W Loved This Film

Rating: Null/10 (1 February 2008)

It is a beautiful film to watch, and the musical score is fun. However, this is a political "message" film, and not everyone likes that sort of thing in an eight-dollar-per-ticket movie. When we consider recent events, and the degree to which petroleum defines our economy and US foreign policy, this film seems a bit too propagandistic. The "targets" in this film are too convenient. It is very easy to go after oil men and religious phonies. In this film, it's even more annoying, because the connection between those two "evils" is so contrived.
I would have respected this film more if the villains were not so over-the-top. Most businessmen are not Ken Lay (Enron). There are many hardworking, more-or-less decent people who have endeavoured to make big bucks through industrial means. Yet, many of those enterprises have contributed to a pretty crummy state of affairs in the long run (Oil, Automobiles, Aviation, etc.). Similar things could be said about "religious" people.
Human beings are stupid, short-sighted, superstitious, and generally pathetic, such is my opinion. I don't need some artsy film director ramming this down my throat. People are stupid. "So what?" Technology has created the crap-hole that we now inhabit, thanks to the genius minds that brought forth so many technological advances. It is often the lesser minds (people like Henry Ford, etc.) who capitalize upon the achievements of the true "scary geniuses". They only succeed, because there are vast quantities of stupid people to exploit and manipulate. This is theme of many stories.
I understand that motion pictures are constrained by time. Things must be simplified to tell the story. The villain in this film is probably a metaphor for a larger problem (Big Oil "in bed" with phony Jesus types, in some marriage of convenience...yet, in the long run, the religious people get the shaft...even if it's a hollow victory for evil Big Oil).
Here's a stretch: George Bush got elected by courting the Religious Right. Yet, his Big Oil cronies eventually get their way, and the religious fools who put him in office end up battered, bloody, and penniless...having been robbed and lied to for years and years.
Am I reading into this too much? Regardless, the characters in this film are just too much...too much color...too much message. Perhaps this reveals the ultimate inability of film to convey intricate and detailed concepts.
The series of weird events that brought us George W. Bush (100 years of Big Oil....phony Evangelical Christianity, etc), cannot be neatly packaged. There may be real-world parallels, but the story is still a stretch.
Also, I am no student of film, but when filmmaker reveals their influences so explicitly, it seems to distract from the material. The last 45 minutes of this film are absurd and very derivative of Stanley Kubrick. Others have noticed this.
Maybe Kubrick was just more adept at hiding his influences.
6 Stars: Beautiful Film to watch. The message is overt and the plot contrived. I wonder if the original short story was so contrived...