Deconstructing the lie

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2013)

I know people don't like spoilers so as well as marking this commentary as having spoilers I will also make mention here that this is not a review but a commentary. The reason I say that is because I am writing to people who have seen the movie already and want to actually think about some of the ideas that come out of it. Granted, the effects and the cinematography were brilliant, but it is the underlying themes that tend to grab me more.
Basically, the movie spends about fifteen minutes constructing a lie, and the rest of the film dismantling it. The story, as we are told, is that Earth was invaded by a race known as the scavengers, and while we managed to defeat them, it left the Earth a desolate waste, so a space station, known as The Tet, was built as a gateway to colonisation on Titan. However, what becomes clear is that this is the story that is being told by the hero, Jack, and the only people that we encounter at the beginning of the film is Jack and his wife Victoria.
However, this is all a lie, and this lie begins to unravel fairly quickly. We are told that Jack had an obligatory memory wipe, as did everybody who went to Titan, but the question is, why was their memory wiped? Is there something about the past that we are not meant to know, or is there something about the present that is being kept hidden from us. Then there are the scav, we don't actually see them, and when we do, we are left wondering who they are (I thought they were robots). Also, there is the radiation zones, why is it that Jack is not meant to travel into the radiation zones. All of that is revealed.
While there is the concept of loneliness in this film, it is the veil that is the lie that seems to stand out. Jack and Victoria have everything provided for them, including information. They are not meant to ask or to question any of this information, and there is no reason not to. The destruction of the Earth is quite evident, and the lack of humans on Earth is also quite evident. In fact that exist behind a veil that is impossible to pierce. The only form of information that they receive comes from The Tet, and neither Jack nor Victoria have any reason to question it.
Events move to actually change, and challenge this lie. For instance, Jack has these memories that he cannot explain, because they were supposed to have occurred before he was born. Then there is a ship that comes crashing to Earth, and despite being forbidden to travel to that ship, he does so anyway, and it is at this point that the lie begins to unravel, and the veil that has been thrown across his face is beginning to be pierced.
That is the thing about Jack, he does not blindly accept, he questions, and while Victoria attempts to challenge some of those questions, she does not have absolute control over Jack, nor does Susan, the commander on The Tet. We see this because Jack has created his own home away from home, where he has taken books, and built himself a house, in a peaceful valley. He will disappear there, and both Victoria and Susan are oblivious to its existence.
In many ways this is a reflection of our society – the loneliness despite being among people, and the perpetual lie that we are meant to accept and not to challenge. Jack is an everyman, he is every one of us, who go about their daily job, and hoping for that time when things will be better. However, Victoria represents that aspect of our lives that prevents us from questioning the lie, while Susan is the human face of the lie. What makes Jack unique from the everyman is that he questions, he investigates, and he is willing to listen even though what he is being told may undermine the safe environment that he has built around himself.