I read your theory on the use of the brain's capacity. It’s a little rudimentary but you're on the right track.
Lucy
(2014)
Lucy is entertaining
enough, but the inevitable salvo of comments, all repeating the refrain that if
one uses less than 1% of one’s brain capacity one might enjoy it aren’t so wide
of the mark. This is easily the dumbest movie claiming to explore intelligence
and consciousness since… Transcendence,
actually. Which this starts to resemble at points, particularly when the screen
begins to fill up with cut-price CGI gloop and nano-cellular-gubbins. I’m sure
there’s a place for a movie combining action and philosophy in equal measure; I’m
fairly certain it’s one directed by the Wachoswki siblings. This most certainly
isn’t it, and it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that a Luc Besson opus fails
to say anything insightful in its exploration of the potential the exists
within us all, or that it makes a horrendous hash of discussing our ephemeral
relationship with the physical world itself.
One only has to look at Besson’s screenplay and story
credits over the past two decades to realise this guy has no interest in
challenging anyone to think deeply about anything. A succession of mid-budget
action movies, most of which have been astutely gauged to turn a tidy profit
and a few (Taken) that have gone
through the roof. Since he’s become a one-man mini-studio, in tandem with his diminished
desire to actually direct, he’s become a lot less interesting. The ‘90s
triptych of Nikita, Leon and The Fifth Element (the latter is how to have fun making a big dumb
action movie with a lot of heart and a kernel of simplistic philosophy) now
look like the last valiant cry of a moviemaker who fooled us into thinking he was
going places. Instead we got one who doesn’t really care what he makes, or
fills in at the last moment when one of his protégés drops out.
That said, I had a lot of time for Besson’s last picture. The Family wasn’t a revelation in any
way, but it made me laugh, it was well cast, and the action – when it surfaced
– was every bit as confident as ever. The action bit is sort of Lucy’s problem; Besson wants to indulge
in a speculative treatise (perhaps that’s pushing it… ) on what would be in
store for us if only we could tap into that other 90% of our brains we don’t
use (already this has been denounced as an “unscientific” stick with which to
beat the picture, though really I think such a conceit is the least of its flaws)
but the only bit he’s really good at is
the action, and he seems reluctant to really let himself off the leash in that
regard. All the old skills are present and correct; that smooth, clear coherent
staging and enervating editing. Yet it’s used to little gain. The most notable
sequences come early. Later it’s time
for some sub-Neo in The Matrix
physics-defying shenanigans (and chains of code, and last lines that mimic the tone of his in the first of that trilogy). Further counting against him is the evidence
that Besson is most certainly no sage, such that when he attempts to strike a
philosophical note Lucy is mostly
laughable.
There’s also a problem of basic relatability here. Besson
has apparently cited his indebtedness to 2001:
A Space Odyssey, which does him no favours whatsoever (given what’s on
display here you expect him to summarise that masterpiece with “Yes, that
Kubrick, he’s wicked cool”), and it says something about Besson's failure to
come even in the remote vicinity of its quality that he fetches up a
monolith-shaped USB stick as the sum total of human knowledge. The tone of 2001 was precise, deliberate, one of
cerebral inquiry and detached observance. Besson isn’t naturally a demur
director, and his best films wear their passions on their sleeves. Lucy is quickly punctured by his having
no one to care about, and nothing to imbue tension in the proceedings; as such,
its merciful that the picture is so short.
The casting of Scarlett Johansson doesn’t help matters
either. Somehow the Wachowskis hit gold with the open-faced vacuity of Keanu
Reeves, positing him as a guileless messiah. That approach, of contracting
someone who clearly is not a boffin, flounders here. Perhaps Besson should have
asked Morgan Freeman to suck up that blue meth, then asked his stunt double to
do a series of back flips. Credit where it’s due, Johansson is very good in the first 20 minutes or
so, before CPH4 begins to take effect. As caught-unaware student Lucy, she is wholly
persuasive emoting a palpable terror at whatever this fiendish Korean gang (those
Koreans, eh?) have in mind, be it death or worse. These scenes are tense and
nervy, with a fine streak of dark humour (the gang withdrawing to a safe
distance while Lucy opens their potentially booby-trapped case). Besson perversely, and perhaps purposefully
(he’s not just an action director,
you know) does his best to dissipate this by cutting to really subtle wildlife shots of predator and prey; once you’ve seen
that, you know exactly the level of depth this picture is aiming for. The
whacky Frenchman.
And yet this deranged zest also, almost, works. Wheeling out
everyone’s favourite walking (just about, he’s really getting on these days)
gravitas Morgan Freeman to deliver a lecture on the brain’s unused expanses is
such a blatant attempt to disguise sloppy writing (to make a silk cerebrum out
of a sow’s noodle), it’s not true. We can’t really blame Morgan for picking up
the cheque, twice in one summer with Transcendence,
and at least his rent-a-sincerity momentarily veils a seminar that possesses all
the integrity of a high school essay project (what happens if we use all our
potential, or even more? Hmm, you don’t really have the foggiest do you Morgan?)
The decision to intercut his lecture, so utterly pedestrian, with the grimness
of Lucy’s encounter with Jang (Min-Sik Choi) and his goons is so perversely
off it has a daffy appeal. It’s not even close to being audaciously brilliant,
but it’s likably offbeat.
However, once the bag of crystallised Lu Blue that has been sewn into her abdomen seeps and Lucy (literally? – I assumed this was
intended to be a Renton-esque trip, but everything that occurs later suggests
otherwise) starts climbing the walls, Johansson’s grip on the performance
evaporates. She inherently fails to exude anything approaching braininess, and
her attempts to button it all down and do the robot are lack lustre; Besson’s
as much to blame for the material he gives her, of course. While she handles
the earlier emoting well, a wholly naff scene in which Lucy calls her mother
undoes this good work. She speaks to her for all the world like a student
taking her first Acid trip (except no student in their right mind would call
their parents in such a state). Like, the colours, man (mum), and everything is one,
man (mum). And I can taste the milk from when I used to suckle on your tit, mom.
What? Perhaps Lucy’s mother has early onset dementia as she seems not to bat a
verbal eyelid. There, dear. Perhaps you need a nice cup of tea. The scene foregrounds a lurking suspicion that, in order to be most amenable to Lucy, one should be severely baked.
Since auteur Luc hasn't bothered to work out any of the
markers of these incremental advances in brain function, from 30 to 40 to 50%
capacity etc., Lucy’s marvellous antics all becomes much of a muchness. There’s
magic wand waving up the wazoo, where anything can happen but nothing much
really imaginative does, and there's no real danger because she's unstoppable
within minutes of being loved up. Lucy uses an E.T. glowing finger to read Jang’s mind straight off the bat, then
she’s making her hair change colour in the blink of an eye. So at the end it’s
not so much surprising that she can transform her form in to strange mutations,
or finally disappear at all, as that, with all the possibilities available, she
has does so little with them (Limitless
at least, by setting its sights low – too low, really – comes out with
something much more coherent and much less inane). By the end Lucy is the
world, she is the people, she is everywhere, but there’s zero sense of awe and
nothing mind-blowing about it.
Admittedly, I liked the scene on the plane where Lucy’s
cells begin striving for individual survival and she starts to tear herself
apart, before sticking her nose in more drugs to calm her corporeal form down
(let that be a lesson; more isn’t always less and moderation isn’t always the answer).
At this point there’s a much needed – but brief –dramatic tension as she panics
and doesn’t know what’s going on, combined with a suitably Altered States-esque bodily breakdown. Because Besson can’t feed the audience’s
brains, he’s unable to sustain most of what occurs post-mental expansion. And
he doesn’t even care. There’s no reason Lucy would leave Jang alive, except to
have a villain in the third act. The overblown shootouts are immaculately
staged (there’s an amusing moment as the police pile into a building while,
unbeknownst to them, the Korean mob arm up in the foreground) but there’s no
dramatic investment in them. Amr Waked does good work as the confidante cop,
but it’s a thankless part. By this point, another perverse turn around has occurred,
such that the gangster plot is tangential now to the metaphysical rumblings,;
unfortunately this isn’t particularly satisfying on either side of the divide.
Besson’s spin on his premise, of what happens when we switch
on, aside from the supernatural abilities that come with it, is wholly
pedestrian. As such, it's notable that the picture, for all its "anything
goes" attitude, can muster little more than enlightenment or transcendence
coaxing a liberating effect on our perception of time. Once it is no longer
bound by time, the physical body no longer exists, so Lucy can range back and
forth across the centuries and millennia… Time is a constant by which we
measure our existence, and freed from that limitation we can do anything – just
as long as it involves sitting in a chair and flashing across green screen
landscapes. And that’s about it? Sure, Lucy meets some dinosaurs, and even gets
to indulge in a bit of Grandmother Paradoxing by sparking intelligence in an
unwitting ape name Lucy, but there doesn’t appear to be much else under the lid.
Perhaps Besson, an avowed atheist, struggles to find more having eschewed all notions
of spiritual advancement. Lucy’s development is very limited and linear, a
tangible reflection of timelessness replete with CGI ape, CGI dinosaur, CGI-tentacles,
and what looks a lot like CGI CGI.
I wondered occasionally if Lucy was going to show some
perversely curious motivations as she grew in knowledge and understanding. Some
of the discussions held had interesting germs of ideas. Why would she
necessarily lose touch with her emotional and more especially empathic
faculties? Such that she shoots taxi drivers and kills terminal patients with
impunity? There’s an element here of divesting oneself of limiting notions of
humanity, such that compassion hardly matters when you have the brain the size
of the planet; was the line about the patient dying anyway an afterthought to
justify the calculated machine mind Lucy? Did Besson wish to forward the idea
that anyone or thing approaching the capacities of a godlike being must
inevitably be morally suspect – or amorally suspect (David Icke fans will note
Lucy’s lizard eyes during her transformation)? After all, Lucy would do bugger
all if not for Freeman’s suggestion that knowledge should be passed on. Morgan
is used to strike a positive note, then vacillates and it is left to Lucy to reassure him that ignorance brings chaos not knowledge but the idea that order should result from her actions isn’t actually actualised in
Lucy, or at least not per se.
It’s almost inevitable that writers write themselves into
corners when they try to broach the cosmic, which is why its usually better to
verbalise as little as possible; if you’re dealing with symbols (2001, Altered States) you’re more likely to carry resonance. Still,
credit to Besson for his lack of restraint in juggling armed gangsters with CG ape-men,
wildlife footage and weird physical transformations. And doing it so concisely
(any longer and it would have become wearying, as Transcendence illustrated). Lucy’s
a stupid movie, with an attractive premise that eludes its writer-director. The
shame of it is, Besson’s action chops are as great as ever but he only wants to
flex them intermittently. That’s where his real talent lies. You’re not a
thinker, Luc, you’re a bruiser.