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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Hear God

posted by on December 18 at 11:24 AM

Three moments in I Am Legend:
iamlegendphoto2.jpg

Moment one: A female survivor of a virus that has killed 90 percent of the human population attempts to convince Will Smith that God still exists. She tells Smith to open his ears and wait for His call. “If we only listen, we will hear God’s voice,” she more or less says. What does this moment tell us about life at the end of the world? People are still reading Luther.

Moment two: From an opening to the underworld, hellhounds are unleashed by some devil in the dark. They leap into the day, onto the dead street, and bound toward a wounded Will Smith and his faithful dog. What does this moment tell us about life at the end of the world? Even if there’s just one man in the city, all of hell, the entire network of the underworld, has lots of work to do. Hell will only go away when not one man, one daywalker, exists.

Moment three: There is an explosion, a fire, a vanishing, and the peace of white light. What does this tell us about death at the end of the world? That it is still moralized by two imagined purities: pure light and pure darkness. But pure light is simply another form of nothingness. One is no better than the other. Together, the light and the dark constitute a transition. Not apart, but as a transition of one and the same, one state of entry and exit—in that transition, the blurring of the states occurs, so that neither light or darkness are distinguishable. But here is the twist: That primordial indistinction is where the abstraction happens (not the other way around). This abstraction arranges the distinctions, or determinations—not without but within (from within this indetermination emerges the idea of pure, distinct states, the Christian-death states of light and dark). Out of that moment of transition, which in actuality is the stability, the existence of a vanishing (death is nothing but the vanishing of a vanishing), we draw the points of opposition that in essence to do not exist, that are one and the same. From life, from stability, from the transitory blur comes the impossibility of permanence in the poles of one or the other. But it is not a matter of good or evil; both are united in the transition from light nothingness to dark nothingness. It darkles all this our world.

RSS icon Comments

1

Hittin' the acid nice and early today, eh?

Posted by Wowza | December 18, 2007 11:27 AM
2

only moment one was funny and interesting.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | December 18, 2007 11:36 AM
3

I hated that movie, SOOOO much.

Posted by Mr. Poe | December 18, 2007 11:36 AM
4

watch the original: "Last Man on Earth" (1964) with Vincent Price. Then watch "The Omega Man" (1972) with Charleson Heston instead.

Posted by bobcat | December 18, 2007 11:47 AM
5

"It darkles this our world."

Well put. I know exactly what you mean.

Posted by mattymatt | December 18, 2007 11:51 AM
6

Did you like the movie? I have not read the book, but understand that it's ending is different and sooooo much more interesting.

Posted by StrangerDanger | December 18, 2007 11:53 AM
7

I don't get why every single frigging movie version has to change the basic story so fundamentally. The whole point of Neville's character in the novella is the loneliness, the isolation, that causes him to grasp at any hope of connection with other living beings. Giving him any kind of companion for most of the movie changes the whole theme.

There's absolutely no reason to screw with the basic storyline. It's extremely cinematic all by itself - as is most of Matheson's work.

I'm still waiting for someone to make a good movie version of The Beardless Warriors, definitely one of his best books.

Posted by Geni | December 18, 2007 11:58 AM
8

Hey Charles, forget about the flowery prose and answer the burning question:

does my boy Will fire off any funny one-liners right after he caps somebody?

"Now THAT was a close encounter!"

Posted by Shaniqua Jackson | December 18, 2007 12:00 PM
9

Another waste of perfectly good web space to say in god knows how many words what most people hopefully figured out back around the end of adolescence, if not earlier. You yet again take the non-profound and try to make it sound interesting. Was this for a class or something?

Posted by Zzzzz | December 18, 2007 12:09 PM
10

I liked the movie, but only in the context of zombie movies. For a zombie movie, it was pretty damn good; nice plot, believable characters that I cared about, pretty gnarly teeth-knashing monster-people. I felt the ending was lacking, but the rest of the movie was strong enough to make up for it. As a zombie movie. I haven't read the book and don't doubt that is intended meaning was completely subverted. But it was decent entertainment.

Posted by Aislinn | December 18, 2007 12:29 PM
11

Charles, only you could waste that amount of time, analysis and verbiage on a schlock Hollywood "paycheck" movie.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | December 18, 2007 12:32 PM
12

if this had been an adventure movie to find another person I would see it. as it is, a non funny zombie movie I won't.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | December 18, 2007 12:45 PM
13

So, did the 90% just disappear, or shouldn't there be loads and loads of corpses everywhere? And where did the other 10% go?

Posted by Fnarf | December 18, 2007 1:04 PM
14

@4 -- are you looking at my netflix queue or what? crazy.

Netflix Queue

DVDs in your Netflix Queue

001- The Omega Man

In this cult sci-fi hit, Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is one of few remaining survivors of a hellish germ-warfare doomsday, having injected himself with an untested vaccine. But he's far from safe, as he must battle a band of infected mutants who stalk at night and are determined to decimate any human left standing. Rosalind Cash co-stars.

002- Fright Fest: Vincent Price

Horror stalwart Vincent Price lures some unwary people (who want to claim a $10,000 prize) to spend a night in The House on Haunted Hill. (They should've opted for a room at Motel 6!) In The Last Man on Earth, Price is the titular man, a scientist who's seeking an antidote to a toxin that has extirpated most of humankind. And in The Bat, Price is a crazed killer who terrorizes a woman writer (Agnes Moorehead) summering in a vacation house.

Posted by creepy mccreeperson | December 18, 2007 1:19 PM
15

@13: I would assume that, it having been a few years and the infected not being particularly picky, that everyone who died was eaten. When Will Smith breaks down the numbers to convince Anna that no one else is alive, he says that it killed 90% of people, then 9 out of ten of the people remaining became the zombies, and the remaining 1% who were immune were mostly eaten. The story is set three years from the initial onset, so it's realistic that there wouldn't be any bodies left.

Posted by Aislinn | December 18, 2007 1:38 PM
16

do zombies have to poop & pee?

do they have the wherewithal to maintain good personal hygiene or do they have diaper rash & such?

Posted by backwoods stupid | December 18, 2007 2:01 PM
17

i bawled like a child when will smith was forced to kill his dog. i can deal with dead children in movies, but why must they fuck with man's best friend?

Posted by dirty girl | December 18, 2007 2:06 PM
18

I'll pretend to act surprised when the hounds of hell are released (thanks Charles) and when Will Smith has to kill his dog (thanks, dirty girl).

Any other key points people want to ruin for me?

Posted by monkey | December 18, 2007 2:48 PM
19

i hated this movie so much
not original
same story can be seen elsewhere
(a bad remake for "Last man on earth"/"The Omega Man")
very funny and unrelated ending
and the worst part - god
come on, give me a break
that's not smart at all

Posted by T | December 18, 2007 3:01 PM
20

@17, are you just trolling with that asinine comment about dogs being superior to kids?

oh Hell, I guess it worked.

Posted by Peter | December 18, 2007 3:06 PM
21

You're an ass, dirty girl.

Posted by Shit | December 18, 2007 3:10 PM
22

Great movie, terrible ending. And it completely reduced the creatures to howling zombie vampires instead of what they really were, infected humans struggling to survive a madman's murderous rampage.

Posted by laterite | December 18, 2007 3:47 PM
23

2 more late 70s-80s B-movie zombiesque (look fnarf i'm making up more words!) fun.

Night of the Comet (Comet zaps people and turns the rest into zombie mutants)

Damnation Alley (Zelzanys excellent novel turned into pure and utter crap - saving point is that it has 2/4s of the A-Team)

No i dont use netflix, instead http://www.cinemageddon.org/ provides me with enough campy out-of-print goodness. Where else can you download movies like "Midnight Madness", "Slugs", and "Rasputin (the xxx version")

Posted by bobcat | December 18, 2007 3:55 PM
24

As if it's surprising that the dog dies.

It's also hardly a revelation that, yes, Legend isn't the last person on Earth and of course the other person he finds is a woman.

Posted by keshmeshi | December 18, 2007 4:07 PM
25

When did I ever say you shouldn't make up words? Zombiesque is OK, though I might prefer Zombified. The point is to be understood, huh?

Posted by Fnarf | December 18, 2007 4:55 PM
26

Or save your bucks and pick up a book, one of many dystopic novels: Russell's Hoban's Ridley Walker; Angela Carter's Heroes and Villains; Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake; David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Way better than any movie version.

Posted by isabelita | December 18, 2007 6:11 PM
27

why am i an ass? for spoiling the part about the dead dog, or saying a dead animal on a movie is more upsetting than a dead child? i don't have children (thank fucking christ for abortion), but i have dogs.

Posted by dirty girl | December 18, 2007 7:20 PM
28

Charles, every time I read a piece of yours I get about a third of the way through before I find myself skimming to the bottom. I understand that I very well may be missing good stuff, but I just can't do it.

Posted by Soo | December 18, 2007 7:27 PM
29

Charles, how gesaelig.

Posted by unPC | December 18, 2007 7:32 PM
30

hey, charles: luther said we live in the devil's wormbag. discuss.

Posted by scary tyler moore | December 18, 2007 8:45 PM
31

I don't mean to state the obvious or anything, but you do realise that it was...just...a film, right? Not Bible. Film. Not theological manual. Film. Not essence of philosophical truth. Um. Film...

Posted by Rei | December 19, 2007 8:58 AM

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