Kratki komentari o filmovima

Evo osvrta na film koji sam pomenula na nekoj od tema. Film je iz 2002. godine, mozda ga je dosta vas gledalo, ali ovo je topla preporuka za one koje nisu. Objasnjeno je po scenama koje se teme obradjuju.

Scene in Film   What It's About   Philosophical Themes
1. Dream is Destiny   Wiley Wiggins dreams of playing with origami fortune teller ("dream is destiny"), then floats away, touching a car handle.    Dreaming vs. Reality
2. Anchors Aweigh (The Boatisattva)

AXIAL SCENE   Bill Wise picks up Wiley in his boat car, telling him to go with the flow. He's in a state of constant departure. Random choices are important. Linklater is with them.
Buddhism

Taoism
3. Condemned to be Free

AXIAL SCENE   Philosopher Robert C. Solomon defends existentialism against the socially constructed, fragmented self of postmodernism: "it's your life to create."
Existentialism (especially Sartre on freedom)
4. Signifier and Signified   Kim Krizan tells Wiley that words are inert, dead symbols. At first they were survival tactics. They try to help us transcend our isolation, allow for spiritual communion.
Vedanta

Situationism
5. Neohuman Evolution   Eamonn Healy, a chemistry professor, predicts the evolution of a neohuman manifesting truth, loyalty, justice, freedom.

6. Self-Immolation   Journalist J. C. Shakespeare rants about human self-destruction & the media making us passive observers; he sets fire to himself like the Vietnamese Buddhist monk in 1963.
Situationism

7. Collective Memory   Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke muse in bed about dreaming and multiple consciousnesses, death, collective memory, and the simultaneity of scientific discoveries.
Taoism

Tibetan Buddhism

Dreaming
8. The Prisoner   Prisoner swears revenge against his captors. He's trapped in his self-created hell, like Sartre's characters in No Exit.
[Existentialism]
9. Free Will and Physics   David Sosa, physics professor, discusses free will in Augustine & Aquinas, and how it's compromised by modern physics.
Existentialism
10. Systems of Control   Alex Jones, radical broadcaster, rants over a loudspeaker about how political systems of control turn us into slaves.
Situationism
11. Say Yes to Existence   Otto Hoffman, a Quaker, wants us to be free from nothingness, to say Yes to one instant, and thus to all existence.
Buddhism

Existentialism (Nietzsche's love of fate)
12. Liminal Experiences   Aklilu Gebrewold, African-American writer, speaks of liminal experiences, radical subjectivity, and the great moment.
Vedanta

Situationism
13. The Aging Paradox   Carol Dawson, novelist, and Lisa Moore, English professor, speak of feeling freer as they age and of the fiction of personal identity.
Buddhism
14. Noise and Silence   A chimp speaks of subversive micro-societies and the possibilities of art while screening a rock performance and a showing of Kurosawa's film Dreams.
Situationism
15. The Overman   Louis Mackey, a philosophy professor, laments people's fear and laziness, their inability to reach their true potentials.
Existentialism (Nietzsche on the Overman)
16. What's the Story?   Violet Nichols asks Alex Nixon what's the story he's writing; it's just gestures, moments, fleeting emotions, he says.
[Postmodernism]
17. The Right to Bear Arms   Steven Prince tells a bartender how he treasures his right to bear arms. He shoots the barkeep, who shoots him in return.

18. Lucid Dreams   Clips on television: a man talks of flawed reality of the present; Mary McBay of lucid dream state reached by sorcerers, shamans; man talks of narrowness of the single ego.
Dreaming

[Buddhism]
19. Dreamers Muse   Three men: Jason Hodge identifies waking & dreaming perceptions; Guy Forsyth wants to combine waking & dreaming abilities; John Christensen says "fun rules."
Dreaming
20. The Holy Moment   Caveh Zahedi talks about film allowing us to see holy moments (Andre Bazin saw God as reality, film as presenting God). He and David Jewell have such a moment.
Bazin

[Vedanta]

[Situationism]
21. Society is a Fraud

AXIAL SCENE   Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt, two others want to rupture the spell of the consumer society, interrupt continuum of everyday life. "Mr. Debord" discusses not working.
Situationism
22. The Train Arrives   A man pops out of a train car, tells Wiley he's a dreamer, and that it's the most exciting time to be alive: don't be bored.
Buddhism

Dreaming
23. One Thousand Years   Ryan Power, an autistic kid, tells Wiley that 1000 years is but an instant, to build beautiful artifacts, feel joy, sorrow, etc.
Vedanta

Taoism

[Situationism]
24. The Human Ant Colony

AXIAL SCENE   Tiana Hux, performance artist, compels Wiley to communicate with her, rejecting the "ant" autopilot most of us use everyday. In lucid dreams we're in control.
Situationism

Dreaming

Buddhism
25. The Ongoing Wow

AXIAL SCENE   Mad poet/tour guide Timothy "Speed" Levitch speaks of the ongoing wow, Lorca's poems, that we're the authors of our lives, that life understood is life lived.
Existentialism

Situationism

Buddhism
26. Dream Self   Short scene: Steve Brudniak, artist, says the person you are in a dream isn't your real self - you haven't yet met yourself.
Dreaming
27. Channel Surfing   TV: Catholic puppet speaks of heaven & hell; Steven Soderbergh tells joke about Billy Wilder and Louis Malle; Mary McBay discusses post-death dream body.
Dreaming
28. Swept Along   Short scene: man on street says that as pattern gets more intricate, being swept along is no longer enough.

29. Exploding Burritos   Bill Wise returns as convenience store clerk (denies other role) bemoaning customer who explodes burritos in his microwave.

30. Every Moment is Magical   Mona Lee, actress, sees the self as a logical structure. Life was raging all around her, and every moment was magical.
Buddhism
31. Garden and Portrait   Short scene: an elderly woman draws Wiley's portrait in a garden.
Taoism
32. Sweep Me Up   Short scene. Passing man: "Kierkegaard's last words were, 'Sweep me up'".
Existentialism
33. The Tango of Yes

AXIAL SCENE   Orchestra from earlier in film plays a tango, dancers dance. Linklater plays pinball, tells Wiley about Philip K. Dick story coming true in his life, dream of Lady Gregory: there's only one instant, it's right now. God invites us into eternity. There's only one story: moving from the No to the Yes.
Dreaming

Vedanta

[Existentialism (Nietzsche)]
34. Wake Up!   Wiley wakes up, walks down street on beautiful day, begins to float again.
Dreaming, Vedanta, Taoism