Reality and dream; rational and irrational; life and death; all those binary oppositions we learned from the course appeared in the film “The Discovery”. “The Discovery” is British-American romantic science fiction film directed by Charlie McDowell and written by Justin Lader and Charlie McDowell. The film talked about a man name Thomas Harbor proved the existence of an afterlife. He proved that part of our consciousness leaved us and traveled to a new plane by capture brain wavelengths on a subatomic level. People started to believe it and committed suicide because of it. Millions of people killed themselves. On the two-year anniversary of discovery of afterlife, Thomas Harbor’s son Will traveled to visit his father and brother. Later, Will saved a woman name Isla from committed suicide. Isla blamed Will for saving her life but later she changed her mind. Isla and Will became more and more closer. Thomas Harbor also invented a machine that can record dead people’s afterlife. They found out that the afterlife was not the same as they expected. The whole film’s storyline might not seem perfectly related to our course but some of their conversations and imagines made me recall things that I have learned from the reading Kafka’s “The Judgment”. For example, the zero point, Death of God, madness, and logic of dream. In this article close reading, I will apply those terms to the film “The Discovery” to view this film at different angle.
The rational thinking eliminated the God. The film pointed out Death of God at the very beginning. When Thomas Harbor had the interview with the reporter, he said that “ I can’t comment on terminology like “soul” and “heaven” and “afterlife”, but what I can say with scientific certainty is that…”. This message pointed out that religious belief about afterlife (heaven) was wrong, the afterlife can be detected with pure logical machinery. In the end of the film, Will and Isla revealed that the afterlife of human being was just another alternative life that based on people’s desire and imagination. This perfectly fit to the point that Professor Rickenbach’s recap on Kafka’s The Judgment (Friedrich Nietzsche), which it stated that “God is dead and we are his murderers”. Another dialogue between Will and Isla, Will said that “ I think it’s our instinct to search for meaning, and when there is none, it’s our instinct to create meaning.” It gave me the feeling that God and Heaven existed in spiritual life because human were afraid of death or human could not interpret what will happen after death so we gave it a meaning (God and Heaven). When we discovered the truth behind death and life, the whole point of God and Heaven falls apart.
Suicide in Kafka’s Judgement represented that return to the zero point (unjudging). The point that we as child with wonder and fascination of the world that didn’t make any decision. In the film “The Discovery”, suicide was caused by discovery of an afterlife. Millions of people committed suicide because they believed in afterlife even they did not know what will afterlife looks like. They wanted to escape from the reality/life. They believe that they can restart their life (return to the zero point) by go to the afterlife. But reality is that afterlife is just people’s desire, imagination, and fantasy. There was no zero point as people expected for the afterlife.
Logic of the dream fit perfectly in the end of the film, which Will and Isla found out that afterlife was just people’s desire and imagination. As Professor Rickenbach mentioned in the Recap, “logic of Dream is not like logic we understand in real life. It is not based on logic of non-contradiction. The unconscious and Dream logic know only “yes””. In the film, Will and Isla understood that afterlife was what alternative life that people wanted (the world that people make up by him/herself). Things in their afterlife (dream) did not have to follow the logic. Tattoo in someone’s hand could be different from reality and people could go to places that they did not go before or did things they regret they did not do before. The afterlife was purely based on people’s unconsciousness, the id. The screen that display the afterlife was black and white only, the reality was colorful. It was like our discussion on the opposition, Life- Dream, Color—Black and white.
What I learned from the reading in this course can be apply into different literature, film, newspaper articles, TV show, games etc… Those ideas provided me the tools to view things at different angle and different prospective.