Warning: plenty of spoilers ahead. This is the edition of the blog where I dig deep (hopefully) into the thoughts behind the imagery of the film.. I'm going to go over the main points, so feel free to chime in with things you saw or thought about.
I guess my favorite thing aside from the artistry of the story-telling is the entanglement of emotional attachment.
For people taking the drug together you become completely in sync with your best friend, AWESOME. For others, your soul becomes permanently attached to some pig-vessel that houses your soul. The couple in the movie is attached because of their similar drugging experiences and because their pig-vessels are in love as well. The pigs' and peoples' relationship echo off each other to reinforce their relationships. These two things seems to make a love more intense than any that could happen in real life. But I believe that's the beauty of romance, is that because of our emotional journey through life we either become attached to those who've experienced similar tragedies or someone who can save us from the demons awoken because of them. In this movie, both happens, which is beautiful. For some people this tragedy is divorce, for some it's drug rehabilitation or alcoholism, for others, it's a death or moving away, or loss of purpose in life.
Another echo in their bond is that they begin to share memories, Jeff cannot tell his memories from Kris's and she can't tell hers from his. This is probably because somehow in the ether between their lives and the pig farm their souls became completely intwined in a way that isn't possible without the parasite. I suppose it's the same for married couples in a way, they know the other spouses' stories so well and they've had a lifetime together of sharing experiences that became stories. My father tells stories about my brother saying they're about me and vise versa all the time, which drives me insane. But the way memory goes, a story loses touch with reality until only the words exist to remind you of the story you used to tell. This movie gives those mistakes purpose, which is reassuring. It's reassuring to know that the little things we quibble about with our family and loved ones could be the result of some beautiful message from the universe.
I believe the greatest emotional entanglement addressed is mans' emotional attachment to their perceived God, or collective conscious or great magnet or what have you. Face it, even if you're the most die-hard atheist you have those days where you're inexplicably angry or depressed without any explicable catalyst. There's some outside force shitting on your day. You can't explain why but you just want curl up, you push the day away. The scene where they're tangled together so uncomfortably in the bathtub reminds me of that feeling. Like Wily Coyote who prepares everything just right but can't catch the Roadrunner,
the universe keeps working against us even when we've planned it all out. And we curl up in a ball or we find someone to share the feeling with and you just let it all out. I remember at governor's school I was in a trance-like malaise at the beginning of senior year. Everything seemed distant and I found Melody Rood and Jack Wadell were feeling about the same. We took knives from the cafeteria and threw them at squirrels in the park, god knows why, I guess to feel instinct kick in for a moment.On the topic of external forces perhaps the most formidable emotional attachment is that echo between the Jeff, Kris and their pigs. It sort of adresses that the reason you love someone is because there is another place where your souls are doing a dance you cannot see or they've been together forever. This is like the modern spin on romanticism, not with the pigs obviously, but the scientifically-viable explanation for romantic love.
So the great tangle becomes you thinking about your soul and what it means and so the pigs become more important than the people. And when the pigs are more important to the audience then it's the same for the characters in the movie. The people go off and take care of the pigs because they have to, because their lives are directly entangled with the characters'. Just as the web of life connects all living things in a way we cannot see, so the entanglement becomes this ecological metaphor.
It's the story about the condition of our society straying from nurturing into cold the network of the jobscape. And it can also be seen as calling for the reanimation of us taking care of the environment. Because we all have the power to unify and help cultivate the world we live in if we can pull ourselves out of that cold machine. I believe the answer is that it will take a catastrophe like Alaska reaching 100 degree weather for the first time since Sabor Tooth Tigers were around (oh wait, that just happened). It doesn't say that this is the solution, it doesn't directly adress any global issues, because we all know they're there. Instead it asks the question: If this is what it took for you to change and for everyone to change the world around them would you do it? A greener earth, becoming more cultured, finding true love. I think if most people were given the option to take the drug and endure the parasite they would definitely say....
FUCCCKKK THAT. Worst hangover ever
Of course the movie raises more questions than it answers, including: Did she kill the "farmer" in real life after finding out where he was or did she travel from her reality to his and kill him within some hyper-reality? Is the drug-guru actually a force for good, as in this sort of experience is what it'll take for humanity to become care-takers of nature again or is he just a selfish fuck looking to make some money? And finally: if that drug-guru can extract tens of thousands of dollars safely from his victims then why is he dangerously trying to sell pills at seedy bars for a quick buck like an idiot?
If the main characters ever ate bacon could it be considered cannibalism?
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