Visioneers. A Look Within.

So I’ve been on this pain (& suffering) kick lately, if you’ve read my last two posts, you’re aware of my “plan” for this summer. Really I felt like it was necessary to invoke a focus or “journey” mentality for these next two months, or else they would just be one extremely long weekend with no meaning, perhaps even no justification. I am still “working”…making powerpoints and the like for this upcoming fall and I have some books to read and re-read that I want to do this year with my classes. However, I know myself, like I’ve said before, and I could see myself sleeping in eighty percent of the summer, perhaps only getting out a couple of days a week, not even knowing what day of the week it was.

I watched a movie last night called Visioneers starring Zach Galifianakis and Judy Greer. I have had Netflix for about two months or so now and ever since I got wireless Internet at my apartment, I have been enjoying their Watch Instantly films, TV shows, and documentaries. When I first got the Internet, I just looked for things I’d already seen or knew I’d like and enjoyed them. Then for a week or two I was on a serious documentary tip and would watch two or three in a row and become half-impassioned on a topic that I’m normally not that concerned about. Lately though, the choices presented on the Netflix website have appeared increasingly overwhelming. I would have never thought of myself as a movie connoisseur before going to China. While living in the teacher’s dormitories, I happen to be the only American with a TV present in my bedroom and being the only female American on campus the second semester, I tended to spend a lot of time there. I borrowed my friend Hannah’s movie collection and over the two month winter holiday, I watched every single film she owned at least once (including High School Musical 1 & 2, yes they were on the “only watched once” list, but I’m admitting that I’ve seen them). This may have sounded weird of me to watch so many films (maybe thirty or so in her DVD case) over a small period of time. Winter in QinHuangDao happens to be very cold, windy, icy, and all around unpleasant if you enjoy doing something other than staying in your room. Therefore, I, being the only soul on campus for at least two weeks of the time (literally the only soul…all teachers—including foreign had gone home or were traveling as well as all the students), had an extensive amount of time to myself. After watching these thirty or so said movies, which ranged from the aforementioned High School Musical, to foreign films like Amélie (which was watched at least four times), to probably unknown movies like Before Sunrise with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy and the follow-up years later Before Sunset, to musicals like Rent, I found myself really dissecting films and being able to talk about why they really moved me or perhaps just brushed by me. I found myself affected by the lighting, the editing, the detail of the cinematographer’s eye, the soundtrack, the moments of silence, the parts of the film that perhaps were not picked up on my radar consciously before. Now a year and a half later after that bitter winter in the HeBei province of northern China, I feel quite able to at least talk about films and have seen much more than I had before then.

Having said all of that, Visioneers (trailer here) was quite moving. I’m glad I actually sat through it, but after watching Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion, I am willing to watch anything with him from beginning to end, reserving any judgment. Anyway, I have started this habit of watching a couple minutes of a movie from Netflix’s Watch Instantly and then deciding there’s probably a better one in the myriad of film options on the website and hit the Back to Browsing button only to be utterly indecisive amid the overwhelming variety of options. I watched the trailer to Visioneers, and read a couple reviews regarding it on the IMDB and decided it was worth my evening.

The plot can be read on Wikipedia or the IMDB, I won’t go into great detail, except to say that it is a depiction of a entropic society (some would argue dystopian). Galifianakis works as a Level 3 “Tunt” in the best working system since the history of mankind. The world they live in is doing all they can to “work together,” be successful, and most importantly, be happy. His wife, Greer, spends her days watching the ultimate New Agey female guru named Sahra on TV. Sahra is constantly telling her viewers how to be happy and introduces an author to promote her book, 10,000 Things to Be Happy About, which Greer immediately buys. Their “great land” is finding it increasingly more difficult to choose happiness amidst a world that is failing, that is fallen, that is flawed. They are commanded as a society not to dream, not to allow pain in their lives, not to do anything but aid themselves in coasting along in life. Anyone who realizes they cannot buy into this mantra and can no longer take the disparity between this happy reality they are literally commanded to have and the existence they are truly living, which is at best numbing its pain and filling the void by ignoring it, literally “explodes” (think massive, exploding, premature heart attack). To defend its citizens against these “explosions” the president of the US commands that all citizens in danger of exploding be fit with an “Inhibitor” which flushes out any painful, frustrating, basically negative feelings and replaces them with happy ones. At one point, the music radio station that Galifianakis listens to on his way home from work announces that they are no longer going to be able to play music, but will only be doing comedy shows once he is fitted with his “Inhibitor.” The DJ also reluctantly advises any who feel in danger of “exploding” to go to the Undeveloped Areas where there will be dancing, alcohol, and women in bikinis. Again, this movie shows through Galifianakis’s deadpan delivery the utter failure of trying to numb, assuage, or kill a person’s pain or true needs. There is even a small window into a culture of “hippie-ish” people who rebel against the “Inhibitor” placement and working altogether to gather and dance and be happy outside in their own way; this way of thinking is also pictured as having flaws…simply numbing the pain in a more perhaps loving, cooperative, accepted sort of way. There were more than two poignant moments in the story for me, but the first I won’t take time to explain other than Galifianakis and his wife finally get on the same page and show real expression of their dissatisfaction with their society which leads them to “wreck” their kitchen. The second was where Galifianakis was approached by the head of his company who saw something in him and he wanted to help him relieve his pain. He writes something on a card and tells Galifianakis if he follows this directive, he would never have dreams or pain again in his life. [**Spoiler Alert**] The card simply reads, “KILL THE THING YOU LOVE.” I won’t say anything further regarding the movie, but if you can handle silence, slow-paced films that reward you at the finish, this is a must-see.

The fact that this society was told not to dream or feel pain interests me. I know the dreams I have had throughout this quarter of a century that I’ve been alive. I know the dreams that have died perhaps and passed on into just memory to classify a certain season of my life. (“Oh yeah, back in my Freshman year at ORU, I used to really want to do ‘xyz’ with my life, but now I don’t think about that much anymore”). I know the dreams that have lain dormant within me for what seems like a decade waiting for a “moment” to come where they might burst into life and take me over finally to press me onto a real “purpose.” I know there are dreams I excuse as flippant because they don’t seem very likely. I also know the terrible secret of my reality that I rarely have thought about dreams in the last three years and have seen some fade away, seemingly into the mist of the dark alleys of the roadways of my heart. Is this also a byproduct of me numbing something—numbing feeling, numbing frustration, numbing desire… Am I subconsciously allowing dreams to die or fade away in an effort to remain happy, to remain unscathed by living in a disappointing world, full of broken promises, unmet expectations, weak people, and despicable me?