MovieChat Forums > Pandaemonium (2001) Discussion > is it a plane?

is it a plane?

posted 20 years ago by hereicometosavetheday
15 replies | jump to latest

i didn't think this movie was too bad, pretty average with the exception of the awful credit sequence. however, there is one shot where we see the clouds moving across the sky (as we do many times in the film) and there seems to be an exhaust trail from an aeroplane forming. the sequence has been greatly sped up so you can't actually see the plane but the trail is extremely obvious, or at least was to me. i was wondering if anyone else noticed this, or can confirm it.

if it is what it seems then it was a very sloppy piece of film-making. it bugged me all the way through the movie.

...immediately after making this statement, royal realised it was true.

[–] flashman1_2000-1 20 years ago

Yes it is a vapour trail in the sky and at a guess is ment to represent Coleridges supersonic creative enlightenment.

[–] hacamatik 20 years ago

It was a sent to cloridge.And film was a true answer to wrong england history based on wordsworth.

[–] hereicometosavetheday 20 years ago

that's fair enough but i think the choice of symbolism in this film was pretty bad.

...immediately after making this statement, royal realised it was true.

[–] Ambiance35 20 years ago

It is most definately an aeroplane vapour trail & I thought it may represent "the sky is the limit" for Coleridge when he is in the hot air balloon & the huge advances in aviation made from the earliest hot air balloons of that period to the supersonic jets of today.
On a similar theme,later on in the film the Coleridge's & Wordsworth & his sister are being shown how electricity is made (the scene looking very much like Baron Frankenstein's laboratory I thought although granted this is the early 1800's!)Later on we cue to one of them running across a field & in the background you can most definately see electricity pylons as well as a nuclear power station (presumably Sellafield in Cumbria,North West England) & maybe that is also meant to represent the huge scientific advances we have also made in the last 200 odd years too.
An odd analysis I agree & just a thought perhaps..................

[–] gibbonici 19 years ago

I think the vapour trail and the pylons etc were there as part of the theme that Coleridge was a man out of synch with time. On a couple of occasions when he's in a drug-addled state, Coleridge says something to the effect that he's losing touch with time. At the end of the film we see him walking around modern London.

It's a shame that this theme wasn't played up more as it would've made the film more interesting and illustrated the timelessness of Coleridge's works and life.

Romantic literature at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries was itself a movement out of it's time, as it was a reaction to the Age of Reason that came out of the Enlightenment.

"Jar-Jar Binks makes Ewoks look like f'kin Shaft"

[–] ilovemyshotgun 19 years ago

Not only have they butchered English history, but they altered several lines of Coleridges poetry, I am disgusted.

[–] lestatelives 19 years ago

Modern parts such as the plane(s) and at the end where Coleridge is reading Kubla Khan to a mordern household was symbolism. It shows how Coleridge's poetry survived the ages and how even now it is admired. What Coleridge poetry was "altered"? Excerpts were taken, true, but i don't recall any poetry actually changed, and I am a huge coleridge & wordsworth fan.

[–] sonicdeath10 19 years ago

what you don't remember the part in history where wordsworth burned kubla khan? or when he betrayed the democratic cause for his own self promotion? or the way wordsworth was worse than hitler.

the symbolism was stupid and out of place in this movie. Dumb movie.

[–] Owlwise 10 years ago

To the contrary! Temple is using the poets as symbols themselves, representative of two different worldviews, two different approaches to experiencing & interpreting life. It's as much a film about the present day as it is about the past.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] knightm7 19 years ago

The plane went through twice. I was prepared for this kind of anacronistic event by a car horn during the opening credits. Also, during Colridge experiences writing Kubla, never mind you must have seen the ocean scenes. Nothing could have prepared me for the end credits, however.

Nothing, tra-la-la!

[–] lestatelives 18 years ago

i liked the ending credits. Whenever i hear "xanadu" i think of this moive, NOT of Oliva Newton John.

Die young. Live Forever
I LOVE MY CAT! HE'S 20!

[–] knightm7 18 years ago

1. You do think of Olivia Newton John, you can't help it, she sings the damn thing and you know it.

2. When are you hearing "Xanadu"? Now that station will play anything.

3. What makes you such a fan of the movie?

4. Ever hear of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard?

Nothing, tra-la-la!

[–] lestatelives 18 years ago

1. she should be dead by now. Is it her singing in THIS movie, or is it a cover?
2. Theater people can here the damndest things.
3. I am a fan of STC. and to a lesser degree WW. This is way off their real lives, but it is nice to see a movie about them.
4. no idea what you are talking about.

Die young. Live Forever
I LOVE MY CAT! HE'S 20!

[–] knightm7 18 years ago

Wordsworth's wife was played by the same actress who played the original Thomasina from the London premier of Arcadia, a play by Tom Stoppard, a great playwright who also wrote Shakespeare in Love, Empire of the Sun, and helped with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Arcadia is like the movie Possession, but is about researchers on a English estate, one of whom thinks Byron shot a small time poet and fled the country for a few years. I directed it, and part of my research was Pandaemonium; too bad Netflix didn't carry Gothic, you should check that out if you like STC.

Not a cover that I remember

Nothing, tra-la-la!