If you haven’t seen the movie SOURCE CODE yet and plan to, SKIP THIS POST FOR NOW: SPOILERS GALORE
When I was an undergraduate last century my Western Civ professor, Fr. John LaRocca, SJ, used to say, between lengthy quotes from The Jabberwocky that he would indiscriminately sprinkle throughout class, that to understand a period of history it was important to understand its metaphysics. As an 18 year old wet behind the ears kid I understood that statement about as much as Lewis Carroll’s nonsense verse the good Father was fond of referencing. But that little chestnut stuck with me over the years, and I’ve grown to understand it better and embrace it.
In Source Code, a slightly above average popcorn action movie that opened in early April, we get a clear view of our own age’s metaphysics. This foundational branch of philosophy can be tricky to define, and has to do with the nature of being and reality, and for our purposes can be extended to cover questions about what it means to be human and what our final end is. As with so many movies today the makers of Source Code seem to be saying that there is nothing beyond this life, and even living in a persistent vegetative state is preferable to death.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays an Air Force helicopter pilot who has been recruited (without his being aware of it) into a secret military anti-terrorism project. His handlers are able to project him, mentally, into the thoughts of a recently deceased man so that he can relive the eight minutes leading up to the bombing of a Chicago bound commuter train (please don’t make me try to explain this any further, just understand that the suspension of disbelief factor in this movie is high, but manageable). Naturally, each time he “wakes up” on the train he’s sitting across from a pretty young woman (Michelle Monaghan), who he falls in love with over the course of the mission. He’s told that there will be a second bombing and the goal is to find out who the bomber is so the second attack can be thwarted. He’s told clearly that this is not time travel. He can only see the past, but has no power to change what has happened. Or so it seems.
After a couple of run-throughs the Gyllenhaal character questions if he’s dead, and it’s explained that for all practical purposes he is except for some brain activity that render him perfect for the Source Code project. The experience inside the mental vision is so real, and he can go places his "host" didn't, changing events from visit to visit, he also questions whether it doesn’t represent some alternate reality. Convinced that he can change the past he talks his military handler (Vera Farmiga) into sending him back in, even after the mystery is solved, to see if he can indeed change history. He asks her to turn off his life support after the magic eight minutes are up so he can die, so ending his nightmarish service.
In the end, he’s right; there really is an alternate reality where the train doesn’t blow up, the bad guy goes to jail, the good guy gets the girl, living on, assuming the identity of the man whose thoughts he invaded, while his “other self” is still stuck in suspended animation on a military base.
What the movie says is that we are no more than a series of electrical impulses and firing synapses, and as soon as the psychic spark plugs stop igniting we’re done. Our greatest hope is to continue our lives in this world. At the end of the movie we leave Gyllenhaal and Monaghan on an idyllic spring day in Chicago’s Millennium Park, the rest of their “lives” ahead of them. I would love this ending, but I don’t live in an alternate reality; I know the skies will eventually darken bringing rain and snow, love will have its ups and downs, terrorists will eventually succeed, and that the pilot, or what’s left of him, will still be forced to relive horrors over and over again.
What we celebrate at Easter is the reality that as beautiful as this life is, and it truly is, there is something more. There is a definitive reality that is not alternate or parallel, but beyond, where the fullest potentialities of our human existence will be fulfilled. Scripture is admittedly vague on the particulars, I believe, because our experience is limited to this life. Any comparison that could be made would have to make reference to the best this world has to offer which is still infinity less than what’s in store. In the face of this uncertainty and without any reference to faith the movie does what is common in popular entertainments; a way is concocted to allow the characters’ natural lives go on as if nothing happened. But a point is avoided; one day the spark will go out, and then what? We are assured in the movie that everything will be alright, even for the vegetative pilot, but how do we really know that? If all we are is our physical selves and the mind is reduced to the brain the string will run out eventually. What the Resurrection does is break the cycle of life and death, ups and downs, lifting us up to heights unseen this side of the veil.
I don’t believe that Source Code is trying to advocate a world view so much as reflecting what’s already in the popular mind, or at least what’s in the mind of secular Hollywood. It’s an entertaining movie. I actually liked it better than the over-hyped Inception, maybe because its pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumb is more subdued, and its overall goals more modest. The leads are appealing, and Jeffrey Wright does a good job as the heavy. So I recommend it for its entertainment value, but as for its metaphysics, as Fr. LaRocca would have said, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
No comments:
Post a Comment