You can never go back (1)

Flickers of fading firelight…

Antonio: I keep thinking I ought to do something with what’s left of my life. Leave something behind. Not just...
Mariella: Cruise to the end of it, you mean? Well, a legacy doesn’t have to be grand. Even a small one matters. It’s never too late. One just has to be organised about achieving it.
Antonio: Organised. Hah. Seventy years misplacing my glasses; now I’m meant to organise a legacy.
Mariella: Legacies aren’t paperwork. They’re gestures. A letter, a kindness, a story you pass on. Even the way you talk about old films becomes part of someone else’s memory.
Antonio: Maybe. But some people just settle in one place, follow the same routines, stay in their circle of friends. They seem content just chatting in the piazza every day.
Mariella: And that’s a kind of joy too. Piazza life. Familiar faces, familiar jokes, the comfort of being known without explanation.
Antonio: Communities that get old together. Then they die off. And those friends… they’re not easily replaced.
Mariella: True. But the warmth of those years still counts. Even if the cast changes, the scenes mattered.
Antonio: I wouldn’t like to go back to my hometown. You can never go back. Not really.
Mariella: Got to keep moving forward, then? Reminds me of Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso. “Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don’t come and see me.”

Cinema Paradiso: Alfredo and Toto

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Voice-over
Alfredo’s advice to Toto is ironic, to abandon small-town life for a greater future in Rome. Looking back with nostalgia restricts potential, and one must move forward, embracing life without being anchored by the past. Basically, Alfredo is giving Toto "tough love," encouraging him to follow his dreams, build a future, and not look back on the life he will leave behind.

The Age of AI and Mission Impossible

Déjà vu…

Heinrich: The movie is about AI going rogue, I got the feeling that your team was referring to anxieties about AI that Kissinger, Schmidt and Huttenlocher wrote about in The Age of AI.
Kris: Well, the researchers used sources from politics, military, economics and so on, talking to a lot of people, attending NATO briefings, reading books and articles like RAND papers.
Heinrich: So the script is an amalgam?
Kris: Common enough, that. Except that we used plot beats to ramp up the tension about AI.
Heinrich; Like the first plot beat where The Entity takes over control system of the Russian sub and uses its own weapons to destroy it. Others?
Kris: And then in the chase scenes where AI anticipates human movements and sends fake instructions diverting them from the targets.
Heinrich: So it’s a cinematic parable for the book that is a warning about how AI system spins out of the control of its creators and manipulates global systems.
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Voice-over
Fictional films can draw on elite policy discourses by offering models of future crises or ethical dilemmas that policymakers haven’t yet formalized. Blade Runner 2049 indirectly echoes 2016–2017 UN debates on lethal autonomous weapons and AI rights, without citing those reports. Seems like the research paid off for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which scores highly among critics and audiences.

An Eye Operation

The day after…

David: Replacing the lens under a local anesthetic was more dramatic than I’d anticipated. Think travelling through landscapes like Matrix and Space Odyssey. Bright lights, vivid colors. HAL as doctor, machines pumping and screeching and beeping, nurses flying about like bird flocks. 

Helena: A robot doc?

David: No, he’s a 30 something human doc, joking around with colleagues, and as he installed the artificial lens I could see pink fish, green corals, and a yellow sunset in a turquoise sky.

Helena: A Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds chamber?

David: Yes, but I was certainly conscious that he was putting a knife in my eye. Then at the end he said the op went as planned. Could have been my imagination but he sounded a bit disappointed. He admitted to me once he likes ops that go off like fireworks.

Helena: But now you can see clearly?

David: Plaster removed from left eye this morning. WOW, the clarity, with no glasses. Like when I was a kid. Time travel!
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Voice-over

David passed the doctor’s rolling eyeb
all test the morning the plaster came off the eye. Not out of the woods yet though, pressure still up in the eye. Check on it next week.

Glass Onion: Architecture as stage and symbol

Glass Onion

After watching “Glass Onion.”

Daniel: Now, that must have been a dream film to pitch. A profitable predecessor, Knives Out, a star cast who wanted to be in on it.

Angela: A popular genre, a plot that recalls the best of Agatha Christie and a detective like Hercule Poirot.

Daniel: But not a slavish copy.

Angela: Not at all. The writers ran with it.

Daniel: And for the cast. Lavish setting, great place to party and go over the top with ad libs.

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Voice-over

And a great set for critics to tease out the symbolism. A glass onion. The mysteries in plain sight peeled back. Next: The Glass Gherkin?

Ghosn and Diana: Celebrities behaving badly

After watching Netflix doco Fugitive…

Marmaduke: Well, that was some story.

Maurice: Ghosn lost, Nissan lost, Japan lost.

Marmaduke: New genre of film. Celebrity behaving badly gets their comeuppance and drags everyone else down too?

Maurice: Same could be said for BBC’s interview with Diana?

Marmaduke: Yes. You could lump them in the same category. The Palace lost, Charles lost, Diana lost, the BBC lost.

Maurice: Weren’t there any wins?

Marmaduke: You mean positive outcomes? I suppose you could say that Ghosn’s supporters were satisfied that he didn’t end up in a Japanese jail for life and that Diana’s supporters were happy she could pour out her heart to her public.

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Voice-over

As in a gladiatorial contest, the primary participants might not have won anything, but the fans may have.

Servant of the People

Worth dropping in on…

Mariya: What are you watching?

Stanislav: Servant of the People. Zelensky before he became president.

Mariya: Is it any good?

Stanislav: It’s satirical. It’s funny. It’s great.

Mariya: Corruption?

Stanislav: Aplenty. Politicians
controlled by oligarchs but you never see more than half their face. A teacher who wins 73% of the presidential vote because a student posted a social media video of him which went viral.

Mariya: So Zelensky plays as president?

Stanislav: Which is what he became in real life.

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Voice-over

A television series 2015-2019 that started as fiction and ended as fact. But who would have guessed that Zelensky would end up in such a beleaguered role in an ideologically-driven war? Fighting for his country’s life against an unfortunately-governed Russia. 

Taiga Drama

NHK’s year-long historical drama television series...

Reach Beyond the Blue Sky

Ryohei: Sunday nights? I usually watch the taiga drama.

Kaori: This year it’s Shibusawa Eiichi?

Ryohei: Reach Beyond the Blue Sky. Great man, big cast, as usual, a costly production.

Kaori: Yet audiences are declining.

Ryohei: True. Even this one, it started with 20% of viewers, declined at one point to 13%.

Kaori: So is the investment worth it?

Ryohei: It’s a cultural investment. Shibusawa was an impressive character. Started life on a farm, became an activist, participated in a rebellion, went on to start up hundreds of companies.

Kaori: And never took any stock in them. Founded hospitals, schools, universities as well.

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Voice-over

Taiga (大河) or “big river”, translated from the French roman fleuve, is a long novel of a social group. The current “Reach Beyond the Blue Sky” is worth watching. Emotions mixed with economics and expediency in politics.

Anthropomorphism

On cross-species communication…

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Don Quentin: Why do you call the cat Boris?

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Pete Gonzales: He looks like a Boris.

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Don Quentin: And you talk to him as if he were human. It’s not as though he understands human language.

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Pete Gonzales: Sometimes we communicate using his language.

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Don Quentin: You meow?

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Pete Gonzales: And sometimes I blink at him. Then he blinks back.

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Don Quentin: So, it’s a bilingual relationship?

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Pete Gonzales: Well, at times it seems we’re talking past each other.

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Don Quentin: Like the Chinese expression about a chicken talking to a duck.

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Voice-over

In writing, anthropomorphism helps us relate to animals, they come to life. The stories become more nuanced in meaning. Human language added complexity to the plots of Animal Farm, Cats and The Lion King. Imagine if those stories had been told through grunts, meows and blinks.

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What have I done?

After a difficult telephone call …

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Phillip: He’s having a hard time facing the end of his life, he said, “What have I done?”

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Florence: Meaning what had he done with his life? Like Alec Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson after finishing the bridge on the river Kwai for the benefit of the Japanese, saying, “What have I done?”

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Phillip: No, no. Not that. It wasn’t a sudden realization of a great mistake. He delivered it with an air of resignation. Then he said, “Could have done so much more.”

I did so little...

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Florence: A gentle regret?

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Phillip: Regret yes. A sadness tinged with regret. More like Leonardo Da Vinci. “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

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Voice-over

It’s natural to reach the end of life wishing one could have done more. What’s a suitable response? Whether you’re talking to someone else, or you’re talking to yourself, at the end of life there’s no need for qualified assessments. It’s the time for “You did great,” or  “You were incredible”.

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Ducks as a snail solution in The Biggest Little Farm

Biodiversity is difficult...

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Heather: All the leaves disappeared from the lemon trees.

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Laurel: Try some snail killer.

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Heather: Isn’t there a biodiversity solution?

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Laurel: Meaning?

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Heather: Well, instead of poison baits, can’t we bring in some other animal to eat the snails?

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Snails, yum!

Laurel: Like ducks?

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Heather: Mmm. Closest I have is a duck dish I bought in Angoulême.

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Voice-over

A 2018 film, The Biggest Little Farm, directed by John Chester during eight years of running an ecological, organic farm on biodiversity principles showed the use of ducks to stop snails from infesting their lemon trees. Good method, good film.

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