It was during one of the solar eclipses of early 90's. My mom took me and a friend to the hospital where she worked. It's a unique hospital, built by the sea, the wards opening to a long sunny balcony over the beach. We made our way up to one of the many wide terraces - their floors reflecting aggressive white as there wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and somehow the sun, even though partially covered by the moon, was brighter than usual.
As with every eclipse and astronomical event, theories about the end of the world were abundant. For the starters of such theories, everything is a sign of the end of times. Soon there were predictions of fire falling from the sky and mysterious dark rainbows. With our special sunglasses on, me and my friend were looking up at the sun when I said "How about that black rainbow they talk about?". What he replied I never forgot: "If it happens, it'll be in the United States. That's where all those things always happen".
The reason why I still remember this moment and his answer so vividly is because of how truth it is, in a sense. A fictional sense. You could argue that if something is true only in a fictional sense, then I might as well just call it a lie. That's not what I meant though. What I wanted to say is that in the abstract world of fictional works, the phrase holds truth. Think of the movies you've seen - everything happens in the US (unless you're an alternative-indie scene addict). The aliens always land on the US. Ok sometimes they land everywhere, but eventually they are defeated and that happens in the US. Volcanoes, ghosts, tsunamis, end of the world - 99% in America (it's no wonder, after all they are the top action movie makers).
Be it movies or music, paintings or performances, I look for originality in everything, as being original and creative is a sure sign of intelligence (of a kind) and that is something I definitely like. I love when I can tell that a director, a musician or a publicist, before settling for a final version of his work, asks himself "Just how can I make this better?". But let's move on.
I went to see Avatar a while ago and because I didn't post about it when the topic was hot, it's really of no use to repeat what everyone already said. Good looks, etc. I had already heard people around me say that it had amazing 3D but that the story wasn't that great, but I didn't expect it to be so... polarized. Because the visuals are really good. And the story is really nothing new. And that's not the worst part of it - even inside the "looks" department, I was really disappointed with a few things, mainly the fact that after being able to create such alien yet mesmerizing fauna and flora, such creative designs and ideas for amazing living beings, when it came to stylize the planet's native intelligent race, they just copied our own African tribes. I have to ask "Why?". Why has their creativity suddenly stopped? Were they tired? Why didn't they just took a day off to rest before settling for "rasta" looking aliens with african accent ("Jake soo-lee"? Please)? After all, the movie was 15 years in the making, what difference would another day have made? Aren't 15 years enough to come up with an intelligent alien species that doesn't look like us in every way except bigger and with tails? I honestly don't understand.
Again, it's the American government that's ahead of everything, accompanied by the American army. But hey, it's an American movie.
A few days later I saw District 9 which only made me more disappointed with Avatar. Turns out, you don't need 200 million dollars or whatever the number was to make a really really good movie. I understand what James Cameron does: he does big things but always plays by the rules. So his movies will never be horrible. They'll never be great either.
District 9 starts off by showing you South Africa, the "landsite" of an alien spaceship that has been hovering the city of Johannesburg for years. The alien passengers, instead of shooting everyone, have been marginalized by the local population and now live in what heavily reminds the viewer of a Brazilian Favela, only militarized. Gangs thrive, so does crime and illegal trading of weapons and drugs (which for the aliens is cat food). All of this is shown in a very documental/news report style, a camera sometimes shaky, and even clips from news shows that include footnotes scrolling by, interviews and anchors. The realism this grants to the story is unparalleled by any other movie I have seen. The news report style gradually fades into a usual cinema approach as the story goes from just presenting you with the context to getting familiar with the characters you'll follow, and the main events of the film. The transition was clearly thought out to the detail, either that or edited by someone very, very skilled, but knowing what I know today about moviemaking, I'd put my money on superb planning. Or both. Probably both.
In the end, my liking or disliking movies is very related to how believable things are. This doesn't mean I don't like fiction - I love fiction! But there's smart fiction and "let's just go wild" fiction. Wild fiction is terrible. It has no boundaries and therefore is not creative or imaginative at all (Harry Potter). Intelligence and originality are related to boundaries, most people just don't understand this and think that the further you go away from reality, the more creative you are. The fact is that if you don't retain some link to the real world and its rules, you are just being random, and random is not the same as creative.
I shall differentiate between these two in the next post, let's hope I can do it soon.
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