I was just thinking the other day of which movies really made an impression on me. I'm not talking about whether they are good movies are not - just the fact that they made a deep enough impression that I periodically watch them again or the scenes or dialogue occur to me again and again.
I forget why I got on this. Maybe it was that in rereading Henry Miller I see how much different books made an impact on his worldview and writing style, but for my generation I would think that t.v. shows or movies would do this as well (if not totally in place of books).
In no particular order here are the movies that really made an impression on me just off the top of my head (and if they weren't just there at the top of my head than that would show that the impression wasn't all that deep - or perhaps more subterranean and unconcsious). Oh and beware - there will be spoilers:
1. Beneath the Planet of the Apes: This is a deeply dystopian movie and full of horrific, grotesque and apocalyptic imagery. Perfect for a kid like myself growing up under the constant threat of nucleary anniliation between the United States and the Soviet Union and in a religious tradition that promised and threatened that the world would in a fiery apocalypse. The theme of the movie is that our hatred, bitterness, and ignorance will definitely lead to war and ultimate destruction and that any attempts to stop this are just futile and pathetic.
Now for some spoilers:
- The rally where the gorillas are all being roused into a frothing craving to wage a genocidal war.
- The beautiful psionic and psychopathic mutants living in the underground radioactive slag of New York City who reveal that their faces are indeed just masks. They are actually hideously deformed mutants who reveal their "true face" while singing hymns to the nuclear bomb that they worship as their creator.
- Everyone dies! Many of the major characters are brutally gunned down in the last scene and then Taylor activates the bomb basically out of sheer malice and spite.
- The world blowing up with a very stark narrative to the effect that earth has just been wiped out and in the grand scheme of things the universe is too big to notice.
For some years I had nightmares that I had set off a nuclear bomb in order to destroy my enemies but then could not outrun the shockwave and radioactivity.
In high school one of the role playing games we played besides Dungeons & Dragons was the Morrow Project, wherein a paramilitary group heavily equipped with guns, medicine, vehicles, and other equipment called the Morrow Project would awaken from cryogenic hybernation after a nuclear war and then attempt to rebuild society. This game came complete with a list of all the cities in the USA that would be bombed, the types of Soviet weapons that would wipe them out, and the radiuses of the blast and radioactivity. It also came with pages and pages of the types of survivors that would be encountered - including mutants, crazy human cults, and other militaristic societies trying to conquer new kingdoms using ancient or modern or even futuristic weaponry. Basically the way the game played out is that one would drive around poking through the ruins, help those survivors you approve of, and gun down those survivors you don't approve of and/or who attack you.
2. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: Yet another dystopian and apocalyptic film. This one is about a futuristic fascist U.S.A. (complete with security guards in black uniforms and jack boots) where apes are used as slaves and frequently brutalized. The only talking ape is Ceasar (Roddy McDowell) whose parents were murdered and whose surrogate human father (played by Ricardo Montalban) is imprisoned, tortured, and then commits suicide to prevent the government from learning about Ceasar. Ceasar then pretends to be another dumb ape and is processed like the other apes, giving the viewer a chance to see how brutalized and oppressed the apes really are. In the end he organizes a bloody revolution that leaves Los Angeles in flames and his human oppressors (and even one human sympathizer) at the feet and at the mercy of the bloodthirsty and quite savage gorillas who are about to pound them into hamburger with the butts of their guns and/or hack them into gobbets with their cleavers. A strange movie because as a kid I sympathized with Ceasar and the brutalized apes, but at the same time realizing that this is genocidal war going on and it is the humans who are finally on the receiving end. A strange mix of vicarious thrill as the oppressers rise up against the oppressed and fear that if you were there it would be you the gorillas would be tearing into pieces (regardless of the level of your complicity in their brutalization).
How can you forget scenes like:
- bands of armed gorillas rampaging through the city finally turning the tables on their brutal opressors symbolized by the jackbooted riot squads sent to kill them.
- Ceaser being strapped to a table and then tortured with electricity and ultimately executed (or so they think).
- the final scene where Ceasar, in a backdrop of burning buildings and a foreground of armed and angry apes declares that now it will be a planet of the apes.
Did I mention that I was living in Los Angeles during the L.A. riots and that previous to the riots I was as outraged as anybody by what happened to Rodney King, but during the riots I hid up in the hills of San Pablo and watched the fires from a safe distance. It should be obvious that the "apes" in Planet of the Apes were being used as stand-ins for any dehumanized, enslaved, or oppressed group and the righteous fury that would eventually boil over into chaos and anarchy (though Ceasar does pull back from vindictive revenge at the end but of course this is a fantasy that rarely ever happens - usually in real life vengeance and wrath just run their course).
3. Battle for the Planet of the Apes: This one shows the aftermath of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Humans are now second class citizens living in an agrarian and apparently vegetarian ape utopia. There has apparently been a nuclear war and the cities are radioactive slag. But there are snakes in the garden in the person of an ambitious gorilla general. This movie shows that all the elements that will lead to the total annihilation of Beneath the Planet of the Apes are all beginning to fall into place. There are mutants in the city who are becoming more sickened and warped in body and mind by their undeground radioactive haven, and the apes show themselves just as capable of murdering one another as the humans - not to mention more than capable and willing to commit acts of ethnic cleansing against humans and mutants. Though this movies seems to show Ceasar's attempts to change the future (which he learns about from recorded interviews of his dead time travelling parents) and in the end the humans and apes seems to be living in equality and peace there is a strong indication that all these efforts are just temporary and futile and that nothing can stop the world's destruction. As the last of the original five Planet of the Apes movies it seems to end on a note of hope, peace, and equality but really that is just to make the final note of nihilistic despair all the more heartrending - showing that history is just an iron circle of periodic brutality, revolution, war, false peace, degeneration, and then annihilation.
Significant scenes:
- Ceasar and his friends trying to make their ways through the radioactive tunnels of the nuked city as sickly dying mutants reach out for them from their shelves inset into the walls.
- Ceasar's trick that wins the battle and saves the ape city.
- The brutal murder of Ceasar's son by the gorilla general Aldo.
- Ceasar's confrontation with Aldo at the end in front of the whole ape and human community where the apes are all chanting "Ape has killed ape!" in shocked recognition that they have lost their innocence and are perhaps no better than the humans have shown themselves to be.
- the statue of the Lawgiver crying at the end - the indication that nothing has really changed and all these efforts to change the future have been futile.
4. Dawn of the Dead: Here is a really apocalyptic movie. Everyone on earth except a handful of opportunistic and amoral surivors has died, and the dead have arisen as flesh-eating zombies. Aside from scenes of zombies ganging up on a person and ripping them limb from limb and pulling their intestines out to feast on them, the really scary thing about these movies is how utterly pathetic the zombies were. They were just regular people moping and stumbling around slowly trying to make an attempt to mindlessly repeat the meaningless patterns of their daily lives - like wandering around a shopping mall for instance. The scary thing wasn't just that they would eat you - but that they would only get a bite or two out of you and then slowly you would be consumed by a fever, die, and then be reanimated to become another decaying drone unable to do anything but crave flesh and repeat endless and meaningless patterns until all the flesh finally dropped of your own bones. Dawn of the Dead was not so much a horror movie in the conventional sense that there is a monster that threatens the protaganists. Rather it is more like a Dante-esque vision of hell and the survivors are simply staving off the inevitable for a few days at a time.
This movie also influenced the way we played the Morrow Project, in that it is about a world that has ended and the survivors are simply scrounging a life among the ruins left behind until they run out of food, ammunition, and luck and the long night closes in. The Morrow Project even had zombies in it - dead bodies animated by radioactivity who glowed blue in the darm. A few months ago I came across a description of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and read, to my disgust and horror, that many of those who were still walking around afterwards were so badly burned all over their bodies that they really should have been dead instantly. These burned living-dead made it to some body of water and then died as they entered into it. There are things in real life, apparently, just as grotesque, horrible, hellish, and pathetic as in the movies or role playing games.
5. Burnt Offerings: This is a horror movie from 1976. I think I first saw it on t.v. sometime after that. Most horror movies do not frighten me, in fact many of them I just find comical or amusing. As my wife points out (and I tend to agree with her) Americans just do not know how to make a truly creepy or scary horror movie. The Japanese are past masters at coming up with creepy ghost stories and disturbing images (at least as far back as the Edo period if not long before). But this movie I did and still find very disturbing - probably because it is so minimalistic and suggestive.
What happens is that a family consisting of a mother, father, young son, and elderly aunt, rent a house for the summer. The only thing is that the mother of the owners lives in the attic and they must leave food outside her door for her, even though they will never see or talk to her. As the movie proceeds horrible accidents claim the lives of the aunt and then almost kill the son. The mother becomes more and more obsessed with caring for the old woman in the attic. The father starts sensing a horrible presence coming towards him (portrayed as a pale grinning man driving a hearse that only he can see) that causes him to have nervous breakdowns. Whatever is happening is not physical, it is a metaphysical malevolence that manifests itself in and through the house itself (no one ever sees or speaks to the old woman in the attic). The ending is as grim as one might expect, and it is revealed that what happens to that family is just part of a larger self-perpetuating cycle that presumably will never end.
I'll stop there with these five.
Ryuie,
It is interesting that I watched these same movies and found them more funny than any other impact for me. But hey, I am not a big fan of horror flicks, but they are a hoot.
Patrick
Posted by: Patrick at May 5, 2009 10:28 AMHi Patrick,
I don't know how they would have struck me (or not) if I had seen them first at the age I am now. But I first saw them when I was in grade school probably in the mid to late 70s on television.
While there was and is a lot of hokiness in horror movies I think these particular movies tapped into a few things that really bothered me when I was younger and frankly still bother me:
1. The seeming inevitability of a nuclear holocaust (I don't actually see it as quite so inevitable but I do think eventually some terrorist group will succeed in using nuclear terrorism and/or that a regional nuclear war is still very likely as nuclear arms proliferate).
2. That "they" all want to kill you. The idea of masses of flesh eating ghouls (or rampaging gorillias or legions of orcs) want to run you down and tear you apart and that there is nothing you can do about it because you are just one person and they are the vast majority is something that does bother me. There have been and continue to be places in the world where there is such rioting and even genocide.
3. That our eventual fate will be to become mindless shamblers and/or starving survivors scavenging in the ruins. All I have to do is look around at the public detioration of homeless people in the Tenderloin and Mission to see this kind of thing. They may not be undead or cannibalistic but the depths to which human beings can sink or be relegated to is worse than any fantasy or sci-fi movie where it's all just "in fun."
Again, I also have to emphasize that growing up in a Christian culture where the idea of a fiery armageddon is constantly being used by opportunistic fear mongering evangelists to fill their coffers also adds to the impact of these kinds of visions.
That is one thing that, for me, makes Buddhism so vastly superior. For the most part it does not try to get its message across through fear mongering but through common sense, common decency, and the appeal to the law of cause and effect whereby it is impressed upon us that it is our responsibility to determine what kind of world we create.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
Not the original Planet Of The Apes? All I can say is "It's a madhouse!"
There's a Japanese film called "Audition" which WILL disturb you. But if you watch the CD, DO NOT look at the stuff that happens before you push play as it tips the most psychologically horrific event.
When I was a little kid I was afraid to watch the Saturday afternoon movie on TV, which my older brother chided me for. It was called The Crawling Eye. But I listened to it: "Didn't you see? His head. It was ripped off!" That was the line my brother kept teasing me with. It was summer and that night my brother was out and my parents went out and left me alone. The doors to the house were wide open because of the heat. I was watching TV when I realized that it had gotten dark. The only light was coming from the TV. For what seemed like the longest time, I couldn't get out of my chair to turn on a light because I was afraid of what might be in the darkened hallway. Finally I got up and ran to the light switch. When my mom called to check on me, I was so scared I actually told her. Years later as an adult I finally saw the movie. It was so stupid. The Crawling Eye was a giant eyeball from outer space with tentacles and you could see the wires on them.
Posted by: joe at May 7, 2009 07:10 AMI saw the first Planet of the Apes, but the later ones I saw as an adult so they weren't so depressing. The first was good enough. The head of the Statue of Liberty and Taylor shouting "da****" kind of presaged the later episodes.
I guess books such as Catch 22, Cats Cradle, or just simple history, including recent history, have served that role for me.
Burnt Offerings is deliciously scary. It did scare me. So did the exorcist, the second time I saw it, after realizing that I'd been hearing the theme "bells" tune in my head just before bad things would happen to me, after seeing it the first time and laughing at it. Somehow knowing that Demons are personifications of internal psychology doesn't help me laugh at the myths anymore. I wish holy water was enough.
My nightmares come from the Manson family, the KKK, Jim Jones, the Holocaust, "The Boys from Brazil," and all the "nice" neighbors, "leaders" and priests who have turned out to be victimizers and murderers. Somehow horror movies seem more catharsis than anything else -- as long as I can tell myself its just a story.
My nightmares come from dealing with a reality where simple greed infects even the most upright seeming individuals and Where I can hear a man tell me in one and the same conversation how nice and sweet he feels to animals or other humans and then express an extremely violent intentionality against people he doesn't understand. Somehow Vegetarians such as Hitler who can order the deaths of millions or condone torture scare the heck out of me.
Those things cause me nightmares, and the only way to deal with them is with activism to try to prevent the tragedy from cycling. Maybe all the effort will turn out to have been in vain, but it is still better to end on a happy note, where all the victims say "never again" and the victimizers are dead or on their way to jail. Even if, at the same time, a new crop of victimizers are cutting their teeth on new victims in some out of the way place like Dafur or Guantanamo.
Chris
Posted by: Chris at May 11, 2009 06:02 AMI guess this discussion illustrates a point. You know the old riddle about what walks on 4 legs, two legs and three legs is about the four sufferings (Birth, growth, old-age/sickness and death). As a kid, those things I couldn't understand terrified me.
Simple things really, like the nightmare that I'd be able to walk half a mile from home only to find a house identical to my own with a family identical to my own, but somehow not mine. Or the giant waves crashing in a beach.
A teenagers nightmares are different. Cheesy special effects might not scare, but the notion of vulnerability is scary. Yet as teenagers our ability to fear is disabled, fighting demons and vampires seems almost fun.
Then there comes a time when it isn't fun anymore. One recognizes ones' own life is vulnerable. I once ran towards trouble dreaming of reporting on it. Now I run away.
At my age, it is reality that gives me nightmares. A friend of mine just had bypass surgery. I can't even watch planet of the Apes.
Knowing that there are legions of authoritarian people out there who see nothing wrong with torturing people or imposing oppression, scares me because I know it is a possibility that will happen.
My fears are no longer theoretical fears that I can run from. I have to face them. One day, the man on the surgical table might be me, and that is if I'm lucky and something else doesn't do me in first. I'm not afraid of being waterboarded, but I'm afraid for my children and grandchildren.
Somehow the notion of Kosenrufu, world peace, or enlightenment isn't some abstract thing anymore that I can rationalize away. My own responsibility to do what I can to nudge the titanic away from looming icebergs is all the more immediate, because I see clearly the Icebergs in the path of our culture, our peoples our world.
While I'm not afraid of Global warming or Atom bombs, I see climate change as inevitable. And the path we are on is not good: Water resources disappearing, oil disappearing, human beings behaving lost in the worlds of animosity, hunger and anger. Robocop, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, Mad Max; all display a dystopia that our crazy fellow citizens seem determined to bring about.
Every effort to prevent a prophesy only hastens that prophesy. Even benign prophesies often have malignant expressions. The world one day will be peaceful. How it gets there is our choice. Will it be a living peace, or a cemetary.
Somehow, this can be changed. There are concepts and paths that can take people around the titanic icebergs looming ahead. Now more than ever people need to take a rational approach to religion. We need skillfulness, Genuine compassion, wisdom, and courage to nudge things along.
So I guess my final fear is the fear of irrelevence. If our nudges aren't enough. What do we do when even people close to us don't listen? What do we do when people stubbornly cling to lies and bad paths and even seem to take joy in twisting and spinning? Is there any hope for a mankind that seems doomed to repeat a cycle of oppression and fear -- and who seem to enjoy causing pain?
Obama is determined to try to 'move on' while forgetting the past -- thus guaranteeing yet another round of oppression, torture, and police power. The Democrats are bought and the Republicans still think they own them. The big moneyed boys are on a path that seems destined for economic collapse. My nightmare is as real as if I were asleep. In it Cassandra has descendents and one of them is me; all cursed with the same gift; I can follow a chain of consequences.
But then comes the final realization. It sometimes is a good thing to be irrelevent. The concepts are what are important. The nudges don't work because they come from us, but because somehow if we nudge people towards the light, that light casts no shadow, but instead spreads. If we get in the way, we block the light.
So what is to be done?
Do our best and be prepared to move on.
Somehow, even if they don't listen now, at some point like drunks awakening from a bad night they'll remember what we said. If we are lucky we'll all muddle through long enough for them to remember. People always have a choice. Even Devadatta can become a Buddha, and the Dragon Queen did so in a moment.
So the good news is the bad news. Just as I've found that many Buddhists are quite as crazy and dysfunctional as the rest of society, I've found that there are narratives that can lead people out of dogmatism, fear, and hatred, even among the various major religions. Wearing the label "Buddhist" isn't as important as passing on the concepts, spreading the nudges. I can talk and get out of the way. I don't have to block the sun. It can happen. Nobody said it will be easy. It leads me back to Nichiren. Faith says it must happen. Cultivate a good heart and it will. Love is stronger than fear.
My nightmare visions don't have to happen. It is because ultimately "I"'m irrelevent that I know we'll be all right. The concepts matter, not the labels. The four sufferings themselves will nudge people the right way, if they only take their hands off their ears.
Chris
Posted by: Chris at May 13, 2009 02:11 PMI grew up watching the Planet of the Apes movies; my dad was a HUGE fan and took the family to every one of them. THey didn't scare me or stick with me as much as they did you but I certainly grokked the implications of the overarcing storyline.
Oddly enough, the movies that really stuck with me, aside from their appeal were not really horror films but films that presented ideas that were truly odd or alien to me.
Friends (French) - a story about two young kids who run away and livein a country cottage. They have a romance and sex and end up with a baby. This was basically the orginator of "Blue Lagoon" from France. It stuck with me because of its portrayal of innocence and how utopian that could be when unhampered by "adult" influences. I think a lot of my secret romantic nature came from that film. I often thought of it when Iwent through difficult times as a teenager. The idea that I could run away from teh world, live on my own and be happy if I could just get away from the pressures of the "responsible" side of life. It still has a lot of appeal. THat and the notion that friendship can become all one needs in order to enjoy someone but even the addition of sex need not "ruin" it as it so often seems to. That was an idea that stuck with me a long time, even as it failed in reality many times for me personally.
Logan's Run - the very notion that society would decide to outlaw an innocent segment of the population was horrifying to me. I knew much of racism and Logan's Run for me was a thinly veiled comment on 'isms' of all kinds. I think the best part was where Logan and his girl make it outside and see the lush overgrowth of the world with all its Eden-like possibilities. Their decision to go back and bring the people out is reminescent of many MOses-style tales even as it turned the notion of salvation upside down by having the escapees go BACK to the oppressors world in order to lead the people to freedom. I could easily see this as the story of Harriet Tubman. Being an adult now, I doubt other's see it that way but to me, Logan's Run was extremely feminist because all the echoes of maternal feeling which streamed through it.
Zero Population Growth (ZPG) - a futuristic dystopia wherein government and culture has tried to nullify the progeneration instinct and failed. A couple decides to have a baby despite it being illegal and keep it a secret (whoever wrote it obviously didn't have kids) but their neighbors/best friends find out and demand to share the baby with them or else they'll turn them in. The other couple have serious issues with the expectation of society to not procreate, issues which even the latest in technological substitutes will not resolve. The coupel eventually have to flee the city and like Logan's RUn end up in the "outside" which carries the symbolism of Eden.
Posted by: smibbo at May 17, 2009 09:03 AM