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mangrove96
Reviews
Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day (2012)
Cinema awe
Some time ago, it was a great pastime watching concert videos in our family. They can provide the grandness of the live experience, no need for surround, just a huge canvas that fills the walls of the room, bigger than us, the sound shaking the walls so things fall off them.
If a band desperately needed a recent live video it was Zeppelin. They were never just a rock band. The simpler songs pulled them Gods down to the Earth to take a quick visit, but the slower, heavier, progressive stuff is where Zep always shined like no other star.
The performance here starts a bit cold with the opener Good Times but by Dying they're flying and Trampled is in another dimension entirely. Kashmir is the perfect pre-closer but the encores don't work as well since the band can't muster all the youthful energy required for these.
The stereo sound is magnificent and as much as their music stands on its own, this image on a big canvas really scales up the experience. They seem to enjoy playing, smile a lot and maybe don't even miss the drug fueled haze of their heydays.
At the end, our room was filled with the Spirit. Just silence, darkness, maybe some tears but there was something in the ether. The true magick of cinema, and of life. Now the parents are old and we cannot use films as these to lift their spirits up.
But the memories can remain, for a while. Thank you.
All Is Lost (2013)
Hand of Fate
If one is not a sailor then it's hard to say that the events depicted in this film are realistic or not. But surely, the constant downpour of bad luck is almost comical so it's doubtful that realism was the intention here.
Due to population explosion, most souls on this plane nowdays are young. Since they were split from the same source, they don't get much energy (drive) during their lives, they live with smaller amplitudes.
Then there's the older souls who play with a lot of energy, who cannot tolerate authority of any kind, who want it all and want it now. But if a tree wants to reach the sky, its roots has to go down to hell.
This boat ride was our guy again tempting the Spirit, like saying 'okay here I am, do what you want with me'. And it was decided that it's payback time for a life lived so the Hand of Fate intervened, now with a harder swing.
A man can only be resourceful if his guides give him the right kind of thoughts, but if they don't want to do that then he'll make the wrong decisions. Like the band Kraftwerk sang 'We are the robots' about how free will is an illusion.
Knowing this might help us reach some kind of enlightenment. There are no accidents, every unexpected event in our lives, good or bad, should make us think: why did I get this? The ending of this film is ambiguous but the light is certainly there.
Le professionnel (1981)
The soul who wants to fly
When you're locked down for a long period of time, you slowly begin to daydream about how things will be, how they must be, better in the future. Such is the case with our Joss Beaumont, sitting in his cell at night, stretching his arms towards the sky as the rain falls outside.
The ridiculousness of the plot that follows, how he is able to guess beforehand their every single move, isn't what we all dream about, to smoothly glide through life, playing the system with utter ease? The short goodbyes he makes meanwhile, are signs that there's no return trip on this train.
The music doesn't change during the film, sometimes breaking into fragments but it gets repetitive fairly soon. This is not an accident but a cue that we're living the same moment. Very little talk on our hero's part during the two hours further strengthens the transitional state.
Everything should get clear at the final cut, when the helicopter suddenly starts to ascend with no apparent reason except perhaps a filmmaker's cheap gimmick. The soul is finally flying, leaving the body behind on this prison planet called Earth.