By publishing this post, I hereby betray my own #zerodraftproject campaign. Well, wayahna we.. what to do since I’m now sitting in front of my laptop on Sunday morning, at home, and I don’t have the luxury of accessing the internet. Other than my problematic Japanese iPhone currently streaming Heavy by Oh Wonder on my desk, I am completely offline. I can’t access my poor drafts on WordPress dashboard, so here I am deliberately starting a new draft, to be published tomorrow when I have access to the internet at the campus.
For a bit of background story: today is the 2nd day of Ramadhan in Hijri calendar system, which means everyone in my household—and all Muslims around the world—has been fasting from dawn to dusk; since yesterday and will be until the next 28 days or so. We can’t eat or drink or do anything inappropriate during the day so our routine during Ramadhan is a bit special. But, being the unlucky kid I am, I had my period since yesterday, so I can’t do any of our Ramadhan routines. I am not fasting, but I feel guilty to eat or drink openly. I can’t pray, neither Fardlu nor Sunnah. I can’t touch Holy Quran (I used to keep reading it any time of the month, but my brother advised me against it so I just comply). Most importantly, I feel the urge to procrastinate on even more important tasks, like drafting essays for scholarship application and drafting emails for the potential professors (I know, just kill me now).
So I visited my “buang” folder in my movie collections. It’s a folder for movies I’m not happy with, on the verge to be deleted or kept a bit longer. I haven’t even finished watching some of them until the end. Then I took the opportunity in this holy month to re-watch those poor movies. Turned out they were not all that poor. I pick some movies to talk about here, written per the order I watched them.
Caution: If you plan to watch them, maybe it’s better to stop reading until “the reason I dropped the movie” because I cannot guarantee there will be no spoilers included in the final review.
#1 I Origins (2014)
Main characters
Reason I picked this movie for the first time
It has sci-fi genre! You know I have a weakness for sci-fi themes… I’m such a nerd. The synopsis was interesting too. Take a look here:
“A molecular biologist and his laboratory partner uncover evidence that may fundamentally change society as we know it.” (source: imdb.com)
Reason I dropped this movie
Alright, to say it in a simple and plain way: I can’t stomach too much nudity. Call me a prude, it’s just the way I am. I just don’t enjoy finding too much of those scenes in movies with an uninteresting plot. To me, they are simply unwanted seasoning for a tasteless cuisine. I mean, hello Mr Director, is that how you want to sell this? Sorry, I’m not buying this vulgar parade in a cheap presentation you call passionate romance.
Final review after watching until the end
The story started with close-up views of human eyes. Then it proceeds with a narration by a scientist telling the story about his obsession with human eyes, and how a pair of pretty eyes changed his life. There was a random encounter with a mysterious girl, one-night stand (a few minutes, actually) in a Halloween party somewhere in NY until finally, he found the girl again. Then, too much nudity and sex scenes following that made me sick and I dropped the movie for quite some time.
I continued watching to the part when the couple argued about God, just mild arguments in small talks. The girl truly believes in God and afterlife, while the guy, being a true scientist, is a pure atheist. At this part, although a bit cliché, I think their lines were quite interesting, especially when the girl made a metaphor about religion beliefs:
Apparently, the movie made an interesting turn not long after the point where I dropped it the first time. The couple decided to get married, like literally registering their marriage and exchanging rings, with no ceremony whatsoever. Turns out, their wedding day was quite an eventful day. Five major things happened (spoiler alerts):
- The groom’s female lab partner finally made a significant progress in their research project, which was condemned as nearly impossible in the first place.
- The bride being overly sensitive and jealous that her new husband was getting more excited over work on their wedding day, even more after knowing the lab partner is a girl. (how childish and typical.. but ok, I understand her feelings)
- The groom accidentally had hard water prickled his eyes in the lab, which was not fatal, but still required him to rest his vision for a few hours.
- When they went home to the apartment, the couple were trapped in the building’s elevator. They struggled to evacuate out of it, while the groom was partly blind and the bride was being annoyingly childish and uncooperative…
- …which leads to the bride’s death.
…
Wait, WHAT?
Yeah, that’s my reaction too. I didn’t foresee it, so that’s a good one.
The guy was living like a zombie for a while before the pretty lab partner came over to console him and they eventually ended up together (okay, I can see this coming from the beginning). Fast forward 7 years later, they’re married and expecting a child, but apparently, the guy still cannot move on from his dead ex-wife (ugh!).
Then, another topic came out as a surprise, through their child: reincarnation. The cornea of their new-born son matched someone else’s, who died around the same time the child was conceived. Long story short, the events after the birth of their son made the guy (now a professor) flew all the way to India in search of the reincarnation of his dead ex-wife.
I think that’s all spoilers I can tell in this post (and that’s the only purpose I wrote this! Hahaha *evil laugh). Anyway, here’s the list of things I learned from this movie and what I think about them:
- The idea that the eyes containing immortal soul sound beautiful. So, when we’re reincarnated, we can look totally different, but our eyes remain the same? Hmm.. but then it becomes absurd that reincarnation can work across different racial groups. I don’t think it’s normal to have light-coloured cornea in some races.
- Scientist parents are scary. The want to use their own child as their lab’s first test subject? I guess they learned the hard way when another scientist did use their son as a test subject.
- Wedding ceremony and celebration are important for the bride’s mental health. Because otherwise, if you don’t have it, brides will be oversensitive, jealous, childish, and eventually dead on the same day. LOLz
- My favourite scene: The climax scene was quite a success when the little Indian girl (whom the scientist couple suspected as the reincarnation of the dead ex-wife) turns hysterical in front of the opened elevator. Just after all hopes seem vague from the scientific test results. I can totally feel the emotion. *teary eyes
- And it’s quite clever to end it with opening the door, just like the metaphor from 7 years ago.
- The death scene was quite terrifying. Maybe it’s just me being too slow to catch it, but I didn’t get that part right away. Was it because her legs were cut by the lift? Is it possible to die because of that? I guess it is… Maybe I was so emotionally attached to the scene and I started to deny things. I can’t even imagine if it happens in real life, or maybe it really happened somewhere (I don’t want to google it and see scary images).
I even changed my mind to put a GIF image of the death scene. I can’t do it. T.T
- IMHO the scientific results could be done in a better way to avoid bias. Honestly, putting a 7-year-old to answer questions and transparently showing your reactions to each of her answers? They can at least use some code instead of using ‘correct and incorrect’ (and control your expression, please..). Any scientist can tell it’s unethical and you’re practically messing up the data. The respondents are supposed to be kept in neutral, not feeling pressured to answer the “right” answer. I guess it was done on purpose to leave audience questioning the validity of the test, but I still feel disappointed.
- I feel that the main point of the story was reincarnation concept, but the plot took too long to tell the background story. The things happened “seven years later” are far more interesting but they developed too fast.
- AND PLEASE cut off the adult scenes? This movie will still be as good without them, seriously.
So dear readers, are you interested in watching the movie after reading this? Whether it’s yes, no, or if you have watched them yourself, please let me know in the comments section. 🙂
