This is a 2018 Alex Garland film. It annoyed me. I wouldn’t be annoyed if it was shit. Alex Garland annoys me. Ex Machina is one of my favourite films. But there is this thing that is just a bit 90s about all of his stuff, it’s like Charlie Brooker as well.
I am not going to hate, I love how these guys who I was into got careers in the American mainstream and get to pretend to be clever and although they are posher than me, they are not posh posh, but it’s not quite there.
So the film is that Natalia Portman is some character, Natalie Portman, awesome, I’m on board, I love her. She’s our Arnie, she has to go into a Zone where everything is mutated, it’s an alien apparently. I’m sorry but I bet it’s only 3 people read this so I’m going to assume you have seen the film and you also know that it is based on the novel Roadside Picnic. There’s also the Russian film Stalker, I never actually finished the film, I did finish the novel, but really I didn’t need to and this film is the same. It’s just a fascinating idea, I’ll explain how I understand the idea and maybe finish the film if I havne’t bored myself
So the idea is that an alien visits earth by accident I think. The original is called Roadside Picnic because the alien doesn’t care. Like you are on a road trip and you have a roadside picnic, you stop in a bit of countryside and eat your supermarket food and have this weird effect. Like these voles and mice had never had bread before and it was mindblowing treasure for them because they were mice, fermenting bread was beyond their minds, and that was transposed to an alien turned up
The original novel was about Atomic power, but yeah.
Apparently the film is about cancer, but the one I read, it wasn’t anti cancer lol, like cancer is just this weird part of humanity. We used to die around 60, now we live longer, so we get cancer, it’s an organism within us. I’m sure I will die of cancer. as long as I outlive Obama I’m happy
But the film…
So the film is done as this kind of psychodrama. Natalie Portman is of course the protagonist, they go into ‘the zone’ and it’s a prism and it twists them. like there is a theme there as well. They are about the third team to be sent in, her husband was sent in is why she went in, but then she is on an all female team (the other teams were all male, because army) but she finds out that they are all kind of messed up and that is a theme as well (why is everyone weird except me?)
It’s way too long, it was 2018, this one did enjoy and luxuriate in the time. but it was too much. It got boring
I haave a lot more to say but I’m knackered
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