Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Time Machine reflection
I think the two videos we watched did a very nice capturing the shift in our relationship to technology, which was accentuated by the very technology that was used to depict this change. In other words, the technology available to filmmakers in some ways changes the story since the topic itself, time travel, still dwells at the frontier of our current scientific knowledge. Where knowledge is limited, imagination and myth step in. Our understanding of the current limits of human knowledge offers us a fertile area for speculation just over that edge. This is clearest in the older movie, for instance, in how the experiment with the time travel model is conducted. The director shows us a well-made, artistically-interesting device that has motion and that seems to cause a mini-disruption in the time-space continuum with its rattling of the objects in its immediate environment. In the new movie, the experimental phase is glossed over for the deployment of the actual time machine, which is a masterfully-designed and -built piece of machinery that exceeded the capabilities and even imaginations of the director and special effects people who made the original movie. For instance, the new time machine creates two glowing beams, indicative in modern cinema of high energy fields, and creates a sort of bubble inside which the time-space continuum seems to rupture. These are all newer concepts that are the result of the conventions of cinema when it seeks to depict such phenomena that are at the edge of the currently known. In essence, it is our rattling of the light fixture from the previous movie.
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What I find intriguing is that your answer focuses both on the technology of the films themselves and how technology is depicted within the films. I, too, found it interesting how differently the movies began, even though they were both retelling a story from the same novel. It is also interesting to consider how a generational perspective plays into this discussion. The grandson (or was it great grandson?) of the novelist obviously grew up with different technology available to him than did the writer. Thus the two men had different influences on their perspectives of the story's theme.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective, John. I think your spot on when you create the connection between the "rattling light" in the 1960's movie to the "beams of light" in the 21st century version. Even as technology evolves and is only in its theoretical stages (i.e time travel) humans make attempts to depict such advances through special effects. Its ironic, I think, that these depictions, no matter how different and more sensational, are still very much just guess work.
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