I got about 20 minutes in before I decided it was unwatchable. A lot of the dialogue the characters speak definitely strives from emotions, or glimpses of them. This movie is basically impossible because emotion dictates practically all of our actions and thoughts. Without emotion we'd just be walking meat sacks without response, unable to comprehend reality.
shareI recommend checking out THX1138 if you want see emotionless done well. Preferably the theatrical cut.
HI-F___ING-YA
Nicholas Cage Deadfall
2014 Rankings: imdb.com/list/mOL23rGRrh0/
The drug in the movie doesn't eliminate all emotion, merely the highs and lows of it.
sharebut it shows the stupidity of government policies, the do-gooders ones
China's One Child Policy for instance.
The West's terrorism laws, for another
http://myimpressionz.tk
That's true. I guess I just can't stand Christian Bale's wart by his right eye. It urks me.
shareI think this film is great, but his eye thing bothers me, too. I wonder why he leaves it there? Is it a British thing?
What we got here is... failure to communicate!share
I think this film is great, but his eye thing bothers me, too. I wonder why he leaves it there? Is it a British thing?
If it was on his chin or something it would be different, but it's right next to his eye. I would think it would obscure his vision, if nothing else.
What we got here is... failure to communicate!share
I'm pretty sure the stereopsis of his binocular vision can compensate, just like it does for... well, anyone who has a nose, really!!
Worry not about his lack of cosmetic surgery, but about his choice of film... especially if he keeps choosing ones like this!!
It shifts to his left in one scene.
share[deleted]
They did seem to distinguish between emotions and feelings, with some minor explanation, though what they were on about is not really worth my time to try and debate over.
Seen the film thrice. That was enough.
This movie is awesome!
shareYou got 10 times further than I did. You almost got 100 times further!
You're absolutely correct about the movie's colossal misunderstanding of the role of feelings. Nor do the rebuttals in this thread solve the problem.
The opening narration tells us that that the new world order has eliminated the source of man's inhumanity to man (dramatic pause): "the ability to feel."
Well, that's preposterously backwards. (There should be a word for a combination laugh and groan, because that was my reaction.) The source of man's inhumanity to man is the inability to feel -- specifically, the inability to feel the pain and suffering of other human beings, as if it were our own. Empathy. Empathy for others is the only thing that prevents us all from being sociopathic killers and/or Ayn Rand fans.
If you mute feelings in order to ramp down hatred and passion and rage, you also mute empathy. And those destructive feelings only blossom when empathy is absent, and/or in reaction to sociopathic behavior by others.
Since most human beings are empathic, a world with muted feelings would be far worse. All you'd be doing is making the non-sociopathic people more like the sociopaths.
The source of man's inhumanity to man is a combination of two things:
1) We are hard-wired to make a division between "us" and "them", and treat the "them" as nonhuman, and hence unworthy of empathy. Most healthy people now regard "us" as all other human beings.
2) Sociopaths have evolved to exploit the empathic altruism of others. They are far more likely to get themselves into positions of power because of their willingness to act amorally. And they can exploit #1 and get good people to start treating selected groups of others as "them," and thus do whatever it takes to consolidate their power, e.g., fight in a war.
I kept watching after the opening narration to see if the movie was otherwise interesting, but the first three or four minutes or so are just extremely violent action scenes, which looked cool but were so devoid of context that they meant nothing if you had correctly projected the premise.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
holy *beep* are you serious
maybe you should try finishing the film before you make assumptions about it's themes
it's not the movie that understands the role of feelings, it's the regime in control of the world. the movie is about rebelling against this regime.
you just went on this whole screed based on the scene that sets up the world, jesus christ. you're an idiot.
if you'd actually watch the *beep* movie you would see that it agrees with you.
You missed my point. Obviously I agree with the themes of the movie (like, cough, every other human being. See below). The problem is that the world portrayed has less than zero credibility.
Movies that portray a rebellion against an f-ed up society are a staple of sci-fi. And there is no shortage of conceivable types of such societies. But it must make at least a fraction of a smidgen of a whisper of an iota of sense that the society could have come into place.
There must be something credible that the repressive regime believes. And if they're lying to the populace about what they believe, it must be credible that they would bother lying to the public, and credible that the public would believe the lie.
As I explained, the belief that excessive feelings (in general) are the cause of man's inhumanity to man, and that we must get rid of feelings to avoid that, is preposterous. It's not credible for an instant that the members of a ruling class, whether their intentions were good or evil, would believe that.
Now, it's possible that, as the film progresses, it's revealed that this rationale is bs, and that the regime wants to eliminate feelings for some other reason, and that they have used the "this will help people treat each oher better" rationale as an excuse. But why bother with the lie? If there were a repressive regime that had the power to impose such a restriction on an unwilling populace, they would just go ahead and do so. No idiotic rationale needed.
Nor is a scenario credible where they convince people via propaganda that we need to get rid of feelings. It's not credible that people would ever buy that, because, like I said, it's a preposterous idea.
And do you know why all of this is true? People like feelings. People like feelings because people have them and most of them are good feelings, else none of us would want to live. And I think that most people understand that feelings are necessary.
A sci-fi scenario where feelings have been overtly outlawed is barely more credible as one where food or air has been outlawed.
(Nor, by the way, are we in danger, as a society, of moving in the direction of eliminating feelings. So the movie is toothless as satire or warning, too.)
Now, it just so happens that it's barely credible that a future society might decide that certain types of feelings, if felt to excess, are necessary for war, and if we could mute that specific set of feelings, we could end war. And they would need to mute those feelings covertly, without people realizing it was happening, because ... like I said, people like feelings.
And it just so happens that that story exists, and it's called The Giver.
I would say that the premise of this movie, as stated at the outset, is the premise of The Giver as rewritten for chimps, but that would be an insult to chimps.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
I disagree heartily. For one thing, the Giver set out to do more than mute emotions. They muted color, they muted experiences they decided were too close to giving independent thought. They sought to withhold all power and freedom by giving people just enough liberty to enjoy their lives, if they stayed within the boundaries. One step outside of it, however, and you must be removed because it would mean shattering the illusion of the universe. Emotions are a big part of this and a reason why they were suppressed: because they could limit the imagination this way.
As for this movie and its premise... Your argument is also flawed. This movie drew a heavy influence from Fahrenheit 451. This wasn't a society that was sold on the idea of giving up their emotions lightly. It was a society that -willingly- surrendered their emotions. Fahrenheit centered on books because literature was being literally burned in WWII and Bradbury felt a need to respond to it in kind, but that book and this movie spread out into the other forms of media to encompass a problem that all society seems to be sliding into: compliance toward not feeling, not thinking, not really wanting anything but to just exist.
People sit on their couches all day and stare blandly at the TV because it doesn't make them feel or think. Reality television and comedies that don't make you think continue to be the best sellers on the television. The dramas that do make it are often so filled with sex and violence that they don't have time to actually tell a story except in small snippets and it often isn't enough to still make us -feel-. Equilibrium is a movie about a society that gave up a basic human aspect because they thought it would stop their pain. They wouldn't need to question their place in the grand structure of things, there would be no need for jealousy or rage or depression if you were just doing what you knew was best for the world and didn't have to think about it. To think, to imagine, to love, those are the source of despair and, ultimately, violence. It isn't that hard to imagine that humanity could be sold on this idea over a given set of time. It would make people complacent, logical, efficient, in a word: Managed.
We don't want to empathize, we don't want to feel guilty or weird. Take away all emotions and let someone else run our bigger decisions for us. As for why you have to convince the populace it's for the best: it's a lot easier if people just roll over and let you attack their soft spots than to just do it. Then you get investigations and reasons for people to fight against you.
The very idea that reigning in all emotions and emotional content in the world isn't a new concept and it has always existed as a way to keep ideas out of people's heads. It is both satire and a warning and will always be such given that people are always too explosive about a great many things. Point out a group that can cut through all the bs and move into a system where they just get things -done-? Hell, it's tempting to jump on board of that with them.
Really well said.
shareEquilibrium is a movie about a society that gave up a basic human aspect because they thought it would stop their pain. They wouldn't need to question their place in the grand structure of things, there would be no need for jealousy or rage or depression if you were just doing what you knew was best for the world and didn't have to think about it.
To think, to imagine, to love, those are the source of despair and, ultimately, violence.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
That would have been a great movie. But that's not what we're told is the rationale for ridding ourselves of feelings. We're told point-blank that it's to end "man's inhumanity to man." In fact, we're told that before feelings are even mentioned.
No. Lots of things lead to violence, but despair is not one of them. Despair leads to immobility.
Our own inhumanity is inherently linked to the emotions that pervade us.
Without joy, without fear, all that is left is a cold rationale: Thus we cannot be inhumane if we are not letting an emotion guide our decisions.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
I take it you're no fan of the Vulcans from the Star Trek universe.
shareThe "emotionless" Vulcans make sense. They believe in perfect rationality, which is very different from believing that feelings are bad.
And emotions are more than feelings. Emotions include physiological reactions that prepare us for action. The Vulcans have learned not to have the full package that constitutes an emotion, but it's never said that they have no feelings at all. Intellectual curiosity, for instance, is very much a feeling.
And note that the show is wedded to the psychological language of the days of its creation, when we didn't know about the centrality of feelings to all behavior (human or otherwise), and didn't clearly distinguish them from emotions. So the show still refers to them as striving to be "emotionless," and that's technically more or less correct, but it can confuse people who don't know the difference between emotions and feelings*. If you were creating them today, you'd avoid the word "emotionless" and instead use phrases like "perfectly rational." But their actual behavior would not change.
*The discrimination is so recent that there is actually no adjective that unambiguously refers to feelings the way "emotional" refers to emotions. Psychologists sometimes use "affective," as in "affective disorder," but "affect" properly refers to the visible expression o feelings, not to the internal state.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
Even though I love this movie, I agree with you 100%. Every single character action in this movie you can see a response that is emotionally driven. It would literally be the most boring movie ever if they actually made the characters emotionless. Hell, you could even argue that without the ability to feel humankind could not exist. One of the basic mechanisms in people is feeling pleasure for our survival- like eating. I could see those people literally dying because they felt no more joy in anything they did, or any fear for things that could kill them.
shareA lot of the dialogue the characters speak definitely strives from emotions, or glimpses of them. This movie is basically impossible because emotion dictates practically all of our actions and thoughts.
Almost everyone in the film is off the drug. Taye Diggs character among them, obviously, since he is familiar With the entire facade that father still lives, and that Dupont has art in his Office.
There is a big misunderstanding that the drug eliminated all emotion. It just makes People docile, and eliminated the highs and lows of human emotion.