MovieChat Forums > The Congress (2014) Discussion > Bold. Brilliant. Beautiful.

Bold. Brilliant. Beautiful.


How to make Hollywood poetically tragic when most of the time it's just plain old depressing? The players are forgotten, abandoned, chewed up, spit out and they die everyday, and the show goes on. Geniuses and visionaries have to conform or remain in obscurity with a black cloud following them for the rest of their professional lives.

In this grim future, capitalism has corrupted the foundations of human consciousness. "Movies are old news, remnants of the last millennium," says Miramount's monstrous overlord.

But this film "The Congress," is anything but old news and it plays fast and loose with a source novel by Stanislaw Lem, splits from its version of reality at the 45-minute mark, and at that point becomes a decadent post-modern classic.
It's also a wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and philosophy bound to confuse and provoke in equal measures.

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Unfortunately my original comment didn't go through, but it ultimately was that I agree with a lot of your post. I was actually going to make a thread saying “This is a very bold movie”. You beat me to it, though.

Beautiful? Some parts... yes. Brilliant? Maybe not so much. I thought it was thought provoking, though. It's a hackneyed expression, of course, but it really did make you think: is it better to have a grasp on reality and face the harsh and uncompromising horrors of our physical existence, knowing we'll one day die? Or is it better to fade into a blissful pageant of self-fulfillment through an ampul that wipes away the worries of the world?

The self-indulgence of the hallucinatory world came across as a turn-off – the idea that you're only experiencing what you want to experience. It seems to create a loop that feeds into perpetual confirmation bias as opposed to challenging one's mind and opening it up to face reality for better or for worse. A brilliant movie for being thought provoking... most definitely.

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I love this movie, it has stayed with me ever since I watched it. I really don't understand the poor ratings it has received....

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Yes, definitely bold, brilliant, and beautiful. I also really like stories that have this kind of time progression. Where it shows the world evolving more and more. I can't really think of many that do this other than Rin: Daughters Of Mnemosyne. Which is a very dark anime so quite different from this one as it's mostly light in the end.

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What’s it About

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There is a tree called Yggdrasil that releases these orbs and if they go into a woman she becomes immortal and if it enters a man he becomes a violent "angel." So the plot follows an immortal female detective trying to stop the angels and those who work for them. Again, it's pretty dark, but I found it interesting enough to watch it twice. Here is the trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecrqp_pgkLA

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I thought it was about an actress

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No, it's just similar in the time progression factor of the story. It goes from 1990, to 2011, to 2025, and ends in 2055.

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That sounds amazing

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