Join date : 2010-02-15 Age : 44 Location : land of broken dreams
Subject: You're not... Who? Tue Mar 26, 2013 3:55 pm
Welcome to pro life theatre (?) part 1.
Two films popped up on my radar recently, both with a bent on abortion. The other film, the snark of which is on the way, is far more offensive and concrete in its message. This one… not so much, it’s just really, really dumb.
I’ve put the question mark by the “pro-life theatre” label on this one because, honestly, I don’t know what the film’s stance is. It features a character, the main character, who is a staunch pro-lifer/anti abortionist, but what the film does beyond establishing this is well… I dunno. I’ll leave it up to you.
Presenting then, for your entertainment(?) I’m not Jesus mommy.
I had very little info on this film when I first flipped it on beyond its taglines: “Desperate to have her own baby, Kimberly steals a cloned embryo from a lab. But her resulting son may have a terrifying impact on the entire world.”.
With the cloning angle and the obvious biblical symbolism I was expecting a bit of a mix between Splice and The Omen. What I got was… well… special.
You know how cross I was/am at Prometheus? Especially the parts where supposedly intelligent people acted like utter morons? Well this film kinda does that – except the writer of the film has such a basic grasp of not only parts of it’s subject matter and of basic human interaction that the expected competence of the characters is pretty low to begin with… And the film STILL has them act like idiots. It’s really something.
After a few seconds of watching this woman coughing up blood while trying to grasp a crucifix on the floor we cut to an interview with her, presumably earlier in her life (several years earlier, as we’ll find out) introducing her as our main character, Dr. Kimberly Gabriel. She is being interviewed for a TV or radio interview as she is a scientist who specialises in fertility treatment, and her work is outstanding with a huge success rate.
And now for an example of this film’s script:
Quote :
Interviewer: Dr Gabriel. Why are your fertility treatments so successful?
Dr. Gabriel: Nothing in this entire world can replace how it feels to have a child of your own.
And then the interviewer moves on with the next question.
Hoi! Interviewer! That’s not an answer to your question!
As the interview progresses we find out that Gabriel is incapable of having children of her own. The interviewer asks if this is a factor that drives her in her work. Gabriel splutters and stumbles over this question, as though it’s something she’s utterly unprepared for and actually seems to only consider it for the first time right there and then.
I was expecting some sort of indignant “What business of that is yours” response, which would have been inappropriate, but understandable. But what we’re provided with is a sterile fertility expert who has, up until now, not considered whether her own situation is relevant to her work.
But, believe it or not, this is only the start of this film’s problems with this particular plot point. With her condition, apparently, being public knowledge, and her being an expert in the field, the film kinda implies that she genuinely doesn’t know about it. At no point does she mention the cause of her condition, the specifics of it, or why she hasn’t turned her own expertise on herself. The film wants us to know that she really wants a kid, but her behaviour just seems weird. I’m not sure if the film wants us to think she is in complete denial of it, the subject is never addressed. In fact I had to go to the IMDB blurb to find out that her infertility was caused by cancer – the film never tells us this.
We get a sexy scene in her opulent apartment (where every wall has an art deco wine poster hanging g on it. Every wall.) with her and her husband, Bruce. This is followed up with a scene of her pulling out a hidden cache of pregnancy tests and testing herself.
Also she doesn’t flush. It’s a daft thing to get hung up on, but the film makes us sit and watch as she takes a perch, opens up the pack, and passes water. We then watch as she gets up, resets her knickers and paces around waiting for the test to finish. And she doesn’t flush. Woman was raised in a barn, I tell you.
Holy crap – this is fertility clinic is serious business!
Okay, what we find out later is that Gabriel has been invited to a special conference for a new Science project by… erm… I dunno. I don’t know if this is a government project or a private one, the film never lets us in on these facts.
Either way, the project is run by this guy: [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Dr. Roger Gibson.
Who opens his talk with this:
Quote :
Is the public ready? When it comes to science the public doesn’t have a say. Not any more. […] The time for successful human cloning in the United States is not only inevitable, it’s here.
But it’s illegal though, right?
Quote :
Thanks to a liberal president in the Whitehouse and the proliferation of broad foetal cell research, we are practically mandated to take the next steps in human cloning.
Damn Liberals!
It’s worth pointing out that at no point is it made clear if human cloning has actually been made legal or not. Again the source of this project, be it governmental or private, is never made clear.
What you are holding are the world’s first cloned human embryos
Hay, doc… That’s a foetus. It’s the size of a pill jar so is somewhere between 9 and 11 weeks by my quick googling. It stopped being an embryo at week 6-ish.
Doc Gabriel, isn’t happy with this.
The film then proves that it knows what science is by telling all the scientists that clones are exact duplicates of other things. It proves this by running two lines of DNA on a powerpoint slide.
With all due respect. I have delivered children at half that weight, sometimes even 3 months premature, and they’ve gone on to live healthy, normal lives.
There’s a couple of issues here, but let’s go with the big one: Gabriel’s problem isn’t with the successful coning of a human being but the fact that this process involved terminating cloned pregnancies prematurely.
This is why I gave this film the “Pro-Life Theatre” label. But honestly, this is the film’s only confrontation with this. At no point is the issue of human cloning brought into question, in fact Gabriel, as we’ll find out, is well behind it, instead we have this plot point of her being opposed to terminating potential lives. It’s a bizarre and odd stance to take, especially considering Gabriel’s line of work, but it’s not one that the film actually wants to explore. The abortion and cloning angle is dropped almost completely not to long after this part.
Speaking of Gabriel’s line of work… Did she just say that she’d delivered babies? I thought she was a fertility expert? Is she a midwife too?
Either way – she storms out of the presentation, but later decides to phone Dr. Gibson to apologise and beg for a position on his team. Her call interrupts Dr. Gibson who is taking time out in his evening cutting up an aborted foetus while listening to classical music.
I am so not kidding, and the film isn’t shy about showing him make an incision into a baby lying in an oversised perti-dish.
This guy is the project head. He’s the guy who came up with the cloning technology, I have no idea why he’s performing an autopsy on an aborted foetus. I can only assume that, with the classical music and this being quite late at night, this is what he just does this in his spare time to unwind.
It’s also at this point that Bruce discovers Dr. Gabriel’s hidden stash of pregnancy tests. We never find out what comes of this.
So Dr. Gabriel starts the job, and the first thing she sees are three illegal immigrant women brought in and told that if they want to be given US citizenship, they have to volunteer for this treatment and give up the resulting child.
And again, I have no idea what the film’s actual stance on this is. I can only assume it’s an “Anchor baby” reference, or to point out how underhanded and nefarious this (Government? Private?) operation is.
The procedures start and Dr. Gabriel is asked to sign an order to destroy 32 “specimens”. They are literally blood samples, but it’s implied that they are fertilised eggs and/or 1st trimester clones.
Yup. Doc Gabriel steals one of the samples set for destruction, locks herself in a toilet cubicle and, not to put too fine a point on it, knocks herself up. I’m not even sure she knows why those samples are to be destroyed.
I mentioned earlier that one of this film’s problems is not only its paper-thin “science” talk, but it’s lack of understanding in basic human interaction. Well, this bit coming up is the bit I was talking about.
Dr. Gabriel comes home to her hubby and just says: “I implanted the foetus today.”
Kimberly is honestly astonished that Bruce isn’t on board with the idea. Thing is, Bruce seems to have a far firmer grasp of the thing than Kimberly does. I don’t even know what Bruce does for a living, so far as I can tell all he does is sleep on Kim’s couch.
Quote :
Bruce: You don’t even know where this came from!
Kim: What does that matter?
See what I mean?
Quote :
Kim: We can be a family now!
Bruce: That’s not my baby.
Kim: How can you say that?
Well, long story short, Bruce doesn’t like the idea of being the father to a cloned child of utterly unknown origin, and Kim’ insistence that he’ll be the father (despite pretty compelling evidence to the contrary), strangely, doesn’t sway him. He grabs his keys and storms out.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I laughed right out loud at this.
Time passes and Kim carries the baby to full term, finally giving birth in the same institute that has failed to successfully deliver the three other cloned anchor babies. Little David Gabriel, however, is born without a hitch.
Ever have one of those moments in a film or book where a passage of time occurs, and you get the impression that a far, far better film has happened in the meantime? Well that’s what happens here. The film skips seven years and in those seven years well…
Climate change has plunged the entire US into near permanent artic winter conditions. This shift has forced Americans to try and flee into Mexico for a more habitable climate. In response to this tidal wave of immigration, Mexico has erected a wall along its border and will shoot to kill anyone caught crossing.
Food and resources are at a desperate low, with each home now running of their own generators, there is little to no working electricity network. Kimberly, her cone baby and her potted husband have had to leave their lavish apartment and now subside in a squat. The city they’re in is, basically, City-17, Complete with people lining up for their daily box of supplies.
Dr. Roger hasn’t been spared this either. He is living with his sister-in-law and her daughter also, apparently, somewhere in City-17. Also he has now become a devout Christian, spending all his free time poring over bibles, reading from the book of Revelation and listening to evangelical radio shows.
But the pace here is desperately slow and, constant with the film’s tactics so far, really really bad at letting on what is going on. One thing that is made pretty clear is that Kim is sick. Apparently there’s a plague that kicked off in that seven-year-far-better-film-gap.
Kimberly & David go to some sort of outreach/disaster relief area where they pick up their daily supplies, and watch as a couple of folks burst in on the place and kill the soldiers.
Meanwhile, in the Roger house. Roger invites everyone to pray with him, asking God to forgive their sins when they die. When it comes to his sister-in-law, he adds a few lines, specifically trying to get her to ask for forgiveness for leading her child away from God.
She tells him to stuff it, and then, later in the night. Roger smothers both her and the little girl.
The only explanation we get for this is Roger’s recent religious turn (which we find near the end of the film out isn’t a new thing, he’s just gone really into it recently) and a radio show earlier about Abraham and Issac.
The next plot point happens when David just flat-out tries to burn the house down, ripping pages out of the phonebook and setting fire to them. This leads Kimberly to spot this:
Based on this, Kimberly decides to take David to see Dr. Roger. Kim is now very worried about her son, and wants to find out about him, so she decides to track down Dr. Roger.
I’ll remind you that Dr. Roger’s full name is Dr. Roger Gibson, and yet there he is, listed in the phonebook as Dr. Roger.
I’ll also point out that this this phone book is probably extremely out of date – we have not seen a phone since the 7- year gap, and it’s implied that communication with anywhere is near impossible. I’ll also point out that it’s pretty clear that Kim has moved home from her opulent art deco-covered apartment to this slum, this must have happened quite some time ago, so why does the phonebook she have right there, right then have Dr. Roger’s name circled? In fact, why would she circle it herself? Dr. Roger approached her! And beyond that, Kim is able to use this one phone number to find Dr. Roger, despite the fact that Dr. Roger now lives with his sister in law!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many plot holes appear out of a single shot! This is utter film implosion in a single frame!
Well, of course Kim finds Dr. Roger’s boarded up slumhome and breaks in. And, do you know what? I’m not entirely sure that she knows it’s Roger’s place, because when Roger appears and tries to open his own door Kim crushes his hand with a fucking tyre iron!
While she tries to stem the severe bleeding from Roger’s broken hand (and don’t ask why he’s spurting like he’s slit his wrist open when all that she did was crack him on the knuckles, I honestly don’t know) Kim hears sirens outside. She sends David out to flag them down.
Note that Dr. Roger’s hand is all better? Again, I think we’re supposed to assume that David healed it, but no one, not Roger, not David not Kimbery so much as acknowledges it.
Things come over all The Shining and we figure out that David is a clone of… Have you guessed it? Jesus Christ.
Apparently cloned from blood gathered from the Turin Shroud.
Roger wants to “Share David with the world”, while Kim, now she knows that her son is… well… whaever, just wants to try and figure things out on her own. A big-ass scuffle ensues and Kimberly gets she stomach blown open with a shotgun, leading to the scene we opened with.
Meanwhile, David tells Roger that “He’s making a mess” and that he’ll never get into heaven now, because he’s done fucking murdered people. This makes Roger sad and he blows his own head off.
She just pulls out David’s urn (Because she’s been carrying that around with her all this time, apparently) and hands that to him before finally shuffling off this mortal coil, and vanishing – evidently getting raptured.
I have no idea what this film’s message is, what it’s point is or what it wants me to take away from it. Talk about no- moral theatre. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been this baffled by a film this dumb.
Well, that was “I’m not Jesus mommy.” Thanks for reading!
Cyberwulf NO NOT THE BEEEEES
Join date : 2009-06-03 Age : 42 Location : TRILOBITE!
If this was a big studio production, I'd say the writer hurriedly shat it out in a few weeks to wring some cash from the Rapture crowd. But since it looks all low-budget and crappy, I'm gonna guess that this was someone's Grand Vision - someone who has zero experience with anything to do with storytelling, like plot and cohesion.
Goddammit, I need to finish my Rob Zombie snark. I'm such a slob.
WD40 Knight of the Bleach
Join date : 2010-02-15 Age : 44 Location : land of broken dreams
Subject: Re: You're not... Who? Wed Mar 27, 2013 3:29 am
Cyberwulf wrote:
oh my god where did you find this shit
Netflix :p
(Nexflix US to be specific... I use a DNS hosting service)
It was released recently to coincide with... that other film that I'll be getting to.
Quote :
If this was a big studio production, I'd say the writer hurriedly shat it out in a few weeks to wring some cash from the Rapture crowd. But since it looks all low-budget and crappy, I'm gonna guess that this was someone's Grand Vision - someone who has zero experience with anything to do with storytelling, like plot and cohesion.
I get the impression that the film makes far more sense if you're an unthinking fundie who just has pre-programmed responses to moral issues, rather than one who attempts to think about them.
Abortion? Bad, those kids could have gone on to be perfectly normal. End of debate. Context doesn't matter.
You're sterile? Just hope, really, really hard and you'll be okay.
Why does your fertility treatment work so well? Because it's good work and people are happy with it.
IVF? One turkey baster up the wazoo and you're done.
The writer clearly barely understand the topic he think he's supposed to be angry at. What the hell is foetal cell research? Presumably he means stem cell research, but remembered it wrong and put it in anyway.
Especially with the "Science is eeeeeevillll overtones of the film. The eeeeevilll scientist cuts up aborted babies! He's eeeevilll!
I missed a point where the film makes a big deal that the cloned anchor babies (and David) were all delivered via caesarian section. In Kimberly's case, it was an emergency procedure. With the others, the natural birth process was, simply, never allowed to happen and, apparently, never presented as an option by Dr. Roger.
What's the most sciency, eeeevil form of birth we can think of? C-Section! Yeah!
The Second coming of Christ is done by science, but because Science is eeeevil it turns out they make the Anti Christ.
rae wrote:
Oh, wow. O_O You've made quite a find, there. Good snark, especially given that the source material doesn't really lend itself to teh funny.
You'd be surprised. The film is just so absurd and presented s awkwardly that it genuinely comes off as funny. Especially with Bruce's car crash and David getting hit with the car. I genuinely howled with laughter at both of them. I know I wasn't supposed to, but the film is so absurd while playing it deadly serious, and those hits come right out of nowhere that laughing it pretty much the only response you can have. If I find out that this film was directed by David Lynch under a psudonym, I'd be calling it one of the greatest surrealist/absurdist films of all time.
Mr.Doobie wrote:
Goddammit, I need to finish my Rob Zombie snark. I'm such a slob.
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