This blog post contains spoilers for the film Prometheus. If you haven't seen the film and intend on seeing it--and you don't want your experience marred--I recommend you stop reading.
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Recently I saw the Ridley Scott's science-fiction horror film, Prometheus. I loved it! I left the theater with a sick feeling that has been lingering for a couple of days, but it was an experience. And so, I highly recommend it.
It's a beautiful, sublime film in the spirit of such science-fiction / horror classics as Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956), Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), and Paul W.S. Anderson's Event Horizon (1997). As in all of these films, the tone of cosmic vastness pervaded by horrible, indifferent and god-like creatures suggests to me H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. As in the work of H.P. Lovecraft, in these films (Prometheus specifically) existential questions about the origins of life, the meaning of the universe, the relative location of the human world are audaciously braved. And--*gulp*--answered.
The unifying structure that combines all of these films is that the answers discovered in the course of the narrative are, in a word, horrifying. In Prometheus, however, this theme is taken to a new height. In answer to such cosmic, existential questions as, "What is the meaning of life? Was humanity created? Why was it created?" the film responds with a resounding, hostile, scream-like gargle: there is no answer to these questions! Don't go looking for such answers! Die!
Weyland Meeting His Maker
Indeed, one of the most powerful scenes in the film was when the explorers have located one of the ancient engineers who is still alive but in suspended hibernation. They wake him up. The elderly Weyland is there, having traversed a great expanse of the galaxy, to ask a question of his maker: "Why did you make us?" After a strange moment where the Engineer-creature caresses the robot creation of Weyland (the android David), he kills the old man.
This exchange--existential question asked, horrible answer given--epitomizes what is going on in a specific tradition of science-fiction founded, I think, by the work of H.P. Lovecraft: cosmic horror. If you go to the stars looking for answers to existential questions, all you will find is horror. Sure, you might discover god, but you might not enjoy just what you discover god to be.
This is why I find the critical reaction to Prometheus somewhat frustrating. Consider the consensus review on RottenTomatoes.com, which rates that film a 74%:
"Ridley Scott's ambitious quasi-prequel to Alien may not answer all of its big questions, but it's redeemed by its haunting visual grandeur and compelling performances -- particularly Michael Fassbender as a fastidious android." (my emphasis)
It's so obvious to me that a major theme of the narrative is that certain cosmic-level, existential questions cannot be answered and should not, perhaps, be asked. The point of the film is that some questions--these cosmic questions--don't have answers; or, rather, the answers are of a scale beyond naive human understanding. Anyway...
To reiterate: I loved Prometheus. I find this kind of story intriguing. It stirs me intellectually and emotionally. But I need to qualify some things. The feeling it evokes is very modern. The reason it satisfies, I think, is because it names a demon, a feeling that many of us "sensitive folks" living in Modernity struggle with: the feeling of oppressive insignificance, anonymity; the unshakable sadness associated with the idea that perhaps life means nothing, that we human beings are just chemical accretions that slop around a rock for a brief span of time, eating, excreting, eating, excreting, multiplying, multiplying. Indeed, I find this kind of story intriguing. To reiterate again: I loved Prometheus. But let me be back off a little bit and say that, although I enjoyed the film--it entertained me--it didn't give me pleasure. The horror genre rarely gives pleasure. The pleasure it gives--if you can call it that--is the pleasure of picking at a wound, or massaging a canker sore in your mouth, or that terrible burn after shooting some liquor. It's the "pleasurable pain" of a horrible feeling confirmed. And so, as much as I liked Prometheus, I liked it conditionally.
I largely agree with you. While I understand people's frustration with some of the science in Prometheus and some of the actions it has its character's engage in to make its point, I don't find it much worse in that regard than most other science fiction films. I'm puzzled why it has attracted the ire it get from some quarters.
ReplyDeleteSame here. I thought it was great! I don't read reviews or check the rating on Rottentomatoes.com before seeing movies; and, usually, after I watch a film, my impression of it is generally on target with the consensus. This was one of those surprising films where, when I left the theater and checked the reviews, I was surprised by how disconnected it was from how I felt.
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