Equilibrium - Movie Revire
Equilibrium, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Dystopian future, emotions have been eradicated by big brother, er, I mean, "father".
This is not really a movie review so much as it is thoughts on the human condition and what it tells us about the universe. Though the gun fight scene 10 minutes from the end was that rare occurrence: a novel fight scene! Never seen anything like it before.
It is fascinating how completely un-fascinating the first part of the movie is. Not for a minute do I believe that the actors have no emotions. Maybe it is impossible to play human characters who have no emotions. We could write the script for computers or adding machines. They would have no emotions. But then absolutely no one would watch the movie.
Where did this craving start, to have the emotionless version of ourselves? Star Trek tried, and got pretty far. But *everyone* knew that Spock was good. So the whole premise of pure logicality stayed aloft in some delightful, tongue-in-cheek way for us the audience. Not for a minute did we really believe that Spock was soul-less, good-less, humor-less. Where did this craving start, to see the emotionless version of ourselves?
In Equilibrium, the characters are so charged with emotion that the whole premise of the movie collapses. This is not a bad thing. This does not make it a bad film. Quite the contrary. If film is ever to make one think, wonder, ponder, hope, question, then Equilibrium is a very good film. Though I doubt the film makers were planning it to be good in the way I am saying.
We do not know where emotions come from. For the past 20 years there has been a trend, like everything in life sciences, to explain emotions by the molecules we see associated with emotions. This is fascinating research. Especially the find that most cells in our bodies have specific receptors for each molecule associated with various emotions. In other words, when you are angry, there are specific molecules produced and dumped into your blood stream; and each cell in your body has receptors for the anger molecules. So, when you are angry, every cell in your body is angry - or knows that you are angry. But our understanding will not progress as long as we refuse to let the universe outside us also have emotionality. When I feel joy, I am also participating in joy, and those specific molecules sent into my bloodstream also have joy. A day can be joyful. We are emotional beings because the whole universe is emotional. But just as two people have slightly different experiences of any given emotion, so an emotion in a person have its differences from the comparable emotion in another being. In other words, the sadness rainy November day is similar to, but different from the sadness I personally feel on that day.
Is everything in this world equally emotional? No, I don't think so. I think reptiles are not nearly as emotional as, say, horses. But we are not going to get any where in our understanding if we want emotions to exist only inside the heads of human beings.