06-25-2007, 06:17 PM
Yesterday, I went to see this motion picture with my son Rick and his friend Nick. We all felt similarly about: Not great but interesting.
I've been thinking about the movie for a day now and, as I do so, I find myself becoming increasingly somber over it and its message.
The plot is easy to describe, but not really very important. What the movie was mainly about was the experience it presented, our visceral reaction to it and what may be inferred from that experience about the nature of reality and our experience of it.
The point that the movie seems to make is that there are certain times and places in which the law of cause and effect is suspended and the purpose of reality is pretty much to simply cause pain. About the best that even a hero can do in such a situation is to be unyielding in his(her) determination to survive and heroism consists pretty much in merely not yielding to despair.
And are there not elements of this experience in the daily lives of most of us?
Now, in the end the hero figures out a rational response to his predicament that resolves it, but this is one of the weaker moments in the film. The most effective part is portraying him locked in the irrational and chaotic environment of Room 1408, close to self destruction as the only way out of the situation
Now, what I find interesting, even instructive in this is the degree to which I found myself and the movie goers around me able to relate to this experience and accept it as a valid view of life. At least, part of our lives.
I find myself wondering whether Ken Wilber is entirely correct in his analyses of human and societal development, with the only problem being that as increasingly advanced stages of development are reached they mainly serve to enable increasingly powerful pathologies to develop. As evidenced by this film.
Fred
I've been thinking about the movie for a day now and, as I do so, I find myself becoming increasingly somber over it and its message.
The plot is easy to describe, but not really very important. What the movie was mainly about was the experience it presented, our visceral reaction to it and what may be inferred from that experience about the nature of reality and our experience of it.
The point that the movie seems to make is that there are certain times and places in which the law of cause and effect is suspended and the purpose of reality is pretty much to simply cause pain. About the best that even a hero can do in such a situation is to be unyielding in his(her) determination to survive and heroism consists pretty much in merely not yielding to despair.
And are there not elements of this experience in the daily lives of most of us?
Now, in the end the hero figures out a rational response to his predicament that resolves it, but this is one of the weaker moments in the film. The most effective part is portraying him locked in the irrational and chaotic environment of Room 1408, close to self destruction as the only way out of the situation
Now, what I find interesting, even instructive in this is the degree to which I found myself and the movie goers around me able to relate to this experience and accept it as a valid view of life. At least, part of our lives.
I find myself wondering whether Ken Wilber is entirely correct in his analyses of human and societal development, with the only problem being that as increasingly advanced stages of development are reached they mainly serve to enable increasingly powerful pathologies to develop. As evidenced by this film.
Fred