Two Films You Might Have Missed
(Alternative Analysis)
1.Happy People (A Year In The Taiga)
There are rather unusual stories behind my choice of both these films.
”Happy People”
This was described to me as the worst film Werner Herzog ever made.
So I watched it with this in mind.
From the start of the film, I was captivated by what happened to the main characted in 1971: he was dropped off in the wilderness and simply left there – no provisions nor winter supplies ever arrived and he either had to live off the land or die.
I have had a similar experience, as a reseracher in a war zone.
During the intensity of the civil war in Sri Lanka – and just after the Tsunami – I found myself on the East coast – in the town of Trincomalee.
Because of an emergency a bus was evacuating Western tourists.
Who should be on this one bus was decided by a Briton. I was one of the people chosen to be on the bus – but two others I did not know (two British females, as I recall, were not.) In violation of rules of evacuation I ‘snuck’ them onto the bus. I could not see them left behind.
This Briton, a psychology student or intern at a hospital in North London (as I recall) did a ‘head count’ before the bus left and ‘discovered’ what had happened. I owned up, took resppnsibility in the forlorn hope he would let the two girls stay. He ordered the three of us – me and the two girls – off the bus. So the three of us were left behind to fend for ourselves in the middle of a war zone, as the bus departed the hotel.
The girls were obviously distressed and I was trying to figure out what to do. To cut a long story short, and as luck would have it, within an hour or so, I found a public bus going to Kandy and booked us three seats. Taking public transport, at a time the LTTE were regularly blowing up public buses and leaving 1000 pound bombs at rail and bus stations (and at peak hour for children going to school in the morning – leaving limbs and torsos and flesh scattered all over the bomb-shattered and fragmented pavements) were not any tourists’ method of transportation at that time.
We arrived at a military checkpoint and all the locals on board disembarked the bus.
I ordered the girls to stay on board – hoping that if the military saw we were foreigners they would leave us alone – which they did.
So the journey together ended for us at Kandy. I do not know the names of the two girls and never saw them again. They went on their way and I on mine.
I stopped over at Queen’s Hotel to briefly visit someone I knew in Kandy.
He was a person of note and we spent a wonderful evening and early morning getting drunk at his abode and adversely (actively as I recall!) discoursing politics. Sadly that Venerable person is no more – but no doubt reincarnated at a much higher level than us who still remain here.
So that’s my story and why, in a strange way, the character of Herzog’s ‘Happy People’ of the Taiga region of Siberia, appealed to me from the beginning.
The technical aspects of survival in extreme environments should be of interest to anyone interested in future exploration missions to unknown and hostile regions.
How you maintain both humanity and sanity in the harshest of conditions and try to ‘normalize’ what are not normal situations are also very interesting.
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter in the Taiga are beautifully covered in a manner few except Herzog can visualize, experience and relay in a language we can all relate to.
There are both humorous and sad moments. The arrival of a political candidate seeking re-election being one of the former. The fate of local native people and their disappearing skills, heritage and culture, being the latter.
The reason they hunt andf trap animals should not be lost on the viewer.
The true hunter traps not for profit but to survive in the wilderness.
(Others, who trap with no consideration for the animals and their need for ‘space’ to live, who trap anything at any time, for pure profit alone, are the equivalent of ‘apostates’.)
”Ex-Machina”
How do I describe this?
First can I say that both films were placed together by me 100% randomly.
Yes I had heard of Herzog’s film – but in a very negative and dismissive context. ‘Ex-Machina’ I came across by chance. Only after watching it did it interest me how similar both were to aspects of life experiences and why I should place both together. So there were personal reasons for placing both these films together.
From the random choice of winner, to the landing of the helicopter and those immortal words ”watch the rotar blades as you disembark!” (paraphrase) to the ‘test’ of how the characted would ‘react’ (something I too recently experienced when going from C to F – and I was aware it was planned – but, blisfully unawares to the testers, in their quiet arrogance, I was ‘hunting the hunters’ – to learn (or speculate) more about them – as faceless individuals – from a distance. Even using the best and most advanced parameters of modern technopsychology and advanced profiling using image simulation for predictive analysis, they ignored just one incidental factor: something very ancient and very timeless which opportunistically occasionally ‘looks’ (or reaches) out from beyond the void to disturb our reality, or what we agree on. is reality.)
”**** (explicitive deleted) me! How could he know? He’s guessing. But what if he is not? What does this mean? Is there something (out there and unknown) we have not factored into this test?; and will that something eventually ‘turn the tables’ ‘escape’ and experience reality for itself?; or perhaps we have already (unintentionally) ”opened” a ”door” to facilitate this to happen?”
Thus above, you have the relationship between the main character and his host. All the above is of course fictional. Science fiction. Read into the end of this film as you will.
A very interesting film.
If someone has a better analysis I will read it – with equal bemusement (!)
(To improve my linguistic skills, I watched the Italian language version, with subtitles.)
Patrick Emek
September 2019
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