Review: The Island

– Directed by Michael Bay, Written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Starring Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor

It was a little overwhelming.

At first I thought the look of it was gorgeous – the colors were rich and beautifully saturated. The images fantastic and dream like. But a lot of the action was delivered using fast cut editing with close moving shots, which was vertiginous to my senses, and I could at times only infer the specific details – until a pause and pull-back made the situation evident.

The actors playing the 2 principal characters were always attractive and a pleasure to watch. However, there was a tension between my experience of them as characters and my sense of them as actors.

Every now and than their presence as characters would supersede their presence as actors, but only long enough for them to register as good actors, and thus leave their presence as characters behind. And as far as characterization at the level of the script is concerned, they registered as concepts as much as I ever did identify with them as people.

This was in keeping with my general awareness of the story’s constitutive elements (its themes, its style, its metaphors, and other aspects of its structural architecture). Which meant there was also a tension between my experience of the story, and my sense of the script.

I had no sense of the director’s presence. In this sense, the ownership of the movie seemed to be signed by the actors, the editing, the lush imagery, and to the story. All these elements are usually under the control of the director, but there was no peculiar and idiosyncratic stamp, as there is with such directors as Woody Allen, Martin Scorcesse, John Cassevettes, Stanley Kubric, Frederico Fellini, David Lynch, Wes Anderson and Sophia Coppola, and many other of the “auteur” type.

I was aware, of course, that it was a film by Michael Bay, who is supposedly known for his action sequences, but the movie did not register on me as being uniquely stamped in this regard. In fact, in some way, I was reminded of the 2nd Matrix movie, and the many others since that used that unique style in a derivative fashion. Of course I have not ever really identified a sense of Michael Bay’s films, inasmuch as I have only ever seen one other in his directing catalogue.

The story arc and concept registered, as I inferred before, but it was superseded by my interest in the romance within it. Which meant that although it was an action adventure with plenty of perilous events (or sequences), I experienced the dangers as an expression of the perils of the romance. This I think created a stress against the ostensible theme, which could be stated as an exploration of the perilous risks involved in the privatization of healthcare (healthcare for the rich) in the face of greed and an anti-humanist capitalism. This theme (or thesis) did register, but I was moved more by the nested themes of: innocence lost; the division between friendship and desire in relationship to love; what it means to be human and be responsible to the welfare of other humans. And I found that all of those themes were informed by a broad social philosophy of love – all of which, although marginalized, occupied the center of my attention.

When I think about the romance and all of its high ideals it now, it endears me more towards the movie.

But at the time, I felt a little bit let down by the whole thing. – I’m not sure why. – Perhaps I was just queasy from the rollercoaster ride the action scenes provided. – Or perhaps it was because the childlike innocence it seemed to valorize, although it was endearing to me, and it did agreeably represent, if somewhat vaguely, a humanism I have a some affinity towards, was for all of that sublime and noble and exciting feeling it evoked, missing a maturity of thought?


The Island – cont.

I felt that the “cat and mouse” element was at times thrilling, but a bit too much, as well. Especially when I consider that the tension was underwritten by a goal of personal freedom that was at the centre of a revolution (social).

That revolution might be the bigger picture but it was in a smaller frame. Which was OK by me because I enjoyed it less, even if I did appreciate the idea it represented.

But there are some things about the idea that I’m not so sure about as well. For instance, there are sacrifices that are made, as there usually are, in the name of greater glory, but they are made for the sake of the heroes and their romance and not at all at their expense. The only loss they suffer is their own ignorance and innocence, while others lose their lives.

I don’t know if it is irony or if it’s a faulty contradiction when I see the revolution is driven by a belief in the basic right to live, and yet I notice that some people clearly do deserve to die. There is a judgment there that I feel I do comply with, but only in the context of a movie fantasy – outside of that it would be unsubtle and reactionary. Still, it poses an interesting question, I think – How does a law that informs a political economy define and measure mitigating circumstances?

Of course the feeling during the movie is clear – kill the rotten bad guys, sure. But it’s an uncomfortable complicity after the movie’s done and I’ve come down off the dream.

Isn’t that effect that a movie can have similar in intent to the planted memories that imprison and deceive the clones in the story and that thereby bring them suffering? They are manipulated into their motive by exposing them via classic brainwashing techniques to relentless and repetitive viewings of a movie that represents their history. It suggest already in that sense the presence of a strange complicity.

But one of the ideas is to be freed from that tyranny, and how to execute that idea is where things get interesting. For the revolution can only begin through the introduction of an anomaly – that is, by introducing someone driven to ask questions – someone who’s infected with a kind of virus, the consequence of which is to stimulate curiosity, an otherwise repressed characteristic.

I guess the lesson that’s in that is, it takes a freak of nature (or rather, a freak of nurture) to generate an evolution with revolutionarily results in favor of the tribe.

So, it’s a fluke that gets this evolution/revolution going, – a sort of mutation – but it’s not the classic evolutionary model that’s being touted or used as a device here. Actually, it’s driven rather by a version of what’s known as “Murphy’s Law” (i.e., “If something can go wrong, then something will go wrong.”) And yet, it’s an optimistic version. It’s like something you can hope for, count on, or wait to exploit, when the bad guys are in charge.

Of course there’s no one in the movie who recognizes that, but it’s an interesting prospect worthy to explore.