The Jury Duty (2023) TV series is like a real life Truman show. If they really did what they said (Jury Service, but everyone, including the Judge and clerks is an actor except the main "star") then I feel really bad for him. The reveal episode is cringe. I just hope he is really an actor too.
I thought it was handled about as best as it possibly could be, and he reacted fairly well. What really sold me was his podcast appearances afterwards, which I'd highly recommend checking out.
Having watched enough Derren Brown I wondered how and why he passed whatever tests and rounds were created to pick a contestant. Derren Brown goes to great lengths to pick great “suckers” for need of a better word.
They picked a good one - I think he “acted” better than the actors in terms of facial expressions, reactions and general gravitas.
They had to pick someone smart but not cynical/sceptical , not crazy in any way, with a personality, but will behave etc, and who had some leadership skills.
> "I had many reservations, and the biggest one was the wild card of this one human being who's being dropped into this situation that is all fake and manufactured," Marsden says. "Is this even something that is ethically right to do, to play with someone's human experience over the course of three weeks of their life?"
> From the beginning, Marsden told show creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (who also worked on The Office) that he didn't want to participate in a prank show. But they assured him that Jury Duty wouldn't be cruel or mean-spirited. Instead, Marsden says, the intention was to create a "hero's journey" for Gladden.
One of my favorite games is Space Channel 5. On the surface it seems rather cutesy, inspired by 1960s space-age aesthetics like from The Jetsons and Barbarella. But narratively it's considerably darker. See, (spoiler warning) it turns out that the orchestrator of the alien invasion main character Ulala is documenting is the head of her own network, who staged the invasion in order to boost ratings for his network. It was actually a biting commentary on popular Japanese television of the period, as well as news and media in general; the turn of the millennium is when shows like Susunu! Denpa Shonen (which famously locked a man naked in an apartment and forced him to acquire everything he needed including food and clothing as prizes in magazine sweepstakes, ultimately awarding him nothing for his trials) were on the air, and incredibly popular.
So the future of The Truman Show was playing out in Japan, in real time, at right around the same time.
I don't really pay attention to social media much but apparently there are families in my country that put their entire lives on YouTube and have a million subscribers.
No idea why anyone would watch that but I'm sure I'm the weirdo.
Our abilities to pay attention are limited. Not so our abilities to receive it - Michael Goldharber
The Attention Economy accidentally came into being taking advantage of the inequality above without anyone knowing about the inequality itself.
People have a need for attention. Advertisers have a need for attention for their products. The platforms had a need for cash to keep all their freebies running (search, chat, video, social, email, streaming etc) and make sense/filter down exploding Information the internet produced.
These 3 needs accidentally came together, with no one having any clue about Goldharbers inequality and we get the absurdity that currently exists.
The original problem being solved - how to handle the info explosion was forgotten. Everyone got side tracked into how to capture attention. And then they got rich.
The question today is knowing much more abt the inequality and still facing the ever increasing Info overload problem, how do we build better less exploitative systems?
One theory I've had re: inequality and peoples feelings towards it now vs 10/20/30 years ago (its been fairly stable since 1992 in 40-41 range) is that its a social media phenomenon.
Previously, I didn't know any of my friends (or their friends) flew private jets or stayed in $1000/night resorts regularly. Someone in town might have a nicer house or nicer car, but I didn't see them (or their kids) flaunting or humblebragging on social media about where they did spend their money.
Unironically it's probably much worse with kids because they don't have the social mores & filter to understand what they shouldn't be posting.
There's a lot of "stealth wealth" that has lost it's stealth out there due to this.
> how do we build better less exploitative systems?
Its a black hole from which there is no escape. The only mechanism accepted by society is monetary profit and there is no way a less exploitative system will be more profitable.
I banned YouTube kids from all devices because of the kids shows. These unhappy looking Eastern European kids finally put me past the edge, they looked like they didn’t want to be there at all. They have millions of views and are likely making much more than me but it looks very shallow.
I was really moved by this movie. Based on his previous movies, I didn’t think of Jim Carrey as a good actor. But this movie changed that.
Everyone watching this movie will relate to the movie’s plot as it speaks to the existential questions that arise in every human. We can imagine the reality tv boss as God. Our own experience of thrownness feels like God is playing with us just as the reality tv boss is playing with Truman.
In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life.
It’s as if you wake one day and suddenly find yourself in the midst of things without anyone asking you whether you actually wanted it. You don’t choose your epoch, parents or the nation or the religion you are into. You find yourself “thrown”. I meant it like that.
The ending of Truman Show is often considered one of the greatest moments in the history of cinema. It's a really great sequence that also stayed with me since then. I was never too much into Carrey acting on comedic roles, but I really like his dramatic ones.
Definitely up there as one of the greatest endings, the melancholy it represents is just so on point. Another similar film like that would be 'Being John Malkovich', - a film that was utter perfect all the way til the end.
The thing I absolutely love about the end is that what happens after is completely left open. Did he find peace or was it disappointment at the horrors of what was outside the dome? We will never know, it is just something you have to wonder and accept. It is not for us to know, it is but the feeling a dream you can never grasp like the clouds behind a distant mountain.
I rewatched it the other day and it is a great ending. My first thought was that they could have cut to black when Truman walks through the door, but actually having the last line as "what else is on?" is perfect IMHO.
Considering the pace at which the attention moves on, it was an honest but savage mirror onto the viewers. And by comparison, the 90's was slow by today's standards.
It is funny looking back at media from that era and seeing how there was this idea that things were already too hectic. Like in the early 90's Bart Simpson referring to the non-stop fast times they lived in.
Vaguely related but another great one was the small doco "Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age" filmed in 1985, they are talking about how they cannot keep up with the pace of BBS boards. If only they knew what was coming. Also of note is this is one of the earliest recorded sightings of Richard Stallman, his message was very on point even then.
This may blow your mind: Alvin Toffler wrote the book Future Shock [1] about the psychological effect of "too much change in too short a period of time" in 1970. That predates cell phones (1973), personal computers (1977), the web (1989), smart phones (2007) and modern AI (2022?)
Before watching the Truman Show I actively avoided Jim Carrey movies because I really disliked his over the top acting. Just like in your case, this movie completely changed my view of Jim Carrey, even the performances in previous movies that I had disliked so much. I may even call this my favorite movie of all time.
Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.
Also not a fan of his variety of slap-stick & such, he's good at it but it just isn't something that works for me from other performers either, but give him a slightly more dramatic role where he isn't just being Jim Carrey Jim-Carrey-ing like Jim Carrey, and you can see he has a talent.
(not that I object to his other stuff existing – different strokes for different folks!)
For me the equivalent was seeing Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. I was channel surfing and this came up randomly. It was absolutely captivating, and was easily the best portrayal of mental illness I had ever seen in cinema.
Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget comedies that won't even make you laugh once!
Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a true genius because he doesn't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.
Adam Sandler also delivers a stunning performance in Uncut Gems - any preconceptions of him disappear as he plays the role of a greedy, jaded gambling addict so well. He clearly knows how to act, just chooses the low-stress comedy route most of the time.
I love Sandler's movies exactly because you know exactly what you get. He's found a formula that works well enough, and has largely stuck to it. He's one of a handful of actors I can go "I'm in the mood for a X movie" about and not care much which movie it is. They're a genre in themselves.
Sure, I know I will groan at how dumb various things are, but that's part of the expectation.
Carey is similar but less so. His span is wider. That hits both ways, Carey at his best have more brilliant performances than Sandler, but it also means that you can be in the mood for Carey, but not Mask and Ace Ventura stupidly over-expressive Carey, for example, so it's harder to just semi-randomly pick one of his movies based on a mood.
There's a few actors that just fit in a niche like that. I'm thinking Steven Segal, who's been playing the same role in the same film for decades now. But his movies are sold and played on TV all the time, there's definitely an audience for his brand of... whatever he's selling.
It undersells what he’s doing a little bit to say it’s just a formula. He’s still trying to be experimental, it’s just that, in his risk taking the riskier he makes things the worse they tend to be. His Hubie Halloween accent is a good example. “What if I spent an entire movie talking like this in this silly voice” is one of his gags, and more often than not it doesn’t work, but he still tries new voices.
This resembles my feelings towards Tom Cruise. I always thought of him as an action star and nothing more (well, a Scientology-kook as well, but that detracted further). But his performance in Magnolia was so convincing to me that I started seeing his acting skills in a different light.
He is a good actor, no doubt there. He can be darn funny too, check ie his stint in Tropic Thunder.
That doesn't change the fact he has some very deep internal issues/fears that Scientology has managed to hook on very tight and kept their grip so effectively. It fucked up his marriages and is a stain on his brand/legacy that literally everybody knows about but respectfully act like they don't see it. Almost a bit like Truman show :)
Just like the Truman Show movie, I have always felt it's a bit underappreciated. So many great performances in that beautifully shot movie and such an emotional roller coaster. Although in many aspects a totally different type of movie, I think Uncut Gems was the first one since I watched Magnolia that touched me in similar ways. And just like with these other movies, it really changed my view of Adam Sandler.
The director of Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson) actually cast Sandler in a dramatic role a couple of years later (Punch-Drunk Love) that was also received very well. Might be worth checking out if you liked Magnolia (I loved that movie).
Amazing Score/Soundtrack by Jon Brion too. If you like that then try Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Heart Huckabees for their Score/Soundtrack.
I felt the same way about Tom Cruise until I saw Collateral, which quickly become my favorite movies of his and possibly one of my favorite movies of all time.
>>> In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life.
Why does the age of the movie have any bearing on this? We aren't born with all knowledge of previous movies. There will only be more and more of them released as the years go on. For most of us it isn't possible to watch and know all of them. I don't think it's too much to ask for a heads up when a spoiler is coming.
If this was a community based on the movie I'd say all is fair, but since it isn't I don't think it is fair to dismiss the concern just because the movie is old.
A single spoiler can't really ruin the experience of that movie imho. Also the age of the movie aside, if you expect comments about a movie's story don't contain any information about that story that's on you.
It's not even a spoiler. There is no great plot reveal at the end, it's already established in the first 10 minutes that Truman is living a fake life inside a giant dome. Sure, the post above gives away some of the specifics of how the character experiences the denouement. But hardly a spoiler. And, as others have said, you can't expect perfect secrecy to be maintained in discussions of a 25 year old film.
The film is not a mystery, it is a satire using the framing of Plato's allegory of the cave. There's no twist, its purely comedy and commentary about his antagonists and their motivations.
Carrey was absolutely amazing as Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sure it was just a kids movie, but there was something really sinister in his performance. Really amplified the sense of true powerlessness that the kids had in their lives, what a terrifying world to live in as a child.
I think Carrey is seriously underrated as an actor.
The texts like this say sometimes more about the author than the object of the text: IMO the author completely missed the deeper levels about the individual living soaked in lies, but recognizing them and, in his case, literally sailing "to the end of the world" to escape. The author wrote from the spectator perspective, not from the person's escaping.
I always wondered how much the 1959 PKD book "Time Out Of Joint" about the man living in a fantasy world winning prizes which turn out to be intuitive defences in a space war influenced this story.
>And then there’s the audience: massive, constant, mistaking exploitation for fandom. As Truman struggles to escape—the island, the show, and the life that has been imposed on him—he commandeers a boat. The producers create a storm. He falls off the vessel, struggling in the water, gasping for breath. He could die, before their eyes. The audience at the Truman Bar is rapt. “I got two to one he doesn’t make it,” someone shouts. “Hey, I want a piece of that!” yells another. The exchange is 25 years old. It hasn’t aged a bit.
This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped. It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End? t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in the audience.
I see it differently: while I agree that the audience is on Truman's side, they only care about him as much as they would care about (say) whether Ross and Rachel end up together.
I take the final shot (two guys looking at the now-dead channel and saying "I wonder what else is on") as a sign that the audience will go back to their lives without even questioning what they just saw, with Truman being just another sacrifice in the altar of the TV gods.
Or perhaps despite our wish that our existential travail be officially registered somewhere by some big Other, one's life "as a movie", our "walking through that door" is ultimately our own and our own in such a way that won't be registered with some sort of social registration.
Oh I agree. The euphoria doesn't last. People need to get on with their lives. None of us have any personal connection to these people nor could we influence their lives even if we tried. It's TV. Switch off or change the channel.
I disagree, and i think so does the director, due to one very deliberately written line. "So, what else is on?" by the security guards at the end. They did not care about him, they moved on a second after
You can be rooting for him but ultimately indulging in his exploitation all the same. Yeah, people want the happy ending, but they will be fine with a tragic one, so long as they are entertained.
I watched Dark City years after watching The Matrix (on opening in the cinema) and I enjoyed it very much, have watched it multiple times over the years.
This is Mr. Hand [Richard O’Brien] talking in ”Memories of Shell Beach”:
> It was a very groovy movie, you see?
> I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it really doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s a box-office success because we’re going to get paid as actors anyway, sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we’re gonna get paid as actors anyway and isn’t it nice to be part of something which is groovy?
Thanks for the links. Wow didn't realize there was a producer in common between the two films. Stinks that Dark City didn't get enough credit at the time.
There were several movies with a similar theme that came out around this time. The 13th Floor is another good one, although Dark City and Matrix were better IMO. I think the backdrop of the Internet really taking off sort of had everyone thinking about worlds within worlds more than they were before.
I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
I've actually used the movie when arguing about religion, because it makes for an interesting parallel. Christof plays the role of a mostly benevolent, power limited God.
And he does his best (of course not perfect) attempt to give Truman a good life. And Truman at the start seems quite happy and positive, until things start falling apart because Christof isn't powerful enough to keep up the illusion.
It's very interesting to me that people give the Christian god a pass for doing a worse job than Christof does in the movie.
That's how Lovecraft started. And before, Nietzche/Shopenhauer. More than "god", it's the absurd of the universe, and existential terror. There's no God, and we are like ants for the vast and huge universe. We should grow up from Gods beings created from the Neolithic (the Abrahamics religions are just metaphors on cults around Sun and grain harvesting), and to create something else akin to modern urban cities and not old villages around the primary sector for economics.
For instance, transhumanism. No, we don't need to create a religion, but set a good chunk of facts and laws to govern ourselves. The American and French revolutions were a good step on that against the Old Regime around the mentioned Neolithic.
One issue is that it lets go of benevolence. Which works but raises the question of why we'd want to worship such an entity, and what does morality even mean anymore if it's supposedly based on an entity whose reasoning is inscrutable.
There's also that power removes excuses. Eg, Christof resorts to methods like "killing" Truman's father because it's all he can do to maintain the illusion. But if Christof had a whole planet to work with that'd instantly stop being a morally grey thing and just be plain evil. An actual god effectively has no excuses, because there are no limits forcing any kind of compromise.
The question also sneaks in the presupposition that suffering is anathema, or that suffering is never acceptable or worthwhile. Anyone who has been a part of a sports team (especially one that was successful) can attest to the fact that short-term suffering and sacrifice can lead to long-term success or joy.
There are many episodes in my life that were horribly difficult while I was going through them, but later on, I see how they have changed the course of my life and have benefited me deeply, in a way I couldn't foresee while going through the struggle.
The "problem of evil" also assumes that a world filled with automatons with no choice to do anything except submit to God's will is somehow superior to a world where anyone can choose to follow the Way of Life while surrounded by those who either haven't chosen yet, or have made the choice not to walk that path.
Suffering is an anathema, and only acceptable when necessary because no better ways are available. Deities can't avail themselves of such methods.
Eg, sawing somebody's leg off without anesthesia was the best we had before anesthetics. Today it'd be outright barbaric outside of extenuating circumstances like anesthetics being unavailable in some sort of emergency.
Whenever we get to the point where we can fully and painlessly fix up somebody's leg by using some sort of scifi device, then cutting it off even with modern anesthetics will become morally unacceptable as well.
The more ability, the less justifiable suffering becomes.
I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience. Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well. Also, what about parenting? Telling your child to pull the weeds feels like an enormous burden of suffering when you are the 12-year-old child who has to go out in the summer sun to pull weeds, but for the parent, the view is quite different. The garden produces food for the family, and the child learns to do things they don't want to do or don't like to do.
Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the cultures that have adopted it.
> I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience.
Resilience is only necessary if there's some purpose to it.
> Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well.
Right, as a means to an end, for lack of a better solution. If we could accomplish those goals without suffering, we would. Suffering is a last resort, not good in itself. It's a compromise. An all-powerful entity doesn't need any, thus loses any justification to resort to it.
I'm pretty much thinking of the definition from the 1913 edition of Websters: "Suf"fer*ing, n. The bearing of pain, inconvenience, or loss; pain endured; distress, loss, or injury incurred; as, sufferings by pain or sorrow; sufferings by want or by wrongs."
I'm not sure what the meaning of "I believe god exists and he has a plan" is, if the plan is beyond our understanding. What do people actually believe? Sure, the words will be "I believe in god", but what are the consequences of this belief?
If anything can happen inside this incomprehensible plan, what is different from there being no plan? If you don't believe anything concrete about the plan, if there is nothing that is impossible because it would be against the plan, then isn't everything just as it would be if there was no plan and no god?
"God has nothing to do with good or bad in our life. When it made us in his image, it means he gave us the opportunity to know what is good/bad and the liberty to choose between it. That's the pure definition of freedom.
If he chooses everything for us, we're not free. "
Truman wasn't free until he choose to do something "bad" and left.
Typically-inconsistent Christian apologetics; the Biblical God "made us in his image" – but then cursed us with hunger and toil and the pain of childbirth specifically because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (And banished us from the Garden in fear that we'd eat from the Tree of Life.)
> I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
These questions don't make sense. I am not claiming to be a believer etc., but if God exists then eventually you end up with your maker, right? So given an eternity of whatever is after this life, what does experiencing something bad or evil even matter then.
The existence of God implies a number of things about human nature and existence, and that's regardless of whether one accepts or rejects God. Per my understanding, humanity defines itself by defining what is not- what we say is evil or immoral or wrong, etc. I think the problem is that religion (historically) has been confounded by politics.
Tbh I don't think humans can do religion correctly, so society as a whole should be secular.
If a parent locks up their small child and isolates them from society, so that the child never has the opportunity to tell a lie or steal another child's toy, you could say that parent has willingly used their power to prevent evil, within the little world that they have created. A benevolent parent, one could say, according to the definition you have supplied.
For some reason, as a society, we tend to prefer parents who lovingly grant their children freedom to make mistakes, and present them with appropriate consequences after the fact. Growth and authentic love only come from a situation where we have the freedom to reject those values. A truly benevolent, omnipotent God would not force the people he created to obey him (i.e. to do good, because God is love), he would allow them the freedom to choose good, which necessarily grants them the freedom to choose the opposite.
Look at the problem statement. “Omnipotent”, “omniscient”… things that parents are not.
Parents are just humans and are just at the mercy of the world. Unlike God. God made the rules and could have created a completely different world which doesn’t have the limitations that this one has. Meanwhile parents have to work with what they were given.
> This is an assumption you are making that many (most?) religions do not.
We're really only talking about the Abrahamic faiths here, which are the ones making claims about God being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.
Any limitation to God's abilities implies that God is not all-powerful. If it is the case that this universe of sin and decay and the literal hail Mary of self-sacrifice on the cross with the result, as described in the book of Revelations, that the vast majority of humans who have ever lived will still burn in Hell for eternity is really the best God can do, then God cannot be all powerful. If God is all powerful then everything is arbitrary to Him. He chooses to allow evil. He chooses not to forgive sin. He chooses a pyrrhic victory at the end of time where evil still mostly wins.
Incompetent, yes. Malicious, certainly. To quote George Carlin, this is not work that belongs on the resume of a Supreme Being. All powerful? Obviously not.
Other religions don't have this problem. The gods of many other religions are limited in their capabilities and often exist within the framework of a cycle that allows constant redemption and renewal through reincarnation. In many ways, the cosmos itself is the highest power, and the gods are just what sits above humanity, but it's all still a part of the same flawed yet transcendental machine. There's always hope. With the Abrahamic faiths, there is only always existential dread. God by default will cast you into perdition, your sins are absolute and immutable, and if you fuck up the one life you have there are no second chances.
Oh my God. Of course I’m presupposing the idea of the omnipotent/omniscient/… God:
> > Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?
Because that’s the premise of the problem statement!
> This is an assumption you are making that many (most?) religions do not.
The original problem is only a problem is you are making those assumptions. When most religions aren’t making those assumptions, the entire thing becomes a strawman argument
For some reason you decided to take this up with someone who was responding to a problem statement which had already been established; the parameters were set.
I don’t know why you seem to be taking offense to the part about how this is a “religious problem”. No, that doesn’t mean that all religions share this supposed problem. Rebirth/reincarnation is relevant to Hinduism but not all religions.
And a glib response about how “not all religions” make these assumptions is also a useless starting point. (Not that I care to discuss this with anyone since it’s not my pet cause.) My first thought was that you might be alluding to something like Buddhism or some other very non-Christian religion. But I see in some other comments that you mention “other Christian sects”. Okay, yeah, sure. That makes things really simple to respond to: Hey, not all religions share these assumptions! (But I’m not gonna tell you where I’m coming from, either.)
That “problem” is highly simplistic. For one, many religions, including some Christian sects, don’t actually believe in the omnipotence of their deities, so the problem doesn’t actually exist. On the other hand, God not preventing evil while having the power to only implies malevolence if one assumes God’s only purpose for man is to not do evil, willingly or unwillingly. But there are many other alternatives, such as God wanting man to learn to not do evil. To use an equally simplistic counterpoint, if your desire is for your kids to get straight A’s, you should just do all their schoolwork for them. If your desire is for them to learn and grow, you have to tell them what they need to know, but then let them do the work themselves, knowingly they certainly will make mistakes at some point.
> including some Christian sects, don’t actually believe in the omnipotence of their deities
I am curious now: how do you define "Christian"? That's truly a bizarre definition if it admits sects like that.
For the record, the conventional definition of a Christian is someone who believes in the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons, and has been baptized with water and that formula.
A non-Trinitarian is, by definition (see above), a non-Christian.
How do you define "Christian"?
There are a number of sects, with significant numbers and influence, who call on the name of Jesus (in a "Lord, Lord" way) and they "self-identify" as Christian, and yet they do not share a Christian belief as commonly understood by Christians.
Christians have always defined our belief in a particular way. It's fine if sects wish to disbelieve in the Trinity or not use water Baptism, but then they cease to be members of the Church by any stretch of the imagination.
These sects include henotheists such as LDS, Arians such as Jehovah's Witnesses, and non-Trinitarians such as Oneness Pentecostals. They all believe themselves to be Christians, but have excluded themselves by definition.
It's unecessarily overintelectualized and abstracted problem.
It's way better to truly consider way simpler and viscerally real one "Why do babies get terminal cancer?"
If you honestly approach it with undamaged humanist morality and won't abandon it before reaching the conclusion you'll leave any notion of benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God behind.
I feel uncomfortable when people like this movie, as if someone discovered my secret pleasure.
When this movie premiered it felt like an epiphany, a revelation, but almost everyone I knew hated it. Jim Carrey fans didn't like because it wasn't slapstick enough. High brown movies fans didn't like because it had Jim Carrey on it.
But it became one of my dearest "cult" movies. There is so much on it: mass manipulation, lies, religion, politics, the whole stupidity of reality TV, the fake happiness of consumerism, the lack of any authenticity in mass media, ...
I hope it doesn't become like Monty Python's "The Holly Grail": a brilliant movie that gets reduced to a collection of quotations and clichés.
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