parallels everywhere.

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 1999)

there are those who hated it. said it was shallow. enter girl, senior in high school, with a love for overanalysis.
watch the movie again and then come back and take note of this:
conquistadors enter into a new field for three things: god, gold, and glory. each of these is personified in the film. god is the kaballah group's goal, gold is marcy dawson's, and glory is for max.
on albert einstein's striving to understand the world, tonight (sept 21) on nova (pbs/kedt): "it was albert einstein's... almost arrogant ambition to read the mind of god."
jenny's english teacher says that some guy by the name of.. bartley? barkley? apparently with far too much more prestige for Simple Jenny to acknowledge as a Great -- also said that "matter is another word for god."
and on aristotle. today, i read some stuff by john dewey ("genius!" announces jenny's english teacher). in our modern society, we regard aristotle's syllogism, by which he taught logical thinking and ultimately an understanding of the world around us, as highly simple, merely an exercise in thought, because we haughtily believe we know now that the universe is chaotic (so argued sol robeson, remember?), and aristotle based his syllogism on order, on classifying all things, on the idea that all the universe was static and constant.
we don't believe in aristotle's syllogism because of all the change in our world. with said change, there must be chaos. but aristotle argued emphatically otherwise (see max cohen), and accounted for the changes we knew in our world, those changes we observed in life, by accounting for them as being changes NOT in the actual nature of said changing elements. instead, aristotle said they "moved," not really "changed" -- they MOVED into their most complete form.
the two examples aristotle gives which most caught my eye were trees and smoke. the small sapling moves outward until it becomes the mighty oak, its most complete form, its final stage. and smoke moves upwards and out until it dissipates -- its final form. but what i found truly intriguing was that the film made a point of showing us the recurring fractal of the tree, as well as dwelling on lenny meyer's cigarette smoke. wow! what visuals.
the movie parallels the computer, euclid's, breaking down (and moment of self-discovery, to which the visual of bright white light is applied) with max and sol's both 'breaking down.' it's very cool. and at that instant in which max totally breaks down, as suggested euclid's foreshadowing (euclid's always making predictions), max is to at that instant understand the some of his parts. the sum of everything, the stock market, the torah, himself, everything.
that someone can sit by and call the movie shallow is pretty ridiculous. even to a damn stupid high schooler.