A Clockwork Orange/ A Clockwork Testament

Most people will have seen Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" and may have noticed that the name "Anthony Burgess" features in the credits in a typeface as large as Kubricks since the film is based on a novel of the same name. While Burgess's novel also features the teenage criminal Alex it also has a serious intent, to explore the conflicting viewpoint of Saint Augustine and Pelagus on the notion of Original Sin and the freedom to chose between good and evil. When Alex is offered the chance to leave prison if he submits to a form of conditioning the prison chaplin argues that if a person no longer has the freedom to chose between good and evil then they are no longer fully human but no more than a mechanical being - a clockwork orange.

Kubrick's film was a great success but did precipitate a degree of violence which backfired on Burgess as being the originator of the story and therefore responsible for the violence that was caused. In response Burgess wrote "A Clockwork Testament" which features Enderby, a character from several other of his novels. Enderby is a poet, now living in New York and at work on an epic poem about Augustine and Pelagus. But he has also written a shooting script based on Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" in which a group of nuns bound for America are shipwrecked and drowned. The result is a rather exploiting film which features nuns being raped by Nazi youth and suddenly poor Enderby, as did Burgess, receives all manner of abuse and threats that he has precipitated attacks on nuns. The novel
is humorous but also Burgess's way at hitting back at Kubrick and a film that he particularly disliked.

But yet again it is a meditation on the notion of original sin and the freedom to chose.

Projection

The last post was on Active Information. This one is on projection which is the basic principle of cinema - projecting images onto a white screen. It is also used on a metaphoric sense for the way a patient "projects" material from the unconscious on the bank screen of the "non-judgemental listner" - the analyst. This a patient may become aware of feeling of anger, or love towards the therapist and the therapist can then address those feelings.

Of course we tend to project into those around us but most of them do no act as blank screens because then exhibit a "persona". This was the name for the mask used in Greek theatre. Similarly a person may wear a mast in their professional life or in their dealing with colleagues - it may be the mask of the "helpful friend", "unflappable expert", "professional teacher", "sympathetic doctor" and so this may act to interfer with our projections.

But what if a person has no persona? This was the case in the film Being There, Seller pays a man who has no persona, no public mask. He is a total blank onto which people can project anything they like and so he soon becomes the expert businessman, the astute politician and at the end of the film his colleagues have even chosen him as the next president.

Facebook

Note there is also a discussion of "Flickering Reality" in a group of F. David Peat's Facebook page. In addition we have just opened a "Flickering Reality" page on Facebook.

Note that copies of the book "A Flickering Reality: Cinema and the nature of reality" can be purchased from
Amazon or paripublishing.com.

Inception

The film Inception deals with the notion of dreams within dreams. In fact there are three levels of dreaming within the plot and even a fourth which is limbo. This raises such questions as to what extent we can be said to have an existence within a dream, to make choices, exert morality or have free will. And to what extent is being immersed within a film similar to being in a dream state as we resonate with characters in the dream or become caught up in the story. And then later that night as we begin to drift off to sleep do we recall the dream and maybe become confused between what we have seen in the cinema, or TV, and what we experienced in real life.

There is element and that is the significance of dreams themselves. For Freud they were “the royal road to the unconscious”, in his early career Jung tended to agree with this but then felt that dreams may have less significance since the dreamer had low energy is sleep and the dreams may be more shadows of unconscious content and favored what he called Active Imagination. In active imagination we reflect or stay with a mood or feeling while not indulging in rational, analytic thought. As we enter into such a state we may hear words spoken within the mind, or see a visual image. As we continue the imagination may become more activated like a waking dream. In this context engaging and interacting with a film could become a sort of active information when we resonate with a character. Certainly the film “Black Swan” would give plenty of opportunities for a viewer who was female to imagine the condition of the dancer.

What other films come to mind when you think of dreams, dreams within dreams and waking dreams.

Shutter Island

A Flickering Reality gives emphasis to those films in which the viewer is placed in the same situation as the protagonist, or sees the world through the protagonist’s eyes. This in Beautiful Mind we are led to believe that Nash’s roommate is as real as all the other people he meets. Similar situations exist in Vanilla Sky, Sixth Sense and The Trueman Show. Shutter Island is an interesting case for we are introduced to the main character, Teddy Daniels, a U.S Marshal on his way to investigate the escape of a dangerous prisoner from an asylum for the criminally insane. But as we follow the progress of Teddy’s investigation we begin to question our sense of the reality of the situation. To begin with there are Teddy’s disturbing flashback to the drowning of his children by his wife, and to his experiences during the liberations of a concentration camp during the Second World War. These are hints at brain washing, mind control and even lobotomies on the island. And when Teddy begins to interview the nurses they appear embarrassed and uneasy at having to speak to him.

As Teddy’s sense of reality begins to break down we realize that he is not acting as a principal investigator but is an inmate of the hospital. One who is about to admit that he has been suffering from serious delusions brought about  by the guilt surrounding his failure to realize the threat his wife posed to his family. And what of the end of the film which has been much debated. Had Teddy lapsed back into the world of delusion, or made the conscious decision that it would be better to remove the crippling pain of his guilt via a lobotomy? Shutter Island is an interesting variation on films in which the view must collude with the protagonist in an attempt to make sense of the world that is presented to him.