Predestination (2014)
Are we fatalistic when we say that life is predetermined? No matter how we try to change it, it would somehow end with an outcome that may not be favourable to us. Is there a reason why the word 'fate' and 'fatal' has the same root word? How much free will do we hold?
I am surprised that I never actually heard about this movie before watching it. It is an outlandish movie about time travel, a beautiful hermaphrodite, self-impregnation and changing history! It may sound a bit like the 'Back to the Future' series, but this one is darker. It is pretty confusing as the characters move in and out of timelines.
In the beginning, a man tries to defuse a bomb but sustains facial burn injuries. He is treated in a hospital and has extensive skin grafting or perhaps a facial transplant. In the next scene, this man is now attending to a customer in a bar and starts a conversation with him. A nihilistic man tells him tall tales about being a trash magazine writer who was born a female. At that juncture, you think, okay, she changed her biological sex. But no! 'She' grew up in an orphanage as Jane, a lonely, nerdy and sad child. After an unsuccessful stint at a space recruitment project, she meets a 'guy' who disappeared after getting her pregnant.
Complications during delivery need surgical intervention. She loses her uterus, and the doctors discover functional male internal organs. Somebody steals her baby, and she is all alone again. After a series of gender reassignment surgeries, Jane became John. John eventually becomes a writer with hatred hanging over her mind with the man who got her into this mess of pregnancy and life-changing experiences! This takes almost half of the story. You start wondering. Is this some kind of trashy pulp fiction story where the sky is the limit; anything goes! Then it gets interesting...
The barkeeper takes John to the cellar to show a violin case which is actually a time machine for him to go back in time to avenge the boyfriend who got her into her predicament. What do you know? When John goes back in time (with the barkeeper), John is indeed the boyfriend to Jane! In other words, John impregnants Jane at a different time and begets a child.
It is an intricate weave of a story to alter history to protect the lives of many who perished in a terror attack in 1975. The barkeeper, John, Jane and even the bomber eventually turned out to be the same in the end. It needs a lot of mind-bending and science to understand this exciting concept. The story moves between 1975 to 1970 to 1963 to 1992 to 1981 to 1970...
The characters are supposed to be part of a secret organisation with a time travel device to put the world in order, avert danger and save lives. They come to realise that nobody is affected by what we do, mishaps may occur in other ways as the effect of our actions or inactions. We can stop one event, but the impact of that action can start another domino effect of another and another. They can never truly be 'Peace on Earth'. One of the side effects of this travel, however, is psychosis. This derangement is the one that pushed the barkeeper to be a terrorist as he thought that action would prevent other catastrophes that were destined to occur in the future.
Need to check on the grandfather paradox, predestination paradox and causal loop in the context of time travel.
Are we fatalistic when we say that life is predetermined? No matter how we try to change it, it would somehow end with an outcome that may not be favourable to us. Is there a reason why the word 'fate' and 'fatal' has the same root word? How much free will do we hold?
I am surprised that I never actually heard about this movie before watching it. It is an outlandish movie about time travel, a beautiful hermaphrodite, self-impregnation and changing history! It may sound a bit like the 'Back to the Future' series, but this one is darker. It is pretty confusing as the characters move in and out of timelines.
In the beginning, a man tries to defuse a bomb but sustains facial burn injuries. He is treated in a hospital and has extensive skin grafting or perhaps a facial transplant. In the next scene, this man is now attending to a customer in a bar and starts a conversation with him. A nihilistic man tells him tall tales about being a trash magazine writer who was born a female. At that juncture, you think, okay, she changed her biological sex. But no! 'She' grew up in an orphanage as Jane, a lonely, nerdy and sad child. After an unsuccessful stint at a space recruitment project, she meets a 'guy' who disappeared after getting her pregnant.
Complications during delivery need surgical intervention. She loses her uterus, and the doctors discover functional male internal organs. Somebody steals her baby, and she is all alone again. After a series of gender reassignment surgeries, Jane became John. John eventually becomes a writer with hatred hanging over her mind with the man who got her into this mess of pregnancy and life-changing experiences! This takes almost half of the story. You start wondering. Is this some kind of trashy pulp fiction story where the sky is the limit; anything goes! Then it gets interesting...
It is an intricate weave of a story to alter history to protect the lives of many who perished in a terror attack in 1975. The barkeeper, John, Jane and even the bomber eventually turned out to be the same in the end. It needs a lot of mind-bending and science to understand this exciting concept. The story moves between 1975 to 1970 to 1963 to 1992 to 1981 to 1970...
The characters are supposed to be part of a secret organisation with a time travel device to put the world in order, avert danger and save lives. They come to realise that nobody is affected by what we do, mishaps may occur in other ways as the effect of our actions or inactions. We can stop one event, but the impact of that action can start another domino effect of another and another. They can never truly be 'Peace on Earth'. One of the side effects of this travel, however, is psychosis. This derangement is the one that pushed the barkeeper to be a terrorist as he thought that action would prevent other catastrophes that were destined to occur in the future.
Need to check on the grandfather paradox, predestination paradox and causal loop in the context of time travel.
Comments
Post a Comment