Smack-notes: OK movie, good metaphor for political and psychological things, bad CGI, very good performance by Will Smith. I discuss my personal experience of the movie and some thoughts r/e the psychology of horror, the state, the Jungian 'Other', the false self, etc..

So the sub-heading for this section says:

Quote:

Saw a film that touched you, that got you thinking, made you cry or puke? laughed your ass off watching Curb Your Enthusiasm? Surfed for hours on an obscure website? Share your joy or anger!

And while I don't know what this will have to do with the general topics as LiMi, I feel invited to just share my experience today watching "I Am Legend" with my brother and sister-in-law. The movie is based on the 1954 sci-fi novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. Its the theme of lone guy vs. the vampires.

Not the greatest movie ever, but does some things very well.

I find it really easy to suspend my disbelief, and scary movies scare the begeezes out of me. Love movies make me cry. Comedy makes me laugh out loud, etc.. I go into horror movies with especial trepidation however, because sometimes the scary feeling stays with me for a few days afterwards. Yeah I know: I'm a real pillar stalwartness. This lingering scary feeling has happened to me since my first scary movie: The Shining. I watched it all alone in someone else's house while babysitting 2 very young kids. But really, it started even earlier in life with a few episodes of 'night terrors', or dreams you can't wake up from very quickly.

Anyways, I've figured out that if I watch a scary movie with someone I can share the experience with, its much easier to shake off the shivers, although the actual movie might still be as frightening for me. Today had already been tragic due to a relationship mini-nova, so I was more primed for sadness than scariness, but off we went to the theatre. I love spending time with my bro and sis. They can be very funny, but also good friends. They are allies in the family non-drama.

The movie uses typical devices to set you on edge from the very beginning. There are some things that happen right away that seem like they might be 'funny', but in the context of everything else, just make you even more tense. The suspense builds well. Its not a kind of 'Gee what is going to happen' suspense, but classic horror suspense of 'When does the shit hit the fan, cause this is creeping the hell out of me......'.

Surprisingly though, I didn't build sympathy with the main character very well during the movie. He remains part of the 'Other' throughout. This is no simple 'Good Guy vs. Zombies' movie after all. Its even ambiguous whether or not this is intentional, as certain things really draw you to the character, but others leave you wondering what the hell is the matter with him. He's a man on a precipice, yet he's thorny in an unpredictable way.

Imagine trying to rescue a very-wounded animal. As you go to tend its wounds there is the tension of "I hope he doesn't bite the shit out of me". Half rabid and insane, even the most sympathetic character is full of danger when so pushed to the edge. Moreso, Smith's character is simply hard to follow in his thinking. There's an ambiguity that prevents the viewer-empathy from taking full hold, even beyond the thorns of insanity, should you be able to do so. I do think this is intentional on the movie-maker's part, and leaves you tense about the internal struggle perhaps more than the external one. Excellent!

The movie keeps this up, and the bad guys, though poorly CGI'd and illogically portrayed, scare the crap out of me too. It is never made clear just how intelligent or powerful they are, just how aware. Its never made clear how organized, or what their agenda is all about, or if they even have one. Many of the reviews I read this afternoon chalked this up and said: "Hah, the bad guys suxxors because they are illogically portrayed". To me this is like saying "The Rembrandt is teh bad because he can't even draw a field realistically".

Horror has many levels. One key anxiety is around the logic of the world in some capacity or other. Predictable things, though they may exhibit many kinds of horror, lack the rich and deeply disturbing quality of the undefined. Imagine going slowly insane. That is horror. Imagine not knowing whether or not your self-defense of pushing someone away from you would result in them flying for miles to their death or if your arms would pass right through them (overkill or impotence). A child grows quickly to fill a room. Grows bloody fangs and bites your head. In the words of Dave Chappelle: "Thats some scary shit man!"

I found that the movie rode this line fairly well. I often felt though that it was either mere accident or that the director was drunk and forgot to re-edit. Some scenes disambiguate, while others obfuscate. The CGI creatures, including a herd of deer and a lion or 2 are pretty badly done. This made it hard, even for me, to keep my suspension of disbelief going high enough to maintain the overall anxiety of the movie, or at least what I think it intended.

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Psychology of vampires, zombies, and the end of the world. Maybe more on that later.

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My sister-in-law, surprisingly to me, was scared to tears by the movie. I was scared, but not as badly. My brother was a little disappointed in the movie. We all loved the dog of the main character though. The love between Will Smith and his pup is brilliantly evoked. Its a lot of directorial technique rather than simply brilliant acting, but it works. Some reviewer said the movie was worth seeing only for the dog, but that was worth it!

We did some discussion and decompression afterwards. I was especially hoping to help my sis-in-law process. The movie is really traumatic I think. I find myself wondering how someone could watch a movie like that and laugh and cheer and not get drawn in at all. But they do, in droves. The reviewers seem like zombies to me......hey, that's for the middle section!

-Alex

Interesting analysis, Smack.

My son saw the movie and talked to me about it yesterday. I'm always interested in how American movies develop the mythology of US might and right---and deal with aspects of society's cognitive dissonance in themes and plot turns.

My son pointed out that the mother and child survivors who go forward to build the new society are deeply religious and were "directed by God" to their salvation. Nice emdorsement of the fundamentalist right wing.

The ending seemed to pick up on the horror and mystery and power of suicide bombers/ 9/11 flyers, etc.,--very alien and unrecognizable-- and re-cast this as a typically American, recognizable act: self sacrifice for love of country.

The mother and child come into the movie suddenly and so unrealistically that one is compelled I think to at least 3 choices:

1. The director is really clumsy.
2. Religion is riding in on a magic carpet.
3. The main character has finally gone insane and some or all of this is a dream or psychosis.

Whatever it is, it has a feeling of being 'tacked on' to the movie. It weakens what has come before significantly. And it makes the ending, besides being religiously dependent, dependent on a moment of total personal sacrifice. The sweet stickiness of Hollywood hero movies showers the audience and degrades most of what had come before.

Still, the acting and relationship with the mother and child (to the main character) kept up the ambiguous tension very well. I do think its intentional: You can't figure out who to trust, or why Will Smith doesn't reach out to more effectively to Braga and son. Then suddenly they are completely trusted. Smacks of dissociation to me:

"I'm going along in this hellish existence of total narcissism (everyone is completely bloodthirsty. I must defend myself with violence.). I remember and idealize people from my early life (his wife and kid). yadda yadda.

Suddenly, when I'm so sick of it I want to die, I make a connection with someone else. They save me, but I don't trust them either. They just appear in my house one day. Who are you? I can't connect with them. I try to connect clumsily. Just as I seem to make some headway the evil outsiders screw it up. I blame them. I see my new wife and kid as helpless victims who are too stupid to communicate with, too weak (then how did they save you, moron?). Only IIIIII can save the world MEEEEEEE.

Then one day, when I finally figure out how to save the world (its actually the woman who notices the man's discovery as they are retreating from the hordes), I have to sacrifice myself. I have to die. I have to die to save my new replacement fake-o wife and kid, who I kinda like, but who don't even know who Bob Marley is! (IE they are too foreign to actually replace my idealized wife and kid. Ego defenses oh ego defenses......).

Also, I have to believe in God for this whole save-the-world thing to work. Otherwise fake-o wife is just a nutter and I'm dying unnecessarily here. If it hadn't been for her I would have survived. Oh well, let me eat this grenade sandwich. See y'all!"

Its quite strange, but interesting too. The basic metaphor I'm working with here is like this:

I have a true self.
Something happens and I lose it. I'm partly to blame.
The world, once heavenly, is now hell. Other people are completely mindless, yet ingenious bloodthirsty zombies.
I can find it again, but I don't know how.
I 'research' my way to a solution.
Meanwhile, I'm killing all these bloodthirsty sycophants who want a piece of me.

The world was fine.
Someone tried to fix it. They broke it.
I can fix it.
I can save everyone, if I only try hard enough.
Meanwhile though, everyone is evil.

Only one way of looking at it, but I think it really rings true to the narcissistic aspect of the false self.

Trauma --> False Self
Universalization and Normalization of trauma.
Pain in me is caused by evil others.
My fear of others is because they are terrifying (justified).
I try to keep safe, but keep getting hurt.
I look for a way to improve others, to make them human again.
As long as I keep hold of the idealized image of good people, I might be able to recreate it.
I don't like mirrors

That the movie has a period of dissociation in its 'discussion' of trauma seems brilliant to me. But it could very well be clumsy directing that I'm reading into.

Good review,

My first thought as the movie was ending was, "Wow what a stupid ass Will Smith is... he could have climbed in the tube, pulled the pin, tossed the grenade, closed the door, and been as safe as the woman and child were behind the door... and then probably boned her later after she got all horny because he saved her and shit... GoodGame mindless pandering to Altruist ethics." Knowing that the end of the movie was somehow enhanced for a lot of people just because he died makes me wanna vomit.

I agree that their depiction of how a phychology might be affected by isolation is a farcry from reality. Then again, alot of the "normal people" (sociopaths) couldn't really live without vicariously experiencing reality through their peers. Anyway, I walked away from the movie with the faint taste of shit in my mouth. Two Thumbs Down!

I also wrote a few lines that I will eventually encorporate into a poem sometime, but they're written down at home... and I can't remember them... so I'll get back with you on that.

Becoming a legend
Is a consilation prize
something something....

Hah! He coulda boned her for sure, you're right!

Spaghettim0nst3r wrote:

Then again, alot of the "normal people" (sociopaths) couldn't really live without vicariously experiencing reality through their peers. Becoming a legend Is a consilation prize something something....

The missing middle paragraph of my review goes from the idea: The movie is about how we think, right now, in this world, about ourselves and others. So Will Smith is 'normal people' and the Dark Seekers are other 'normal people', yet this is how we perceive what is exterior to our attachments: as monstrous others.

Of course, then there's the angle of 'The Dark Seekers as projection of our dark side', which is slightly different. Nonetheless, it is the irrationality of the movie that makes the movie effective actually (irrational fears and mental processes, externalized).

I think your insight about the second-handers is dead on. I hadn't thought of it from that Brandon / Rand perspective.

I want to hear the rest of the poem.

-S