LEVIATHAN 2012

Here's another film that I saw at Steve's recently. Don't confuse it with a different film made two years later with the same name. You want the one with title lettering that looks like a tattoo artist or a biker did it. 

Ask ten people what the film's about and you'll get ten different answers. For me it's about the way the world really is: the chaotic way our senses actually perceive the world before our brains have a chance to process the information and make a pleasing story out of it.

The film takes place on a New England fishing boat but it could just as easily have been about a walk in the park. Wherever we are life bombards us with a cacophony of sound and images which our brains filter through algorithms. Those algorithms create for us a  three-dimensional map and a sense of what's in that map and how it can be used to enhance our survival.  It's amazing that we can do that.

It's scary to think that we might have been visited by intelligent space aliens many times in the past but they simply failed to notice us. Their own algorithms might have attached more significance to that rarity in the universe: the radiation protected, surface ocean. Or maybe the cacophony of all the splashing droplets and weather might have overwhelmed their senses. Maybe their image of the Earth is of a baffling place of loud white noise. Maybe they were glad to have left it.




Anyway, here's (above) a trailer for it. To make its point the film has to be immersive so widen the picture to full screen mode and crank up the sound. If you see the whole thing, try to see it in a theatre rather than on a video at home. Or better still, if you live near L.A., see it at Steve's house next weekend. Contact him at:

http://animationresources.org/