Latest movie you watched (1-10 scale)

[riley-o]

godfather part 2 - 9.5/10

[Hotchka!]

W. - 8
World Trade Center - 8
Eastern Promises - 6
Alexander final cut - 4

[danox3]

United 93 - 8/10

I wanted to slap the shit out of that fucking limey!

I imagined Di Niro in Ben's role.

[Necrometer]

Tree of Life 5/10 Romanticization of apologetics for art kids, I guess? Great cinematography, performances, and screensavers - unpleasant everything else. Voiceovers sucked. I was disappointed an hour in, and infuriated by the end. Movie is not for atheists.

Luke I would really appreciate hearing your enspoilered take on this movie.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Did we actually see a dinosaur choosing the path of grace?

Febtis I feel like this might one day help turn over a new leaf between us; I understand that having an arts degree means you can't go below 7 on something like this but I'm still brimming with hope.

[Necrometer]

okay, apparently they exclusively included the stupid parts of the initially planned ending:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

PART THREE

EXT. CITY – JACK (ADULT) – THE FUTURE

Jack, an adult now, wakes up from his reverie His soul has come to life. He sees the order of things, the sanity of the creative scheme; a moral purpose underlying all.

Now, before his eyes, the future unfolds.

THE WOLD IN RUINS – THE GREAT TRIBULATION

Scenes from the Congo, from Bangladesh, Iraq and Chad. Children stranded by a flood; their mute, inquiring eyes. Dry, abandoned wells. Riots, fires. Grief and dread have seized the earth.

EXT. NEW EARTH – THE FAMILY OF MAN

The music shifts to a major key. The C minor of the chaos section is resolved into a triumphant E flat major as, after the great catastrophe, a new earth appears; a new land of the spirit.

Evil is overcome, wrong is set right. Men lay down their arms. Manacles are undone. Bolts and locks fly open. Black embraces white, Muslim Jew. Man recovers his lost inheritance. The soul is reconciled with nature.

Women from Guatemala, India, Kenya, Greenland: They smile at their children. Scenes of peace and harmony: from the Dordogne, from Bhutan and Switzerland, and other happy lands where the earth is still a garden.

THE END OF THE EARTH (CGI) – BLACK SKY – MUSIC

The last days of the earth. Man has long since left its surface to seek asylum on worlds yet unknown. The atmosphere has vanished. The seas have boiled away. The land melts. Lava streams down the naked hills.

Trumpets sound as the sun swells outward, spewing its last reserves of energy into the night of space.

The earth skims through an envelope of luminous white gas, in eventless rounds.

THE DYING SUN (CGI) – PLANETARY NEBULA – TENDER MUSIC

The dying sun collapses to a fraction of its former size, a white dwarf now.

All man’s sacrifices, his work, his suffering and genius are gone without a trace. Nothing seems the better or worse for it, nothing improved or diminished. He was here one day, swept away the next.

The sun, torn from its axis, drifts through space without purpose or direction, an undistinquished cinder glowing with a faint blue light, no brighter than today’s full moon.

Behind it, like a lost child, trails a remnant of the earth.

NEW WORLDS, IMAGINARY LIFE (CGI) – PANDROMEDA

New worlds spring up from the ashes of the old. New suns, with new planets in their spheres. Numberless galaxies, in a universe without center or circumference.

As the universe grows older, life assumes new forms. It runs like a fire to the uttermost reaches of space and time – breaks free of its confinement to mortal flesh – resolves itself into the unbounded and ethereal – into spirit, light.

DEGENERATE ERA (CGI) – A THOUSAND TRILLION YEARS FROM NOW – LAST WORLDS PERISHING – DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE – END OF TIME

At length these new worlds perish like those which preceded them. Their mountains burn like tar. Their suns go out like candles in the wind. Stars are scattered like chaff, and the heavens roll up like a scroll.

The expansion of the universe accelerates. The galaxies recede out of sight of each other. All but those in our local group become invisible. Gradually, as they run out of hydrogen, star formation ceases. Only brown and white dwarfs remain, with neutron stars, black holes, atoms the size of the Milky Way, and other bizarre products of this era. With each passing year they drift farther and farther apart from each other.

Night sinks into a deeper night. Now and then there is a burst of light as two dwarfs collide to form a new star.

When there is nothing left to devour, the black holes themselves evaporate away.

All dies, even death itself. Time comes to a close, and all is as it was in the beginning.

Shall the creation leave off here? Has death no purpose, great as life’s?

The same triumphant music accompanies the departure of these celestial scenes as greeted their arrival at the start of our story, when the stars were first born. A hymn of joy.

Though all that lives is doomed to die, something yet remains. Though even our universe is not eternal, there yet is that which is.

THE MULTIVERSE (CGI) – MULTIPLE BIG BANGS – THIRD EXPANSION

From the sadness and gloom of the last night, new universes burst forth, one rising out of the other, a fountain of light.

Creation is eternal birth. A beginning without end. It happens in every instant of time.

The same power which burns in the stars and nebulae burns equally in us. Our being is a miracle, equal with the creation of the universe, and like the universe, each day is created anew.

For a third time, the cosmos expands. Universes froth and dance like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Most contain no life – unstable seas of neutrinos, photons and electrons, incapable of combining to form any higher structure – but what can we say of the countless others?

We have reviewed the whole of time, in order that we might see what is without beginning or end – without growth, without decay – eternity revealing itself in the phenomena of time – as active in undoing as in doing.

TIGHT ON JACK (30) – DAWN

The first shafts of dawn reach into the city of desolation.

EXT. CITY – CROSSROADS – DAWN

Jack finds himself at the edge of the city. A choice is offered him: he may either go back into the labyrinth where he wandered so long, or come out into the unknown and unfamiliar.

EXT. WALL, RAMPS, DOOR – REIMERS RANCH SET – DAWN

He sees a ramp, a ladder, a gateway, a door.

gathering of the juggalos his courage, he goes forward. The door is ajar. He stands at the threshold. There is no sound of life, only the wind. What lies on the other side? Does he dare to see?

One step, and he is through

EXT. FIELD BEYOND THE WALL – SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC

He stands in a field beyond the wall, which already seems to lie far behind him. He hears the singing of cicadas. The land is dry. He looks for water. He will not find it here

EXT. SLOT CANYON – GOBLIN VALLEY – SLICKROCK (UTAH) WITH TIME LAPSE OF FLOWING WATER, CLOUDS - _________________ CLIMB

He passes through the narrow defile of a slot canyon. His heart pounds with dread. He climbs through the rock.

He sees a coral snake on the ground. This and other images from his past gradually take shape – assume a sense they did not have before. At last he begins to understand the meaning and the pattern of his life. Everything seems a clue, and oracle: the nighthawk overhead, the rising moon, the faint sound of a guitar.

EXT. STREAM – POOL AMONG PETRIFIED DUNES – DAWN

A stream runs through the rock. He approaches it. A canyon wren is singing. He kneels down beside the rock. He drinks from it. He bathes his face and neck.

We have traveled up the river of time – ascended, from nature to the soul.

Paradise is not a place here or there. The soul is paradise; it opens before us; here, today. The humblest things show it. We live in the eternal, even now.

EXT. SUNFLOWER FIELD

Sunflowers, their heads turned towards their source: the unseen sun, illuminating all with its bright shafts, pressing eagerly through chinks and cracks, driving the darkness before it –

EXT. LAND OF THE DEAD – MIST – DUST – CAVE/SEA/CITY/QUARRY – UTAH SALT FLATS – MONO LAKE – GRASSLAND – BOMARZO – DAWN

Dawn tints the high clouds as a fresh wind finds its way into the land of death, at the end of that road from which there is no return, where men sit in darkness, where dust is their food.

The mists dissolve away. Light breaks through a high window, awakening the dead. The sleepers open their eyes, look about. They rise up exultant, changed – fresh as they were in the days of their youth.

They gather from different places – all who have ever lived. They ascend towards the light at the mouth of a cave. They come out of the city streets where they last walked – out of quarries and abandoned factories, and up from the depths of the sea.

Their faces are covered with ash. Each wears that costume which indicates his character or occupation while he was alive: a ball gown, a cassock, a military uniform or simply his Sunday best. One drags a chain; another pushes a large ball. Gradually, as though at the close of a masquerade, they put these disguises aside.

They stop by a pool to wash their faces. Their features grow more distinct.

They wander over a salt flat. At first the ground is dry and cracked. Then, with mounting excitement, they discover water beneath their feet. Ahead lies a mountain. Rain clouds stand above its peak.

Shoots of young grass spring up through the hard ground.

EXT. SAND DUNES – REUNION AND REBIRTH

Men and women embrace in the dawn, reunited at last. Husband and wife, mother and child, greet each other in joy and awe. Eagerly they tell each other all that has happened. The ages since they last saw each other have passed off like a dream. Here there is no before or after.

EXT. SHORE OF ETERNITY – MUSIC OF UNBOUNDED JOY

They go down toward the shore, entranced by a growing brightness in the east. They speak with each other in whispers.

The shore teems with people now. Water laps at their feet. A crown lies cast down on the wet sand. Mrs. Stone finds her son, Mrs. McKeever her husband. Jack sees other figures from his past: Mr. Reese, O.C., his grandmother and his uncle, Betty and Rush, Cayler and others: the prisoner, the lame man, Marsha and Robert. It is as though they were coming together in one great chorus.

This is the end of the voyage of life. The music sings: all came from love, to love all shall return.

Jack has crossed over death’s threshold, gone beyond space and time, to some greater life which includes death within it.

HIS BROTHER

Now from a distance, he hears that sweet voice which he trusts most in all the world.

JACK

Brother!

As RL approaches, Jack reaches out and takes his hand. We see him from the back; never face on.

JACK (CONT’D)
I’ve found you.

They melt into each other’s arms. Here, in the eternal, they have not been apart.

The walls of the world fly away. It can hold them no longer. They know each other in that which is without end.

MOTHER AND FATHER

Turning, Jack sees his mother, father and Steve looing on. He leads RL towards them.

MOTHER

Is it you?

RL wipes the tears from her eyes.

MOTHER (CONT’D)

You!

She embraces her lost son. She touches his hands, his face, ecstatic. Wonder! Unspeakable joy!

FATHER

my autistic son!

Now, with open arms, his father comes towards him. Love unites what death and suffering have put asunder. He turns to his wife. She caresses her child’s hair. She looks at the strangers who are standing by, as though to ask if she is dreaming. She looks at Jack. She nods. Her grief is cured. Her doubts are ended.

JACK (O.S.)

What you are can’t die.

The plain and ordinary has become a door to the infinite. He lives in that which neither comes into being nor passes away.

He takes his mother’s hands. The music drops away. He knows love and not its semblance. The world itself is music now.

ETERNITY

Dawn approaches.

We pass beyond death. We arrive at the eternal, the real – at that which neither flowers nor fades, which neither comes into being nor passes away – that in which we might live forever. Hitherto all has been mere image; all that we think solid and permanent. Space, time, evanescent all; images only, the purpose and last end elsewhere; the life of life.

Eternity – that realm of pure and endless light – how shall we represent it? A ladder leading up into a tree. Sparks flying up from a fire. A bridge. A kiss. A solitary island.

A single image might serve better than several combined. The whole creation in the figure of a tree. The smallest leaf communicates with the lowest root, all parts feeding on the same sap, breathing in the same air and sunlight, drawing the same life up from the darkness of the earth below.

Simple images, captured with a pinhole camera. After the nervous movements of time, we see that of which time is a moving picture.

A child; the similarity in form between the shape of his ear and that of an oyster shell, between the cowlick at the crown of his head and a galaxy. A lotus, its stalks rising clear of the water; its leaf to which nothing clings. Sequoias. A rose, unfolding. Life surpassing itself.

A locomotive approaches the end of a tunnel. The light draws closer. Soon it shall burst out into the day. No longer a blind mechanism, it has become (quick dissolves, quick cuts) a river – living, flowing – the pure waters of the river of life, rushing down from a mountain peak.

Winter has passed. The leafless woods our hero wandered in are green and cool, murmurous with the song of birds.

You separate the true from the false. You, to whom all things return, from whom all proceed; in whom they are; the beginning of things and their last end; the goal of each and all.

The whole of the picture has been a sifting. The chaff flies away, the kernel remains. Something lives in you that shall outlast the stars.

EXT. SHORE

As Jack watches, his mother spreads her arms towards her children, restored to faith and happiness, reconciled to life.

Now he sees that it was she – his mysterious guide, the guardian of his heart, the source of his moral being. She is the mother of all creation. All flows out of her; she is the gateway, the door. She smiles through all things.

Through her the eternal sought him. From out of her mouth it spoke. Through her life and actions she brought them near it.

MOTHER (O.S)

Fear no longer. You shall find me.

The camera rises with the music’s circling strings – over the trees, over the hills and plains. Now there is rest. The peace of eternity spreads about him, and all is as it was in the beginning.

EXT. CITY

Rain. Weeds in the cracks of a sidewalk. Children playing. We are back with Jack in the city. Even in these streets, the eternal shines. This is God’s world, and not an infinite plain of chaos and sorrow after all.

Though he must linger here a while yet, he will not despair. A new life lies before him. A faith which sees through death.

MOTHER (O.S.)

Know that I am.

EXT. O’BRIEN HOUSE

We return to the present, to the noise and confusion of the everyday, to the place we set out from. We see it now as though for the first time What seemed plain and familiar glows with radiance it did not display before. We have found the infinite in the everyday, the commonplace.

Jack looks about. Will the revelation be forgotten? Will it seem a passing fancy – a dream?

Inside the house, his father is playing the piano. His mother has gone into the backyard. A bell sounds.

The great oak tree stands like a sentient being – thoughtful, benevolent – looking down on him.

He puts his ear against the trunk and listens for those words that, it was foretold, would destroy the evil in men’s hearts and bring them good.

The camera rises up through the branches, cranes up and up until it breaks out of the canopy of leaves into the sky above.

All ends in peace, as music does. The last chord melts into ordinary production sound. Time has reappeared; resumed its sway.

And still the vision is not the journey. The real journey has yet to begin.

Will he give himself to this new life? Does he dare?

A stranger, smiling.

A threshold.

A star.

THE END

that would've been great

[Necrometer]

It deals with our place in the universe, meaning of life, evolution, etc - things I am fundamentally interested in. I heard there were great visual sequences. People seldom make this sort of movie. Yep.

[Necrometer]

I would LOVE to hear your take on this one.

[CHUFFED beyond necropsy]

"Dying of Laughter" - 8/10

i really need to catch up on more of Álex de la Iglesia's films.

[caldwell.the.great]

who is Febtis?

[riley-o]

fall back on spear

[Necrometer]

who is Febtis?

question of my life

[caldwell.the.great]

okay, apparently they exclusively included the stupid parts of the initially planned ending:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

PART THREE

EXT. CITY – JACK (ADULT) – THE FUTURE

Jack, an adult now, wakes up from his reverie His soul has come to life. He sees the order of things, the sanity of the creative scheme; a moral purpose underlying all.

Now, before his eyes, the future unfolds.

THE WOLD IN RUINS – THE GREAT TRIBULATION

Scenes from the Congo, from Bangladesh, Iraq and Chad. Children stranded by a flood; their mute, inquiring eyes. Dry, abandoned wells. Riots, fires. Grief and dread have seized the earth.

EXT. NEW EARTH – THE FAMILY OF MAN

The music shifts to a major key. The C minor of the chaos section is resolved into a triumphant E flat major as, after the great catastrophe, a new earth appears; a new land of the spirit.

Evil is overcome, wrong is set right. Men lay down their arms. Manacles are undone. Bolts and locks fly open. Black embraces white, Muslim Jew. Man recovers his lost inheritance. The soul is reconciled with nature.

Women from Guatemala, India, Kenya, Greenland: They smile at their children. Scenes of peace and harmony: from the Dordogne, from Bhutan and Switzerland, and other happy lands where the earth is still a garden.

THE END OF THE EARTH (CGI) – BLACK SKY – MUSIC

The last days of the earth. Man has long since left its surface to seek asylum on worlds yet unknown. The atmosphere has vanished. The seas have boiled away. The land melts. Lava streams down the naked hills.

Trumpets sound as the sun swells outward, spewing its last reserves of energy into the night of space.

The earth skims through an envelope of luminous white gas, in eventless rounds.

THE DYING SUN (CGI) – PLANETARY NEBULA – TENDER MUSIC

The dying sun collapses to a fraction of its former size, a white dwarf now.

All man’s sacrifices, his work, his suffering and genius are gone without a trace. Nothing seems the better or worse for it, nothing improved or diminished. He was here one day, swept away the next.

The sun, torn from its axis, drifts through space without purpose or direction, an undistinquished cinder glowing with a faint blue light, no brighter than today’s full moon.

Behind it, like a lost child, trails a remnant of the earth.

NEW WORLDS, IMAGINARY LIFE (CGI) – PANDROMEDA

New worlds spring up from the ashes of the old. New suns, with new planets in their spheres. Numberless galaxies, in a universe without center or circumference.

As the universe grows older, life assumes new forms. It runs like a fire to the uttermost reaches of space and time – breaks free of its confinement to mortal flesh – resolves itself into the unbounded and ethereal – into spirit, light.

DEGENERATE ERA (CGI) – A THOUSAND TRILLION YEARS FROM NOW – LAST WORLDS PERISHING – DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE – END OF TIME

At length these new worlds perish like those which preceded them. Their mountains burn like tar. Their suns go out like candles in the wind. Stars are scattered like chaff, and the heavens roll up like a scroll.

The expansion of the universe accelerates. The galaxies recede out of sight of each other. All but those in our local group become invisible. Gradually, as they run out of hydrogen, star formation ceases. Only brown and white dwarfs remain, with neutron stars, black holes, atoms the size of the Milky Way, and other bizarre products of this era. With each passing year they drift farther and farther apart from each other.

Night sinks into a deeper night. Now and then there is a burst of light as two dwarfs collide to form a new star.

When there is nothing left to devour, the black holes themselves evaporate away.

All dies, even death itself. Time comes to a close, and all is as it was in the beginning.

Shall the creation leave off here? Has death no purpose, great as life’s?

The same triumphant music accompanies the departure of these celestial scenes as greeted their arrival at the start of our story, when the stars were first born. A hymn of joy.

Though all that lives is doomed to die, something yet remains. Though even our universe is not eternal, there yet is that which is.

THE MULTIVERSE (CGI) – MULTIPLE BIG BANGS – THIRD EXPANSION

From the sadness and gloom of the last night, new universes burst forth, one rising out of the other, a fountain of light.

Creation is eternal birth. A beginning without end. It happens in every instant of time.

The same power which burns in the stars and nebulae burns equally in us. Our being is a miracle, equal with the creation of the universe, and like the universe, each day is created anew.

For a third time, the cosmos expands. Universes froth and dance like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Most contain no life – unstable seas of neutrinos, photons and electrons, incapable of combining to form any higher structure – but what can we say of the countless others?

We have reviewed the whole of time, in order that we might see what is without beginning or end – without growth, without decay – eternity revealing itself in the phenomena of time – as active in undoing as in doing.

TIGHT ON JACK (30) – DAWN

The first shafts of dawn reach into the city of desolation.

EXT. CITY – CROSSROADS – DAWN

Jack finds himself at the edge of the city. A choice is offered him: he may either go back into the labyrinth where he wandered so long, or come out into the unknown and unfamiliar.

EXT. WALL, RAMPS, DOOR – REIMERS RANCH SET – DAWN

He sees a ramp, a ladder, a gateway, a door.

gathering of the juggalos his courage, he goes forward. The door is ajar. He stands at the threshold. There is no sound of life, only the wind. What lies on the other side? Does he dare to see?

One step, and he is through

EXT. FIELD BEYOND THE WALL – SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC

He stands in a field beyond the wall, which already seems to lie far behind him. He hears the singing of cicadas. The land is dry. He looks for water. He will not find it here

EXT. SLOT CANYON – GOBLIN VALLEY – SLICKROCK (UTAH) WITH TIME LAPSE OF FLOWING WATER, CLOUDS - _________________ CLIMB

He passes through the narrow defile of a slot canyon. His heart pounds with dread. He climbs through the rock.

He sees a coral snake on the ground. This and other images from his past gradually take shape – assume a sense they did not have before. At last he begins to understand the meaning and the pattern of his life. Everything seems a clue, and oracle: the nighthawk overhead, the rising moon, the faint sound of a guitar.

EXT. STREAM – POOL AMONG PETRIFIED DUNES – DAWN

A stream runs through the rock. He approaches it. A canyon wren is singing. He kneels down beside the rock. He drinks from it. He bathes his face and neck.

We have traveled up the river of time – ascended, from nature to the soul.

Paradise is not a place here or there. The soul is paradise; it opens before us; here, today. The humblest things show it. We live in the eternal, even now.

EXT. SUNFLOWER FIELD

Sunflowers, their heads turned towards their source: the unseen sun, illuminating all with its bright shafts, pressing eagerly through chinks and cracks, driving the darkness before it –

EXT. LAND OF THE DEAD – MIST – DUST – CAVE/SEA/CITY/QUARRY – UTAH SALT FLATS – MONO LAKE – GRASSLAND – BOMARZO – DAWN

Dawn tints the high clouds as a fresh wind finds its way into the land of death, at the end of that road from which there is no return, where men sit in darkness, where dust is their food.

The mists dissolve away. Light breaks through a high window, awakening the dead. The sleepers open their eyes, look about. They rise up exultant, changed – fresh as they were in the days of their youth.

They gather from different places – all who have ever lived. They ascend towards the light at the mouth of a cave. They come out of the city streets where they last walked – out of quarries and abandoned factories, and up from the depths of the sea.

Their faces are covered with ash. Each wears that costume which indicates his character or occupation while he was alive: a ball gown, a cassock, a military uniform or simply his Sunday best. One drags a chain; another pushes a large ball. Gradually, as though at the close of a masquerade, they put these disguises aside.

They stop by a pool to wash their faces. Their features grow more distinct.

They wander over a salt flat. At first the ground is dry and cracked. Then, with mounting excitement, they discover water beneath their feet. Ahead lies a mountain. Rain clouds stand above its peak.

Shoots of young grass spring up through the hard ground.

EXT. SAND DUNES – REUNION AND REBIRTH

Men and women embrace in the dawn, reunited at last. Husband and wife, mother and child, greet each other in joy and awe. Eagerly they tell each other all that has happened. The ages since they last saw each other have passed off like a dream. Here there is no before or after.

EXT. SHORE OF ETERNITY – MUSIC OF UNBOUNDED JOY

They go down toward the shore, entranced by a growing brightness in the east. They speak with each other in whispers.

The shore teems with people now. Water laps at their feet. A crown lies cast down on the wet sand. Mrs. Stone finds her son, Mrs. McKeever her husband. Jack sees other figures from his past: Mr. Reese, O.C., his grandmother and his uncle, Betty and Rush, Cayler and others: the prisoner, the lame man, Marsha and Robert. It is as though they were coming together in one great chorus.

This is the end of the voyage of life. The music sings: all came from love, to love all shall return.

Jack has crossed over death’s threshold, gone beyond space and time, to some greater life which includes death within it.

HIS BROTHER

Now from a distance, he hears that sweet voice which he trusts most in all the world.

JACK

Brother!

As RL approaches, Jack reaches out and takes his hand. We see him from the back; never face on.

JACK (CONT’D)
I’ve found you.

They melt into each other’s arms. Here, in the eternal, they have not been apart.

The walls of the world fly away. It can hold them no longer. They know each other in that which is without end.

MOTHER AND FATHER

Turning, Jack sees his mother, father and Steve looing on. He leads RL towards them.

MOTHER

Is it you?

RL wipes the tears from her eyes.

MOTHER (CONT’D)

You!

She embraces her lost son. She touches his hands, his face, ecstatic. Wonder! Unspeakable joy!

FATHER

my autistic son!

Now, with open arms, his father comes towards him. Love unites what death and suffering have put asunder. He turns to his wife. She caresses her child’s hair. She looks at the strangers who are standing by, as though to ask if she is dreaming. She looks at Jack. She nods. Her grief is cured. Her doubts are ended.

JACK (O.S.)

What you are can’t die.

The plain and ordinary has become a door to the infinite. He lives in that which neither comes into being nor passes away.

He takes his mother’s hands. The music drops away. He knows love and not its semblance. The world itself is music now.

ETERNITY

Dawn approaches.

We pass beyond death. We arrive at the eternal, the real – at that which neither flowers nor fades, which neither comes into being nor passes away – that in which we might live forever. Hitherto all has been mere image; all that we think solid and permanent. Space, time, evanescent all; images only, the purpose and last end elsewhere; the life of life.

Eternity – that realm of pure and endless light – how shall we represent it? A ladder leading up into a tree. Sparks flying up from a fire. A bridge. A kiss. A solitary island.

A single image might serve better than several combined. The whole creation in the figure of a tree. The smallest leaf communicates with the lowest root, all parts feeding on the same sap, breathing in the same air and sunlight, drawing the same life up from the darkness of the earth below.

Simple images, captured with a pinhole camera. After the nervous movements of time, we see that of which time is a moving picture.

A child; the similarity in form between the shape of his ear and that of an oyster shell, between the cowlick at the crown of his head and a galaxy. A lotus, its stalks rising clear of the water; its leaf to which nothing clings. Sequoias. A rose, unfolding. Life surpassing itself.

A locomotive approaches the end of a tunnel. The light draws closer. Soon it shall burst out into the day. No longer a blind mechanism, it has become (quick dissolves, quick cuts) a river – living, flowing – the pure waters of the river of life, rushing down from a mountain peak.

Winter has passed. The leafless woods our hero wandered in are green and cool, murmurous with the song of birds.

You separate the true from the false. You, to whom all things return, from whom all proceed; in whom they are; the beginning of things and their last end; the goal of each and all.

The whole of the picture has been a sifting. The chaff flies away, the kernel remains. Something lives in you that shall outlast the stars.

EXT. SHORE

As Jack watches, his mother spreads her arms towards her children, restored to faith and happiness, reconciled to life.

Now he sees that it was she – his mysterious guide, the guardian of his heart, the source of his moral being. She is the mother of all creation. All flows out of her; she is the gateway, the door. She smiles through all things.

Through her the eternal sought him. From out of her mouth it spoke. Through her life and actions she brought them near it.

MOTHER (O.S)

Fear no longer. You shall find me.

The camera rises with the music’s circling strings – over the trees, over the hills and plains. Now there is rest. The peace of eternity spreads about him, and all is as it was in the beginning.

EXT. CITY

Rain. Weeds in the cracks of a sidewalk. Children playing. We are back with Jack in the city. Even in these streets, the eternal shines. This is God’s world, and not an infinite plain of chaos and sorrow after all.

Though he must linger here a while yet, he will not despair. A new life lies before him. A faith which sees through death.

MOTHER (O.S.)

Know that I am.

EXT. O’BRIEN HOUSE

We return to the present, to the noise and confusion of the everyday, to the place we set out from. We see it now as though for the first time What seemed plain and familiar glows with radiance it did not display before. We have found the infinite in the everyday, the commonplace.

Jack looks about. Will the revelation be forgotten? Will it seem a passing fancy – a dream?

Inside the house, his father is playing the piano. His mother has gone into the backyard. A bell sounds.

The great oak tree stands like a sentient being – thoughtful, benevolent – looking down on him.

He puts his ear against the trunk and listens for those words that, it was foretold, would destroy the evil in men’s hearts and bring them good.

The camera rises up through the branches, cranes up and up until it breaks out of the canopy of leaves into the sky above.

All ends in peace, as music does. The last chord melts into ordinary production sound. Time has reappeared; resumed its sway.

And still the vision is not the journey. The real journey has yet to begin.

Will he give himself to this new life? Does he dare?

A stranger, smiling.

A threshold.

A star.

THE END

that would've been great

before I write anything else, I want to say a couple things about this

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

1) most of what is written here is implied in the movie, if not shown directly
2) that's so very specifically Platonic, it kind of blows my mind
3) it's a great movie for atheists, because despite the Christian imagery during the scenes in the 50s (what was he going to show, a Buddhist temple?), there's nothing specifically religious about this movie. Philosophical maybe, but not religious. Maybe it's an argument against materialism, but that's nothing new, and I don't think its terribly controversial.
4) now I get why the last shot of the film is a bridge
5) there's nothing apologetic about the film, and I think this different version shows why; it sort of suggests the meaninglessness of life, but also confirms its preciousness, kind of in a Sagan-esque style... the movie itself doesn't tell us there is a God, but it asks what could be eternal in a universe full of change... and the answer is something like love or light or creation... and these are thoughts that are at least 2,000 years old, and probably much older...
6) go watch the movie again, it's so much better than a 5/10, come on dude

[caldwell.the.great]

fall back on spear

gotcha

[ricin beans]

the human centipede - 8/10.

liked it way more than i thought i would. the german actor was great. looking forward to the sequel.

"FEED HER! FEED HER! HARD!"

[Necrometer]

I dug it in its own hokey way

on FB Luke said:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

the dinosaur sequence might be there for a few reasons, but I highly doubt he was inserting grace into nature that bluntly and stupidly; that'd be a grievous violation of the movie's theme and that sequence's progression, plus it'd be a massively dumb move in general and it'd make the whole thing pointless and horrible and just plain idiotic. Even if you don't like Malick's argument, I think he's smarter than that.

and I am not seeing any other way

Luke am I writing now or waiting for you two write some more? We could sync our schedules in Outlook...

[caldwell.the.great]

You don't see another way, meaning you disagree? More is coming. Pizza is out if the oven and beer is in hand. Both are necessary pre-reqs.

[Necrometer]

You don't see another way, meaning you disagree?

[spacehamster]

Wild at Heart - 8/10

Didn't hold up as well as I hoped, but it's still pretty damn good.

[spacehamster]

Wild at Heart - 8/10

Didn't hold up as well as I hoped, but it's still pretty damn good.

How the fuck did you stay out of Lynch this long?

I just meant I hadn't seen this one since like '96 or something like that. Twin Peaks was just one of the very few things I hadn't seen.

[spacehamster]

As I'm utterly (obviously) culturally ignorant when it comes to the Swiss, tell me this: when you want to go see a movie, whatever, the biggest place you can find with a date, are they all American movies? I honestly don't know if I've ever seen a Swiss movie.

There's not much of a movie industry here (hardly surprising given the size of the market), but there's some decent stuff every now and then. Obviously the movie market's pretty much saturated with Hollywood stuff - I'd say European movies are considered far less of a niche thing here than in the States, but the big sellers are usually American movies, yeah.

[caldwell.the.great]

okay, here we go... there's probably a billion ways to approach this, but

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

I can think of a few ways to look at this movie, and each perspective would necessitate its own little essay worth of shit; there's a book about this movie out there for anybody with the time to take the topic up. Anyways, perspectives:

1) it's auto-biographical; the movie is largely about how people (specifically families) relate to each other and to the world around them; this is a running theme in Malick's movies - you don't need to mention anything specifically religious to talk about this facet, and it fits into Malick's structure, which puts the brothers and the family at the heart of the story (by specifically, I mean that Malick makes no explicit argument for any kind of religion in exploring the effects of losing a brother and growing up in a certain place with certain people; the Christian imagery is a byproduct of the place and time, not an irrefutable truth). Under this interpretation, we can assume that much of the movie consists of Sean Penn's memories and imagination... the jumpy editing is a product of the way our memory tends to work; there is no straight narrative, just numerous ideas and musings that get strung together into something bigger. I'm sympathetic to this interpretation, at least in part. It helps make sense of Sean Penn's character, and it helps connect the "creation of the universe" sequence with the story that takes place in the 50s... the movie ends up being an extended train of thought, seemingly unedited... we get everything from feeling grief to sneaking into a house and wondering what it all means 30 years down the road, after youth has faded and death comes increasingly closer.

2) it's a movie about how the eternal relates to the temporal; this can be combined with 1 without any problems, but I'm separating the two because I think there might be an argument that one is more central the other. I'll leave that up to whoever watches the movie. I think one of the things you have to ask when watching the movie is "why do we need to see the creation of the universe to tell this story?" I think it's because Malick is making an argument that the eternal and the temporal are artificially distinct categories, and that they should be combined or fused in a way we don't expect. Even as time marches on and the world changes in infinitely different ways, there's a constant theme of creation and death that defines the movement of the universe perfectly; there isn't any temporal activity without eternal laws, but the eternal laws are meaningless and void without the temporal specifics; or, at least, the eternal can't be glimpsed by the human except through the specific. I think, when looking at the movie through these glasses, the whole dinosaur episode is just another example of life happening in the universe. The "grace" episode you're talking about with the dinosaurs has nothing to do with grace and nature at all; one dinosaur happens upon the other, one is sick and dying, the other is moving down the river looking for food, and none of it means a damn thing. One lives, the other probably dies, if not by cannibalization (assuming they're the same species), then by something else. In fact, the next scene is a giant asteroid crashing into the earth and killing everything, so it doesn't matter which survived and which didn't. I think that whole sequence was supposed to be a setup for the extinction event he shows before moving on to the next kind of life... we start with brain-less entities, move through the dinosaurs which are modestly more intelligent, and then get to more complex life and eventually humans... but death marks life's progress from moment 1 to moment infinity. It's a sequence, not an argument that there's grace in nature. If that's how you read it, then you're basically arguing that Malick is negating his whole conceptual setup, which I think is a longshot... That brings me to the next thing...

3) the movie is about what nature and grace are; this is harder for me to talk about, because I think Malick eliminates the difference by the end of the movie; that's another reason the dinosaur thing has nothing to do with grace.. They were one kind of life that came along and died, but they're massively different from humans, which can remember their dead and make informed decisions, wonder about the nature of the universe, solve math problems, listen to Sigh, and do more than decide whether to eat or not at some point in time. Humans can reflect and make claims that they see something in the universe that's more than natural, in the sense that it's super-natural, super-nature, whatever. The movie's logic kind of starts with a dichotomy, and then moves toward the elimination of opposites... this is also made clear by the way Malick handles death... we' might think that death and life/creation are opposites, but the end of the movie suggests otherwise. Death makes way for life, makes way for death, makes way for life, etc. etc. etc. etc.

4) the movie is about God in the world; there are several instances that make me think this is the heart of the movie, but I'm not convinced Malick is thinking about God in a specifically Christian context. America in the 50s = Christianity; had the movie been set somewhere else, perhaps the movie could be made with Buddhist images instead of Christian ones... Anyways, Malick uses the dead brother as a way of talking about what happens to people when they grieve and think a lot about death and meaning, but he also uses that death as a way to suggest that death simply isn't the end, and that there is meaning in grief that exceeds the bare materialistic facts. All the talk about love and meaning support this, but so does the scope of the movie... stars are born and die, worlds form and disintegrate, dinosaurs and all other kinds of life live and die, humans live, look for meaning, and frequently pass away before ever finding it or even glimpsing it, but the constant is perpetual life and death, some kind of perpetual light that founds the universe... death is not the end, etc. - whatever it is that put the universe in motion... we see it in the world, we sort of get a peek at it.... there's something in life that goes beyond the basic material facts, etc. The one brother brought the other to a belief that there's more in the universe, the father is brought to self-understanding by his son, the mother is moved to let her grief go by considering the scope of the universe and the laws that govern it... and ultimately all life exceeds itself and shows itself to be more than the mere facts of organic interactions... I think this links the creation of the universe and the 50s-era story nicely. I know I'm jumping around, but I'd have to see the movie again and take more time to form my thoughts more perfectly before arguing this any better than I am now.

5) the movie deals with the way different forces of nature meet to make something new; we see this in the creation sequence, but also in the way the character's change through the movie. We don't even need to mention God from this perspective, because ultimately Malick is dealing with philosophical concepts that don't have to be linked to one dogma or another... This is the perspective that looks the most Platonic...

All 5 of these can be combined to some extent, and I think you could insert ideas about gender archetypes, like the male and the female, and the motherly and fatherly.... So there's probably at least 6 ways of coming at this movie, and it's more likely that all 6 are right in some way or another.... But in each case, I see no reason to assume that Malick thinks dinosaurs had grace...

I mean, he doesn't even exactly define what grace is, so I don't know why you're assuming not killing something = grace. That's overly simplistic, IMO. Assuming he is being Christian, then grace definitely does not equal dinosaur sympathy; it's a billion times closer to what happens internally when the mother lets the death of her son go and moves on; she sort of gives her grief up to whatever moves the universe along (God? something else? who knows? she never says, nor does Malick)... You might also see grace in the brother's coming to terms with the scope of the universe... or maybe even with his coming to terms with the eternal.... it's the grace to cope, and more specifically the grace to have your sins forgiven, which in part means forgiving yourself and accepting that nature delivers something in life that grace does not; it's more a gift from God than some specific mental state that keeps dino A from eating dino B - I don't know that any other religion outside the Abrahamic triad (Judaism and Islam being the other two) has a concept like grace, but if they do, I doubt its anything like sympathy. I guess it's easiest to think of grace (in Christianity, and more specifically in the Catholic form) as that thing which unites us to God, and it seems reasonable to assume that grace includes acceptance of God and reconciliation with God (if you think of God as the creator and also the highest expression of truth in the universe; truth may be something like "goodness is the absolute founding element of the universe" or "light is greater than darkness" or "life is elemental, and death serves it, not the other way around). Grace is actually a terribly difficult concept that no dino interaction could possibly communicate.

So yeah... that's my rambling, quickly written take on different aspects of the movie, and I could talk a lot about each one of those. I'm willing to bet there are many others, too, so I'm not trying to say those are the only ways you can approach the whole thing... hopefully that at least clears up with the dino thing, or helps explains why I disagree with you

[caldwell.the.great]

more ToL thought:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

just a supplement, actually - I guess the mother does tell us what she thinks grace is, but it still has nothing to do with dinosaurs, if only because the dino's fucking brain doesn't give it the option to "act gracefully" - what the mother describes has everything to do with concepts like pride, greed, etc. - specifically human concepts, and maybe specifically religious or philosophical... that still eliminates the dino thing. One of my friends actually asked someone, "are those the kinds of dinosaurs that can't really sense you unless you're moving?" I dunno if that's a dumb question or not, but I know there are a ton of people out there that don't see any reason to read grace into that scene. I get the feeling that all you're supposed to see in that scene is two living creatures interacting in a mostly unimportant way... it just shows life going on between creatures that have advanced beyond the jellyfish and other sea creatures/bacteria.

Also, the river that the dinos are on looks very similar to the river that the brothers spend some of their time on, and Malick really likes creating visual symmetries throughout the movie (the sun, the sunflowers, the shape of a person's face, the spirals of the galaxy, the shapes of sea creatures, the creation of the universe, the division of cells, etc. etc. etc. - I think there are a lot of scenes that are just meant to show off the symmetry of creation in specifically visual ways

[Necrometer]

Good stuff, Luke! I might not be able to respond tonight, but trust me I will. Dinocore.

[ghost boner]

existenz - 8. pretty radd. was like watching a dream

[gelatinous cube]

Burden of Dreams - 7/10

really good. actually on par with Fitzcarraldo.