, that the son will grow up never understanding why... And if the father's actions constituted passing the test, then why was the last person to take those same actions killed by the aliens slamming a truck into him? Because he was trying to help the next person escape testing? Surely killing him for that doesn't fit in with their apparent stance on murder. As soon as the spurious morality became clear I lost the ability to take the film seriously, which is a shame because up to that point I had thought it was absolutely brilliant. I thought someone had made another thoughtful film at last! That's the thing about morality tales... they only work if person writing them has a good grip on the subject.

I agree completely with Katzinoire. Indeed, the movie would have redeemed itself had the correct path been both to refuse to kill the mother and prevent the entities from inflicting harm on anyone else. Their calculated tortures were far more evil than the desperate decisions of their test subjects.

Though many people already have, I have to take issue with this:

"I could almost guarantee that if all three button-pushers shown happened to be, say, black---if, say, the movie compared white couples confronted with The Box to black couples---then people would not be so openly defending Kelly. The 'oh, it's mythic, an evocation of the legends of Adam & Eve and of Pandora, wow, so profound!!1!' excuses would be exposed for what they are, if not for the fact that we're pretty much "okay" with dumping on females in this culture. Again, if it had been a contrast between black and white people (as opposed to between male and female), the bigotry would have been considered inexcusable."

Certainly it was a questionable decision for the writer to invoke that line of thought, but I have to wonder how outraged you'd have been if all three button-pushers had been male. Men get treated as the natural scapegoats for thoughtlessness and violence so pervasively these days that your concerns over "dumping on females" is a little hard to swallow.

One last note... if the whole thing is a cycle, with the previous test subjects killing each other as the next presses the button, then what happens when someone *doesn't* push the button? And who killed the first button victim?