CONSCIOUS CINEMA
romantic comedy “Le Week-End” (2013) in which
a long-time married couple (Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan) return to the site of their honeymoon
in Paris to reassess the choices they’ve made and
those they want to make for the future; and the inventive one-man drama “Locke” (2013) in which
a philandering contractor (Tom Hardy) sincerely seeks to make restitution for the missteps he’s
made in a heartfelt act of personal redemption.
Of course, as noted earlier, understanding the intent behind our choices is just as crucial to assessing why our reality unfolds as it does. For instance,
when we clearly see the intent behind our choices
but willingly look the other way, we may set ourselves up for serious consequences, as seen in the
gripping Roman Polanski thriller, “The Ghost”
(2010). When a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) is
hired to tweak the political memoir of a retired
British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) knowing
that this type of work is not his specialty (but that
he takes on anyway because it carries the promise
of a big payday for a month’s work), he suddenly
finds himself swept up in a web of intrigue that he
never saw coming – and from which he may have
unimaginable difficulty extricating himself.
Similarly, attempting to unduly finesse our intents
into agenda-satisfying solutions frequently leads
to ill-considered choices, as is apparent in the
made-for-cable movie, “Game Change” (2012).
This docudrama chronicles the 2008 presidential
campaign of Sen. John McCain (Ed Harris) and his
selection of Gov. Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore) as
his running mate, a decision driven by intents other than finding the most qualified candidate. As
the story plays out, viewers come to see how far
off-base our results can be when we try to game
our beliefs; this practice might indeed change
the game but in ways far flung from what we had
hoped for.
Using our intents for purely self-serving reasons
often proves unsatisfying, too, a the