I'm nearly annihilated maybe that's why I get it.....

Rating: 7/10 (18 March 2018)

I think I get it better than those who have not been so close to death (several times).
In 5 years I lost my best friend, my health, two dogs and my husband to cancer...
Annihilation indeed.
To me that is what this movie is about. {Yep the title sort of gives that away ;-)}
The shimmer and wat it is/does is a huge malignant tumor to this planet.
Bam! Suddenly it is there and it changes everything in the gene-"order" that we know and like to predict.
A future that can be foreseen is a safe one. One we can be at ease with. One that allows us to make plans and have projects.
That is why we call it "malignant" because cancer cells do not play along with our game rules.
Our predictable future was nothing more than a mere illusion...
The core-message of this film is the fact that it ethically and morally questions whether something is merely evil simply because it does not go according to our wishes?
It certainly feels like that to the frustrated victim who's life projects are thwarted.
But that is a very subjective judgement of those who are or will be annihilated.
In the greater scheme of things there is no objective parameter that can lead us to the conclusion that one way of cell evolution and growth is "better" than another...
It is merely a different way of doing things... Annihilating some and recreating others, always using the same base material, but in different ways. Taking and giving....
This is why the movie gives viewers a "tip" by pointing out that aging is caused by a "fault" in our genes.
The above said is clarified in the discussion between Lina and Kane.
She states God made a mistake, erroring in gene evolution and thus causing us to grow old and die. Kane states God does not make mistakes....
She has a judgement purely based on her values.
The movie's point of view is that genes are genes... No better or worse than others, an sich.
We disappear, but instead there are beautiful white dears running in the forest with flowers on their antlers.
"It's not destroying, it's making something new" -Movie Quote from Lina's script
Therefore, to me, this is not a horror movie or a sci fi flick but a philosophical movie. It questions our homocentric valuesystem, using our human race and our desires as standards of judgement.
Buddhism already pointed out that this is not only an incorrect but also a frustrating and senseless thing to do, because we have no control.
And finding out game play rules that we like and of which we think they should be obeyed does not change a thing about the fact that we do not have control.
So this is a movie that in essence questions our value systems, our homocentrism and our pathetic desire to regulate everything.
I think that maybe having gone to the experience of enormous loss and having to learn to cope and to let go, made this theme somehow more comprehensible for me.
And in that state of mind I found that this was very beautifully depicted. Not an easy thing to do.
I believe that the reason most people don't "get it" is due to the fact that we need the illusion of control, the lie of predictability to survive...
If we are not convinced to reach our pension, why buy a house, take a mortgage, have kids, and go to work every day to pay for all this?
We do this because we think only others die (young).
Yet every day there is someone who arranges his hair, paints her nails, puts on perfume, dresses up nicely, steps in a car to go to work, and dies within the next 45 min. for whatever reason imaginable... car crash, brain haemorrhage, 9/11.....
People do not want to be confronted with that. It destroys there illusion of a safe, righteous and predictable world. That is why victims are often avoided. And probably why this movie is not appreciated.
It apparently takes a nearly dead person to understand.
But believe me the world as you know it will cease to exist!
Because of the simple reason that you will die, and thus will no longer be in it.
And this is inevitable.
In other words: "If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans!"
-anonymous-
My quote is 7/10 because knowing it is a very difficult movie to make, and not knowing how to make it better, I just gave a quote for what I experienced watching it, compared to Liaisons Dangereuses, Melancholia, Godfather, Das Boot and so on....