Lin Weeks Wilder

Lin Weeks Wilder

Movies

Tomorrowland and Critics

Tomorrowland the movie opened yesterday. You know those days when the ‘to do’ list is lengthy but somehow you cannot focus? Cannot seem to beat the distractions or stop the futile jumping from one thing to another? Friday morning was one of those days. So when my husband John appeared with the suggestion to leave in ten minutes to see the new George Clooney film , I jumped at the chance.

I knew I’d like it from the previews but did not expect to love it…I mean love it! When I told a couple of people in the checkout line at the feed store that I thought it should be mandatory viewing for everyone on the planet, John’s wry observation was something like, ‘You know when you get wildly enthusiastic like that with people, their reaction is often the opposite of what you want, like mandatory viewing…’ Left unsaid, ‘Who are you to decide what people need to see?’

OK, fair enough but here the reasons for my ‘wild enthusiasm.’ 

  • In addition to being visually and emotionally captivating, the story has meat on its bones. There is more here than another apocalyptic doomsday story here.
  • Far more than a simple and mawkish exercise in optimism, the conclusion of the only review I took the time to read, the screen writers actors and screenwriters have assembled an excursion into a reality many of us are immersed in; one which assaults us in a daily barrage, affecting us in insidious and toxic ways .
  • In a fascinating series of scenes played by Hugh Laurie as David Nix ( remember House?) Clooney and young Britt Robertson about the ‘bridge’ between Tomorrowland and earth, a monitor which is counting down the seconds until the destruction of earth, Nix explains his decision to detach from the rest of humanity in language that only critics can overlook.
  • Casey, the teenage character played by Robertson cries out “There is no hope here-you’ve lost all hope.”
  • Indeed.
  • What can so easily be missed and the reason for my wild enthusiasm is simple. Too simple: what we think, we become, what we conceive of we create and what we fear, we make happen.
  • The notion of the objective observer in the classic scientific experiments has been completely discounted by recent quantum and string theorists. The interaction of an observer, the very thought process of the observer affects the observed.
  • However, exactly as David Nix explains, our need to accept the reality as it is constantly spewed at us by those we empower as expert so frequently overrides our native common sense. It’s easier to accept our individual powerlessness than to consider that we are responsible for more than just our own choices.

I expected the critics to dislike this movie. But that the NY Times, Variety, Rolling Stone and Roger Ebert all decried it and for many of the same reasons was interesting. Perhaps because the metaphor for the inimical power of the media medium was too disturbing to admit.

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.

Dostoevsky

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creativity, movies, politics, rules, spiritual, writing

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Lin Wilder

Lin Wilder has a doctorate in Public Health from the UT Houston with a background in cardiopulmonary physiology, medical ethics, and hospital administration. 

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