Join Nina Munteanu at Indigo in Yorkdale Mall (Toronto area) for Book Signing of The Last Summoner

Oblivion Review: Earth is a Memory Worth Fighting For...

I just recently experienced the visually stunning motion picture Oblivion in an IMAX theatre and I highly recommend it. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (based on his graphic novel), this SF action thriller is worth seeing on the big screen. It takes place in a devastated NYC (no longer recognizable as a vast lonely landscape of buried skyscrapers and dried up rivers). It’s 2077, sixty years after aliens invaded and destroyed the moon and much of the planet as consequence. This film is LARGE. Kosinki’s spectacular imagery and M83's other-wordly and evocative score must be seen large.

Technician Jack Harper (Cruise) and Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) are assigned to mop up the remaining resource extraction of a "fallen" Earth, before they join what's left of the human race, who have settled on Titan, Jupiter's moon. Victoria oversees operations and communicates with mission commander Sally (Melissa Leo) in the Tet (a large space station orbiting Earth) from the 3,000-foot high Sky Tower, a posh high-tech home/work station where she and Jack live. Meantime, Jack risks his life daily, servicing the droids that chase after "scavs" (remnant aliens), who keep sabotaging the giant resource harvesters.

Jack and Victoria have been stationed there for five years and are due to leave in two weeks. Faced with the prospect of leaving Earth, Jack grows maudlin for humanity’s home. Without disclosing to Victoria or Sally, he’s been collecting Earth memorabilia (e.g., baseball cap, toys, sunglasses, books); It doesn’t help matters that he is haunted by dreams of living in pre-war NYC with another woman (Olga Kurylenko).

Every day Jack leaves his ultra clean and tidy Sky Tower home and descends to Earth's gritty and dangerous landscape. On some level, he thrills in the place, finding a strong connection between its vast and lonely landscape and his own identity. Jack is a man in search of an identity; he was 'mindwiped', after all (to keep the scavs from getting important intel if he was ever captured). Jack desperately summons shadows of memories and collects Earth memorabilia every chance he gets. "Is it possible to miss a place you've never been, to mourn a time you've never lived?" he reflects. When he finally learns what he truly is and the heinous role he (and those like him) unknowingly played in the near-destruction of humanity, Jack does the only thing he can; he sacrifices himself to save what's left of humanity and those he loves: "If we have souls, they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death." 

Showatcher.com calls Oblivion “a slick 21^st century science fiction pulp actioner” with genuinely amazing CGI and action set pieces. Showatcher adds that “it was refreshing to witness a film that, though it did not break new ground, held the attention of a jaded sci-fi audience.” A large part of its attention appeal lies in its “techno-bass” musical score composed by Joseph Trapanese and Anthony Gonzalez with M83 (a French electronic/shoegaze band named after the spiral galaxy Messier 83). They elegantly orchestrated a score that was locked in step with the narrative imagery of Claudio Miranda in a viscerally synchronized life-pulse. The score surges and ebbs like an intelligent sea; at times assaulting the senses with an open-throated tsunami of crushing sound; at others a throbbing caress of longing nuance.

Many reviewers (see the litany on Rotten Tomatoes) have trashed the film for various reasons, from plot holes and appropriation, mismanagement of suspense, to it being a Tom Cruise film. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian calls Oblivion "bafflingly solemn, lugubrious and fantastically derivative sci-fi, which serves up great big undigested lumps of Total Recall, AI, Planet of the Apes--with little snippets of Top Gun."

Roy Klabin of Policymic is less kind: “Unfortunately, I got to see an early preview and doubt it will satisfy even the most dim-witted of audiences…the film’s unsubtle commentary on our own use of robotics in warfare is lackluster and anticlimactic…the weak story is sprinkled with a heavy dosing of famous actors [with] wooden-faced expressionless performances.”  

David Dizon of ABS-CBN News calls Oblivion “an idea-movie, except the idea seems like a rehash of ideas from other, much better sci-fi flicks.” He and others cite Mad Max, Moon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Halo, Matrix, and Star Wars Episode 1 as examples. Dizon calls Oblivion “a pretty movie served cold.” He claimed that the movie’s sin wasn’t in the “idea” department, but in the way it was executed.

I couldn’t disagree more on all counts.

Oblivion is not a “pretty movie” and certainly not served cold. Vast. Beautiful. Eerie. Elegant. Visceral. Memorable. I also saw many similarities with the various films Dizon and others mentioned (I would include Bladerunner and Solaris in the mix). But here’s the thing: science fiction is the literature of “the large”. SF metaphorically explores our evolution, the meaning of our existence and our place in the universe through premise and idea. It is not surprising that viewers will see similarities with other films in Kosinski’s meditation on the nature of the soul, identity, self-actualization, love and community.

Several reviewers suggest that the film flirts with such big questions” yet makes no effort to fully answer them. Showatcher adds, "Where the film falls short is not in its visual styles; and its pacing can be forgiven in that it actually builds to a satisfying conclusion. The film falters with its need to include cliched action set-ups... the film addresses some very interesting questions of the human soul, religion, and the meditation of loneliness; however, it never takes it as far as it could. Instead we are left with a slick visual style and action scenes."

Good art always asks the big questions; unlike propaganda and polemic, good art also lets the viewers answer those big questions for themselves. This concept is not as palatable to North America’s multiplex crowd, eager for easily accessed answers.

Some movies are like appetizers or snacks. Others, like Kosinki's Oblivion, returns the film experience to a full meal, engaging all one's senses and where sound (its own character) marries with setting and actors to create an epic and heart-thrilling experience. Like many things in life, and certainly in good art, the most potent aspect of communication lies in the often subtle and oblique non-verbal narrative. Good art "shows more than it "tells".

For those receptive to his art, Kosinski--like Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Soderbergh in Solaris--lets the imagery and score express a sensual dance that invokes both mind and heart. 

In the final analysis, Oblivion is a simple film dressed elegantly. Oblivion goes beyond surface plot constructs and intellectual proselytizing; it dives deep into thematic representation to pose questions on identity, love, community, and the meaning of "home". Rather than offer up a platter-full of rhetoric, Kosinsky keeps the narrative slim; instead, he provides us with a multi-filigreed tapestry of sensual possibility.

And choices.

After making the startling discovery of who and what he is, Jack transcends his "mind wipe" and remembers what is worth remembering. In a final scene, Jack tells Sally why he is doing what he must do, even though it means his certain death. He quotes from an old book that he'd picked up earlier in the movie (Lays of Ancient Rome narrated by Centurian Horatius): "to every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can a man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods." 

Ben Kendrick of “Screenrant” summarizes what lies at the core of the film: “Oblivion could have easily been a convoluted and indulgent movie-going experience; instead, the film keeps a restrained focus on Jack’s character journey—which, thankfully, is an “effective team” of drama and post-apocalyptic adventure.”

Do me a favor; when you go into the theatre to watch this film, park your intellectual self at the door and bring all your senses with you. This film needs to be FELT. Prepare to participate.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

Nina Munteanu Reads The Last Summoner at Alternative Grounds

Anonymity: The Syndrome of Communicating More Only to Communicate Less

Recently, I had a great conversation with good friend David Honigsberg as we sat in a Starbucks in Toronto, chugging back some coffee and watching the world go by. Most people walked with iPhones or similar devices glued to their hands; talking, texting or simply holding their precious cargo like it meant the world to them. They’d be checking emails, updating their Facebook page, talking with a friend, and surfing a favorite site.

I know…I used to do the same thing. Until I gave

mine away.

After a whole suite of people had passed—virtually everyone clutching their link to the world—David

and I turned to each other in synchronicity. I thought he was going to remark on humanity’s co-dependency with technology or our obsession with connecting, even if only superficially, with the world. But he opened a topic that had nothing to do with it; or did it?

He brought up the topic of anonymity. He’d recently written to the National Post, a paper he esteems and highly respects, about their apparent promotion of anonymous letters to the editor in the online version of the newspaper vs. the print version, which requires a name and corresponding contact information. Here’s his letter:

This brings up an interesting point about where we—and our news media—are headed. With virtually all communications going digital, individual and online (from books to news to movies), it is interesting to note how differently we treat the online, more easily accessed, cousins to the print versions.

Let me give you an example: I published my first ebook with Liquid Silver in 2005 (when ebooks

David Honigsberg

weren’t that popular yet; the iPhone hadn’t made its debut and the ebook industry was in a chaotic mess re formats and devices). While “Collision with Paradise” (now re-issued with eXtasy Books under Kate Wylde) was a hit with its few readers and was praised by Romantic Times and Yet Another Book Review, it hadn’t sold more than a thousand copies. Ebooks now outsell their print cousins 3:1 with sales in the hundreds of thousands for any given title.

Over the years I have observed a great difference in quality between ebooks and their harder-to-get-published print books. And I know the reason…

The easier something is to do or get, the less it will be valued; the easier it is to communicate, the less likely it will have deep meaning. Take the easy road, the slippery path, and you are sure to miss the view. And isn’t that the very reason you were journeying in the first place?

Are we sacrificing the quality of our journey to reach our destination, forgetting that the journey—living with meaning—is ‘part of that destination’?

Texting every ten minutes. Updating your Twitter every hour. Checking your Facebook page every few hours. Does that mean you are communicating more?

I used to talk to a good friend almost every day. The chats used to happen randomly but when we both had time to talk. We shared meaningful things, what was important to each other’s life. We gave each other the gift of time, compassion and understanding. Then as time passed, those calls became more routine and more rigidly timed; while they occurred perhaps more often, the calls became shorter and shorter, until soon nothing of meaning could be shared.

What does that have to do with anonymity? Everything.

When we do not cherish, preserve, and protect meaningful communication, we give away our freedom to be the individuals we are. We throw away our true gifts to the world. We turn into an anonymous society of avatar-wannabes with no genuine identity; texting, chatting, surfing an undifferentiated sea of information pixels.

If we do not say, “Here I am! This is what I believe!” those very beliefs will eventually be taken from us. If it’s too easy, it won’t be valued; if it isn’t valued, it will soon disappear altogether.

Anonymity is not the enabler of freedom of speech; it is its harbinger of death.

Stand up and be counted. Or you will lose your most precious thing: YOU. 

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

Twenty-five Percent of Denmark is Powered Exclusively by Wind

"Denmark is no stranger to green energy, but this latest news is something special. With its latest 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbine up and running, Denmark has just stepped over the one gigawatt wind energy threshold. That's almost enough power to send a Delorean back in time, and it also just happens to be a full 25 percent of Denmark's entire energy needs.

The government of Denmark isn't satisfied with 25 percent. The nation is plowing ahead with an ambitious plan to be a whopping 50 percent powered by wind turbines in just eight years time. That's actually faster than a plan that Denmark itself proposed only last year, which called for only 35 percent of the nation's energy needs to be met by offshore wind."

(cited from "General Knowledge")

In the words of Itzhak Stern, "This is an absolute good" for the planet. And a lesson for the rest of us.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

My upcoming book on water entitled Water Is... (due in Summer

2015) brings my over twenty-years experience as an aquatic ecologist to explore what water means to each of us. Part history, part science and part philosophy and spirituality, "Water Is..." combines personal journey with scientific discovery that explores water's many "identities" and ultimately our own.