Jacobu
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So this movie is definitely one of my favourites. Not so much because I enjoy watching it, but because it takes a part of the human experience and portrays it so well.
In short and spoiler-free, it's about a mysterious wall (the Shimmer) that appears and seems to consume everything around it. Our protagonist, Lena, lost her military husband to the Shimmer and must venture into the Shimmer as well to figure out how to save him. Just go watch it and come back to read my dissection.
Now the spoiler filled discussion:
The ending obviously leaves one wondering what the heck? Are they now both aliens? Will they be taking over the world or what do the glowing eyes mean? Well, I don't think it really matters whether they are aliens or whatever. I think it just matters that they have become something different than they were. This movie is misunderstood if you watch it like a regular Sci-Fi movie trying to figure out whether the monsters won or what will happen in the sequel.
This movie is about how we deal with trauma and how it deals with us and how you really can't stay the same you were before.
The Shimmer represents a traumatic event or situation in your life. As they explain, every one of the characters are "damaged". The Shimmer deals with each of them as they deal with their own trauma or brokenness. I think the most obvious one is cancer. Sheppard lost her daughter to leukemia and as she says the person who she was died with her daughter. That's how the Shimmer dealt with her. Violent and sudden. Unwarranted. Nothing anyone can do to save you. That's just how cancer works most of the time. Her trauma was too much to deal with and she was unprepared for it. Who is ever prepared for such a diagnosis?
Then we get Anya the addict. She looks at her fingers and sees how the Shimmer is changing her fingerprint, this changing her identity. She cannot accept how her addiction (the Shimmer) is changing her and she needs to find someone else to blame. As it goes with addiction, she harms those around her and ends up running straight into her own demise. She has a moment of redemption, but ultimately the damage caused by her destructive behaviour can't be undone. It might also be that she Shimmer for her represents the difficulty and trauma of dealing with life sober when she has for so long run away from that responsibility, instead of the addiction itself.
Next up we get Josie who struggles with self-harm. She goes a different route than the previous two. Instead of continuing her self-harm, she decides to accept herself. She reveals her scars, no longer hiding her pain. She accepts her brokenness. She doesn't try to run from her pain or fight it, she allows herself to be changed and become something new. Instead of fighting her own existence by cutting herself, she now has peace with her place in the world.
Ventress and Lena are the only two that make it all the way to the lighthouse. While they also had something to run away from, they were the only two driven enough to run toward something. Ventress needed answers and needed to go face her own mortality. As a psychologist, she needed to understand the change that her body was forcing on her mind. As is the case with cancer, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, chronic illness, etc. she can understand her change and even embrace it, but she is ultimately destroyed from within and that destruction cannot be avoided.
Then we get Lena who was driven by her love for her husband. She has a reason to go face whatever is inside that lighthouse and she has a big reason to make it back out. I think the lighthouse as the centre of the Shimmer is a metaphor for that deepest place inside ourselves. That place where we get when we dig deep enough, when we push through the pain in the midst of the trauma and we go face our inner self. That place where, if we can be honest with ourselves, we can fight it out with ourselves and decide how our trauma changes us. Because change us it will, but how we come out of it is something we can only decide if we are willing and persistent enough to make it to the lighthouse.
Lena's trauma was perhaps her guilt for cheating on the man she truly loves or perhaps the pain of losing him. It's only when she stops fighting herself or running from herself that she is able to find a way out of the lighthouse. When she gets back, she is changed. Whether she is the lookalike alien or whether it's the same body as the one that entered the Shimmer, it is a different Lena. Before she went through the Shimmer she could not understand what her husband went through or why he was different. It's only when she has went through it as well and went to face herself in the lighthouse like he did that she is able to truly be reconciled with him and accept his change.
I think using a Sci-Fi genre for a movie about trauma is fitting as it shows just how strange and unnatural such traumatic experiences can be. I think the whole idea of the Shimmer becoming part of the people and the people becoming part of the environment is a good device used to portray how we are affected by our environment. We aren't separated from and unaffected by the world around us. There's a whole bunch of other cool devices used to tie into this theme of "Trauma and Change".
We so often look at those who are having such experiences like they are aliens, until we go through something similar and understand that they have just been changed. You might think very poorly of alcoholics or people struggling with depression or people who change after losing a loved one, but if you had went through what they had went through, you might understand them instead of judge them. It doesn't mean you condone their destructive behaviour or their self-harm, but at least you have some understanding and empathy. That's really the most human thing we can do, is to understand and accept each other with all our brokenness and scars.
In short and spoiler-free, it's about a mysterious wall (the Shimmer) that appears and seems to consume everything around it. Our protagonist, Lena, lost her military husband to the Shimmer and must venture into the Shimmer as well to figure out how to save him. Just go watch it and come back to read my dissection.
Now the spoiler filled discussion:
The ending obviously leaves one wondering what the heck? Are they now both aliens? Will they be taking over the world or what do the glowing eyes mean? Well, I don't think it really matters whether they are aliens or whatever. I think it just matters that they have become something different than they were. This movie is misunderstood if you watch it like a regular Sci-Fi movie trying to figure out whether the monsters won or what will happen in the sequel.
This movie is about how we deal with trauma and how it deals with us and how you really can't stay the same you were before.
The Shimmer represents a traumatic event or situation in your life. As they explain, every one of the characters are "damaged". The Shimmer deals with each of them as they deal with their own trauma or brokenness. I think the most obvious one is cancer. Sheppard lost her daughter to leukemia and as she says the person who she was died with her daughter. That's how the Shimmer dealt with her. Violent and sudden. Unwarranted. Nothing anyone can do to save you. That's just how cancer works most of the time. Her trauma was too much to deal with and she was unprepared for it. Who is ever prepared for such a diagnosis?
Then we get Anya the addict. She looks at her fingers and sees how the Shimmer is changing her fingerprint, this changing her identity. She cannot accept how her addiction (the Shimmer) is changing her and she needs to find someone else to blame. As it goes with addiction, she harms those around her and ends up running straight into her own demise. She has a moment of redemption, but ultimately the damage caused by her destructive behaviour can't be undone. It might also be that she Shimmer for her represents the difficulty and trauma of dealing with life sober when she has for so long run away from that responsibility, instead of the addiction itself.
Next up we get Josie who struggles with self-harm. She goes a different route than the previous two. Instead of continuing her self-harm, she decides to accept herself. She reveals her scars, no longer hiding her pain. She accepts her brokenness. She doesn't try to run from her pain or fight it, she allows herself to be changed and become something new. Instead of fighting her own existence by cutting herself, she now has peace with her place in the world.
Ventress and Lena are the only two that make it all the way to the lighthouse. While they also had something to run away from, they were the only two driven enough to run toward something. Ventress needed answers and needed to go face her own mortality. As a psychologist, she needed to understand the change that her body was forcing on her mind. As is the case with cancer, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, chronic illness, etc. she can understand her change and even embrace it, but she is ultimately destroyed from within and that destruction cannot be avoided.
Then we get Lena who was driven by her love for her husband. She has a reason to go face whatever is inside that lighthouse and she has a big reason to make it back out. I think the lighthouse as the centre of the Shimmer is a metaphor for that deepest place inside ourselves. That place where we get when we dig deep enough, when we push through the pain in the midst of the trauma and we go face our inner self. That place where, if we can be honest with ourselves, we can fight it out with ourselves and decide how our trauma changes us. Because change us it will, but how we come out of it is something we can only decide if we are willing and persistent enough to make it to the lighthouse.
Lena's trauma was perhaps her guilt for cheating on the man she truly loves or perhaps the pain of losing him. It's only when she stops fighting herself or running from herself that she is able to find a way out of the lighthouse. When she gets back, she is changed. Whether she is the lookalike alien or whether it's the same body as the one that entered the Shimmer, it is a different Lena. Before she went through the Shimmer she could not understand what her husband went through or why he was different. It's only when she has went through it as well and went to face herself in the lighthouse like he did that she is able to truly be reconciled with him and accept his change.
I think using a Sci-Fi genre for a movie about trauma is fitting as it shows just how strange and unnatural such traumatic experiences can be. I think the whole idea of the Shimmer becoming part of the people and the people becoming part of the environment is a good device used to portray how we are affected by our environment. We aren't separated from and unaffected by the world around us. There's a whole bunch of other cool devices used to tie into this theme of "Trauma and Change".
We so often look at those who are having such experiences like they are aliens, until we go through something similar and understand that they have just been changed. You might think very poorly of alcoholics or people struggling with depression or people who change after losing a loved one, but if you had went through what they had went through, you might understand them instead of judge them. It doesn't mean you condone their destructive behaviour or their self-harm, but at least you have some understanding and empathy. That's really the most human thing we can do, is to understand and accept each other with all our brokenness and scars.
