9 Songs

The first time I saw the film I was impressed by the cinematography and by the film's texture. The soft light that adorns Lisa's face when she smiles or even when she cries turned this sensual and mysterious creature almost into a symbol of piety. The cinematography is reminiscent of Kieslowski's very subjective use of color and light in The Double Life Of Veronique only, in 9 songs, Lisa is adorned in the colors that male subjectivity suggests: this is how Matt remembers her. An objective and unbiased account of Lisa is impossible since we are spectators of Matt's recollection of his intense love affair.

This is one of the aesthetic points of the film from where I begin to appreciate it. We witness a glimpse of a woman and of the world through the memories of a man and therefore every image is filtered by his emotions and his very own perception of Lisa, in other words by subjectivity. This film is arguably a vindication of Marcel Proust's belief about literature and the world - that we do not need to change the world, but to see it through different eyes. Obviously, cinema overall suggests suck an outlook since the artificial eye of the camera is a second medium (that is why medium specificity is always relevant in cinema and accounts of films).

This film then does not seek to interpret the central female figure or to unravel her before us, for we are gazing at her from a distance. The director looks at her in awe and wonder, trying to unravel her, aware of in the process that this is inevitable since he is gazing at her from a distance, immersed all the while in the male spectatorial position. This is the key point of subjectivity: the male gaze seeks to interpret the object of its desire but gets merely a glimpse of it, of all the antithetical elements that consist her rubric. However, we perceive the layered nature of Lisa, her mysterious, ethereal and intriguing qualities which are better left as such, fascinating and puzzling, otherwise all the initial excitement may vanish.

This brings me to what I mentioned earlier. I initially admired the texture of the film, meaning the realistic facet of its artifice. 9 Songs might be the subjective memories of a man but nevertheless, the images and their qualities are prescribed by realism. After all, Winterbottom is a disciple of the British realists Anderson, Reed, Reisz, Loach, Frears and Leigh whose heritage is embedded in British films of the 90s and 00s. Many films that portray a theme and an attitude like that of 9 Songs very often distort the image by using effects, excessive coloring, music with very specific and binary connotations and even fantastic elements. 9 Songs manages to deliver its worldview without any such effects. This is achieved thanks to the minimalistic scenery, improvisation of the actors, real settings and of course from the desire to immerse us absolutely in the experience of love, hence the real sex scenes. Let us not confuse realism with naturalism.

In the case of 9 Songs a basic realism is applied since this is not a neorealist film or a Kitchen Sink film and Free cinema. This means that the political and social aspect of neorealist films has been left out since the theme would have to revolve around the lives of the lower classes and of marginalized social groups like gays and lesbians. This basic realism is predicated by a certain distance that the director maintains from the events in the frame. We are not peeping toms but neither uninvited guests. The director documents every little event without over dramatization. There are no trumpets sounding before the break-up of the couple or even after, to proclaim the end and then accentuate its terrible consequences. Additionally, Winterbottom does not wish to excavate every scene, body, face, kiss, genitalia and ejaculation.


Essentially then the formal language of the film is (partly) realism which is necessary in order to perceive the world as objectively as possible .

Yet, Winterbottom stands with one foot on the heritage of the British and European modernists Roeg, Powell, Kubrick, Antonioni, Rossellini and Kieslowski. A fundamental aspect of modern and modernistic films is the absence of a linear narrative. This dictates that a plot is nonexistent or that the events in the film unfold without referring to cause and effect. Therefore, we are very often not in a position to fully understand and assess the characters of the films since their actions and incentives are predicated by impulse and are depicted as impulsive, without a subtext. The combination of a traditional realistic and modernistic approach by the filmmaker is what posits 9 Songs in the same category with stunning love stories of the twentieth century which revolutionized cinema: Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, Truffaut's Jules et Jim, Kar Wai's Happy Together, Scorcese's The Age of Innocence, Borowczyk's Story of Sin, Jordan's End of the Affair and of course the masterpiece of all masterpieces, Hitchcock's Vertigo which epitomized forever the ethereal female figure that is looked at by the man, unable of grasping her essence, despite his attempts to transform and conquer her. I shall now describe the modernistic aspects of the film in order to conclude to a final assessment.

The film begins with Matt's voice over, as we see him in a plane flying over the glaciers of the South Pole. The scenes at the South Pole are some of the most remarkable cases of what Pasolini called free indirect vision, or in other words free indirect associations. This concept very generally refers to the technique of poetry applied in cinema, with cinematic means of expression. It is a modernist technique introduced by Rossellini and perfected by Antonioni, Godard and Resnais to illustrate the psyche of the protagonist, without referring to narrative prose. This is achieved thanks to a combination of camera work, dialogue and especially mise en scene. Above all, free indirect vision is instructed by realism but with an eye to subjectivity.

In the opening scene, we dive head on into the fluid and distorted memories of Matt who recalls the most visceral "images" of Lisa, her skin, her smell. From the beginning then, Winterbottom is faithful to the first canon of free indirect vision, subjectivity. The narration is in first person: "I saw", "I remember" says Matt. With the "I"comes a biased and personal account of reality. In doing so, the director is showcasing the flux of memory which chooses what to remember and in what context, very much like in the masterpieces of Resnais, who explored but never essentially revealed the workings of memory, only its fluid state. How does this scene explain the psyche of the protagonist? As Pasolini suggests in his famous text, what is achieved is an allusion to a certain state of being.
This is highlighted by mise en scene. In Voyage to Italy, in a rather crude and obvious manner, Rossellini displayed female angst in the face of mortality by placing Ingrid Bergman at the Vesuvius excavations. The images and the subjective gaze, maintained by camera work, underlined and showcased her angst, which is not expressed through dialogue and prose. In 9 Songs, Vesuvius is replaced by the vast Glacier, a cold, barren, lifeless site, where agoraphobia and claustrophobia coexist and where memory is stored in the depths of the ice which preserves life forms from centuries ago - memory itself. Free indirect vision in this case points towards the mechanisms of memory, how we could remember only smells, sounds, textures. What this narrative also reveals is the impact that this intense relationship had on our male protagonist, the memory of which is stored like a scar in his mind, just as various life forms are trapped, sealed within the ice caps - "memories" of other times.

One could also argue that the ice represents Matt's state of being - his soul is frozen, numb without the presence of this woman whose memory is carved in his mind. This may seem like a silly and of course two sided metaphor (as is often in poetry which uses metaphors). However, what we have in this image (interestingly a man flying over the ice, as if in a dream looking down while floating in the air above like Guido does in the opening of Fellini's 8 1/2) is a fluid and dialectic relationship between subject and image, which is simultaneously reality but also "mind-screen" an extension and reflection of Matt's psyche. Therefore the relationship between image and subject is in constant motion, exchanging information. Again, narrative prose is absent and the image can speak on its own. This is the famous deleuzian time-image, a free indirect suggestion predicated by the condensation of time within the cinematic frame.

Probably the most modernistic element of the film is the ubiquitous ethereal woman who is Lisa, a female figure that shares so much with Madeleine (Kim Novak) and other women who were idolized by the camera eye. As I described earlier,the modernist cinematic subject's actions, behavior and initiatives are very often impulsive veiled by mystery. Matt met Lisa one night at the Brixton Academy at a rock gig. They felt mutual attraction and from there began an intense relationship exploring the boundaries of love, affection, sex, carnal lust, pleasure, happiness, sadness, passion, attraction, break-up. All the emotions that consist the meaning of our existence, life at its most high moments. This is what 9 Songs is - a symphony in a high major key, a 69 minute celebration of love, of the platonic Eros and of carnal love.


Still, let us not forget that the film is Matt's memories of Lisa's smell and skin, the superficial elements of a human being, arguably the only part of a person that we can have direct access to. Lisa's inexplicable urges, behavior and attitude are what consist her fascinating side that one may want to discover. One moment she is in the mood for love, always trying to be above Matt and to experience sexual pleasure more than him, as if competing. She is a independent and strong female character, not unlike Sada Abe in Oshima's film. Another moment, in the morning, she wakes up crying, for no special reason. She is just sad, somehow experiencing a strong emotional conflict. Matt gazes at her. The gaze, a free indirect vision, suggests a mystery, a question from the side of Matt: why is she suddenly crying? how do I get to interpret this person who seems to experience everything in ways unimagined?

 Every orgasm, party, gig or every little nuance, caress, play,kiss are equally important and exciting for her. At one point, while Matt is in the kitchen cooking, she begins to masturbate using a vibrator. But the actual man is right there! No, she will pleasure herself even while she knows that Matt can hear her and that he is standing there watching her with a mixed sense of pleasure and unease. The gaze suggests a thought: "why is she doing this?" "what is this woman?". Matt's masculinity is being challenged and with that his character. And then she breaks up, leaves back to America, just like that. He is partly devastated but she is fine, life goes on, full of exciting things to do while you are young and full of love. But we are left in the end with an emptiness, the void of Matt's psyche, a desire that goes beyond sex and ephemeral pleasures. Possibly this is the Eros of Socrates who agonizes to find the reason why we constantly seek for that "other half" that will make us whole and kill the angst of our existence in Plato's Symposium. Alkiviades gazes at Socrates with the same unease and childish desire that Matt does at Lisa unable of grasping the mystery that is Socrates.


Is this love, or just ephemeral pleasure? is actual love on the border of sex and of platonic Eros, the awe and fascination that Matt feels towards Lisa? No one knows. This is surely life and this is definitely great cinema. The films that avoid great political statements and patronizing audiences while feeding them with pseudo intellectual philosophies. real life lies in the small and mundane revelations of every day life, in the smell of Lisa, the look she gave me, the ice glaciers of the south pole, lifeless and bleak. The textures of life are embedded in this film which speaks about the pleasure of being young, the beauty of love and sex, the little big things that make life meaningful and exiting.

Cinema and Taxonomy: the example of Film Noir

Recently, I have been going through material on the overall topic of representation in cinema, apropos my doctoral thesis which requires good insight in this controversial topic. An interesting but nevertheless problematic article was one on Gay men and lesbians in film noir, a argument that is to a certain level, plausible. This article developed an analysis not only on the image of homosexuality in noirs from the mid 40s to late 50s but also engaged in issues concerning structure, motifs, mise en scene and camera work. The ultimate aim was a system of classification of the films based on the subject of the article. 
However, I noticed two major errors which I believe are the backbone of taxonomy's crooked spine. One is a categorization of films based on thematic concepts and what is essentially interpretations of symbols (i.e noirs that reproduce the hysterical femme fatale are one separate category) and the other is neglecting the role of auteurs and of cinematic expression as a means of classifying films. In other words films are often classified into categories which don't reflect the artistic merit of a film but merely its themes and iconography (the "detective image" the chiaroscuro lighting and of course the ubiquitous femme fatale). Cinematic expression is so much more layered and we often understand it like we stereotype people, placing varied and different cultures under one umbrella while we need to dig deeper to understand them.

Film noir is like the musical genre of grunge. There has been only one real grunge band, Nirvana, which on its own formed the characteristics of grunge, while all other bands were hybrids that were not absolutely original. Arguably, noirs are so versatile a genre, that it is common place to use it as a departure point that will be infused by so many other elements, not entirely arbitrarily. Of course, according to my last example, there are only just a handful of noirs that are entirely original, always in regard to a classified set of labels.

Initially, noirs were pulp fiction, crime novels by Ramond Chandler and others. The term was coined by the French - Romans Noirs - black, dark if you may, novels because of the morose and bleak atmosphere. The first films were the Maltese Falcon by John Huston, the Big Sleep by Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger's Laura, Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder, Gilda by Charles Vidor, Robert Siodmak's The Killers , Jacques Tourner's Out of The Past and maybe a few more that I forget. The thematic motifs are so many and so diverse, that it would be pointless to attempt a classification of just these aforementioned films, not to mention tens of noirs that followed, defiantly breaking the rules (most memorably Blade Runner, a film that fails on every level as a film noir).

However, there is one issue that almost every academic and critic forget in their attempt to over analyze every film and to see it as a text, while a film is a film per se, a universe of its own: the films that are known above all as film noirs, with the image of the detective and the femme fatale, introduced subjectivity in ways unprecedented. We had seen before the 1940s subjectivity and specifically a subjective gaze, hence a personal and biased point of view, in films of Murnau (The Last Laugh) who placed the camera right in front of the drunk protagonist to project his gaze and lastly, in the very first silent films of Hitchcock, the first filmmaker to truly epitomize the subjective gaze. In Blackmail, after the female protagonist murders her rapist, she drifts in the streets of London and we witness what she does, through her eyes.

Her gaze becomes that of a fragmented woman who suffers from her crime. In order for us too perceive this, Hitchcock used visual effects, turning the seconds hand on the clock on Big Ben to resemble a hand holding a knife in stabbing motion. This concept was perfected in Vertigo, when Scotty followed Madelaine, who from that point on became the ultimate female presence, the untouchable female, the desire of the male gaze and of the camera eye that has transformed Kim Novak into an ethereal woman who can not be touched or perceived because she is unreachable for our central gaze, Scotty, the detective.

is Vertigo a noir?
I would say that it has certain traits of noirs, a fact that hardly holds any importance in an evaluation of Hitchcock's masterpiece, because Vertigo is a Hitchcock film, the work of an auteur whose films are a category on their own, unparalleled yet extremely influential. Here however we have pointed out one basic stylistic motif that combines theme and cinematic expression. It is therefore an idea that guides our understanding, assessment and celebration of film noir. Subjectivity is the cornerstone of every noir in terms of structure (plot)and expression. A noir is essentially a mystery that unfolds gradually, only to reveal to us a labyrinth that brings more questions with every answer. But why is it that this occurs? It may seem predictable in these days of saturation, even mundane, but in the years after the War, seeing a mystery as if the audience is perched on the shoulder of the detective was unique, exciting and fascinating. 

Each noir worldview was distorted, dark, mysterious, terrifying and yet exciting exactly for the reason that this was the impression of the detective. One may recall here a case of extreme experimentation on this concept with The Lady of The Lake by Robert Montgomery. In this film, the camera was literally poised on the actor and only in two mirror scenes do we see his face. The director, in an extreme case of applying the "rule", ultimately failed, since the outcome was very distant. This however comes to show how important this matter was for filmmakers. We could recall here Fincher's Seven, in no way a film noir, but still one that is loosely based on the genre. The mystery unfolds before our eyes but subjectivity is not key here. 

Nevertheless, the world is worth fighting for, although it is an ugly place. This is the ultimate subjective image that noirs create. It is important to point out that this thought is projected not in a patronizing manner, by "creating" a world that is objectively so, as though the director is telling us that this is how things are. The gaze of the detective bears all the terrifying sights of a noir: murder,deception and greed. These are all highlighted of course by mise en scene - the dark settings, black and white shadings, bizarre angles and the absence of almost any natural light which create a bleak atmosphere, that is not absolutely unrealistic - a fact in early expressionist films. Therefore, I could safely argue that film noirs were the first films to deliver to the screen the modernist visions of Marcel Proust and James Joyce, that inevitably influenced and shaped the Nouvele Vague: that we do not need to change the world, but see it through different eyes. This idea hardly ever is prominent in analyses and classifications of film noirs

To return to my idea of classification and to the beginning of this text, the article I was reading mentioned, on the premises of gays and lesbians in noirs, a number of Hitchcock films: Rope, Rebecca and Strangers on a Train. Of course, the two male protagonists of Rope have been often discussed in the context of sexual deviance and the relationship between the two males of Strangers is indeed open to interpretation (Bruno asks from Guy to kill his "father", what would Freud say?). Finally Rebecca's caretaker is a hysterical woman who behaves more like a male and could be lesbian (this is an interpretation and clearly a mistaken case of possible symbolism taken as a motif of noirs). It is at least an understatement to say that Hitchcock's films could be classified. 
Apart from vague descriptions (drama, adventure) even though film noir refers to characteristics of cinema, unlike comedy, drama etc., the only term that fits is in this case "a hitchcock film." Yes the men are wearing trench coats, and scotty follows Madeleine as the plot thickens, but after all, these are films of an auteur. The only term with which I could maybe agree is "modernist", one which contains references to innovation and which allows for further classifications in terms of cinematic expression and not only themes and iconography. It is for the lack of clarity on this matter that numerous films are labeled noir, just because we see a detective in a trench coat, accompanied by a dark jazz soundtrack. This is why Blade Runner is not a noir, but a more of a thesis on existential philosophy. 

The reason for this, the all seeing and revealing camera which reveals the schemes of the bad androids and of the "God" abandoning thus the gaze of the detective, so that instead of suspense and mystery, we have a case of a dramatic sci-fi film that debates binaries of God and Man, creator and creation, death and life etc etc, which are not per se bad but not a noir.

A forgotten masterpiece of the 21st century

Walking in the street on a sunny afternoon with a light breeze blowing and the sun touching my face, listening to Eddie Vedder's musical score for Sean Penn's masterpiece "Into the Wild," I feel momentarily free like Andy Dufresne's co-workers on the jail roof top drinking beer in the sun. Sounds rather cliche but it is true and probably the closest I might ever get to the freedom that Christopher Mccandless, aka Alexander Super tramp experienced on the road and in the wild.

One scene from the film keeps swirling in my head. When Ron Franz (the late Hal Holbrook) tells Christopher that he wishes to adopt him when he comes back from his journey into the wild. In this one scene we encounter the old man's quiet desperation, as he, and every other person who met Christopher, clings onto him, mysteriously, impulsively. Christopher of course is stubbornly keen on his journey, on his destination, not ready yet to come to terms with the lessons of his incredible journey. As we experience the freedom and endless potential of the open road and the wild, we also repeatedly "meet" Christopher, the vagabond and wanderer, through his personal encounters with other people. Above all, we experience an ultimate love, the goes beyond the love for nature, poetry, the wild landscape. That is the love for another human being and the lust for life, which Christopher, unknowingly, bears.

Mr. Franz clings onto Christopher, like a dying man to life itself, impulsively, without any trumpeting, but with a great and inert desire that cannot be manifested on the screen (this is where a great actor may shine). This is one of the most heart felt and searing moments in the film, that speaks truly from the soul.

Christopher Mccandless may not have realized it, but he changed the lives of people with his journey. Sadly for him that was the end of the road. Sean Penn made this film that is about love, ultimate and sacred, above all a love for images and film-the most extraordinary medium that man ever created to represent the world.

Some comments on the new trend of the internet - media age called "Zeitgeist"

After seeing "Zeitgeist Final Edition" and "Zeitgeist moving forward" I wish to say the following few comments that I think sum up my view on such documentaries.

Firstly, documentaries, as opposed to films (popular films and "art" films) require a critical audience that is also aware of certain ethical and even moral issues that come with their making and viewing. Documentaries document certain realities concerning real events, people, historical landmarks and more. As Walter Benjamin once pointed out in his seminal essay "the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (Benjamin 1968), the mode of capitalism, being mass production and consumerism, has affected the arts and Beauty. Reproductions of stills, paintings etc through the mechanisms of capitalism, as Marx also perceived it, is characteristic of the 20th century as being the age of reproduction and mediation. Hence the critical discourse that has been going on for more than half a century on the nature of the cinematic medium, one which reproduces and processes images which immediately become mediated, loosing thus their virgin form as seen by a naked human eye, instead of a mechanical eye which places every image in the sphere of capitalism - production and consumption. However, it is not on the other hand a coincidence that this is one reason why fictional films, especially in the age of modernity and modernism have become intrinsically tied to Marcel Proust's quote: "we do not need to change the world. We need a new set of eyes to look at it."

Benjamin's concept applies greatly to documentaries primarily for the reason that they document facts and even form a public opinion (as is the case always with the general media). Let us get back to "Zeitgeist" Final Edition at this point. The director of the film, Peter Joseph, reproduces many images and sounds which have marked certain turning points of the last century as well as events which take place however in very specific and distinct of character contexts. One is the speeches of stand-up comedians who talk about religion. The director of the film extracts these jokes, and the laughter that follows from the audience from the original context and places them together with animation representations of the gospel, of Heaven and Hell. Thus, he removes these from their first place to support his claims and primarily to mock religion and to create an ominous atmosphere.

The most crucial image of course is that of the planes crashing in the Twin Towers in 9/11. The moving images, the sounds, the testimonies, which have become practically pop symbols of New Age Media, which undoubtedly Andy Warhol would reproduce in his famous "factory," are reproduced numerous times in the film in montage sequences, slowly, fast, in close-up etc. It is certain that by now it has become very difficult to define the source of these images. This is the key to Benjamin's notion. This constant reproduction solely in the internet, through numerous mediated screens (youtube) strips the image from any authenticity but also from its original context and character. primarily, an act of terrorism but also an immense tragedy which entails the deaths of more than 2000 people. However, the image of a man, a John Doe, falling from the tower, again in close-up, in montage sequences and so forth, is used only for the sake of projecting an image related to the general event. Other than that, the tragedy of 9/11 is reproduced in "Zeitgeist" to serve a certain purpose, that of proving a very vague conviction. A conspiracy theory which dictates that this was just one of the many inside jobs of a dark and mysterious band of people who conspire against the unaware lambs that we all are, thrown to the slaughterhouse. lets us skip all the other ethical issues and say the following concerning the content of Zeitgeist:

It is patronizing to say the least to claim that this man, Peter Joseph, is enlightened, a new age messiah, who knows the truth (what truth exactly?) and that we are all slaves, brainwashed and immersed in some kind of web of lies that "the men behind the curtain" feed us. Indeed, it has been proven over the last century that the United States have been responsible for immense crimes against humanity and that they have funded wars. This is something that "Zeitgeist" needn't prove to us as there have been numerous other films, documentaries and a vast literature on the matter (Arendt, Adorno, deleuze, Aliente, Kouloglou, Chomsky, Barthes, Sauper, Pakula, Pollack are just few names of artists and writers who have dealt with the matter). What Peter Joseph deals with is defined as fringe theories, which go beyond the rational and material world of perception, but simply into the realm of conspiracy theories. I will return to this soon, after I say this: In a quasi democratic world (let us adopt the idea that true democracy is utopia) where a film-maker like Joseph can make documentaries but a spectator as myself has the right to choose what to see and not, by simply pressing the red button on my remote control, I do not believe that I am a slave who needs to wake up to the good versus bad "truth" of a film-maker who, with absolution and fanaticism, serves us a perception of the world that we are asked to believe, as religion and governments do as well. I must say however that the man has provided us with evidence, which is of course biased and processed for the purpose of the film-maker, but it is not without some thought that I disregard this evidence. Therefore, let me say that until proven through more objective and unbiased means, I do not believe either the film-maker's or the legislator's side. I prefer to be critical towards any such approach.

The films deal with issues concerning religion, war, capitalism, the media, the destruction of the environment, pharmaceutical businesses and industries. These matters are scrutinized by Joseph in order to (arbitrarily) conclude that all these world-wide matters are impinged upon us in order to bring world slavery. yet here I am writing about this. Am I a slave, as lets us say George Orwell perceives it in 1984? Leaving that comment aside, let us examine one of these topics in conjunction with the crucial concept of intolerance.

Joseph, a film-maker, blogger and activist, searched very thoroughly into historical and conceptual matters concerning religion, from antiquity to this day. Again, he manages, maybe not so arbitrarily, to concentrate the deities, history, miracles and dogmas of religions from Ancient Greece, to Asia and Europe of the Renaissance and the 20th century, in order to state that plagiarism has been the rule by which every religion is formed. That doesn't seem untrue, as of course many scholars and researchers of biblical studies and archaeology have proven before Joseph, without of course the myopic and fanatical assumption that these are used for brainwashing and world slavery. This all comes down to one simple, and quite human issue: arrogance and intolerance.

Bill Maher in "Religulous," acquiring once again the position of a messiah for the enslaved people, essentially mocks and challenges people who are deeply religious (Christians, Muslims and numerous heretics of the United States such as Mormons and others) and fanatics as himself. Having obtained the idea that his ideas are the only true and meaningful (atheism essentially) he asks people how they can believe in a man living in the clouds who looks upon people etc etc but lets say not in Santa. His intolerance is displayed in many other instances, where, just like Nixon, Bush and other war and political criminals, he is unable to respect and acknowledge a culture and world perception different from his own. This is evident when he travels to the Holy Lands. This is the same approach adopted by Joseph in "Zeitgeist" Final Edition. None of these people are capable of abandoning the truly myopic view of the world which they have created (0bviously without reading any material from anthropology, ethnic studies, ethnoarchaeology and ethnography. By the way here are some names that are useful on this topic: Mead, Conckey, Levi-Strauss, Moody). They do not acknowledge, in their nevertheless, careful study, the right of every person to believe in a God, Santa or for that matter, fringe theories concerning conspiracies, alternate universes. Who am I after all to deny any of that? This critical approach I believe is healthy, in contrast to intolerance. The attitude of Maher and Joseph is no different from that which the conquistadors or the American troops had in the 15th century and the 20th respectively. The indigenous tribes of Latin America were seen as primitive and inferior in their cultures as opposed to the much more superior of the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors. Likewise, the Vietnamese people were perceived as slaves who needed to be freed by the yoke of communism, by their great liberators the Americans. This is not at all different from Joseph's perspective. We are all slaves who need to open up our eyes and stop believing in any religion and adopt his truth.

One may say that religious fundamentalism is an outcome of bad education. However, who and with what means will determine what should be taught and not? politicians? teachers? parents? and how did the teachers become teachers in the first place? it all comes down of course to free will, in a time when there are very many restrictions. But isn't the core of democracy that Ancient Greek notion that democracy requires that your freedom stops where another individual's begins? again, this idea has been highly scrutinized by scholars and philosophers, notably Plato in "The Republic." As evolution, these ideas constantly change and are in flux. But above all, we must be tolerant towards cultural difference, even if it seems to us as primitive or dangerous. This attitude alone, led to the most appalling crime of the 20th century, which very little has to do with religion, but merely with simple cultural attributes, with bigotry and intolerance: the Nazi death camps, images which again have been reproduced (notably in "Schindler's List" which reproduced Auschwitz and Nazi atrocities in a Hollywood studio). It truly worries me that so many young people use "Zeitgeist" as a banner for a 21st century revolution, a revolution which would probably lead to a new form of cultural fascism. If one cannot understand and tolerate cultural difference, then that person should at least leave it as mystery or primarily ask the people representing that culture if they actually want to change (according to one person's truth). let us remember here the films of Werner Herzog but also that one film of a fanatic enfant terrible, Lars Von Trier and his film "Manderlay."

Lastly, let me note that what is shown and said in "Zeitgeist Moving Forward" is not absolutely untrue, but of course all these matters have been debated by serious scientists who refer to matters concerning the environment, capitalism and industry in much more pure and scientifically objective frameworks without making the arbitrary claim that we are slaves. Again of course, we are all free to believe what we wish to believe.

My 20 most beloved movies from last to first