This film leads us to mental archeology

Rating: 8/10 (4 November 2007)

The film opens with the twin towers standing proud and tall in New York City. We are in 1998. The US had not yet been the victim of that deep fit of terror fright which is just as frightening as space fright. It was a time when the US were already deeply obsessed by the end of the world (as always and ever in their short history), and since the USSR did not exist any more, and China was not yet seen as the new contender, they were exploring the danger from outer space anew. They could accept the idea of more or less showing a few Moslem pictures along with dominant Christian ones. The strict separation of religions had not yet reached Hollywood. The enemy that the US mind needs to be able to think the proper way was a big piece of rock coming from far far away in space and the size of Texas, read my lips of course. But why do the US always think the world as having to come to an end and why envisaging this end as having to be a fight, even against a piece of rock? If the world has to have an end, and it sure has to because nothing is eternal, why not prepare for death that may occur any time? If humanity has to have an end too and it will have an end since it had a beginning, why not just getting ready to meet that end in dignity? Why always see that end as a catastrophe? What's more why do the US always end at once thinking of themselves as the saviors of the world as soon as they speak of that end? The world will have to come of age and be able one day to face its future, no matter what, in other terms than a savior and a mass of repenting and grateful individuals? But the film is a lot more interesting when seen ten years after its shooting. The world can be saved by the human race itself. Good. We had not reached the great paranoia of climate change yet. To save the world one individual will have to sacrifice himself for it and that one is the father and not the son. That is a complete inversion of the Christian myth. But even better, in fact worse, that savior, that redeemer, that self-sacrificial person is a man, as if women were not yet of age for that kind of selfless sacrifice. But note that father has a daughter and there is no mother anywhere. Is it a sign of our times when families are broken up everywhere? Or is it a sign of the superiority of men, though there is another divorced couple with a son and the son is taken care of by his mother (inverted situation). So where is the real truth about this question? I personally have the impression that the film is ten years old and that in Hollywood they could ten years ago still produce such films that are definitely slightly male chauvinistic with just a light, very light touch of female liberation if not only female presence to avoid any gay ambiguity. Slightly passé, and also a little bit long as for the scenes on the meteorite.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines