The Puppeteer

Craig Schwartz to Monkey: You don't know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. And they won't allow it... because I raise issues.

Summary: Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and pet store clerk Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Despite not being able to earn a living solely through puppeteering, Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take the ability to inhabit the skin of others to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for the off-kilter LesterCorp. Behind one of the filing cabinets in his work area, Craig finds a hidden door which he learns is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich, the visit through the portal which lasts fifteen minutes after which the person is spit into a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike. Craig is fascinated by the meaning of life associated with this finding. Lotte's trips through the portal make her evaluate her own self. And the confident Maxine Lund, one of Craig's co-workers who he tells about the portal if only because he is attracted to her, thinks that it is a money making opportunity in selling trips into Malkovich's mind after office hours for $200 a visit. Craig, Lotte and Maxine begin to understand that anyone entering the portal has the ability to control Malkovich's mind, which also alters his entire being. This experience makes Maxine fall in love with a composite. This ability to control Malkovich's mind begs the question of the ultimate psychedelic trip for Malkovich himself, who begins to feel that something is not right in the world as he knows it.

 At the beginning of the movie, Craig tells the monkey about having a consciousness; he sees it as a curse as it allows him to feel, think, and suffer. Suffer because of his free will, his will to make choices and have to live up to the consequences. We see Craig's free will all through out the movie. However, the free will of a person is portrayed very distinctly in the movie. While in Leaving Las Vegas, the free will is seen in the actions that both Ben and Sera make; in Being John Malkovich the free will of a person is shown as having control over their own mind.

Lotte, Craig's wife, goes into the tunnel and is inside of John's mind, however, so far both Lotte and Craig have no control over John's mind. When Lotte emerges from John's mind, she tells Craig that she is transgender, she feels like she is a man. In an attempt for figure out her emotions, Lotte goes back in and while in John's mind she receives a call from Maxine and she invites John out to dinner. When Lotte returns to John's mind to met up for dinner, she falls in love with Maxine. Both Lotte and Craig are in love with Maxine, but Maxine only has feelings for Lotte when she's in John's body and has no feeling for Craig. In an attempt to receive Maxine's love, Craig goes inside John's mind and has intercourse with Maxine and finds out the he can control John. The remaining of the movie turns into a battle of John's free will, Craig has taken over John, but Maxine has taken Craig's free will as he will do anything to please her and receive her love. John loses his free will to Craig and he can't do anything about it. While Craig is in full control of his mind, he ends up living through John's life and is no one without John. The puppeteer has control of the puppet, but is nothing without the puppet.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

Bill Murray, trapped in an egotistical arrogant mindset, eventually catches up to him when he travels to cover the Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  All of a sudden, the next day after February 2 he wakes up and it is a complete repeat, and it just repeats and repeats and repeats.  Bill is the only person who knows that the day is on constant repeat so in a way he manipulates his ability and entices Rita completely because each and everyday he memorizes what she loves and then tells it back to her the next day, so then she just thinks he is the most perfect man for her.  Which is the opposite of how Leaving Las Vegas was, Sera knew from the start of their meeting that Benny was a complete drunk. He did not have a redo and he did not show a fake façade. Bill Murray basically changes himself for her.

In one part of the movie, around the 1 hour mark, it is almost as if she slaps the arrogance out of him, and he falls in to his rock bottom. He then tries to end his life but because he just is in a never-ending loop of repeating days, he still wakes up in the same Bed and Breakfast at 6am the next morning.

Benny in Leaving Las Vegas always knew he was going to drink himself to death; he never attempted at trying to stop his endless destructive alcoholic fate.  Sera understood that he was ending his life. Bill’s relationship with Rita was almost the same. He knew that everyday that he woke up he was going to have to start over again with her completely, knowing exactly what she was going to be like and even say.; much like Sera knowing that every moment of Ben’s life he was going to be intoxicated and every morning when she woke up she knew that was what she was going to deal with. 

All in all, both films were off setting, in a way of the choices humans make; how both men killed themselves or just Bill Murray trying to. That there was never going to be an optimistic hope for a better life.  When they hit rock bottom, suicide is the answer to numb the pain and struggle.  Groundhog Day was the light at the end of the tunnel though, it showed that at the end, he was able to escape the time trap and be with Rita.   I wish that Benny would have sought help, or just changed.  It certainly worked in Bill and Rita’s favor!

Kill or Die

Jigsaw forces individuals to perform gruesome, painful tasks that are specifically designed for them.  The source of pain, whether it be cuts to represent previous self-harm, or family members to represent unappreciated family ties, is unique: as is the means of solving a puzzle.  Dr. Gordon must kill Adam, the other man trapped in the bathroom, or his wife and daughter will be killed. Jigsaw also focuses on time; tasks must be done within a relatively brief period of time, limiting the will to thoroughly think through situations and decide. Rather, victims are forced to act on instinct and often insane, irrational urges.

We talked weeks ago about the idea of gifts: Saw provokes a number of thoughts pertaining to things we take advantage of. He targets people who he believes do not appreciate their blessings. When a gift is given, in this case: life, health, or loved ones, it is the recipient's choice of what to do with it, not Jigsaw's. He rationalizes his cruel punishments because people should appreciate their gifts, maybe so, but he should not be able to decide what other individual's need to be thankful for…yet he finds a way.  Though Jigsaw’s victims can be free to live, their fate is determined: Frankfurt says, “A person’s will is free only if he is free to have the will he wants” (548).   The consequences are so great i.e. taking a life, losing his loved ones, or cutting off his foot, that Dr. Gordon (and others in Jigsaw's "game") has no free will. 

Saw shows ultimatums, dilemmas, and lose-lose situations: though there are choices, there is no free will according to Frankfurt’s description: “a person is free to want what he wants to want” (549).  Jigsaw is "innocent" because he does murder, yet he causes deaths, arguably just as a severe a notion. Jigsaw threatens freedom, and in turn, determines a terrible fate or death. In later films (I've only seen Saw 2 and Saw 6 prior to this), consequences are often so severe that death may be a "better" fate. Finding oneself in one of Jigsaw's puzzles leaves him with minimal free will: yes, he has a choice, but it is difficult, painful, and haunting enough that his fate is determined by Jigsaw. 

The Gift of Life

Today is a gift, that is why it's called the present, or so they say. Often times life is underrated and unappreciated, it is undervalued and misused. In a sick and sadistic way The old man in the movie Saw manages to reignite the desire to live in others. He practices a form of "justice" but not in the way we would expect; not to bring justice to a person or group of people or etc. but to justify life, as if it were a being of its' own who's suffered from the people's ungrateful ideology of it. In every event, the plot is set to where the victim(s) has to make decisions to either live or die, at all cost.

Determinism, in a way, was present in that the options they had were chosen by an external person in control. Yet the victims still had free will to choose between killing or living for themselves or for the survival of their family. The old man brilliantly planned out every angle of it, and although a criminal, couldn't be imprisoned for murder since he actually didn't kill them. He has a mission to "right" those who are wrong, to convey how precious life is, but the methods he uses are demonic and portrays a sadist. The way in which he artistically finds a way to drive them crazy either through emotion or fear is, although rather impressive, cruel and torturous.

From the beginning choices are made, to find an alternative to that which was originally planned for the victims, and the end results are even worse. In the attempt to not kill Adam, Dr. Gordon tries many alternatives, including trying to out-think the sadist old man whom they have no idea is the real mastermind behind it all; but when his family becomes endangered he believes his only choice is to saw through his leg and kill Adam as had been originally commanded.

Both free will and determinism co-exist and become so intertwined that they almost seem as one. They hardly really seem to juxtapose in the movie, but yet they don't quite merge as one either. They have the free will to choose whether or not they will kill one another; but have a limited amount of time and choices to make as their lives (And in the doctor's case, his family's lives) depend on those factors, thus determinism emerges out of the scene. The actions they choose to take will be in their control, but only because the options they had were far out of their control and the outcome would come as a result of both.

A Dream Referred

Daren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream depicts the solemnity of compromising oneself for the sake of a dream. The antithesis of Langston Hughes's poem, "A Dream Deferred," this film portrays four interrelated people as they chase their dreams with reckless abandonment. While Hughes's poem explores the potential fates of dreams left to die, Aronofsky's film exhibits the corrosive nature of the unregulated pursuit of happiness where drugs serve as the intermediate.

The desire for the quick fix breaks the characters as they turn to the immediate reward of drugs as a way to expedite their success. The film carries the viewer through the parabolic nature of doing things the quick and easy way. First there is nothing. Then there is a drug. The drug use is followed by accelerated growth. After the summit, the user plummets. Addicted to the drug, the user's view is reduced to a scope with only the drug in the crosshairs.

This tragic and common story brings attention the the dilemma of finding the balance between individual freedom and the need to socially compromise for the sake of one’s desires and safety. The general public pays the cost of their free time and independent urges in order to gain the social capital necessary to sustain their lives and protect themselves. One extreme is to do everything society expects of you, break none of the laws, and follow all of the rules, thus taking minimal risk. This appears to be the safest way to maneuver through society’s challenges. On the other end of the spectrum, are people who chase their desires without concern for what others think and fail to be deterred by the fear of punishment. Neither is free. The super citizen is shackled by the norms established by others, many of which are highly limiting and fundamentally unnecessary. The radical rebellion is shackled by the products of his/her self destructive actions and negate themselves from receiving many of the services offered by the society they shunned.

Freedom has a price on it. Freedom is the ability to choose your limitations. The protagonists traded the monotony of the working class life for the freedom to do seize the day with their own desires. However, once they were addicted, their drugs of choice evolved from facilitation to means of desperation. Their dreams were redirected, or referred, to drugs.

What happens to a dream referred?

Does it dry up

like an old lady in the sun?

Or **** like a whore–

And then run?

Does it turn your arm to rotten meat?

Or lock and hold you under–

like iron bars and concrete?

Maybe it just shocks

Like a battery, corrode.

Or does it implode?

When it hot, you have to cool it down

In the movie the cooler there were many different times where free will seemed to not be as easily attainable as it might have been thought. Interestingly enough i did not know that the term "Cooler" is used to describe someone who is sent in to cool of table that are hot in a casino. Once again this movie along with leaving Las Vegas takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada and shows some of the dark parts that are not widely known.

There is a line in the movie in particular where the performer is talking to the owner of the casino and tells him about a national geographic show he watched where the lion that ruled is challenged by a new upcoming lion. This is show through the movie as the rising owner of the Shangri la casino who is going to change it and ultimately in the film kill the existing lion/owner. This displays the change and adapt or die style of business that is all around us in the American culture. If a company has something good going they must continue to strive for or else close up shop.

The main character of the movie Bernie is the cooler and is always down, not really having much free will or choice. He has seen the consequences of wrong actions in his now crippled walk and is happy just doing what he is doing until about half way through the movie. This is where the determination part of the film starts to take place. He meets a lady and starts to fall for her. When he does this the mood changes and there is a rooting for Bernie feel that the spectator has. Bernie goes after this girl and ends up having her fall for him as well. Until Shelley, the casino owner puts a stop to that for a while.

When there sad parts of he film the score is primarily done in blues style of music that really helps bring out the emotions that are trying to come across the screen. Like any good film the score is important and here it was very well done. The Shangri La was not going to change its ways and conform to be like all the other big casinos. This also is shown in the music that the composer chose by selecting crooning music such as frank Sinatra and other old tunes that remind us of better days. There is even a mention of the phrase "This town" at the dinner table by Bernie multiple times which may be referring to the Sinatra song this town, which in the song says, "this town is a make you town, or a break you down town." This could not be more true for Bernie.

What is good that the director does is he ends the film climax part in the same way as he started the movie. There is nothing but an elevator going to the ground floor but the mood in the beginning is dull and sad, while the mood in the end is happy and confident. The determination is held strong by Bernie while he is happy, but his free will and choices seem limited when he is sad. This is just the same with the female as well who is hired by Shelley and threatened with death if she comes back.
Over all the movie was good. Not a full spectrum of emotions i would say were hit here, but most of them yes. The transitions were good like the poker-chip to alka seltzer and the door open to scene change. But one thing i did have a question about was at the end of the movie. There is a black man at the craps table who is just watching. I do not know the significance of this person or if he was in the movie and i just missed it. If anyone else watches this movie and can explain that would be very helpful.