Change of point of view

Rating: 7/10 (28 October 2018)

There are three major components in this drama about a sadistic oil tycoon who wants to play God with other people's lives.
It begins with the future tycoon (Daniel) surviving a disaster, crawling to safety. From that point onward, he becomes a worshiper of the Devil, not so much in name, but in his worship of Evil. He believes he is a god by virtue of his good fortune.
His sadistic character, which this dark age of Psychiatry likes to pretend is actually a lack of empathy, is actually just pure Sadistic evil in a desire to play God with other people. That is what psychopaths do. We're in the darkest age of Psychiatry and Science that has ever existed among humans.
It's proven when he just arbitrarily decides to treat one twin boy with fairness, and the other with absolute evil, for absolutely no reason. That's the second component of this film. When the second boy greets him with friendship, Daniel immediately sneers the sort of demonic hatred that many of us have found in such people in real life.
The hatred is totally unprovoked. That happens in real life. Daniel just decides to torment this young man and satisfy his devil worshiping lust.
The third component is the point of view. It becomes obvious about two thirds of the way through the film, or at least I thought it was obvious, that the movie was an experiment in point of view, changed from the Disney sort of POV from the fifties.
By that, I mean the usual heroes are never seen. The "holdout" family of heroes, who are the film's biggest winners, represent what were once the Swiss Family Robinson, the McCahans, the space family Robinson, all the usual heroic groups.
But we never see them. Instead, we see the other components, from outside their world. However, this is also exactly what the heroic family sees, and it does enable them to be able to combat the evil of Daniel and his demonic force.
One character gets to see all of this, and learn from it. Daniel's adopted son. He becomes a helpless character early on, helpless against the evil of Daniel, and at first tries to fight fire with fire, quite literally. He learns the passive approach. One could say this is a fourth component of the film, but I think of it more as a product of the first three components.