OBSOLESCENCE IS THE THEME OF TRANSCENDENCE
Fear that machines would put laborers out of work prompted the Luddites to try to destroy machines. The prospect that machines can keep everyone alive indefinitely and will run everything through artificial intelligence has spawned Transcendence, a film posing Luddism as a strategy to use before machines cross a red line. When the film begins, over-serious Frankenstein researcher Dr. Will Caster (played by Johnny Depp) proclaims such a future in a lecture on a stage, only to be gunned down and killed afterward. When he comes back from the dead, first as a facepic on screens with a voice, and later in the flesh, he tries to persuade his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) to carry on until the project reaches its goal. At first ambivalent, she continues the project to a point where she decides to stop, accepting Luddite logic. But the film, directed by Wally Pfister, has a fundamental flaw: Where did Caster get the money for an enormous computer lab five floors below the desert floor powered by solar panels? Asked whether the government provides the funds, Caster denies what is clearly the most obvious source, as the only watchdog provided by a funding source is a government representative, FBI Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy) whose role is mostly ambivalent. And filmviewers expecting a profound moral statement or some sort of resolution of the man/machine conflict will be disappointed. MH
WALKING WITH THE ENEMY IS A BIOPIC OF A HUNGARIAN JEWISH HERO
The fame of Pinchas Rosenbaum (played by Jonas Armstrong) can now be shared with those who did not realize the heroism of someone who did everything he could to save the lives of Hungarian Jews in 1944 after Eichmann (Charles Hubbell) came into Budapest. The film also relates some of the history in which Regent Miklós Horthy (Ben Kingsley) first makes a pact with the Germans to save his country from war and then tries to join the Allies, in particular the Russians. But when word of Horthy’s machinations reach Eichmann, who is busy rounding up Jews, the Germans support a coup headed by the fascist party, Arrow Cross, headed by Ferenc Szálasi (Simon Hepworth). Beside Rosenbaum, another hero is Raoul Wallenberg (renamed Carl Lutz and played by William Hope), the Swedish ambassador (for some reason the Swiss ambassador in the film), who distributes citizenship papers to the Jews so that they can leave the country. While high politics plays out, Rosenbaum (renamed Elek Cohen in the film) facilitates the distribution of passports, arranges sanctuary in a Catholic church, and—wearing an SS uniform—risks his life on numerous occasions to redirect his fellow Jews from the road to Auschwitz. Titles at the end indicate how many were saved, how many were not saved, and which Germans were convicted of war crimes in addition to Eichmann. Despite the renaming of heroes and insertion of fictional elements to carry emotional impact, the Political Film Society has nominated Walking with the Enemy, directed by Mark Schmidt, for best film exposé of 2014 as well as best film on human rights. MH