Several Chimesfreedom posts have touched on the theories of sociologist Ernest Becker. Among other things, Becker’s book Denial of Death has inspired artists including Woody Allen and writer Don DeLillo. I also own a documentary about Becker’s theories, so wanted to point out this interesting film Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality(2003) for anyone who might be interested.
In a superficial nutshell, Ernest Becker wrote about how humans are unique creatures because our intelligence gives us an understanding of something inevitable and horrible. One day we — and everyone we know — will die. This knowledge is so disturbing, Becker reasoned, that we subconsciously suppress this knowledge on a daily basis. In so doing, we subconsciously use other ideas to help us suppress our fears. Thus, we seek out things that help us feel immortal to buy the idea that we may one day die. For example, we root for sports teams because our attachment to a team that will survive and triumph makes us feel connected to something eternal.
But these attachments can have bad effects too. If I have a belief that helps me deal with my subconscious fear of death, your belief that is inconsistent with mine may make me feel threatened. As a result, our subconscious fear of death can make us hostile to people with different views from us. Interestingly, a number of scientists have been exploring these theories and are seeing results of how they affect our every day lives, influencing everything from voting to wars.
Anyway, that is my attempt to summarize some of the ideas in a couple of paragraphs, but the film Flight from Death does a better job of explaining it. In the film, a number of writers, philosophers, and Terror Management Theory scientists discuss the way that our subconscious fear of death can impact our lives. Some of the commentators in the film include Sam Keen, Robert Jay Lifton, Irvin Yalom, Merlyn Mowrey, Sheldon Solomon, and Daniel Liechty. It is one of the rare documentaries that can change the way you look at your life.
The film is narrated by Gabriel Byrne, and while the film is no longer available on YouTube, you may find some clips there, such as this 10-minute clip (or watch the whole film on Amazon).
What do you think of Flight from Death? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The new space film, Gravity (2013), starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is getting rave reviews. The movie about two characters who end up floating in space features great special effects, fine acting, and drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
If you have seen the trailer, you know what to expect. The movie does not waste time with a back story leading up to the accident, where debris from a Russian satellite destroys the U.S. space shuttle and sets Bullock and Clooney adrift. The rest of the movie features their attempts to stay alive and get back home.
Without saying more about the plot, the movie features plenty of action and drama, reminding me of Tom Hanks in Cast Away (2000), where a human struggled to get back to civilization and learned about himself along the way. Director Alfonso Cuarón, who also directed the wonderful Children of Men (2006), has a special eye for creating other worlds while still staying focused on character.
For a film set in space, Gravity is a very intimate film, with Clooney and Bullock carrying the entire story. Clooney’s character makes great use of the actor’s charm, and Bullock provides a solid center as a scientist who appears to be in over her head. We do, however, hear some other voices. As required for any movie about NASA such as The Right Stuff (1983), Ed Harris appears. Here he is the voice for mission control as he was for Apollo 13 (1995).
The movie is playing in both 3D and 2D. I had the unusual experience of getting to see part of the movie in both forms, as the theater made a mistake and showed my 3D audience the first 20-30 minutes in 2D and then, realizing its mistake, began the movie from the start in 3D. While, I still enjoyed the 2D version, Gravity is a movie where it is worth the extra bucks for 3D, as the shots of people and items in space, as well as the earth in the background, are spectacular.
Conclusion? If you like space movies or desert island adventures, you will enjoy Gravity. I do suggest you avoid reading many of the glowing reviews, as they may raise your expectations too high for a solid movie that has many traditional elements. Gravity is not as challenging as recent space or sci-fi movies like Moon (2009), Clooney’s Solaris (2002), or Cuarón’s Children of Men. But it is definitely worthwhile. I give the film eight chimes out of ten.
What did you think of Gravity? Leave your two cents in the comments.
American author Ambrose Bierce originally published the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” in 1890 in The San Francisco Examiner. Today the story remains in the national consciousness more than one hundred years later, largely due to the story’s appearance in film and TV.
Director Robert Enrico made the story into a 1962 French short film La Rivière du Hibou (“The Owl River”). The film won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards.
But you may have seen the French film without knowing it was a French film. Rod Serling broadcast it with the short story’s title during the 1964 season of The Twilight Zone.
The Story of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Civil War soldiers prepare to hang a man named Peyton Farquhar at Owl Creek Bridge. When the man drops, the rope breaks, dropping him into the river below. Farquhar escapes and tries to return to his family and loved ones.
In the film, the escaped prisoner, played effectively by Roger Jacquet, conveys his desperation to get back home. If you have never seen the film or read the story, I will not ruin the ending.
The French Film Version
The original French short film won the Golden Palm for Best Short Subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the Best Live Action Short at the 1963 Academy Awards.
Unlike the short story, the film begins with the execution, omitting the back story but thrusting the viewer right into the action. [October 2015 Update: Unfortunately, the entire French film is no longer available on YouTube, but below is reportedly an excerpt from the original French film with the song “Livin’ Man.”]
The Twilight Zone Broadcast
The French film attained a larger audience when Rod Serling incorporated the film into a Twilight Zone episode. In a series of original productions, Serling’s use of the film in this way was unique.
Different sources give different stories about how the film came to be a Twilight Zone episode. One source claims that Rod Serling attended a film festival and saw the short. Then, he bought the rights for broadcasting on his series.
However, most other sources report that Twilight Zone producer William Froug first had the idea when he showed the movie to a film class. Froug, who passed away in September 2013, explained how the idea arose.
Below is the “special and unique” 1964 Twilight Zone episode that incorporated the French short film and added a Rod Serling introduction. The original French film achieved its tension with very little dialogue and used English for what little dialogue there was. So, the French film easily translated to American TV.
The Twilight Zone episode includes some music that does not appear in the French video above (although one source says the song “Livin’ Man” appears in the French version too.
Reportedly, the Twilight Zone episode of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was the last one produced for the series. But it was not the final episode that was broadcast.
For a long time after the broadcast and one repeat showing, viewers could not watch the episode. Twilight Zone did not have the syndication rights for the film. So after its initial broadcast and a repeat, for years the “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” episode did not rerun on TV in syndication with the other episodes. Eventually, though, the episode was reunited with the other series episodes on DVD.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The Twilight Zone episode, however, was not the first to tell Ambrose Bierce’s story on television. Several years earlier in 1959, Alfred Hitchock Presents aired its own version of the story.
The Hitchock version, like the original short story, provided more back story on how the man came to be sentenced to death. [September 2016 Update: Unfortunately, a decent quality of the video is currently not available on YouTube.]
A Song, “Owl Creek Bridge”
Finally, more recently, Montreal-born singer-songwriter David Rubin wrote and recorded a song inspired by “An Occurrence at Owl Street Bridge.” The song, “Owl Creek Bridge,” appeared on his album Secret Agent in 2006.
One can speculate that Ambrose Bierce could never have imagined how his story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” would reach so many people. It continues to grip us even today because the tale of one man’s desire to get home reflects the tragedy of both death and war.
Which is your favorite version of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In 1983, Columbia Pictures released “The Big Chill,” a film featuring an ensemble of great young actors (including a rising star cut out of the movie) as characters looking back on the 1960s with nostalgia, loss, and wonderful music.
On September 28, 1983, Columbia Pictures released The Big Chill. The film, directed by Lawrence Kasdan, featured baby boomer college friends reuniting around fifteen years after school for the funeral of a friend who committed suicide. The film perfectly encompassed the baby-boomer anxiety about selling out in life and a loss of innocence.
And of course, there was the humor. And the movie featured the great soundtrack with such performers as Marvin Gaye, Creedance Clearwater Revival, and Aretha Franklin.
The move taught me an important lesson that had little to do with the lost idealism or the friendship of the characters. I learned how great it can be not to know anything about a movie before you see it.
When I was in college, I went to a shopping mall with friends and we decided to see a movie. As we debated what to see, none of us had yet seen any advertisements for The Big Chill. I only knew that my sister had seen it and liked it, but I had no idea about the story or the actors.
Well, we decided to see The Big Chill based on my sister’s vague recommendation. By the time the movie got to the scene with the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” I was hooked.
For the time period, with MTV only about two years old, the movie seemed like something new and refreshing, using rock music to explore the 1980s nostalgia for the 1960s. I do not know if I would have loved the movie so much had I known what to expect. So I learned the best way to see a movie is without expectations. Now, before I see a movie I try to learn only as much as I need in order to decide whether or not I want to see it.
Thus, in case you have not seen the The Big Chill, I will not say much more about the plot. Many have fond memories of the movie, which had a great ensemble cast of Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams.
Much later, we would read that the dead friend Alex, who we never see in the film, was originally played by a young Kevin Costner. In this reunion video, you may hear more about a deleted flashback scene featuring Costner.
Critics are somewhat divided on the film. I understand how looking back at the movie through today’s lens, one may see too many clichés.
But for the time, seeing the movie through my own innocence, it helped connect me a tiny bit to thinking about how I might one day look back on my own life. And today, I find myself older than the characters in the film looking back nostalgically at where I was when I first saw The Big Chill during my own college years. What is your favorite scene in The Big Chill? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In this short video, The Last Thing You See: A Final Shot Montage, Zach Prewitt has created a montage of final movie scenes. The video connects final shots by theme, creating a seamless video of wonderful moments in what Prewitt calls, “A meditation on the beautiful, cathartic, and transcendent power of the final shot.”
The collection is divided into eight parts: Awakening/Creation, The Natural World, Youth, Love, The Journey, Triumph, Celebration, and Transcendence. It opens with scenes from The Tree of Life (2011) and Vanilla Sky (2001) and ends with scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Check it out.
Several Chimesfreedom posts have touched on the theories of sociologist Ernest Becker. Among other things, Becker’s book Denial of Death has inspired artists including Woody Allen and writer Don DeLillo. I also own a documentary about Becker’s theories, so wanted to point out this interesting film Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality (2003) for anyone who might be interested.
in 2006.
