I couldn't watch this movie…
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emvan — 10 years ago(January 20, 2016 10:06 PM)
Equilibrium is a movie about a society that gave up a basic human aspect because they thought it would stop their pain. They wouldn't need to question their place in the grand structure of things, there would be no need for jealousy or rage or depression if you were just doing what you knew was best for the world and didn't have to think about it.
That would have been a great movie. But that's not what we're told is the rationale for ridding ourselves of feelings. We're told point-blank that it's to end "man's inhumanity to man." In fact, we're told that before feelings are even mentioned.
To think, to imagine, to love, those are the source of despair and, ultimately, violence.
No. Lots of things lead to violence, but despair is not one of them. Despair leads to immobility.
The point remains: people widely believe that the source of human cruelty is the
lack
of feelings, not their presence. When you accuse someone of being "unfeeling," it's almost always a shorthand for saying they lack empathy, mercy, compassion, and the like. So it just beggars all credibility that any kind of repressive government would
try to convince people of the opposite
, let alone that people would come to believe it. When we present an imagined sci-fi future, we have to be able to connect our present to it (and the easier we can draw the line connecting the two, the more effective the movie is). This movie fails that test.
Now, I readily admit that the possibility that the movie's take on feelings is actually more nuanced that what they set out at the beginning. But that opening is so stupid that it left with me no confidence that the rest of the movie would be substantially smarter. And it needed to be
hugely
smarter.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
markcameron-42529 — 10 years ago(January 21, 2016 01:12 AM)
That would have been a great movie. But that's not what we're told is the rationale for ridding ourselves of feelings. We're told point-blank that it's to end "man's inhumanity to man." In fact, we're told that before feelings are even mentioned.
That's sort of the point It's always been the point. Our inhumanity to man is a balanced struggle for power, fueled by the illogical emotions and 'feelings' of our then-previously held beliefs and philosophies. If you remove those aspects, you turn to blame emotions and feelings for everything. Almost all religions are based on the fear that this is the only life we can live and so we must be good in order to go to Heaven or face an eternity in Hell. Rearrange the words as you may, it still leads to a fear that there either is or is not something after this life and that leads to illogical decisions, flawed logic. The same can be said of many philosophies and decisions. Our own inhumanity is inherently linked to the emotions that pervade us. Without joy, without fear, all that is left is a cold rationale: Thus we cannot be inhumane if we are not letting an emotion guide our decisions.
No. Lots of things lead to violence, but despair is not one of them. Despair leads to immobility.
I disagree. Despair leads to fear, anger, hatred, and paranoia. All of these are known associates of violence. Have you ever known someone that is cornered and, in knowing they are doomed or confused or riddled with doubt, strikes out at themselves or others out of the sheer frustration of it all? It's a very common occurrence.
I think the point of authoring such a piece is to point out the fuzzy logic inherent in the argument as it comes. I'm not defending the lack of emotions as a viable way to live, but it certainly has gained credence in recent decades. Conquering ones emotions and focusing instead on pure logic is seen as a more 'accomplished' individual to those that see it this way. People would widely believe that it is the lack of emotions that leads to suffering (after all, this is the exact claim of capitalism these days). However, you are ignoring the other side of that argument. The defenders of those that are 'unfeeling' or that are seen as merciless argue that these emotions are running over. It is a commonly spouted statement of "You're just getting offended because things did not turn out like you hoped. You need to calm down and come back when your emotions aren't clouding your judgement or fueling your statements."
The premise also isn't a peaceful one. This is why there's a resistance in the first place. Many argued, many fought back, but in the face of an enemy with vastly superior resources and the 'higher ground' as it were: there is little doubt that they would be able to create a government based around the idea of stopping the violence by removing your ability to GET angry. You can't be inhumane if you cannot imagine a reason for doing so. Without emotion, you're just thinking about the next task, your next step.
This movie isn't even THAT smart. I'm more arguing the premise, since it's been used in several (dear god several dozens) stories. Emotions are the infection, scrub them out. Then someone proves that emotions are our saving grace. Then someone points out that somewhere in the middle is the best way. It isn't so far fetched to imagine a society being led into a future where they've been forced and led into believing these things are true. You are right in the sense that people believe it is a lack of compassion in the world that causes violence, but how can you not see that it is just as alluring, could be compelling, to prove that, by removing someone's emotions, they see your side of the argument and sit down to talk, renounce their claims of aggression and everyone moves on peacefully? The silly notions of the past, their crimes against themselves and others would give hope for people tired of dealing with so much white noise and pain.
And as I said, some would fight it. But if you have the right people behind that movement, the ones fighting it would lose quickly, because they aren't likely to be the ones holding any sort of major wealth.
All-in-all, the ending was anti-climatic and there were some conflicts they never resolved. It never was a perfect movie. But it was a better attempt at something approaching Fahrenheit 451 than the eponymous movie released a decade before. -
emvan — 10 years ago(January 21, 2016 06:57 AM)
Our own inhumanity is inherently linked to the emotions that pervade us.
But this is only true because all our behavior is determined by our emotions.
Without joy, without fear, all that is left is a cold rationale: Thus we cannot be inhumane if we are not letting an emotion guide our decisions.
In fact, there is no behavior, not even thought, left, if there are no feelings. We can be neither humane nor inhumane.
So eliminating feelings or emotions is impossible. They can only be muted or reduced.
You've actually written a very articulate summary and defense of the use of the idea in science fiction while admitting that you're being smarter than the movie!
So I should make it clear that I did not object to the general premise. Let's contrast the way it is almost always used versus the way it was presented here:
Typical: There's a future society where feelings and emotions are willingly suppressed or diminished in intensity. Everyone acknowledges that the source of man's inhumanity to man are
various negative emotions
. The value of the positive emotions is never denied. The diminuation of the positive emotions is viewed as a price to be willingly paid for the elimination of the negative ones. The story is about the discovery that this is, in fact, a
bad deal
. The price is far too great.
What we're told here: There has been no discrimination between good and bad feelings. We are told that after a war, the world agreed that
feelings in general
are the source of inhumanity which is ludicrous and decided to
eliminate them entirely
which is also ludicrous.
It's as if someone said, hey, what if we took this really good but kind of subtle, complex, and nuanced idea, and dumbed it way, way, down to make it more accessible?
I literally have 1500 movies in my Netflix queue (the extra 1000 are in a spreadsheet). I've seen 219 in the last year (including 40 re-watches). And I'm trying to see every science fiction movie that exists, and is above a certain level of quality. I'm keeping a definitive list here of modern indie sci-fi flicks worth seeing:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls076641370/
and I plan to eventually create a set of companions (precursor indie, mid-budget, big-budget), and to further improve the ranking algorithm where I mix my take on the movie with that of others. I'll also be writing reviews/entries for most of the indie flicks for the
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
.
I have no doubt that
Equilibrium
has the virtues you ascribe to it, but it's also clear to me that those good things will be at least fully offset in my mind by the things about it that are bad.
Why am I sure? Netflix has predicted I'll give it a 3.3/5.0, and their predictions for me are very accurate and, for action movies, almost eerily so. I rarely in fact rent a non-genre movie below 3.8, and almost never rent a sci-fi movie below 3.5. Furthermore, my tastes are very broad, embracing both extreme arthouse and extreme commercial films but always with an emphasis on quality and smarts. I therefore really view that Netflix prediction as a proxy for what people with taste like mine would think, and those people are the target audience for my lists and my future Encyclopedia entries.
I checked out
Equilibrium
simply because it had been very popular. What I saw not just confirmed the 3.3, but suggested it might fall short. And that's below the bar where I can ever include it on a list of films worth seeing.
However, I will name-check it at the end of the mid-budget list, as a film that has some defenders. And if I ever get that queue significantly reduced, I may well give it another shot. You've made me curious about the virtues, even if they are offset by dumbness. But there's probably 100 sci-fi flicks alone that are ahead of it.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
emvan — 10 years ago(January 20, 2016 09:27 PM)
The "emotionless" Vulcans make sense. They believe in perfect
rationality
, which is very different from believing that
feelings are bad
.
And emotions are more than feelings. Emotions include physiological reactions that prepare us for action. The Vulcans have learned not to have the full package that constitutes an emotion, but it's never said that they have no feelings at all. Intellectual curiosity, for instance, is very much a feeling.
And note that the show is wedded to the psychological language of the days of its creation, when we didn't know about the centrality of feelings to all behavior (human or otherwise), and didn't clearly distinguish them from emotions. So the show still refers to them as striving to be "emotionless," and that's technically more or less correct, but it can confuse people who don't know the difference between emotions and feelings*. If you were creating them today, you'd avoid the word "emotionless" and instead use phrases like "perfectly rational." But their actual behavior would not change.
*The discrimination is so recent that there is actually no adjective that unambiguously refers to feelings the way "emotional" refers to emotions. Psychologists sometimes use "affective," as in "affective disorder," but "affect" properly refers to the visible expression o feelings, not to the internal state.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen. -
grahamvandyke — 11 years ago(March 12, 2015 09:10 AM)
Even though I love this movie, I agree with you 100%. Every single character action in this movie you can see a response that is emotionally driven. It would literally be the most boring movie ever if they actually made the characters emotionless. Hell, you could even argue that without the ability to feel humankind could not exist. One of the basic mechanisms in people is feeling pleasure for our survival- like eating. I could see those people literally dying because they felt no more joy in anything they did, or any fear for things that could kill them.
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leeleechick — 10 years ago(August 03, 2015 09:26 AM)
A lot of the
dialogue the characters speak definitely strives from emotions
, or glimpses of them. This
movie is basically impossible
because emotion dictates practically all of our actions and thoughts.
EXACTLY! With no emotion, there is no acting. No acting = no movie. Taye Diggs at the end showed emotion when he tried to expose Bale. Really corny. I still love Diggs and Bale though. -
triplegrim — 9 years ago(December 15, 2016 07:11 AM)
Almost everyone in the film is off the drug. Taye Diggs character among them, obviously, since he is familiar With the entire facade that father still lives, and that Dupont has art in his Office.
There is a big misunderstanding that the drug eliminated all emotion. It just makes People docile, and eliminated the highs and lows of human emotion. -
Seth_Rogue_One — 10 years ago(September 05, 2015 01:45 PM)
If you WOULD have kept watching you would have seen that
Christian Bale gets emotions
That said I think many of the characters Taye Diggs especially shows signs of emotions when he shouldn't have, such as smirking when he does "a good job" and asking if Bale was "close" to his former partner Without emotions you can't be close to anyone, the latter could be explained as
Taye digging to see if Bale is having emotions tho
You gave yourself a name. I gave mine up. -
f2039 — 10 years ago(December 19, 2015 06:29 PM)
You couldnt watch this movie?
F'ing great! you saved over 1 hour from your life
what a piece of s**t this is why IMDb should have an option "hide the ratings". when you see 7.5, you expect sth, then you see this garbage