The Precipice

The Precipice

It’s been a week or so and I’ve had this sickness that kept me bedridden. Though I enjoy the opportunity, there are too many hours spent watching horrible films. Of which one that particularly caught my attention was the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. There’s a bit where Cleese and Keanu engage in a discussion about the impending end of the world and how species only change when they are forced to the precipice.

The film was not that great, but this particular piece almost became the inspiration for this post. You see, I am the example of a person who postpones action until the last moment, until it is easier to leave than to find a reason to stay in one place.

For those who haven’t heard of me until now, I imagine this blog is rather beneficial for fans of Traveling Savage, who stays in one place for one month out of three travelling, and standing here thanks to the hopes and quarrels of his fans. During the trip, I will make every effort to appreciate the culture and the land so as to maximise experiential travel. If I’m not roaming the world, I will China myself back to my wife Sarah and three cats and a suburban house, now however changed and loaded with whatever I have brought back.

That is the intention. Today, I am in the business for the last seven years. So, what changed? I am not yet thirty, yet the light of maturity brings with it the tell-tale signs of silver hair on my head but ever so slowly. I needed three days to get over even a single match of flag football. Such are the costs of an office job that gradually build up and are slowly contributed to in a most silent manner. If only such physical ostentations were the only signs, then I would cope, but I had handcuffed my creativeness a long time ago too.

The precipice is the turning point, the edge of an imaginary cliff as it were that requires some kind of action. You can choose to leap forth into a new path or simply choose to stand there, indecisive, and dawdling at the edge of the cliff without the ability of making any decision at all or not even realizing that a decision is necessary.

The greatest of life’s leaps is that of jumping. Who knows, maybe you will fall into the abyss while doing a somersault. However, there is the chance of emerging onto a solid surface with a new direction broadening up ahead. Most of the time, though, it is dark across the chasm. The pathways that we desire to walk on are seldom visualized.

Admittedly, I was on a ledge and had been on one for a number of years. The keyword for me in this case is “risk” when it comes to the definition of peril. I have never been one to take risks in my life. In the past, it may have been referred to as being realistic. I remember times I would lament the presence of adversity, of the ledges, in the hope that there would be no suffering or challenges of the mind in the future.

The perspective, however, shifted as I started to see the ledge as a good thing and as an important point. In most dictionaries, risk means exposure to the chance of loss, but it also means exposure to the chance of gain. You took the leap, regardless of whether you landed on solid ground or had to emerge from the depths of a chasm. You summoned the bravery to attempt something knowing fully that there was a chance you would fail and crash inside the hole.

I can appreciate the irony in it that it needed a frozen December night to thaw myself. I mean sure, life was perfectly okay and standing on the ledge. But what did it matter when I was standing still because “okay” has never been enough in any circumstance? To me, leaping is best illustrated through traveling.

There’s nothing bad, really, with a film not revealing all the information at once. Nevertheless, you have to assume the audience will be interested in the plot and want to know more about the details in such cases. In this respect, this movie disappoints, being so uncommunicative that I was absolutely ready to agree to put it in a chair, tie it up, and commence waterboarding.

Even the characters were generic that the story did not even bother to provide us names with anyone involved, it is that deliberately uncooperative. This commences after a shootout occurred where a wind-farm was located. One woman, Szep, and her captive de Francesco, were reportedly the only two survivors. They travel through the countryside intending to meet her associates although they are not only pursued by the captive’s associates but also other interested parties.

I will attempt to provide context by offering some details that the movie itself completely neglects. There is a great or as the film tries to suggest, it is already present, environmental disruption that threatens to make all water sources unfit for human consumption and usage. Such a scenario would most likely push the human civilization toward a collapse, developed countries in the more populated Northern hemisphere being worst affected.

The elites, The 1 Percent, acknowledge the deepening trouble and have designs on the southern regions aiming to monopolize the resources including substantial underground springs there. This was the activity which the captive was engaged and which the woman is trying to avert. Yet there is possibility of there being other, unexplained, potentially dangerous, motives as well.

Probably the highlight of this is the interaction between the two leads as there is no trust on either side. For example, just before going to bed, he says to her, ‘What makes you think I wouldn’t slaughter you in your bed during the night?’ Her response, and I thought “Wow, what a response”: “Probably the ketamine I fed you when you went limp,” as he goes out of his mind. One can only feel sorry for how any attachment is strengthened or weakened, such as attachment to care, in the case, for instance, of their relationship. It is easy to note that both she and he understand perfectly what is happening here.

But they do not want to provide this information to the audience and in the end it is a feeling of disinterest which is not very strong. Which is a bit of a pity, since Szep is decent, a low-rent version of Rhona Mitra, and the pursuing group is led by another unnamed woman (Walker). The future has nothing but negative attributes, but the bright side is that it appears to be gender blind.

In fact, the images are nice, and the shots were composed well. There were some allusions to South African things that left a little baffled. I suppose it’s all Southern Hemisphere. There’s a moment when the woman simply permits her prisoner to escape, because Well, almost every other thing in this place, it is left unexplained. However, I would point out one particular fact I have seen this twice, which is a miracle in itself.

I had reached the one hour mark and was about to declare that I had no actual comprehension of what was going on. I thought this because I engaged in some unrelated activity, and so, I started it again. No, now, I can put it to rest, there was no particular distraction there, the issue really is that movie.

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