Obselidia

MOVIE TITLE: Obselidia
DIRECTOR: Diane Bell
YEAR: 2010
GENRE: Drama
RATING: PG-13 for language
GRADE: Pass

George is a librarian who moonlights as a cataloguist for obsolete and nostalgic items, all of which he hopes to document for a book he’s putting together. He even goes so far as to believe love is obsolete and therefore leads the lonely life of being single. When he meets a beautiful projectionist named Sophie, she tries to get him to come out of his shell as the two of them venture to Death Valley to interview a climate change scientist for George’s book. The ideas of love and the apocalypse collide in a debate about how we should spend our last minutes on earth if they truly are that. Will George live the rest of his life in isolation or will he believe in the power of love humans can give each other? Does he have anything in his heart for Sophie?

The three major themes of this movie (living life to the fullest, romance, and nostalgia) intertwine perfectly with each other as they try to bring George and Sophie together as a romantic couple. With nostalgia, they bond over how the past used to be a happy and simpler time, when technology wasn’t going berserk and people paid attention to each other. With living life to the fullest, they get hard hitting cynicism from the climate change scientist who believes all happy experiences will be erased because of humankind’s sins against the earth. With romance, it’s the classic tale of a socially awkward guy like George shying away from a flirtatious girl like Sophie. With the scientist feeding him all of this negativity, George has to struggle to believe in the power of love when Sophie tries to get in his social bubble.

Near the end of the movie, we ask ourselves if George’s struggle to suppress his inner negativity is worth it. While he does realize how the power of love can make someone happy, he also realizes how it can break his heart. While I won’t give away any spoilers, I will say that Sophie does break George’s heart in the end and he’s sobbing to himself in the comfort of his own home looking at pictures of their vacation together in Death Valley. That is such a powerful image that the audience watching has no choice but to question their own capacity for romantic love. This may not have been the message the movie was trying to send, but to my way of thinking, in this 50-50 bet between happiness and heartache, I was leaning towards heartache. I was so heartbroken and touched by the movie’s end that I spent the rest of the night listening to Seether’s cover of Wham’s “Careless Whisper”.

The best part about this movie is that it encourages the audience to ask questions instead of mindlessly conforming to a singular principal. If the world ends tomorrow, how will we spend our last hours on earth? Is romantic love worth all the struggles or does it lead to easy cynicism? Should we all love each other before it truly is indeed too late? Should we have as many experiences as we can despite the huge risk attached to them? Finding the answers to these questions takes a lot of courage and living with the answers is even scarier than that. Some people become so saddened by the answers that they resort to isolation or even worse, suicide. In the end, positivity will save us. It will get us through the hardships whether they’re in a personal relationship or part of a global crisis. If you’re going to attempt to answer these questions, make sure you do it without regret. Otherwise, temporary heartache will feel like permanent torture.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate.”

-Flyleaf singing “Again”-

"Careless Whisper" by Seether

I would have never known this song existed if it hadn’t been for Wham’s original version from the 1980’s. But exist it does. There indeed is a hard rock version of “Careless Whisper” and it’s done by Seether. No, Shaun Morgan doesn’t scream his head off like most of the singers in my Windows Media Player do. In fact, Shaun Morgan sounds very pleasant. He reminds me of somebody I used to know from the early 1990’s who put out the albums Never Mind and In Utero. What’s that guy’s name again? It’s on the tip of my tongue. Hint, hint, wink, wink.

So why exactly would I pay tribute to Seether for doing a cover version of a song originated by a pop duo named Wham? Because Seether’s version is not only more energetic and depressing, but it was there for me when I walked out of the Grand Cinema in Tacoma after watching the movie “Obsoledia“. When I got in the car with my mom and step-dad Dale, it was the first song I listened to on my MP3 player. George will never dance with Sophie again, not like they did when they were out in Death Valley speculating the fate of the earth post-climate change.

“Careless Whisper” and “Obsoledia” are both mediums that will rip your heart to pieces. By the end of both of them, the beautiful relationships are over. It’s true that “Careless Whisper” wasn’t sung by Shaun Morgan with Amy Lee from Evanescence in mind. The two of them used to date and they don’t anymore. Judging from the fact the two of them wrote breakup songs about each other, the separation was pretty fucking brutal.

There was nothing ugly about the way “Obsoledia” ended. George was a lonely librarian who didn’t believe in love until he spent a weekend with Sophie. Just when this poor introvert was starting to believe in the power or romance, it was used to break his heart when it turned out Sophie already had a boyfriend. Obsoledia is about things that are obsolete in this world, so maybe Seether’s new and fresh version of “Careless Whisper” wouldn’t have fit with the movie’s theme. If it were any other canon, though, it would have worked to perfection.

Shaun Morgan and George were both people with broken hearts. I made this connection the night I saw Obsoledia and subsequently listened to “Careless Whisper” by Seether. In my short stories and novels, the power of love is a deity in and of itself. It’s worshiped to the fullest extent and executed with beauty. Characters fall in love with each other all the time, sometimes in the most inopportune times. “Not Gonna Die” and “If I Offer You My Soul”, anyone?

I can get away with that in literature, because a good story is better than a cold reality. In the real world, people get divorced and broken up all the time. When those breakups and divorces happen, they often involve a power struggle that may or may not involve violence or monetary possessiveness. We all want to believe in the power of love. But is it really there? Can it last a lifetime? Can it endure so many hardships that it becomes indestructible? The answers vary from person to person. But as long as Seether is singing “Careless Whisper” on my MP3 player, the jury will always be out on this one.

　

***FACE BOOK MEME OF THE DAY***

“If Katniss and Peeta from The Hunger Games were Hollywood celebrities, their super couple nickname would either be Kat-Pee or Pee-Niss.”