"--- that everything in the whole scheme of life is just the way it is and in the end, it's good."
From the very first minutes I suspected such a deterministic message would be unavoidable. After laboring for 30-40 minutes, I gave up. It's just not really worth my time to spend more on a movie I know will leave too much to be desired. When I asked a friend who had seen TOL what she thought about it and she couldn't - or wouldn't - really form a opinion, I didn't pay much attention. I took it merely as a conservative heads-up. Only after ejecting the DVD I looked at the director's name.
Should have guessed. Last time I watched Malick - and sat through the whole movie - was around when Pocahontas was released (also to great hype). I pretty much made a conscious decision then not to bother with his works from now on.
I bet TOL was/is important to Mr. Malick for myriad of reasons (or why else would he have spent years trying to make it come to life) and I'm sure at least some of Mr. Malick's notions/messages (not just in this movie) are worth the watch for many folks. More power to them, I guess.
Malick and Lynch share a passion for great visuals. I share a passion for great stories.
I say each to their own but I've still always quite wondered why people such as Malick and Lynch insist on making movies when they so obviously love painting beautiful pictures and underlined moods that seem to go really well with them instead.
Why not just paint pictures then?
Because it would take too much time and effort to learn to paint well? And/or because it doesn't pay well (if at all), and movie-going audiences are vastly larger compared to audiences who happen to dwell in art galleries and museums (for whatever reasons)?
Beats me.
I tend to reflect upon my life and my relationships most days of the week.
I frequently catch myself pondering about life in general though I subscribe to no religion or dogma. Even the idea of soul - to me that is - seems like something some hippie thought when he wanted to feel "more connected" to the world and/or feel better about himself and the decisions and choices he has made during his short stay in this planet.
Would I be a better, deeper, person now had I endured and watched Mr. Malick's Oscar nominee? I tend to think not really. On the contrary I would have likely been inspired (I know myself well enough) to write a scathing review which - of course - would not have really helped anyone to revise his/her mind about this movie or life in general. If anything it would have (from its very small part) only managed to cement people's opinions firmer where they are already stuck.
Just last weekend I befriended a squirrel baby only to witness it being killed - for lultz of course - couple days later by a neighbor's cat (who sporadically likes to hang out in our apartment to look for some quiet rest and TLC or a quick fight with me just for lultz - we never feed the guy by the way).
It would have been a funny scene (a movie worthy even I should think) - me yanking the cat by the belly and the cat yanking the squirrel by the neck - if it hadn't been such a heart breaking scene to witness.
It's not the brutality or even the self-evident callousness by which an ordinary house cat hunts and kills for sport per se but the whole futility of it. And me getting emotionally worked up - and physically mixed up - in the whole affair isn't too wise a stance either.
I know for a fact that this cat isn't nowhere near starving (and has likely never even experienced first-hand what starving would even feel like). He simply kills because he can. And maybe, just maybe, he occasionally eats what he kills just to taunt us - and his actual "masters".
I personally like cats better than dogs because they seem much more human than dogs do. As they say, dogs have masters and cats have staff...
Anyways, the poor squirrel didn't even understand to get the **** out of the situation when he had the chance. I was torn: it struggled to get up on its feet, so it might have already been seriously hurt. Then again, it might have just as easily been in a state of shock and would have recuperated just fine if let alone.
But better be safe than sorry, can't leave an animal suffering, so I let the cat out to finish the job that he was dedicated to finish no matter what.
"Go on, do your worst you well-fed spoiled house cat". It was all over in seconds. And that was the end of the sleepy/hyperactive squirrel baby on a brink of summer. Even the tiny tail was gone (probably snatched up by a crow) when I looked for remains a little later. As if he had never even existed.
Now, that's one big cosmic F.U. if anyone asks for my opinion. And my make-believe god, not that I have any, would not allow something like that to happen. But it happens because this is the real world and not some hippie dream where everything is beautiful and people understand - and want to understand - one another as best as they possibly can.
Yes, it's always possible that there was something wrong with the squirrel in the first place. No way of knowing of course. That's what we are always told to so it would make us feel better about it whether it's actually true or not. Since there is no shortage of grown-up squirrels in our backyard, I'm guessing the cat simply went for the easiest kill and that's about the depth of it really.
So, Bob had a lovely meal out of it and likely will not pay us a visit for quite some time. We did exchange glances yesterday, but he didn't want to come inside and I didn't want to let him in. Cats (and people) are funny that way. It is cats who make the rules for us and not the other way around.
I've interfered with Bob's plans once before some years ago (another squirrel again). Tried to outsmart him then (let him out from another door that opens to the opposite side of our building) to no avail. Left it stalking, so I didn't witness then what the outcome was. But he's been disposing quite a few squirrels through out the years that I've known him, so that's obviously his forte and something Bob probably takes a great pride in too.
Well, anyways, yesterday I happened on another spot where there were running around not one but two squirrel juveniles. And I'm thinking, great, now someone's going to run over at least one of them with their car by accident... If I'd believe in karma, I'd wonder what the hell have I've been doing wrong that I have to bear witness to all these small great tragedies all of a sudden like it's the last time to see something like this.
But I know it's just a bloody coincidence. It is after all spring time when new life gets born and only a fraction of those born will be alive this time next year.
And, though cute as they were, it became soon self-explanatory that the squirrels were actually after (driven would be more fitting description) bird chicks in a near by but hard to reach nest...
Summa summarum: a cycle of life is evident all around us whether we can appreciate it or not and whether we care to watch it unfold before our very eyes.
Oh, the horror. Oh, the futility.
So, excuse me for disagreeing with the notion that life is by definition good. It's just a matter of opinion (or rather angle on which you look at things) whether the natural world's outcomes are "good" or "bad". But it is not relative when we shift our focus on what a man does to another man by his own volition.
Because by the same notion gassing Jews in WW2 must have been a good thing because "in the end" Israel was born out of it? And because now it is possible for the Jews to apply the same methods and tactics if they want to that nazis used on them and on the gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped, "subversives"/communists and so on to force their neighbors to succumb to their will?
Was incinerating Japanese civilians en masse "in the end" a great thing because it put - as many would argue - a speedier end to hostilities? Was Vietnam "in the end" worth it too because it managed to stop the spreading of communism? After all, the whole world is not manufacturing everything of significance in the biggest communist regime in the world right now with a population of 1.35 billion which will soonish become the greatest superpower in the world?
Yup, that stopping of communism couldn't have worked out much better.
All such actions have been deemed necessary, and the right thing to do, in the name of progress. Choose your poison.
Thomas Hobbes was a determinist when he spoke of "the war of all against all" and how life used to be in a sense "nasty, brutish and short". Then again Marshall Sahlin was sure that there was this original affluent society, a paradise on Earth if you will.
I guess a man of science would rather argue that it's a little bit of both where you get good with the bad and bad with the good no matter what.
Having a baby - maybe even giving a birth to it - is a fundamental experience as it should be. But people shouldn't let emotions cloud their judgment as they evaluate life around them.
Mr. Malick, as most middle-aged folks the world over, are the agents of status quo.
They believe that man can't be changed because they themselves failed to do things that would have made a difference in times when those actions would have mattered the most. I'm guessing largely due to everyday pressures of coping and secondarily having had to live a life in the middle of the vast sea of people who seem not to care much about anything at all except if it affects their own immediate well-being (however defined).
But the younger generations will always prove them wrong. People can and do change and we can morally expect most folks to revise their views and attitudes when it becomes apparent in everyday situations that those ideas have been based mostly on skewed or just made-up data and are not worth the hassle to really hold onto.
I believe even a person who has raised a family can still strive to be a better person. Not a super(wo)man but just a better version of her current self. Someone who struggles to make sense of the world, someone who rights wrongs when it is in her power to do so, someone who will take a stand when she knows it's the right thing to do. Having kids is always a good excuse, but that's all it is, an excuse for inaction.
End of rant.
To cap: if Mr. Malick can give me a better insight on life, I'd be most interested to hear it but thus far it has seemed like most he can offer me are bunch of fancy pictures (that I've seen before and witness every time I take a peaceful walk or a paddle amidst the nature).
My two cents.
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