So I just watched “Lucy” last night.
(*warning: spoilers and a half coming*)
Honest opinion? It was literally an amalgamation of that one flick she already did (called “Her” opposite an awkward Joaquin Phoenix character, where she plays an evolving computer who ultimately also merges with Alan Watts and the holy Higgs field. I’m pretty sure she even says, “I’m everywhere…” at the end of that too) and another movie Bradley Cooper did called “Limitless”.
Both the super-Cooper and “Lucy” movies had that same theme going on – where some wonder drug was made to serve as a shoe in or that mystical chemical “thing our brains naturally make when in heightened states of consciousness.” And in both films, they neatly dance around calling it DMT, but that’s what’s meant. That’s what they’re actually describing in great detail.
The diff?
I sat through “Limitless”for more than just the boobs (no offense, Brad; yours are lovely) and that “what’s in the baaaax?!” Se7ven style torturous Brad Pitt intrigue – which was the only thing motivating me to carry on watching Johansson’s deadpan quantum psychopath character right up till the end. And that end was such a nuclear disappointment bomb, that I just wish I could do my own super-brain rewind to get the hour or two (seemingly twelve) of my life back.
The aforementioned brain bait was that the whole movie, they do these interjected notifications you’re meant to assume are her at “20%” of brain use, then “30%”, and so on till the conclusion which I’ve already kinda spoiled for you but I’ll do it again now –“100%” – which is when she just dissipates into the ether.
That concept – of “merging with the infinite” – is something they talk about in eastern religions. “Moksha”, I think they call it; liberation from the body. Likewise, this concept of scientific “super-consciousness” would be referred to as “Enlightenment” in some of those same cultures. And while I love a good spiritual-science swirl served up like two delicious scoops of ice cream for my own barely-even-at-10%-consciousness, I wasn’t a fan of the way this recent film did it. That end Michaelangelo-esque scene where she touches fingertips with what we assume is “Lucy” – our earlier ref’d apey-grandmama- was a bit sophomoric.
At best.
The reason “Limitless” didn’t feel this way was because they added in all the bells and whistles you like to see and be surprised by in these types of films. The character development of Bradley’s protagonist is better (why do I care what you’re like after you turn if I dunno anything other than that you were mistakable for a prozzy prior?). Cooper’s change is more multi-tiered and impressive than how much violence a femme fatale can do (a nice touch would have been if she’d spoken to the object of her revenge in his native tongue as she campily brain-read him with her thumbs and hand stabbed him Jesus style – another religious ref).
And finally, there was no side or sub plot (or whatever you guys call it in the field).
Some movies can get away with that, but the whole “Morgan Freeman is doing research on this simultaneously” concept really didn’t feel like enough. I mean she had a roommate and a mom, but they served no real purpose aside from giving us more information about how she was was slowly morphing into a socioapathic supercomputer with flesh. That lack made the whole thing fall kinda short so that when the anticlimactic end finally arrives, you get that familiar “saw that coming” feeling wave over you while the crickets chirp.
All that said, I do like the idea movies like these are trying to accomplish. And I don’t mind if they’re suggesting drugs like DMT can accomplish these higher states. Even so, the fact that our gov’ment wants us nice and dumb without easily expanding our consciousness doesn’t make quasi-Lucy-ness an impossibility – and I feel like films could touch on that. Maybe highlight how higher states are possible sans criminal chemicals. Redirect the focus. I’m not sure what kind of camera angles, filters, or soundtracks could make something like meditation seduce an audience to want to go out and enlighten up. But if Danny Boyle could manage to make an action movie out of a man stuck in between the ass crack of a canyon and its giant turd boulder, then surely there’s a way. Then again, Franco’s easy to watch watching paint dry.
Then again-again, so is Bradley.
Then again to the third power times four carry the one… so is ScarJo.
She can touch Sistine fingertips with me any day. All fifteen of ’em.
*I suppose as half second foreshadowing goes, that above scene wasn’t bad.
’cause when she ends up going back and touching our hominid ancestor, “Lucy”, the suggestion is she imbues it with consciousness. And since time is all an illusion, I suppose we just keep going back and reigniting consciousness forever and ever from a Dr. Moreau looking rolly chair. So the self-double-hand thing is like a metaphor for touching her “self” along with the rest of humanity.
Giggity.