One battle after another
The first time I'd ever been floored by any feature film was when I watched "There will be blood" by Paul Thomas Anderson. I remember the first 10 minutes, when Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) falls into a bore hole while prospecting for crude oil somewhere in Pennsylvania. I remember the moment the black gold shoots out of the dusty ground. This was a paradigm shift in the history of our world. What followed next was a 2-hour exploration of the range of human greed and the chaos in the wake of the capitalist leviathan that had just been summoned from the ground. It left a mark in me, and PTA's latest film generated a fresh scratch dead center of the mark.
I couldn't manage to find an IMAX theatre anywhere around, so no, I haven't yet watched the film. But I did end up thinking a lot about the human condition and the greater urgency in art. The daily grind - now romanticized by agencies and their foot soldiers - hides the emotional cost of these battles we fight every day, and the chokehold it has on our lives.
The cost of a meal is measured in the chunk of our lives we trade off, willingly. The moment we sign an agreement, MoU, EMI sheet or even an insurance document to shield us should any of this go "red", we trade off a part of our lives to the machine. For the medieval philosopher, this would be akin to "selling your soul to the devil". Today, we scroll social media after the grind and trade off an even bigger part of our lives only to "feel included". A like, a share, a comment - all engineered around the base instincts to feel seen.
Outside the world of demand and supply, lies an entire life of dreams, curiosities, quirks never explored, never understood. Like a folded memo under a pile of old, chewed up books, to never be uncovered. This lament stays through each battle we fight, growing larger into a mass of regrets that stays behind even after the body dies. Why does this never end? How many more battles remain?
Hard truth - this never ends. The battles keep coming, the blood always drips. Each day pits you against an unforgiving machine powered by infinite streams of workers like you and me, powering it in hopes of freedom - somewhat like Miyazaki's spirits from "Spirited Away". The Sisyphean struggle never ceases. And then a new day begins, one day after another.
But this doom and gloom is precisely the weapon that the machine uses against you to force you into conformity or obscurity. In the movie, Daniel Plainview forsakes his only son to pursue his greed. He shows remorse, but even that is a ploy to garner support for his oil rig. Each emotion is stripped down to its bare skin and what remains is just a reflection of the blind ambition that powers greed.
Today, individuality is all but dead. The fields are teeming with riches, but the mindful prospector works at other rigs and showcases his frugal finds for approval of the powers that be. This is all that our lives have been reduced to. PTA's film bares this truth for us, but do we choose to see?
Of course, One Battle after Another is a different beast altogether, one that I intend to relish soon. However, the parallel with our lives is not lost in translation. When the machine demands conformity, do we obey like meek sheep, or rage against the dying of the light?