"Prometheus" (2012): Produced and directed by Ridley Scott; Colin Wilson receives a screen credit as Executive Producer; script by John Speights and Damon Lindelof; Director of Photography, Darious Wolski; Edited by Pietro Scalia; Music by Marc Streitenheld; STARRING: Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw); Michael Fassbender (Dave); Guy Pearce (Weyland); Idris Elba (Janek); Logan Marshall-Green (Halloway); Charlize Theron (Meredith Vickers); Rafe Spall (Millburn); and Sean Harris (Fifield).
Alternative Reviews:
A.O. Scott, "Once More Into the Galactic Void," in The New York Times, June 8, 2012, at p. C1. (Inadequate.)
David Denby, "Prometheus," (Movie Review in CURRENT CINEMA), in The New Yorker, June 18, 2012, at p. 86. (Shameful, not by David Denby. Possibly, this review was written by the same person who wrote the "Times" review.)
Geoffrey O'Brian, "The Day of the Android," in The New York Review of Books, August 16, 2012, at p. C4. (Review that is better than the article that appeared in The New Yorker -- possibly by the same author -- that still misses the associations with Joseph Conrad's books, Colin Wilson's ideas, the conflict between religion and science concerning human nature, as well as Shakespeare's influence on this movie director.)
I am unable to use italics or bold script. Harassment often makes writing these texts very difficult. I cannot print my essays from library computers due to vandalism. September 4, 2012 at 3:10 P.M. an attempt to edit my essay dealing with Jonathan Franzen's essays was obstructed. I will continue to try to edit my works.
I do not believe that David Denby or "A.O. Scott" (other suspect names include Jim Holt, James Wood, Manohla Dargis?) is directly responsible for the computer crime or censorship that I struggle against. Furthermore, I believe that some of those "authors" have also been victimized by insertions in their articles.
I do not know "A.O. Scott," nor whether this is a "real person's name." I recognize Mr. Denby's style because I have read David Denby's prose for years. I think highly of Mr. Denby's criticisms of films. I am sure that he could not have written some of the reviews attributed to him recently that damage his reputation -- perhaps more severely than people realize -- and tarnish the image of a once much-admired magazine. "Geoffrey O'Brian" may be doing the same for The New York Review of Books. Is Mr. O'Brian also "Manohla Dargis"? ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!" then see "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")
An earlier version of this review appeared in Google Groups on July 14, 2012. I will not delete that review so that readers may compare my essays with the subsequent review of "Prometheus" published in The New York Review of Books. To my knowledge, the first mention of "Solaris" in connection with "Prometheus" appeared in U.S. media only after my published review established the reference. I am sure that this is merely a coincidence. No corrections or editing was possible at Google Groups.
Introduction.
Ages ago, near a waterfall on earth, a being from another galaxy wanders through a desolate landscape under the shadow of a spaceship. This "alien" makes the ultimate sacrifice to weave his DNA into the waters from which all life on earth emerged.
We cut to a near-future discovery by archeologist Shaw (Noomi Rapace, in a stellar performance) and her boyfriend, Halloway (Logan Marshall-Green), of cave paintings (Sistine Chapel?) pointing to our origins among the stars.
This directorial gesture is not about Von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods," but about universal religious/mythological "origin stories" dramatizing metaphysical and scientific mysteries concerning human nature. The cave, in fact, becomes a master device in the movie as in Western philosophy to represent the psyche in relation to the world.
An eccentric and dying billionaire -- someone like Rupert Murdoch/Ridley Scott? -- sets up the corporate project of finding our unearthly progeniturs by means of the spaceship "Prometheus." This quest for the "fire of the gods" is as ancient as human civilization, as is the Romantic idea of "homecoming." The completion of the circle that is human history will also be signalled during the movie for audience members.
"Prometheus" (fittingly enough) is the vessel created for this specific purpose of stealing the mysteries from the gods. It is piloted by Janek (Mr. Elba doing his creative version of an "all-American mid-western accent"). The mission is headed by Meredith (Theron) and Dave (Fassbender), mirror images of gender ambiguity, neither of whom is very "human" although for very different reasons. Humanity, as an endangered category, is a major concern of this film.
"Prometheus" expresses important anxities and poses questions about human arrogance, scientific pretension, the continuing relevance of religion in a scientific age, the human capacity for aggression or self-destruction -- as a feature of our genetic programming or species identity -- and the redeeming power of genius and love as equally powerful aspects of our natures.
Unlike most popular films in the Hollywood tradition these days, this is not a cheerful, feel good, "happy ending" kind of a movie. Nevertheless, the film does offer hope by concluding with a small measure of "faith" (right word!) in humanity's ambiguous curiosity and heroism that makes us "survivors" in biological as well as moral meanings of the word.
"Prometheus" offers an essentially Christian vision of fallen humanity in a post-Christian age. Science is seen as both blessing and curse, but then, so is institutionalized religion. The film's preoccupation with death and transcendence hints at Mr. Scott's final summation of a lifetime's reflections on ultimate issues of meaning and creativity expressed in cinema.
I do not know and cannot say whether Mr. Scott is or has been ill. I hope that he is very well and that we will enjoy many more fine films made by this talented director. One cannot avoid the feeling, however, that Mr. Scott was compelled to offer what might be his final statement in this disturbing work.
"Prometheus," accordingly, is a powerful reflection on mortality by a man facing and coming to terms with his own death. An Executive Producer of this movie is Colin Wilson, whose novel "The Philosopher's Stone" is certainly an important influence on this work:
Wilson's subject is "original sin, the capacity for man's self-destruction, which grows out of his self-loathing, which grows inevitably out of the very psychological and philosophical revolutions that once freed him from even more stifling bonds. The Darwinian, Freudian, and behaviorist assumptions about man's slavery to his 'lower nature,' his helplessness in the hands of natural forces, merge, tragically enough, with the science of economics by Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus ... and against this sense of oppression, of a total denial of 'freedom,' the poet" -- or filmaker? -- "must rebel, if he is to live. And rebelling, he must hate; he finds himself HATING. And in the words of that arch-ironist and hater, Robert Musil, 'One can't be angry with one's own time without damage to oneself.' ..."
Joyce Carol Oates, "Introduction," in Colin Wilson, The Philosopher's Stone (New York: Warner, 1974), pp. 7-8. Please compare Colin Wilson, "The Strange Story of Modern Philosophy," in The Essential Colin Wilson (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1986), pp. 91-111 with Jeremy Rifkin & Ted Howard, Entropy: A New World View (New York: Bantam, 1981), pp. 248-257. ("The Heat Death of the Universe.")
This theme of "anger at one's own time" summarizes Musil's great novel: "The Man Without Qualities." Mr. Scott has been angry at his own century for some time. It is difficult not to share his anger. To be angry at one's time is to be skeptical about science's ability to describe or define ALL of human nature; it is to find room for religious wisdom, even as an atheist, and the arts in a technological age that trivializes both endeavors; it is to protest against evil and greed in their depersonalized and administrative forms, while loving humanity and life. These are the lessons of "Prometheus" and of Mr. Scott's life-work.
I will focus in my review on three symbols and their interactions: 1). the ring, signaling finality and completion, ending by means of a beginning as in T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"; 2). the crucifix, indicating religion's continuing importance amidst the forces of industry, commerce, and science; and 3). a severed head, the archetype of contemporary scientism or inhumanity as the death of classical humanism.
I. "The Ring": Hermeneutic Circles.
Dramatizations of ultimate issues leads to a natural association of "Prometheus" with several tragedies and poems by William Shakespeare, whose shade hovers over this film. Mr. Scott should offer Shakespeare a screen credit. I am sure that the Bard would happily accept such acknowledgement. For instance, Othello, in his agony, specifically alludes to "Promethean" hubris and the life-force:
... but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.
"Othello," Act V, sc. II, p. 114. (Floger Lib. Ed.)
Among other Shakespearean works borrowed from and referenced in "Prometheus" are "Hamlet" and "Lear," "The Tempest" and "MacBeth." Echoes of phrases from a variety of Shakespeare's texts are srpinkled throughout the script. Mr. Scott admires Shakespeare's plays and, evidently, is recognizing a debt to the greatest poet in the English language in this film.
At the center of the film, which purports to be a prequel or prelude to the "Alien" movies (hence, the ring worn by Ms. Rapace's character, "Shaw," that suggests a circle or return to origins) is a single question found in some form in all of Mr. Scott's films. This question is as old as Genessis and as recent as DNA: "What is human nature?"
This master issue leads to a number of related conundrums: What is life? Are we driven to consume, destroy, dominate all other life-forms in our paths? Or are we capable of choice, compassion, and love? Is evolution the amoral story of survival of life-forms everywhere in the universe in a contest of "fitness"? Or are we "designed" to cooperate even at the cost of survival for the individual (or species) as part of a grand scheme that we see only darkly? ("Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
It is these collateral issues that raise the Promethean dilemma: Is knowledge only the ultimate quest for power? Is scientific knowledge the fruit of the tree of "forbidden" knowledge? Do we seek mastery of the laws of the universe in order to become gods as a serpent once suggested to Eve? Or do we seek understanding out of love for all that is? Do we seek to meet and unite with our maker? Or do we seek control and mastery even of God and the universe?
"Prometheus" gestures at the tragic costs of our perilous Faustian bargain with technology and at Mary Shelley's illustration of this theme in "Frankenstein." Ms. Shelley's novel was subtitled: "The Modern Prometheus."
"Cursed, cursed creator!" Frankenstein's monster wails, "Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?"
"Frankenstein," p. 130. (A list of sources will be added to this essay in the days ahead providing my specific edition of this work. "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")
We are driven to seek knowledge or mastery -- sometimes at the expense of others -- but we are also compelled to choose understanding of our fellow "subjects" in a world of "objects." We must "fuse our horizons" with others for the benefit all. The parallel to the virgin birth in Shaw's unwanted pregnancy is an acid-like comment on the Western mythology underlying our story.
Life is indeed "fused" in this movie with the primal sacrifice of the alien life-form in a prehistoric earth (with a bow to Kubrick's "2001, A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange") culminating with a pilot's, Janek's (played by Idris Elba) heroic sacrifice for humanity (Spielberg/Kubrick, "A.I." and "Saving Private Ryan" then "Minority Report").
"Prometheus" is Mr. Scott's Polish movie. This is true not only because of Chopin's "Preludes" in the score. We get it: "Prometheus" is a prelude to "Alien." Also, this possibly final Ridley Scott movie is a completion of themes found in "Blade Runner," "Gladiator," "Robin Hood" and in terms of the sources for the movie. I do not know whether Mr. Scott has Polish ancestry. It certainly seems that this concentration on Polish sources is not accidental. (Aronofsky's "Solaris" was a Russian film with some Polish locations, I believe.)
For example, "Nostromo" is the name of the ship in "Alien" and also the title of Joseph Conrad's novel focusing on the collision between civilizations. Hence, "Lawrence of Arabia" and the tribute to David Lean. As detailed in T.E. Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom," a technologically dominant civilization will tend to exploit and destroy a weaker one. In this story, we human beings are the weaker civilization. Are there analogies to how the U.S. is behaving at the moment in the Middle East? Are Americans different from the British criticized by Lawrence of Arabia? Are we behaving in a manner that is worse than the British in "Arabia" during World War One? (Mr. Scott also directed "The Kingdom of Heaven.")
"Victory" is Joseph Conrad's matching novel on a "Tempest"-like theme -- Joseph Conrad is Ridley Scott's favorite novelist, or certainly one of them -- a theme that mirrors the plot of "Prometheus." Joseph Conrad is the great Polish-English chronicler of adventure on the high seas (outer space?) and within the human subconscious (the cave?).
Like Ridley Scot, the dying billionaire in the story seeks to defeat death through his enterprises. Unlike Mr. Scott -- or Joseph Conrad -- the fictional character on-screen is unsuccessful. Mr. Scott's films and Conrad's novels will certainly outlive most of us.
II. "The Crucifix": Religion within the province of reason alone.
The search for humanity's "Creator" and for human origins is really the search for ourselves. It is the effort to understand ourselves. Stanislas Lem writes:
"We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything, for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbinds us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of the Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. ... we think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors."
Solaris (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1970), pp. 72-73. (Translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, after the Polish text of 1961). Please compare Leszek Kolakowski, "On the So-Called Crisis of Christianity," in Modernity On Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 86. (Both Mr. Lem and Professor Kolakowski are Poles.)
The search for a "homecoming," the feeling of loss after God's departure from human history (Deus Absconditus), haunts this movie. This has nothing to do with a literal search for aliens who visited our planet centuries ago, but with the allegory of God or god-like "creators" of humanity to whom we may return. In order for humanity to be free. ("They designed us!") A creator-God's second action would be to disappear from the universe. ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")
This defense of free will allowed by a vanishing God is a feature, for example, of the metaphysics of Erigena or John Duns Scotus. Nietzsche's comment that the death of God -- or the murder of the gods by man -- is an act that is "still too great for us!" is brought to mind in this movie. God's absence is felt and mourned by Mr. Scott whose Christian education and "faith" is showing in "Prometheus." (Think of the etymology of the word "Prometheus" -- superior to or "over and above the gods.") ("'The Matrix": A Movie Review" and "'Inception': A Movie Review.")
The archeologist, Shaw (Ms. Rapace), and her boyfriend, Halloway (Mr. Marshall), embody the curiosity that defines our species. They are among several pairs of dialectical twins ("Twelfth Night"?) in this movie, a kind of Adam and Eve in outer space: "Prometheus" has a twin-sister or parallel myth in the story of "Pandora" who unleashes all the evils in the world, but also provides "hope" for humanity. ("Where's my crucifix?")
A second pair of dialectical twins, Meredith (Theron) and the HAL and Peter O'Toole-like robot, Dave (played with relish by Michael Fassbender), dramatizes the tension between human and inhuman that obsessed twentieth-century science fiction and history, i.e., "Eichman in Jerusalem." For example, Philip K. Dick's "Blade Runner" and several of Mr. Dick's philosophical essays are concerned with this topic which is also examined in the works of Assimov, Bradbury, Ellison and Lem.
An obvious mythological reference for this dialectical and bi-gendered pair is Krishna/Arjuna in "The Bhagavad Gita." We do not find God among the aliens, but only the "mirror-image" of man -- selfish, brutal, appetitive, driven by an urge to dominance over others.
Plato's shadows on the cave wall become holograms suggesting a linkage to contemporary physics. The cave or dark interior of an ancient and abandoned spaceship becomes an image of the subconscious (movie theater?) by way of Conrad ("The Heart of Darkness") and Freud ("Civilization and Its Discontents"), but also a reflection of the Holocaust with the piling of alien bodies, like refuse, before a permanently shut door. Ghibertti's "Doors of Paradise" -- a sculpture that is roughly contemporary with Dante's "Divine Comedy" that describes Virgil's ascent only to the "doors" of paradise -- is one association here, but there are many others -- i.e., Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" and "Death in Venice."
Death is the consequence of life. We are necessarily devouring organisms who excrete everything that we ingest, including this movie, eventually. Yet we are capable of love and self-giving. Our alienation from one another is often FURTHERED by science which reduces life-forms and subjectivities to laboratory "objects." A machine performs surgery on a person who is, scientifically, only another machine. How many robots are there in this movie? Has Mr. Scott experienced surgery recently? There but for the grace of God (you should forgive the expression) go all of us.
Technology makes us all nothing but intellect "connected" to machines with various "apps." Few of us, in fact, are now deeply connected to others, despite E.M. Forster's advice. We merely interact for mutual convenience. We have become all head and no heart. The history of our species has brought us to the edge of self-destruction by way of our marvelous gadgets. The question left to audiences at the conclusion of this movie and after we read the daily newspapers is -- "Will humanity survive?"
III. "A Severed Head": Scientism.
There are warnings in this film about contemporary culture's abandonment of religious traditions in favor of recent self-understandings, allegedly, based on what science tells us about ourselves -- that we should relinquish all quests for larger meanings. Abandonment of mythological meanings leaves humanity alienated from the cosmos and its own actions. T.S. Eliot writes: "Men and women cannot bear too much reality."
We cannot live without hope. We are said to be brutal, selfish apes, driven by genes; whether as cold administrators (like Meredith) without time for compassion, or as robots transforming persons into unwilling experimental animals. Is this grim knowledge concerning human delight in sadism the ultimate outcome of the scientific revolution? Not necessarily. (Dave asks Holloway: "How badly do you want to know?")
Meredith offers a wicked comment on Euro-politics in an age of austerity. Does the character of Meredith illustrate the cruelty of Ms. Merkel's policies for Greece? Or Spain? Is Dave or Meredith (Ms. Merkel?) more of a "robot"? Are both beings only "severed heads," representatives of Modernity as the worship of impersonal reason at the cost of humane compassion? What is the price of our scientific knowledge? Self-destruction? I hope not.
The film certainly suggests that instrumental reason divorced from human values leads to suicide. Is humanity flirting with suicide (death instinct) as a result of highly rational decisions for INDIVIDUAL nations that have insane consequences for the entire planet and human species? Mr. Scott thinks so. Many others agree with him.
Science gives us space travel as well as nuclear weapons and concentration camps. This may explain Mr. Scott's Polish sources in this film. After all, Auschwitz (symbol of the misuse of technology to create gas chambers) is located in Poland. Poland is a nation trapped between two greedy and powerful neighbors -- Russia and Germany or America. Poland is also a nation forced to choose in the twentieth century between Marx and Jesus. As in this movie, Jesus won that competition.
We need both science and faith. The search by Shaw for our human origins or the "gods" continues, as the curtain falls on our story, even as she chooses to pursue her quest further into the cosmos while wearing her crucifix.
Conclusion.
"For Gadamer, the sheer survival of our species is in question, because it possesses the weapons and the technology to destroy itself. Gadamer also appeared especially concerned with the ecological crisis, remarking, pessimistically, that probably no one knows how to solve it. ... 'Humankind cannot live without hope,' he often said. By this he meant not hope in the life hereafter, ... but rather confidence in life, in the life-struggle for our own survival."
Physical and MORAL survival are equally essential for Gadamer:
" ... '[We] must learn to stop and respect the other, as an other, whether it is nature or the growing cruelties of peoples and nations' [that may prevent this recognition.] ..."
Jean Grondin, Hans-George Gadamer: A Biography, p. 329.
Solutions to the severed head phenomenon are found in new modes (Postmodern) of scientific thinking that are sensitive to values and ambiguities, as features of scientific study itself, because they are aspects of human nature expressed in all that we do.
"Prometheus" is best classified as "Techno-Noir," a style pioneered way back in the eighties in the "Terminator" (James Cameron) and, more recently, in Spielberg's "Minority Report" as well as in "Total Recall." This genre is characterized by a fusion of traditional Noir characteristics from forties' cinema with sci-fi features dating from the fifties and later. Mr. Scott is an original and early contributor to this style of cinema in "Blade Runner" and "Alien."
Ms. Rapace does an especially fine job, as does Mr. Fassbinder in his role. Mr. Scott, like James Cameron, offers Joseph Conrad's solutions to life's mysteries: courage as we sail into the abyss, unapologetic faith or hope in humanity -- despite the horrors of our nature -- and confidence in humanity's aesthetic and intellectual striving tempered by wisdom along with the fundamental need for beauty. Most of all, love and compassion as our best qualities and slim chance for survival.
As a possible final statement from an important director, I cannot think of a better conclusion to a life's work celebrating hope for humanity than "Prometheus."
Sources:
Films referenced in "Prometheus":
1. "2001, A Space Odyssey."
2. "Lawrence of Arabia."
3. "Solaris."
4. "A.I."
5. "Minority Report."
6. "A Clockwork Orange/The Shining."
7. "Dr. Zhivago."
8. "The Terminator."
9. "The Omega Man."
10. "Silent Running."
11. "I am Legend."
12. "Planet of the Apes."
Books:
Works by or about Joseph Conrad:
Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness (New York: Signet, 1991).
Bertrand Russell, "Joseph Conrad," in Portraits From Memory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), pp. 86-92. (Perceptive comments on "The Heart of Darkness" and on Conrad's character. Russell's short stories should be examined after reading this essay. See especially, Russell's "Satan in the Suburbs" which earned Russell a Nobel prize in literature.)
Joseph Conrad, Victory (New York: Signet, 1991).
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (New York: Signet, 1960). (Foreword by F.R. Leavis is excellent.)
Leo Gurko, Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile (New York: Collier, 1962 & 1979).
Other Selected Works:
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream Electric Sleep? (New York: Ballantine, 1968). ("Blade Runner.")
Harlan Ellison, Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction (New York: Collier, 1971).
Harlan Ellison, Dangerous Visions (New York: Signet, 1967).
Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
James Gunn, Ed., From Here to Forever: The Road to Science Fiction #4 (New York: Signet, 1982).
Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity On Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987).
Stanislas Lem, Solaris (New York: Harcourt, 1961).
James Merril, Ed., SF-12: New Dimensions in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Imagination (New York: Dell, 1968).
Jeremy Rifkin & Ted Howard, Entropy: A New World View (New York: Bantam, 1987).
Theodore Rozsak, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (New York: Random House, 1995).
William Shakespeare, Othello (New York: Simon & Schuster -- WSP, 1957). (Folger Lib. Ed. of Complete Works.)
Roger Shattuk, Forbidden Knowledge: A Landmark Exploration of the Dark Side of Human Ingenuity and Imagination (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996).
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Signet, 1965).
Lawrence Sutin, The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (New York: Pantheon, 1993).
