October 21, 2003
Zen and the Art of . . . Dante
"To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause."
-Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
It would appear that Hollywood producer, a bad piece of fish, and staying up too late reading The Divine Comedy led to the movie whose title is taken from the quote above (see linked portion). Let me just say that somebody is having some crazy dreams out there. I enjoyed the imagery of the movie immensely. Very Dante-esque. I haven't read the Paradiso yet, but I know a little about it. The locations in the "heaven" portion of the movie are breathtaking, to say the least. Too bad heaven sucks so much. I mean, come on . . .
Quote from the movie:
Chris (the main character): Where is God in all of this?
Albert (one of the two "Virgil" characters): Oh, He's up there somewhere, shouting down that He loves us, wondering why we can't hear Him... you think?
Sounds very nice, doesn't it? Wait, though . . . the characters are already in heaven. Where the heck is God then?! That's just the tip of one very nasty theological iceberg (the movie is the Titanic, get it?). In terms of watchability, the pacing is totally screwy. It bogs down rather severely in hell. There is some great visual material in the hell sequences. Unfortunately, we don't get to see hardly any of it. The camera spends more time giving us close-ups of Robin Williams reactions than it does showing us what he's seeing. And for every 30 seconds of hell footage, we are forced to break into yet another very unimportant and even more lengthy flashback.
And then the capstone of the thing . . . After hauling his wife out of hell itself, and being reunited with his kids at his dream house in his dream world (I mean, geez . . . even the family dog is there!) . . . After all of this, the main character and his wife decide to get themselves reincarnated and do it all over again. ("I found you in Hell, you don't think I can find you in Jersey?") Oh, the pain . . .
That said, there were some very interesting parallels to Leaf by Niggle (Tolkien) . . . only that story was set chiefly in Purgatory. I wouldn't be surprised to find that someone involved in the movie had read that story as well, although it shares so many themes in common with The Divine Comedy that it could just as easily be a coincidence.
After that I finished the Trivial Pursuit game with Anna and Wilson. For an account of that, head over to Wilson's blog (assuming you didn't just come from there). I need to get back to work.
