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Okay okay I know, you're tired of my endless
conspiracy theory laden rants about cryptically
encoded conspiracy theory laden movies... but...
hell if i care. I'm tired of it breezing over
your heads in the "real" world (what's
real now a daze anyways, eh?) in the form of CNN
news wires dropping plots identical to the ones
in the movies that so many somnambulant societal
automatons fail to draw connection to. So alas,
let the psychoanalytical games continue...
This month's choice meal for the movie musing
mind is Joss Whedon's "Serenity." The
film is an offshoot from his recently plummeted
TV pilot, Firefly, which failed to sustain itself
on Fox Network. Despite the fact that I have personally
never seen the show, Whedon apparently did a good
job of making sure that doing so wasn't necessary
in order for first-timers like me to understand
the movie plot. He jumps into the adventure head
first with no breaks and assembles the characters
and storyline such that the pieces aren't hard
to put together. Besides, if you're a sci-fi buff
like I'm beginning to be, all of the requisite
ingredients aren't hard to notice anyway. It starts
off with a visual feast for the eyes that will
leave your third eye whirling for weeks to come,
wondering if the leftover scenes pasted to your
pineal gland are abstractions brought to you via
the astral realm, or just some residual cinematic
garb still swaddled about the expanses of your
imagination. I don't know how those digital enhancers
did it, but goddamn they pulled out some tricks
from under their aesthetic sleeve for the intro!
Needless to say, the opening scene was enough
to hook any unsuspecting passerby. Non-believers
beware, Joss Whedon is talented enough a writer
to anticipate your anticipations and take well-measured
peremptory efforts to subvert them. Thus, just
when you see that all too cliché opening
scene of the typical escape from enemy territory,
he maneuvers a clever curve ball with the digitized
special effects and throws you for a pretty nifty
loop. But I won't spoil the surprise. I'll just
let the film speak for itself.
Serenity is a lot like last month's Revenge of
the Sith in that it's the proverbial war for freedom
between the controllers and the controlled. It
picks up somewhere along the time continuum of
the original Star Wars series (the one with the
grown up Luke) in that the diabolical empire is
already at the seat of control, commandeering
the ship of human existence in its desired path.
(Ominous trend I've noticed in sci-fi flicks.
But alas, an offering of reprieve: they're all
"western" movies, seen thru the oft-claustrophobic
eyes of the beholder.) The Alliance is the benevolent
euphemism, the noose of nomenclature used to dub
the evil powers in charge. Their Darth Vader-the
Operative in the case of "Serenity"-is
played by a Nigerian brother out of England by
the name of Chiwetel Ejiofor. The leading man
and nemesis is played by Nathan Fillion out of
Canada, a former soap opera actor whose air of
daytime T.V. corniness hasn't apparently waned
much since he had "One Life to Live".
Now there goes a real futuristic curve ball for
ya… (or perhaps not so, considering the present
state of affairs). The indigenous and persecuted
are represented by a cast of all white actors
featuring just one sista among the bunch…
whose romantically involved with a white guy.
(But that's another review for another movie-one
starring Sanaa Lathan ). Meanwhile, the bad guys
of requisite imperial proportions are spearheaded
by a black guy in white face. Point is, the future
has turned race and class on its head and the
diabolical empire, though likely a force still
governed by the auspices of Western ways and ideology,
is not necessarily one still held about the reigns
by alabaster faces. But then the same can of course
be said of the present… Michael Steele, J.C.
Watts, Condoleeza Rice ring a bell?
Anyhow, Serenity takes us onto a raucous voyage
through extraterrestrial terrain at a pace that
rivals any futuristic anime flick. The interconnected
storylines of the characters are dynamic enough
to keep you interested in them despite the facile
nature of their representations (an ailment that
besets one too many a sci-fi film) by the mediocre-at-best
skills of the actors representing. The haunted
River Tam, played by relative newcomer Summer
Glau (one of the redemptory performances in this
flick), grabs your attention like all the other
tortured girls of sci-fi and horror movie past.
Think, somewhere between Charlize Theron's madwoman
in Devil's Advocate and well… Charlize Theron's
madwoman in Monster as far as shorty's bipolar
proclivities towards leaping from completely debilitative
paranoiac to killer kitty in less than 10 seconds.
Her background calls to mind the clairvoyant's
and "latent's" of an Octavia Butler
novel (rest in peace dearly departed) whose name
I believe is "Clay's Ark". But the movie
starts with her under the fierce microscopic probe
of The Alliance's version of sentinels-scientists/intelligence
agents. She has been detained due to her psychic
abilities which pose a serious threat to the empire.
Her skill is no light matter apparently in the
world of the future, where unassuming plebeians
are held hostage by-you don't say! -mind control
tactics and opiates that keep them sedated in
complacency.
In the virtual reality to which the masses have
acquiesced, River finds herself a fumbling oddball
haunted by the looming suspicion that something
just ain't right. The voices of the dead incessantly
ricochet off of the walls of her consciousness.
She tries to block out the cosmic cacophony to
no avail. She is haunted by a million astral whispers
and screams taunting the periphery of her awareness,
encroaching wantonly upon her inner space. (Props
to Whedon for his clever weaving of voodoo-esque
themes all through out the plot of this movie
by the way.) Upon an attempted questioning of
her matrix reality, she finds herself stabbed
by her wickedly smiling teacher smack in the middle
of the forehead-a vicious splice of a needle through
the pineal gland to thwart the third eye vision!
When she wakes up from the digital illusion and
realizes that the same has occurred on the other
side of the virtual imitation of life (something
like a dream reverberating into the physical world)
we are introduced to the truer, colder, staler
reality that the world of the future actually
is; minus the virtual simulation that the citizens
have come to accept. Here is the world where coldly
sterile doctors standing around her issue their
malevolent mandates, practitioners of violent
pragmatism that they be. No sooner than you can
say Jumpin' Jehosaphat and something that goes
with that, Tam's brother Simon played by Sean
Maher, bursts into action and saves li'l sis from
the hands of the beast. The rest of the movie
is an intergalactic game of hide and go seek the
subversives played between The Alliance, lead
by the aforementioned Operative, and Simon, psychic
sis and five other adorable fugitives all aboard
and bound to each other upon the Serenity spacecraft.
This movie allows us some pretty exciting ebbing
and flowing through typical sci-fi couture. It
incorporates all the mandatory allusions to mysticism
and shamanism remixed and packaged perfectly for
the new world panorama upon which we as a species
find ourselves encroaching. It's starts off with
something like, "We left… we had to…
we had multiplied beyond earth's capacity to withstand
us…" It's in the new worlds that we
have crafted for ourselves on other planets and
in other galaxies, no less, that we found ourselves
still confounded by the same old anomalous human
conflicts, enigmas and eventual tragedies. If
anything, our flight exacerbated some of the situations
by intensifying the ingredients in the stew. This
part of the flick I love (hearkens back to Delaney's
Einstein Intersection): there is a prohibited
part of the cosmos, similar to the void, where
parasitic creatures that have become possessed
by the lower elements of human nature, dwell.
Completely inept at escaping the karmic rubric
they have ensconced themselves in, these creatures
have been reduced to flesh eating zombies that
feed on human prey. Looking for a contemporary
correlate: playa haters, backstabbers, corporate
vampires anyone…? I also dig how Whedon juxtaposes
Western sets and themes, even dialogue (see aforementioned
corny soap opera lead man, Nathan Fillion) next
to the new world sci-fi sets. It immediately exposes
the Manifest Destiny impetus that leads man (as
in white man) to the attempted conquering of distant
lands, seas, and seas of suns.
Yea, that's it in a nutshell. What I love about
sci-fi is no matter how far away from home it
may seem, it's really right next door every time;
just sometimes takes a little bit of a tour de
force or a back alley route to get there. Ultimately,
when the Serenity crew arrives at the synthetic
utopia that The Alliance has crafted for the "safety"
of human kind to live in outside of the long arm
of celestial harm, they discover a horrific truth.
All of the humans that thought they were getting
over scotch free with their sedatives and complacency,
their yes-man conformity, were actually living
out a fate quite the opposite. Again, I won't
spoil it for you. I'll let that ton of bricks
hit you a like a Sunday morning epiphany on your
own time. Just suffice it to say that the "good"
citizens of superficial Paradise didn't exactly
get to reap any rewards for their submission to
the laws of the evil empire that was The Alliance.
And they met their fates in their sleep with no
resistance, no less. Or as one of the film's characters
puts it, "they just stopped living."
Kind of reminds me of the post industrial, post-modern,
post mortem (Black) America that Aaron McGruder
satirizes and prods to no end in his weekly Boondocks.
(Shouts out to the kid, hold ya head on that little
hiatus mane! Don't go Dave Chapelle on us less
you're gonna come back with a movie and epic survival
story to match just as good as his! Just playin'-I
digress…)
"You can't stop the signal." That's
one of hacker and Serenity ally, Mr. Universe's
last (albeit: computer programmed into and delivered
through a synthetic humanoid's) utterances as
The Alliance's henchmen swarm in upon him. In
the end, that's the one thing this movie delivers.
In the post apocalyptic universe of jaded flesh
and cynical souls, the only mantra that sustains
Captain Hal on his mission, is the belief that
he must find something to believe in if only to
propel him onwards. The faith in faith itself,
for the mere sake of faith-itself. Come to think
of it, ain't the way it's always been?
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