Watched Rise of The Planet of The Apes yesterday (ROTPOTA):D For anyone who is a bit sceptical about watching it due to the ridiculously long film title, DON’T LET IT DETER YOU! I personally think whoever came up with the name was high at the time . Ignoring the fact that the movie title takes a gazillion and one years to say (I think in order to determine whether the length of a film title is appropriate the producers should try and say it aloud 5 times really quickly and if they fail, the name should be buried in a hole far far away, preferably inside a volcano) I thoroughly enjoyed it. The graphics were absolutely mesmerising and I was quite engaged by the story line however cliche it may be. In brief the movie was about a scientist( a VERY good-looking scientist might I add ;) <3 James Franco) trialling a drug (supposedly to cure Alzhiemer’s) on chimps. He unintentionally provides the chimp with a greater depth of consciousness .. and then ..cue destruction (reminiscent of Frankenstein I’d say)
The idea behind the movie, ‘humans try to be ambitious and then fail miserably’, has been rehashed a countless number of times but for some reason this movie had an enduring effect on me. I love movies that do this to me and it’s been a while since I’ve watched such a movie (damn vce)It really made me think about the idea of consciousness and what it truly means to be ‘conscious’. To me consciousness is the ability to make decisions and create thoughts without relying on habit or instinct. I think this is evident on ROTPOTA especially when Caesar (smart ape) gets locked up with other chimps (no so smart apes). Although chimps are inherently very intelligent creatures the contrast between Caesar and the other chimps shows how the development of ‘consciousness’ can provide individuals with a greater range and colour of emotions and feelings.
I was also silently very pleased by the fact that although Caesar was initially bullied by the other stronger chimps he used his intelligence (combined with some very shrewd tactics) to become the leader of the chimp clan, proving once again that brain will always prevail over brawn.
The movie also questioned some of the ethics behind the advances in sciences we are making today. Especially in regard to making cures. I’m all for helping people who are sick and providing them a better quality of life but I feel like sometimes we take it too far and we become utterly incapable of letting go. I remember watching a documentary once about the intensive care units of a hospital in Melbourne which looke dat this very idea. Apparently intensive care units were initially built for children who were in need of constant care and were on the verge of death. In more recent times, intensive care units have become the deathbeds of very elderly people. Essentially, intensive care units provide all the things necessary for a person to survive (the machinery in these units act like artificial organs). The doctors being interviewed in the documentary were commenting on how it’s very distressing to see people’s health deteriorate to such an extent and then keep them in this comatose-like state for a prolonged period of time. It was quite heartbreaking to see these elderly people plugged into all these violent looking machines. And the reason these people were kept in this state was because of their families who were reluctant to let go. I’m not trying to victimise these families in any way because put in a similar situation I would probably do the same but I think as a society (particularly western societies) we are not very skilled at dealing with loss.
With movies like ROTPOTA where humans make tremendously big boo-boos and then suffer the consequences there is a period of time within the movie where the ugliness of humanity is exposed and you feel like you should despise the very fact that you are human. I live and breathe for those moments in a movie! Not that I don’t love my fellow human beings its just that sometimes, especially in this modern society we live in, we get so caught up in our ‘achievements’ and ‘progress’ that we forget to contemplate what type of effect we are having on this world. I think at the end of the day it all comes down to intention, and the intention with which you pursue any action.
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ROTPOTA
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