Flight From Death - The Quest for Immortality
by Patrick Shen
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DVD details
Actor: Gabriel Byrne, Perrin SprecaceDirector: Patrick Shen
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-09-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: GO-KART RECORDS
DVD Reviews of Flight From Death - The Quest for Immortality
DVD Review: Could be better...
Summary: 3 Stars
I was very much looking forward to this movie -- partly because of the great reviews and mostly because it seemed like a perfect documentary to show in my undergrad sociology course. But, having just watched it, I am sorry to say that I am disappointed. Given the subject matter, I expected something much more insightful and thought-provoking than this. While there are certainly great snippets of footage and commentary here and there, a lot of the footage was artsy filler, the soundtrack was, in some parts, quite unbearable and, most importantly, a lot of the commentary fell short of the in-depth elaboration this fascinating and highly complex topic deserves. The flow and insight improved in the second half of the film, but the first half hour or so was unnecessarily drawn out with not always relevant imagery and very redundant commentary. The point being made over and over can be summarized quite briefly:
Because we are physical creatures endowed with consciousness and intellect capable of pondering our own death, we spend our lives experiencing extreme anxiety about our inevitable demise and compensate (or, in many instances, overcompensate) for it with creativity or destruction (in this movie, the emphasis is on hostility and destruction.)
The text on the back of the DVD promises a life-affirming film, but I felt that some parts of it were unnecessarily grim and morbid. I am not referring to the disturbing images of violence and suffering -- those are only appropriate in the given context. But then, there are running bits like that of a woman suffering from an advanced form of breast cancer interviewed in a mausoleum. We hear her talking about how she is fighing a battle with the disease -- fighting for her life -- while watching footage of her walking amongst tombstones over and over and over again... Given the artistic ambitions of this film, one wonders if the filmmakers picked this interview locale for the accentuated symbolic effects but that would be insensitive, if not unethical, no? If she herself likes to hang out at cemetaries, we don't hear about it from her (and that, in itself, would make for very relevant and interesting commentary...)
Overall, I feel that this film could be greatly improved if it, on the one hand, did not try so hard to be artistic, while, on the other hand, granted the viewer a less dumbed-down view of the actual theory at hand and its implications. The members of the research team at the heart of the documentary offer the most intriguing insight, but even they seem to be holding back (this, perhaps, is to be attributed more to the editing job than their original input.)I also think that this film tries too hard to be "beautiful" and, does it, sadly, at the expense of its content. The way it is now, this film could be much shorter -- or -- would need to fill those 85 minutes with more stimulating and challenging insight (more theory, more background, more interviews from a wider variety of "experts", posing more questions -- even if they are open-ended, etc.)
I gave this documentary three stars because, despite my grumblings, there is still a lot of good stuff there and it appears to have had dramatic impact on some people, which means that it is doing its job for some. But I will not be showing it in my class because it I don't think that it succeeds as an educational documentary (though it does not claim to be one.)
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