Der siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent)

Difficult to know where to find spiritual fulfillment within cultures dominated by dubious markets, consistently disseminating similar messages decade after decade epoch after epoch.

Nevertheless, if you cast a wide cultural net you may find remarkable alternative variability, assuming you don't limit yourself to the present and sample manifold styles and rhythms. 

If your culture micromanages music and only lets certain styles and messages get through, it could certainly become excessively tedious as the years slowly pass and nothing changes.

If your culture does accept new styles and genres and continuously strives to develop new markets, as long as the difference thoughtfully compels, it can be much less depressing than totalitarianism.

I watched a ton of television in my youth and became quite adept at channel surfing, finding shows that became lasting favourites which I regularly watched and routinely recorded.

The world of television made perfect sense and I could predict things that were going to happen, having un/consciously consumed so many narratives that entertaining developments became shockingly familiar.

I eventually moved away though started travelling around the country, and many of the places I stayed had no cable television, so I slowly moved away from the once cherished medium.

Eventually, more than a decade had gone by and I found that when I had the opportunity to turn on the TV, I wasn't as impressed as I had been in my youth, and questioned why I had spent so much time watching it.

I had actually found other cool things to do which imaginatively nurtured less manufactured thoughts, and although hardly anyone ever wanted to talk to me, I still found different ways to randomly express them.

It was like my mind was energized and my spirit enjoyed its liberation, you may not understand what a lot of people are talking about, but there's an uplifting world far beyond mainstream television.

Instrumental music made a big difference too as I imagined different scenarios in differing degrees, laidback listening to the incredible solos the inspired teamwork the emphatic orchestrations. 

Silent walks in natural environments made a huge difference as well with cool animal sightings. 

Defying the totalitarian void.

Unlike the family in The Seventh Continent. 

*Criterion keyword: chilli. 

THX 1138

A totalitarian society, all-encompassed inanimate below ground, every aspect of daily life accounted for, no slip-ups, no love, no quarter.

Drugs are used to manage every aspect of existence, each with its own specific function, ubiquitous relentless mind-control, from the unsuspecting cradle to the strung out grave.

Physical love is anathema, forbidden, and theoretically resigned to the past, those who find themselves amorously stricken assigned chemical recalibration.

Computers monitor everything and not even the most ingenious citizens can outwit them, but there's nothing else to do so they try, the consequences at least a novel distraction.

Leisure time consists of televisual depictions of those punished for immoderate transgressions, all sense of individuality or uniqueness having been thematically sterilized.

A woman and a man living together find themselves caught in the grips of illicit passion, their newfound wanton recklessness quickly detected and sternly dealt with.

But THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) is able to miraculously escape, robot police following in hot pursuit, as he seeks his domain's outer limits.

But this film was made in the '70s, so there are less guards to flexibly elude, the budget generated to ensure his capture, swiftly spiralling exponentially ascending.

A chilling take on a panoptic alliance between religion and the sciences, binding psychiatric liturgies coldly blended with ascetic computation.

It often seems that if science and religion could simply try harder to collectively resonate, the world would be less fanatically divided, and balance and order would felicitously reign.

It also seemed like the cyberspatial genesis wouldn't be transformed into a hotbed of lies, that truth and reason would inevitably flourish, harnessing foresight and benevolent judgment. 

I suppose Animal Farm comes into play, the founders of a new scientific-religious equanimity reasoning with resplendent illumination, before the next generation realizes less cohesive principles, and the balance of power is transformed anew.

It doesn't have to be that way of course, Scandinavia has seemed sure and steady for decades, with a strong commitment to responsible schools, intently focused on cultivating respect.

If there could only be more profit in respectable truths and less of a willingness to cash in on crazy, more opportunities for people left behind in an affluent system, paving the way to act constructively.

As generations raised by the internet mature then lead and govern, it will be interesting to see what happens, if political discourse changes profoundly.

Still a decade or so to go.

Endless narratives could be written meanwhile.

If Animal Farm is taken for granted, doesn't utopia have novel appeal?

Even if it only emerges for mandates.

Isn't that still something to strive for?

La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House)

A small village in the Chilean countryside produces honey while Pinochet reigns, every aspect of its communal existence preconceived and strictly monitored.

Membership is clad eternal, there's no straying from the austere flock, misunderstandings engendering punishment, belittling and quite severe.

Maria is independent and cares not for the steady routine, her daydreams encouraging sharp reprimands as she counterintuitively seeks expression.

One day she sets off into the forbidding forested horizon, determined to vigorously make it, her wits attuned to the luscious wilderness.

She locates an abandoned house wherein which emancipated pigs survive, who soon become her dearest friends, cherished reliant agreeable confidants.

But a wolf haunts the exterior terrain with fierce frightening ravenous omnipresence, their harmonious improvised alternative shyly persisting under hostile constraint.

They endure and emphatically matriculate.

Maria sharing her knowledge.

For a time it's quite idyllic.

Until provisions start to run out.

A chilling parable harrowingly composed to accentuate psychology torn asunder, La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House) smotheringly provokes consternation as it stifles difference.

A rigid blueprint rigorously scripted to ensure precise uncompromised obedience, with neither tolerance nor mediation written into its prescriptive views.

As individuality materializes it must be situated within specific limitations, to ensure no one is ever distracted from the necessary work at hand.

Maria loosens the fatalistic fastenings through the elevation of critical spirits, whose ethereal intangible substance slowly fades when faced with hunger.

The paranoia through which she's been nurtured then manifests itself in menace, deconstructing heartfelt amelioration with crazed drab bitter anxious conformity.

The pigs are no longer her friends.

They are trying to duplicitously subvert her.

She can no longer teach them new things.

She must adopt a less subversive role.

Aligning aggrieved spiritual discontent with physical unsettling pressures, La Casa Lobo presents totalitarianism to distressingly shock anew.

Imagining what things would be like if there was nowhere else to go, and you didn't fit in, it laments the loss of wonder as genius evokes in flower.

The most visually stunning film I've seen since Loving Vincent, its form brilliantly defies the wolf while its content solemnizes desperation.

One part distraught exposition, another typical of insular world views, it magnifies ideological indoctrination, with grim innocent startling despondency.