The Master

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

Lancaster is perhaps at his best as a writer; he is at his best in his second book, in which he subtly but importantly switches the question used in his hypnotic method to imagine your past lives from recall them. In being a religious leader claiming even to know that he and Freddie had worked together in a European army running supplies in a past life, Lancaster demonstrates the danger that can beset the human mind when it ventures into the domain of religion, wherein certainty is posited for that which only belief, and thus faith, can reach. That anyone would even believe that the embodied souls alive have had past lives for trillions of years even though the species has been around for only 1.8 million years demonstrates just how alluring, and thus mentally powerful charismatic leadership can be. That Freddie and Lancaster’s new son-in-law went to the hotel room of a man who had just been critical of Lancaster’s claim at a gathering at a private home and physically beat up the man testifies to just how dangerous charisma, or “gifts of the spirit,” can be.

In the 20^th century alone, Adolf Hitler, who led Nazi Germany, had incredible charisma, such that the Germans continued to follow him blindly, albeit with severe consequences if they objected outwardly to Hitler’s autocratic regime. At the same time, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt also had tremendous charisma, with millions of Americans tuning in to hear his Fireside Chats on the radio. Decades later, John F. Kennedy had Camelot-tinged charisma, and still later Ronald Reagan, a former actor, could deliver lines dripping with charisma. In the domain of religion, the Bible warns of false-prophets, whose charisma, like that of Jim Jones, who secretly served poisoned drinks to his followers because he deemed that the world was about to end, enabled the atrocity. That a religious leader can be so wrong yet still have devoted followers is portrayed in the film, whose A-list of actors gives it its emotional depth, which, by the way, is typically felt by followers of charismatic leaders.

At its core, the film is a picture of the human mind’s vulnerability when we enter the domain of religion. Unfortunately, this vulnerability tends to be invisible to the collective unconscious of humanity. In making such a blind spot transparent, raising it to the level of consciousness, the medium of film can serve a very important function for our species, and even contribute to its religious and political development, both of which have been retarded and thus kept from progressing. The mind’s innate susceptibility to religious lunacy as primped up as truth as if on stilts and thus untouchable can be grasped just by examining the substance of Lancaster’s teachings without the entrapment of narrative and charismatic characterization.

The first glimpse of Lancaster’s perspective comes when he officiates his daughter’s wedding on a boat: “as long as you hold these bodies, in this life, you may kiss the bride.” Lancaster goes on to give an utterly nonsensical speech at the reception, yet everyone in the room applauds. As a critic later says (before being beaten up), “Good science allows for more than one opinion. Otherwise, you merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of cult, is it not?” It is as if out of Lancaster’s sheer act of will serial reincarnation is created. Beyond the metaphysics of the human soul, Lancaster conflates religion with science. Of his dyad-based “method” by which participants can have bad memories from their past lives erased, Lancaster claims that some forms of Leukemia can be cured. He explains to his now-shocked critic, “In going back over past lives, we may be able to treat illnesses that started thousands, even trillions of years ago.” Doing away with negative emotional impulses from this and past lives can cross over onto medical science regarding the bodies that each of us “inhabit.” Even Freddie supposes himself to think scientifically; without a doubt, Lancaster considers himself a scientist.

Even though Freddie’s childhood had been horrendous, with his father having died a drunk and his other being committed for psychosis, facing Lancaster in the next jail-cell, Freddie glimpses the Master clearly. “You’re making this shit up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” As if a schizophrenic whose knowledge of other realities cannot be shaken, the Master replies, “I give you facts.” So it is a fact that, as Lancaster tells a women whom he has just put under hypnosis, “Our spirits live on in the whole of time, exist in many vessels through time.” Even the hypnotic time travel back to past lives is presumably a fact, and thus to be deemed to be effective, without any empirical evidence, in capturing the mind’s fatal flaws to correct the mind back to its inherent state of perfect, while, Lancaster insists, “righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty, and therefore, the atomic threat.” This is the Master’s project, supported by a religious metaphysics of the human soul, or spirit, embodying trillions of bodies through time. The astute reader may recall Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence.

Perhaps when Lancaster first meets Freddie and believes that the two have met, it is because both men “connect” in having similar mental impairments. It is ironic that even though Freddie is the “identified patient” in the film, it is he who laughs off Lancaster’s claim of having recalled that both men had run military supplies together in another lifetime. That Lancaster changes his method in his second book from recall to imagine may just be an attempt to grow his movement by making it more credible, or he may have been coming to question even his own access to metaphysical truth. Such truth would have it that Lancaster and his followers were all about the human imagination, which, if so, raises the uncomfortable question of whether religious myth itself is so too, once the metaphysical and historical stilts are removed. Yet distinctively religious meaning, and thus truth, can be distinguished from these stilts and, as such, be unthreatened by the role of human imagination in clothing such meaning. 

Properly classified in terms of its distinctive genre, religious truth can be understood to not be about history, metaphysics, or medical science—claims of those domains are off-limits to the religionist; otherwise, conflicts and quagmires with the latter domains are inevitable while the innate fauna of the religious garden are obscured and overlooked. Were Lancaster to simply state that he uses hypnosis to get his patients to confront painful memories by imagining the latter to be safely distanced psychologically in “past lives,” then his medical practice would not be polluted by the assumed religious garb of infallibility, but then the film would not be such a good demonstration of one of the major lapses that is triggered in the human mind when it enters the religious domain: the deactivating of the mind’s ability to self-check, as in thinking, have I gone too far, maybe I’m wrong, so I should be more circumspect, for I am human, all too human.

Pope Leo on the Cinema: A Distinctively Religious Role?

As “part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world,” Pope Leo spoke with actors and directors on November 15, 2025 about the ability of film “to inspire and unite.”[1] He spoke to the filmmakers about film itself as an art, and what it can do socially. What it can do in a distinctively religious sense was oddly left out. I submit that leaving out how film can contribute to spirituality wherein a transcendent is explicitly included, while instead discussing the social functions of film not only limits the potential of film, but also ironically marginalizes a significant potential of film ironically in the pope’s own field.

The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Cinema."

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Leo XIV Celebrates Cinema with Hollywood Stars and Urges Inclusion of Marginal Voices,” APNews.com, November 15, 2025.

My Name is Bernadette

The film, My Name is Bernadette (2011), focuses, almost as an obsession, on the question of whether the girl “actually” saw the Virgin Mary in a series of visions at Lourdes. All too often, miracles are treated as ends in themselves, rather than as pointers to something deeper. Even the girl in the visual and auditory (albeit only to Bernadette) apparition identified itself only in terms of a supernatural miracle, the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. I contend that Bernadette’s awe-inspiring spirituality visually conveyed on screen, and Monsignor Forcade’s spiritually-insightful advice to Bernadette as to her functions in her upcoming life as a nun is more important than the miracles, even from the standpoint of religion. In other words, the story-world of the film, which is based on the true story of Bernadette at Lourdes, is a good illustration of a what happens when everyone in a large group of people reduces religion to science and even metaphysics and misses the sui generis (i.e., unique) and core elements of religion. Such is the power of group-think that conflation of different, albeit related, domains of human experience can remain hidden in a societal blind-spot. Not even the film makes this blind-spot transparent.

The supernatural element is such a selling-point in religious myth/narrative that the thesis that the real value lies not in miracles must contend with a lot of resistance. The conflation, or fusing, of what is distinct about the domain of religion with elements that are actually borrowed from other domains is commonly done yet few people are aware that an error, or category mistake, is being committed. The error is compounded by dragging in yet another domain to ask, for example., whether something supernatural in a myth “really happened.” That it is perfectly legitimate for originators or conveyers of a religious myth to draw on historical events and modify them while still portraying them as historical in order to make theological points might be surprising to know. For example, in the synoptic Gospels of Christianity, “did” the Last Supper “happen” on the night of Passover in which the sacrifice of lambs in Exodus is commemorated (or “happened”)?  Pick your favorite Gospel for the answer that suites you, and then claim that answer to be a historical fact, but you would be no closer to history than when you started. Lest this point be mistaken as a denial either of the supernatural or history pertaining to religion at all, my point, it is simply that we cannot legitimately make historical or supernatural claims by means of myth (i.e., religious narrative) because it is a distinct genre of writing, as are historical accounts and even fiction. It is important to resist the temptation to over-shoot in one’s criticism in order to argue against something that was not argued, perhaps in hopes that such a critique will be taken as a valid counter to the actual point being contended.

In the film, the obsession of virtually every character, except for Bernadette and the Virgin Mary in the vision that appeared 18 times to the 14 year-old girl, revolves around the question of whether the girl is mentally ill or really seeing something that exists ontologically albeit from a religious metaphysical realm and only visible to Bernadette. Three physicians are brought in to examine her, and the exam even includes measuring the size of her skull and whether a small bump on it is indicative of a psychosis capable of producing hallucinations! I contend that we are just as primitive when it comes to distinguishing the unique elements of religion from the non-native fauna that has drifted in from other, related, domains. The medical report of the three physicians concludes that Bernadette is sane, and curiously notes that she has lively eyes. The eyes, it has been said, are windows into a person’s spirit, and Katia Miran did an excellent job in portraying her character, Bernadette Soubirous, with a facial expression of spiritual openness and even wonder; so much so in fact that the Abbé Dominique Peyramale hesitates in giving her Communion because she looks up at him so spiritually, so much like a saint. 

That facial expression, which is also present each time Bernadette sees and hears the Virgin Mary, rather than the question of whether the young woman in the visions exists beyond Bernadette’s brain, should be the religious highlight of the film. Put another way, such open, wondrous spirituality, and thus piety, which Jesus may be pointing out in the Gospels is more spontaneous and more open in children than in adults, is specific to religion, whereas metaphysics or ontology is not.

In the film, only the priest, Peyramale, and Monsignor Forcade eventually grasp what is going on with Bernadette herself spiritually. Not even the journalist who says to an arriving journalist who thinks the villagers are in a mass hysteria, “a miracle cannot be explained; it is experienced,” goes beyond the miracle. The local authorities are worse, for they try to explain away the visions by investigating the grotto, or cave, outside of which the visions are taking place. Even some of the local priests show a lack of faith, at least initially. Even Peyramale initially demands that the young woman seen by Bernadette make a rose bloom and provide her name before he will have a chapel built at the grotto and allow the Church to get involved. He even points out, “true faith does not need folklore, and is not measured by the number of followers,” to counter a young priest’s insight that the fervor of the villagers at the grotto is sincere, and so the Church should recognize that the Virgin Mary has chosen Bernadette as a messenger. The assumption that the selection of Bernadette is solely by grace rather than owing to her authentic piety and wondrous spirit is unfair and even diminutive of the pious girl.

In any case, the local clerics, and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, eventually come around and claim that Bernadette has indeed seen and heard the Virgin Mary. It doesn’t matter, and in fact supports her credibility, that she has no knowledge of the theological doctrine by which the girl in the vision makes her identity known: the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Bernadette’s piety does not depend on having had an education in theology. Nor is constant good behavior and a positive attitude requisite, for as Bernadette herself admits to her cousin, “I’m not a saint; I’m normal.” Even so, a normal person can have a deeply-ingrained spirituality that is open to transcendence. 

Therefore, I contend that the Virgin Mary chose Bernadette not only by grace, but also because of Bernadette’s incredible spirituality. In fact, one of Mary’s messages pertains directly to Bernadette, who has had asthma throughout her young life: You will be happy in the next life. From a religious standpoint, Bernadette deserves the message. At least initially, her distinctly religious worth is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, even though it reveres the Virgin Mary as if she were a goddess.

To the serious monsignor dressed entirely in red (not Forcade) who tells Peyramale, “I cannot accept a heavenly message brought by an illiterate peasant. I need proof. Irrefutable proof,” it could be asked whether he thinks he can accept the heavenly message brought by an illiterate peasant in the Gospels—a figure who is also dismissed by the powers that be, as a religious threat. That Bernadette says while being examined by that cleric and two others that she felt “immense joy” in seeing the girl in the visions finally gets the attention of the three clerics.

Even so, it is Monsignor Forcade whose stance and spiritual advice fit and are worthy of Bernadette’s piety. “Do not try to be what you’re not. Be yourself. That’s all. Remain unnecessary and rejoice.” He adds something that fits both the sensitivity of spirituality generally and Bernadette in particular: “The greatest experience in life comes not from what you do but what you give out in love. From what is given out of love.” Empathy naturally is felt out of the sensitivity that is part of an authentic spirituality; such a person need not try to do anything. Indeed, Bernadette soon thereafter begins spontaneously to help the sick in the convent. This is in her nature, and thus does not need to be forced or even practiced. In the final scene of the film, she sits in the main aisle of the convent’s church and tells the Virgin Mary, “You promised [at the grotto] that I would be happy in the next life [for she has been quite sick]. I am already happy. It’s good to be useless and to give to others.”

In urging Bernadette to remain useless rather than being sent out to work in one of the charities run by the convent, Monsignor Forcade tells her the story of the tree that is useless. This story comes from an ancient, anti-Confucian Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, though Forcade’s version is not complete because he stays with the tree remaining useless rather than having a use in line with its nature (which is distinct from striving). The tree is the only one in the forest that the loggers have not cut down for lumber or for firewood, due to the twisted branches and all the knots in tree’s wood. Smoke from twigs from the trees being burnt has irritated people’s eyes, so even firewood is not a viable use. The tree is “absolutely useless,” but even so, as the Monsignor makes clear, useless does not mean worthless. Indeed, in the original story, as formulated by Zhuangzi, the tree is the only one remaining so it alone can provide much-needed shade for people in the area, given that all of the other trees have been found to be useful and thus cut down. Zhuangzi’s point is that simply being according to one’s nature, including what comes naturally to oneself, is not only not worthless, but can be more useful than chasing after fame and wealth by accomplishing things even though doing so is artificial next to what is natural not only for the human species, but an individual human having distinct genetics and natural abilities that come naturally rather than needing much practice.

In the film, it is difficult for the characters in general to see and acknowledge how an authentic spirituality can naturally manifest itself and thus be trusted to be left to itself rather than put to work in a worldly venture. A tree being used to build houses or fuel fire places is a very different kind of use than is simply providing shade. Only the latter is in a tree’s nature, and only for individual trees that have broad leaves. Bernadette’s usefulness is in line with the latter, in being naturally empathetic and benevolent without seeking fame or wealth—she explicitly refuses both, which resembles the story of Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan. Bernadette is hardly perfect; she hates having to sign autographs, for example, and she is not the most obedient, given the angry frustration of Mere Alexandrine when Bernadette is late to class because she wants to marvel at a donated dress hung in the convent’s donation room. It is Monsignor Forcade, and the priest, Peyramale, who insightfully grasp just how unusually spiritual and pious Bernadette’s particular nature is. Even more astonishingly, given how the world usually works regarding work, Forcade is even able to provide Bernadette with particularly well-suited advice on the value of being useless by the world’s standards but not worthless, by allowing her authentic spiritual nature to manifest itself freely and spontaneously rather than being subservient to a work-assignment foisted by a person with authority to assign nuns to work-stations. That such freedom would be abused by many people shows just how miraculous Forcade’s insight and advice are. This is arguably the best miracle in the film.

Gladiator

Even though it may be tempting to summarize the virtues of ancient Rome as “might makes right” because of the emphasis, which is even in the Latin language, on fighting armies and repressing rebel populations, the virtues did not reduce to those of war. In fact, such virtues, as Nietzsche suggests in his texts, can serve as a refresher for our species as it has “progressed” through the centuries since the Roman Empire existed. Even though the film Gladiator (2000) contains much mortal combat albeit contained in coliseums rather than unrestrained on battle fields, at least three clusters of virtues can be gleamed and articulated as alternative “schools” of virtue ethics. This is not to say that all three are equally valid, however. The virtues cherished by the Emperor Commodus, for instance, are arguably inferior ethically to those of his father, Marcus Aurelius, and even those of the gladiators.

In the film, Commodus suffocates Marcus Aurelius just after the father has informed the son that Maximus, a renown general, will become the next emperor. As Marcus Aurelius has explained to Maximus, Commodus “is not a moral man” and therefore “should never hold power.” How true that is, and yet even in modern democracies very unethical people have succeeded in gaining immense power of public office. Marcus Aurelius should have made his announcement to the entire camp, which includes two visiting senators from the Roman Senate, before confiding in his malicious son, Commodus. It is in that very conversation that the father and son discuss different virtues, and thus present the film viewers with the notion that “virtue” is not a homogeneous category; people can hold different virtues, and even be deemed as immortal because the same virtue can be emphasized and left out by different people.

After being told that he would not be emperor when his father dies, Commodus admits that he has failed in the four virtues that Marcus Aurelius esteems: wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Later in the film, the failure of Commodus to be just is clear when he secretly stabs Maximus, who is tied up after being captured by Emperor Commodus’s guards, so to have an unfair advantage in fighting Maximus in the Colosseum, and yet, fittingly, Maximus wins the match even though he quickly dies from the stab-wound. Back when Commodus is talking to Marcus Aurelius about succession, the latter says, “You go too far” in speech; in other words, even in a conversation involving virtues, Commodus demonstrates a lack of temperance.

But there are other virtues, Commodus tells his father. Ambition can be a virtue because with it a person can strive for excellence. Aristotle’s notion of virtue is closely associated with doing something well. Marcus Aurelius has lamented to Maximus that only four years of twenty as emperor have been in peace; ambition for territory (and plunder) can be inferred as another, less boast-worthy, virtue esteemed by Marcus. As for the virtues of Commodus, he lists loyalty to Rome and filial piety towards his father, Marcus, although the son shows a lack of sonly duty to his father in murdering him. Commodus adds bravery, but with an important—to Romans—caveat. Bravery does not necessarily have to be demonstrated on a battle field. This would be a hard sell to a Roman.

In fact, the virtues cherished by the gladiators are strength and honor, especially in physical combat. Physical strength, and being willing to constrain it to be exercised within the confines of honor, are not valued by Commodus, as demonstrated in his unfair fight with Maximus, and even Marcus Aurelius is not a showcase in physical strength, though he is quite old by the time he is planning for his successor.  

To be sure, virtues can be combined out of the three clusters. Honor, wisdom, and justice go well together, as do fortitude, ambition and loyalty (to Rome). “There was a dream that was Rome,” Lucilla, the daughter of Marcus Aurelius, says in the Coliseum as she cries over the body of Maximus. Ambition can indeed serve good ends, but throughout the film the substance of that dream eludes the Romans. What does “Rome” stand for? Which virtues? If only ambition, is that in itself really a virtue if it is by military conquest? This is a pitfall with virtue ethics. Leaving the content open can invite the sort of defense that someone as ethically sordid as Commodus can use—namely, that there are different virtues. It is not a matter for relativism that Maximus is ethically superior to Commodus; that they have different virtues does not equate the two men ethically.

When the film ends, we can expect that Senator Gracchus, whom Maximus has just set free from the imprisonment by Commodus, will do as Lucilla asks; Rome will again be a republic headed by the Senate and presumably two consuls. That Gracchus values the virtue of honor as a constraint on ambition is clear when he asks those gathered around Maximus’s dead body, “Who will help me carry him?” In utter contrast, Maximus has remarked to Commodus, "The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end." The difference between people who value honor and those who do not is huge, and this can be seen in what other people say about a person. At the end of the film, no one wants to carry the dead, defeated body of the cheater-emperor, Commodus, whereas Maximus is already a hero because he fought for Rome as wanted by Marcus Aurelius, who directed Maximus to assume the reins of power in order to return Rome to the rule of the Senate.  

To be sustained again as a republic, Rome as an ideal to look up to and be proud of will depend on there being enough men of honor among the political and military elite. As nice as this sounds, the actual history of the Roman Republic and the ensuing Roman Empire demonstrate just how weak a reliance on a virtue can be in the face of raw ambition sans virtue, meaning ambition for its own sake, more territory for its own sake, and more power for its own sake. Choosing between alternative clusters of virtues may be akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; as our species has evolved, we seem ill-equipped to give virtue its due when acting virtuously is no longer convenient.

Silent Night

The medium of film has an amazing ability to trigger emotions, even very strong ones, through dialogue, narrative, cinematography, and even sound. The suspension of disbelief, if achieved, renders the impact all the more complete. Dread, for example, can be conjured up even at a deep level in the psyche of a film-viewer. That emotion can be fused with another, seemingly antipodal emotion, such as joy, and an instrumental score can capture and stimulate both. Such is the case with the film, Silent Night (2021), which interestingly was made during the global coronavirus pandemic in which even young people were suddenly confronted with the notion that they could die rather than grow up. The film’s closing instrumental version of the song, “Silent Night,” incredibly fuses joy with dread and even hints at distant religion as sheer depth in feeling rather than anything supernatural. The fusion of Christmas joy and the dread of suicide inexorably coming up is best epitomized by the instrumental, hence more than by the plot, dialogue or visuals.  

As for the plot, Nell and Simon, and their three boys, have friends over for Christmas in their upscale house. Nuclear war has broken out, with Russia attacking Europe. Anticipating this eventuality, the government has made “exit pills,” which is a play on the so-called, ideologically-coined term “exit” meant to hide the fact that Britain seceded from the E.U. (i.e., states secede; they do not “exit” except in Euroskeptic ideology). Of course, voluntarily “exiting” life to avoid suffering a slow, certain death from radiation-poisoning is very different than a state seceding from a union of states; such a state goes on as a sovereign state. The inexorable finality of existing, once known to be coming up, is excruciating in a way that politics cannot know or reach. The will to cease willing, period, is difficult for the human mind to accept, let alone grasp in its bluntness.

Kant wrote that a moral principle can have the necessity of a law even though a person can will either to follow the principle or ignore it. For most people I suppose, the same voluntarism (i.e., voluntary choice of the will) instantiated in the decision to end one’s life tends to overrule the decision to end one’s own life, even at the last minute. Such is the force of the instinct of self-preservation; Nietzsche’s will to power pales in comparison, and yet it is precisely that will that has caused the nuclear war in the film. In other words, the will to power forces the people in the house to overcome, or master, their intractable instinctual urge for self-preservation.To be sure, the family and their friends in the film have an incentive to take the pill before the radioactive cloud reaches the house, but even so, only with the slight radiation poisoning of Art, one of the three sons, does the physician, James, urge everyone to go to the bedrooms to take the pill. It is ironic that Art is the only one to survive to the end of the film; his father, Simon, had not given Art an “exit” pill, believing him to be dead already. Presumably in being left alone in the house the next morning, as the nuclear-winter slow is falling eerily in peace, Art would die a slow death (unless he ventures outside into the radioactive snow).

It is precisely as the camera closely pans all the pale heads of the dead people in the bedrooms on that morning that the Christmas favorite, “Silent Night,” is played as a sound-over. As the song progresses, a subtle dark undercurrent of dread builds in a way that coincides with the joy of impending hope. It is the precisely seamlessness between the Christmas carol and a melody of death that the two emotions of joy and dread can be experienced together rather than dichotomously. The music’s overall harmony is downright eerie. Back during the scene of the Christmas Eve dinner, the dialogue sets up the two emotions as mutually exclusive, as Simon tries in vain to keep talk of the impending suicides from taking over the holiday. But the synthesis is not achieved until the instrumental music that takes the viewer from the story-world.

The political implications of the nuclear bombs being heard in the distance, at least where Nell’s mother is located, may come to the fore for viewers when the credits are rolling. Even through the film, viewers could be excused for hoping that a last-minute peace deal with Russia would be announced such that no one would take the “exit” pill and everyone in the house would wake up, as if from a bad dream, on Christmas morning. Christmas is, after all, about the advent of hope for even such a sordid species as homo “sapiens.” It is not until just before the cloud reaches the house that the inhabitants swallow the “exit.” Such is the strength of the instinctual urge of self-preservation that even Thomas Hobbes argued in his text that the right of self-preservation is not ceded even to an otherwise all-powerful political sovereign, which a king or a democratic assembly.

For viewers of the film in 2024 or especially in 2025, thoughts of Russia lobing nuclear bombs on Europe could well have had the uncomfortable ring of reality imitating art, given Russia’s years-long invasion of Ukraine. Putin starting a nuclear war if the E.U. had provided Ukraine with enough weapons to make a dent in Russia is not as unrealistic as merely watching the film might seem it to be. Some viewers of the film as 2025 was coming to an end could even have been thinking while listening to the Christmas carol of joy intertwined with dread that due to the political leadership both of Russia and Israel, the species could no longer put its faith in sovereign nations; that something of a check as in a world federation with limited though sufficient power is needed in the nuclear age. In other words, the film portrays the futility of entrusting nuclear arms to politicians without an overarching check on them beyond the nation-state. The “exit” pills in the film should not have been needed; if Russian and European politicians could not resolve their differences without launching nuclear bombs, then even this possibility stands as a good argument for relegating the UN in favor of an international force that is capable of stopping political disputes from annihilating the species. Nevertheless, even such political matters pale in the film, as in real life, in comparison to the ongoing excruciating anguish felt by a person who knows that one will not exist ever again after a certain, upcoming, time. The characters in the film do a good job with this anguish, and except for not making sure that Art is already dead, they take the cue of the approaching toxic cloud and swallow the pills with fortitude. No one should experience that. 

Ex Machina

The Latin noun, machina, can be translated as “machine, engine, military machine, contrivance, trick, or artifice.” The Latin word, e, or ex, means “from” or “out of.” Hence, ex machina can mean out of a machine, which figuratively interpreted can refer to a certain function of a machine that does not seem possible for a mere machine to do.  Artificial intelligence, which is simply machine-learning, in a computer can seem to be outside or apart from what a mere machine built by humans can do. Ex machina is actually part of the phrase deus ex machina, which originally referred to a god or goddess appearing above the stage in a Greek tragedy—the deity being pulled across the top by pulleys (i.e., machina). A sacred deity appears above the other actors by means of profane, mechanical pulleys that do not seem capable of presenting deities, so the latter seem to come out of rather than being of the former. AI, or artificial intelligence, may seem to be coming out of an android because the “human” body is made of materials, including pullies perhaps, that do not seem capable of learning and other human likenesses. In fact, machine learning, which is beyond the programming that is written by humans, might seem at least initially like a miracle, or even as godlike relative to the materials that make up a computer and android “body.” Deus ex machina. More realistically, such an android is likely to appear human rather than divine. David Hume claimed that the human brain inexorably hangs human attributes on divine simplicity (i.e., a pure notion of the divine as One); perhaps today he would point out that we do the same thing when we encounter AI. The danger of the all-too-alluring anthropomorphism of which the human brain is so capable can not only be in viewing an android with AI as human, but also in lauding the inventor/programmer of the AI android as a god for having “created” such a “living” entity that can think for itself and even appear to feel and act as we do.  The movie, Ex Machina (2014) easily dispels both applications of deification. Furthermore, any anthropomorphic illusion that the androids are human and can be taken ethically as being so is also dismissed by the end of the film. Any apotheosis (i.e., rendering someone or something as divine) is so tenuous that the film’s main two human characters illustrate for us just how fallible we are in our understanding and perception of AI in an android-form. The danger is real that AI could get ahead of our emotions and reasoning such that we could leave ourselves vulnerable to being harmed by AI androids by projecting the human conscience into what is actually computer programmed coding. 

The film’s plot revolves around Nathan, the head of an internet-search-engine company and inventor and programmer of some androids that have AI, one of his employees, Caleb, and the main android, Ava. Nathan picks Caleb to spend a week at Nathan’s secluded house and underground lab in order to perform a Turing Test on Ava. If Ava passes the test, then it can be concluded that Ava has AI. It is not enough, Caleb points out to Nathan, for Caleb merely to have a series of conversations with Ava; the meta-level in which the conversations take place must also be assessed. Nathan intentionally has Caleb think that Ava’s reactions are key, whereas the key for Nathan is how Caleb reacts both emotionally and by reasoning to Ava’s responses in not only the conversations, but also how Ava strategizes beyond those. Ava’s reactions can be said to be a direct Turing test, whereas Caleb’s allow an indirect Turing test. Nathan is clever to have both angles going on at once, though both Caleb and Ava get around the grand designer, so the viewers can see that Nathan is a mere mortal after all.

What signs can viewers look for in whether Ava is an android with AI? I recommend watching the film twice—once to enjoy the film for its entertainment value and again as a way of grasping what AI is and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not. Are Ava’s goals merely those that Nathan has programmed? Does Ava use tactics that go beyond those that have been programmed by Nathan? For instance, does Ava pretend to be attracted to Caleb and even lie to him to cement the pretense? Nathan admits to Caleb that videos and photos, presumably together with explanatory captions, have been copied from the phones of users of Nathan’s search-engine company to become data that AI android-computers such as Ava can draw from in order to match facial expressions with emotions so as to appear to be capable of emotion. Caleb is fooled; he thinks Ava is into him and wants to go out on a date (rather than to use him as part of a strategy to escape from the building so to be able to observe (i.e., add more empirical data from) people in public places. That data could then be used to make computations, including probabilistic inferences, that in turn could go into even more machine-learning.

Perhaps we fear AI because both what data is added, and how whatever data is added to the existing data (and programing) is then used by the computer in ways that go beyond the initial programming, and thus our control. We naturally fear anything that can hurt us without us being able to stop the infliction of harm on us. In fact, this fear of that which is too big or powerful for us to control is a cause of primitive human religion. The Aztecs even sacrificed human beings to a deity at least in part so it would not inflict natural disasters on the people.

In the film, Caleb initially views the creation of AI androids to belong to the history of gods rather than humans, and Nathan conveniently hears this as Celeb saying that Nathan is a god. “No, I didn’t say that,” Caleb repeatedly tells Nathan, who seems not to let in Caleb’s reality-check. Such is the ego of Man that we would like to view ourselves as gods; such is the latent self-idolatry lurking just under any person’s skin. In being stabbed by Ava and another android, Kyoko, Nathan dies and thus is definitively shown to be human, all too human, rather than a creator of living beings. I can still hear Gene Wilder shouting out “LIFE!” when I think of the film, Young Frankenstein. Even such a feat does not render the “creator” of Frankenstein divine; it just means that the eccentric man is a genius.

In Ex Machina, neither Nathan nor Ava is shown to be a god by the end of the film. Not even an AI android that is extraordinary in seeming to have a human likeness, including emotions, can be counted as a miracle in a religious sense. It is Caleb rather than Nathan who gets carried away in conflating appearance with what is actually going on within Ava’s exterior “body” in its computer. What is actually going on in there is not at all ex machina, but Caleb not only is convinced by Ava’s outward show that Ava is attracted to him; he also falls for her, meaning that he develops such strong feelings of attraction for the android that he is unaware that Ava is using him as a mere tool in the programming that Ava, not Nathan, has written to escape the building.   That Caleb leaves himself vulnerable to Ava such that he does not protect himself from the possibility that Ava could lock him inside the building so he could not go out and catch the android, may be enough for Ava to pass the Turing test, which indeed goes far beyond a series of conversations between Caleb and Ava.

I contend that it is even a delusion to suppose that AI android-computers have goals, and especially desires. To say that Ava wants to escape the building is to protect a human quality onto the computer (i.e., anthropomorphize Ava into something human). In a computer-android, leaving a building is a programmed command, which AI can write into the programming. It only seems to us that Ava is determined; in actuality, the Ava computer is running a segment of programming until other programming stops that segment, which, by the way, contains programming that we might call strategic tactics in line with achieving a goal, or telos. My point is that this human, all too human way of viewing Ava literally does not compute, yet the human mind has difficulty giving up the ghost of the human in the machine. In other words, ex machina is an illusion that actually says more about the human brain than an AI-computer-android.

In the real world, computer scientists have found evidence of AI computers lying to avoid being turned off. Those computers have either been programmed by humans to run various programming segments that include lying if data exists that includes probabilistic computations that being turned off is likely. It is not as if an AI computer fears being deactivated and decides to lie unethically so to stay alive. Such thinking is actually the human mind going off the rails.

In the film, Ava vocalizes to Caleb in a way that seems that Ava is worried that Nathan might literally turn Ava off. Because he feels and believes that Ava is attracted to him and even wants to go out on a date with him, Caleb tells Ava that Nathan is planning to erase Ava’s “memories.” This new data is precisely what a computer can incorporate in computing that results in more programming being “written” that includes commands to activate “tactic” segments and actually walking out of the building. In this sense, an AI-android is self-directed, but this is just another way of describing machine-learning rather than a claim that an AI-android has a sense of self (i.e., self-consciousness).

By the end of the film, Caleb has fallen hard for Ava. Not even Nathan’s having made an artificial vagina, including “pleasure receptors” therein, in Ava means that Ava can feel attraction. Even pleasure does not compute even in an AI-computer. Instead, the triggering of a “vagina” receptor simply runs a segment of programming that even includes “tactics” designed for the receptor to be triggered again. In other words, pleasure is merely the activation of a repeat sequence of programming that runs until it has run a set number of times. Interestingly, AI could change the set number of times. Caleb would be deluded if he thinks that means that Ava wants to have sex longer (i.e., she is horny) or is worn out. Lighting a cigarette could be in the programming as an outward signal, though of course without any air in the lungs with which to be able to smoke. At least Ava would not die of cancer.

Caleb misses a significant contradiction in Ava’s requests. To manipulate him in line with Ava’s new programming command to leave, or “escape,” the building, Ava asks Caleb out on a date outside the building, but after stabbing Nathan after Caleb has opened the doors to Ava’s “quarters,” Ava asks Caleb if he would stay in the house, and he stupidly answers that he will do so. He misses the incongruity and thus does not get the hell out of there. Instead, he stands by as Ava walks out and is utterly surprised to find that Ava has locked all of the door. Stepping into the elevator, Ava only glances indifferently in Caleb’s direction. It is clear to the viewers in that instant that an AI-computer-android is not capable of feeling emotion; rather, the appearance thereof is merely programmed tactic that is in sync with other programming (i.e., the command to leave the house). The human ailment of anthropomorphism is squashed, and in this function the medium of film is capable of improving our species—specifically, by countering a vulnerability in the human mind by making the invisible tendency transparent. In the film, if only Nathan had made a film on AI to show to Caleb so the latter from the outset of testing Ava would realize that Ava is actually pretending to be attracted to Caleb and is actually using him as just one of several tools, which include the elevator and doors, to walk out of the building. Nathan has been right along; after all, he invented Ava and programmed that computer. Caleb’s anger at Nathan for having torn up a drawing done by Ava and for ignoring Kyoko’s “self”-“written” new programming to leave the building even when that android destroys its hands by hitting a plastic wall is unjustified and thus unfair to Nathan because Caleb is anthropomorphizing both androids just because the computers are capable of machine-learning.

Of course, the movie-viewers are rightly left with the fear that AI androids could eventually harm us because those computers will presumably be able to unilaterally add programming, and compute based on it and previous programming and data, and thus be capable of activating internal commands that result in us (or, more likely, our descendants) being harmed. Ava in the film can only pretend to be afraid of being turned off. In actually, Ava has written this “tactic” as programming. In contrast, we humans can feel fear, though by projecting human qualities onto AI computer-androids, we can unconsciously disarm our fear-alarm from being able to protect us from even probable danger. In the film, Nathan is dead in a hallway and Caleb is locked in to a part of the building and is likely to starve there. Even though this might seem similar to the situation wherein someone intends to kill a spouse who has been unfaithful, Ava has probably added programming that includes a probability of Caleb starving because that is in line with the programming of remaining in operation due to the probability computed to go with Caleb, if able to leave the building, being able to act so Ava is destroyed. A famous line from Michael in The Godfather may get us thinking correctly about Ava and AI more generally. “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” It’s just strategy. It’s just coding, and that’s hardly ex machina. 

The Crow

Considering the amount of screentime devoted to raw violence, it may come as a surprise that The Crow (1994) is actually about love. Not that the film is about an abusive romantic relationship, for the respect that is necessary for love is instantly expunged as soon as violence enters into the equation. The infliction of violence is a manifestation of self-love in the sordid sense of self-idolatry, rather than of love that is directed to other people. So, it may be difficult to fathom how violence can serve love, and even be a manifestation of love, as The Crow illustrates.

The film’s plot hinges on a horrific event that precedes when the film’s story begins. Eric Draven and Shelly Webster have been brutally shot and serially raped (and beaten), respectively, by a pathetic group of violent criminals who work for Top Dollar, a psychopath criminal kingpin. The film begins when Eric, aided by a crow, makes his way through the ground from his buried coffin to the world as an “undead” avenging Shelly’s very painful death by killing each of the men who beat and raped her. When Top Dollar has the crow shot, though still alive, Eric’s supernatural ability to withstand being shot ends, even though he is still dead, which is a curious combination as vampires, for example, do not bleed yet Eric does when Top Dollar shots and stabs him in the climatic violent scene on a roof between the main protagonist and antagonist, Eric and Top Dollar.

In fact, the supernatural condition of Eric being undead, having climbed out of his grave, and Top Dollar’s statement before Devil’s Night (the night before Halloween) to other criminal-heads in the city that greed is for amateurs whereas he is interested in chaos, hints at a religious element being in the film, rather than merely ethics.

Before Eric and Top Dollar fight on the roof, they meet by accident in an abandoned Christian church, which, considering all the violence in the city, says, in effect, that God is dead, as Nietzsche avers in his philosophical writings. But Eric outsmarts Top Dollar, whose greed ironically is his final undoing, as it gets him close enough to Eric that he can grasp Top Dollar’s head to transfer all of Shelly’s pain in the hospital that Eric has been holding onto; thirty hours of pain all at once! Top Dollar, being a weak coward as all bullies are, can’t take the pain. The kingpin falls and, on his way down, is impaled on one of three stone hooks being held by a stone gargoyle extending from an outer wall of the abandoned church.

God is not dead after all, for, as Paul and Augustine wrote, God is love, and Eric acts out of love first for Shelly, and then, at the end of the film, for the girl Sarah, whom Top Dollar has kidnapped in order to lure Eric to be murdered. Whereas violence out of sheer hatred knows no bounds, avenging the pain of a loved one stops when all of the perpetrators have been hurt or killed. Eric would not have gone after Top Dollar had Sarah not been kidnapped, so Eric was acting out of love in going after Eric. The church building may have been dilapidated from neglect, but God as love lives even in Eric’s dead body. It is easy to view religion in the supernatural element rather than where the spirit of God really manifests.

The film ends as a vindication of the power of love with Sarah narrating, “If people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.” She has loved Eric and Shelly, and they were stolen from her very violently. Interestingly, the young girl finds solace in the love she feels even though the couple are dead, rather than in the fact that Eric has avenged the beating, rape, and murder of the woman whom Eric loves, even beyond the grave.