The Strugatski brothers imagined the possibility of a god.
But not just any one, but a rigorously scientific divinity. In an unlikely future in which technological development and intergalactic travel would make it easier for the most developed civilization to study others, history would cease to be a rather soft discipline subject to all kinds of ideological contingencies to enjoy the flint rigor of any hard and experimental science. It would be enough to observe and take note of what happens, for example, in the Middle Ages in which surely some lost planet lives. And from there, extract consequences on the future of others that is nothing more than the past of the one who observes. For obvious reasons, the observer would be something like a god for the objects-subjects of study. The novel, which would later become a masterful film by Aleksey German, attends to the name,how could it be otherwise,
How difficult it is to be god
.
The
Eternals
saga
, created by Jack Kirby in 1976 and now being adapted on the big screen by the almighty (almost divine) director Chloé Zhao, is something of an unconscious recreation (in the broadest and most rigorous of the senses) of the hypothesis of the always brilliant Strugatski.
It is, in effect,
a film of superheroic beings, but which, in their invulnerability, have nothing to do with the happy and childish anthropocentrism of their colleagues at the Marvel factory.
It would even be said that the characteristic of beings alien to time and of scholars, in addition to defenders, in the distance of the human race (that is the Eternals) brings them closer to the divine mysticism of the DC factory with Superman in front and the ways always Zack Snyder's stunning features than any of the super-powerful and super-responsible creatures that the Avengers family had us used to. It is definitely very, very difficult to be a god.
Let's say that the film, to summarize it a lot, is all of it a paradox
. Or, more precisely, nonsense. It is an eminently Marvel production, but with the pauses and blank monologues more typical of its DC rivals. We are facing the penultimate attempt by Disney to take its titanic creatures one step further in the hyperconquest of the box office, but in the hands of an independent filmmaker,
Oscar-winning
to the point of indignation and specialized mainly in sunsets (in its broadest sense twilight).
The idea, once again, is to compose a testosterone show of outrageous bullets, but from a demographic profile so rigorously inclusive that evil is more of a life option than any other than a defect.
.
And, of course, never objectionable.
Definitely being a god is complicated.
The idea, once again, is to compose a testosterone show of outrageous bullets, but from a demographic profile so rigorously inclusive that evil is more of a life option than any other than a defect.
The director of
Nomadland
thus composes an
eyesore
(not so much an insult as a description)
that is hard to look at in the eye without stumbling on something
: be it an empty reflection on emptiness or vocationally rare creatures with incomprehensible anatomy. Why those ugly digital effects? Why that bombastic opera in each look? Why those dialogues so loaded and supposedly nice?
At times, you can hear how the fingers of the scriptwriters who are devoted to the colossal task of catching, concentrating and exposing in little more than two and a half hours whole millennia of a myth without feet or head can be heard.
Nobody said being a god was short.
If you take a second to analyze the plot, you soon realize that something is right.
It is difficult to find it in the plot chaos, but there is something with sense. I recognize that it is more intuition than certainty. Our protagonists have been sent to Earth by the Celestials led by Arishem and their function is to fight the Deviants, a mixture of dinosaurs and sea monsters in the best Japanese tradition of 'kaiju'. They cannot interfere with human affairs in the same way that the early Strugatski 'historian' could not warn his objects of study that after the gray Middle Ages a flowery Renaissance awaited them. They simply have to put an end to evil, but in the abstract, without anyone knowing about it.
It is a diverse group in which there is everything, from all latitudes and, as if that were not enough, capable of everything, including, and with forgiveness, fucking.
This last point is not trivial.
For the first time the viewer will see a sex scene in a superhero movie
and, also in an unprecedented way, will witness the statistically vulgar fact, and always hidden despite this, that one of the protagonists -Phastos (played by Brian Tyree Henry) - is openly gay. Undoubtedly, it is an advance and even relieves to think that finally these beings so muscular and so concerned about the future of Humanity (including Spain) are in their divine eccentricity individuals capable of both emotion and orgasm. The effort to attend and create another canon of beauty, goodness and sexuality at a distance from the one-big-free or hetero-male-face model is undoubtedly appreciated. And so far the virtues are not necessarily theological.
But let's not get lost. The
Eternals
already take care of that
without help from anyone.
At times, you think you understand the director's motivations.
It can be understood that a filmmaker so concerned with the mythology that shapes and condemns the United States after dedicating herself to analyzing the keys to the western both in
The Rider
and in last season's most awarded film,
Nomadland
, now wants to unravel the mystery of the superhero as incarnation of a pious 'Rooseveltian' pagan referee god in the neoliberal jungle. But that is the only thing intelligible: the intention, not the facts. It hurts to be an economist, but it hurts more to be a god.
When the protagonist of the Strugatskis' novel realizes that his mere presence in the world he studies is an interference with unforeseeable consequences, it will be too late.
The Middle Ages will settle on that remote planet forever.
Something similar happens to Zhao within a universe, that of superheroes, completely refractory to his gaze.
Chloé Zhao's worst movie is also the saddest superhero movie.
How difficult it is to be a goddess (it has lasted a year).
+ Undoubtedly, to the derision of all those eager to be canceled, the multicultural effort is appreciated.
For the rest, very nice Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), the hero and actor of Bollywood.-Definitely, eternity was this.
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