Movieland

 

In Movieland, everything we see on the screen is real.  The actors who play different roles in each of their films are telling the stories of single individuals.  For example, Johnny Depp started out as a lonely teenager in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.   When he got sick of the country, he moved to the city and became a teen-aged rebel in Cry Baby.  His first job was as a magician, which is how he learned all the tricks he knew in Benny and Joon.  His sharp imagination and wandering spirit made him susceptible to some charming forms of madness, such as the erotomania seen in Don Juan de Marco and the misanthropy in Dead Man.  The enlightenment he experienced in Dead Man opened his mind to a wide variety of different skills.  And he didn't really die at the end of it.  Often in movies, death is really a new beginning, which is how he aged to become a flamboyant pirate (Pirates of the Caribbean) and a gonzo journalist (Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas). 

Of course, Johnny isn't the only legend in Movieland.  You can imagine the many other great lives that must have been lead there.  Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep; these are some of the most prestigious people in that world of strange and wonderful things.  You don't have to be a major star to gain any reverence there either.  David Bowie's Goblin King from Labyrinth finds it amusing that only one role can make a legend of oneself.  Even the citizens of Movieland partake in the collective body of films, most of them posing as extras or stuntmen in accidental situations.  These people take pride in seeing themselves as part of a movie, despite being in some very peculiar and stressful situations, such as in Independence Day when a great many people of the world died from an alien invasion. 

The way it works is that there's an all-seeing camera that films everyone from every angle, making it possible to create a movie from any sequence of events that happen.  This camera, called the Cinema Rover, is monitored from a laboratory where recordings of every event are kept on file.  It's not a physical camera, but an invisible one, built into the very substance of the atmosphere, and omnipotent in the air, as if it were made of an infinite series of lenses.  That's why there are no directors in Movieland- everything is filmed by ethereal lenses connected to each other by a network of computers.  Their contents are sent to the lab whenever the editors think a story's worth documenting.  You might think everyone lives in a constant state of fear and paranoia since the world is made of an all-seeing camera.  However, I can assure you, it's actually the opposite; they are most comfortable knowing they have as much chance as anyone to be in a movie or television show.  The enhanced "security" of the all-seeing camera is not used for political purposes, but for the enrichment of the populace in their enjoyment for making movies.  Knowing they're on camera can make people strive for more professional conduct in dealing with others.  More ominous types will try to be as rude or as strange as they can, causing amusing events for their own personal interest in becoming famous.   Many of these backfire and get ignored by the editors- a common problem in this unique world.  You can imagine how frustrating it is for everyone when a villain makes an ass of himself and doesn't get recognized for it. 

Also in Movieland, the film itself is a sacred icon to be worshipped.  Theaters are revered as temples, which are built of silver halide in a gelatin emulsion.  Instead of coming to hear great sermons or passages from the Bible, people go to the theaters in praise of all the classics of cinema.  Ben-Hur, Titanic, Avatar, and even The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman are just a few examples of films that are shown regularly.  All the screen legends get their pictures shown on certain days of the year, which are deemed global holidays.  On holidays, marathons of movies starring the featured actors are played all day long, and people tune in religiously.  

It's important to mention that it isn't just the actors that exist in this world, but the lands they live in as well.  Movieland is an incredibly vast world, built of all the settings we've ever seen on the screen.  In fact, some places even exist on other planets, because there are many movies involving space travel.  Much of its geography is similar to that of our world, since the majority of movies are set on Earth.  But all the fantastical lands invented in film have been incorporated into it, making them blend in with the lands of real places.  For example: the medieval lands of Middle Earth, Narnia, and Westeros are all part of an extension of Eastern Europe that lies far away from modern settings, making them absent of each other's influence.  There's even a part of the world that's animated- where all the characters created by the drawing pen live.  Here lies Agrabah, city of enchantment, from the Aladdin series; the land of Oz, which Dorothy and Toto got lost in; the Avatar world, featuring the Four Nations of the elements; and Springfield, the ever-tumultuous home of the Simpsons. 

 

There came an age of darkness across this world.  Suddenly all the people who'd created movies ceased to exist, and films were no longer made.  Nor was there anyone left to watch them.  The world faded into nothing, like Fantasia in The Never-ending Story, which is probably the only place that could have known it was part of the collective imagination of humanity.  Then, after many millennia, a future species developed the intelligence to watch all the movies humans had made.  Movieland came back to life once this species unearthed from the mantle of existence all the incredible films humans had created. 

It wasn't the single film that grabbed their attention the most.  Segments of movies executed to perfection were held in the highest esteem.  Anyone can make a movie, but if you're lucky enough to have all the elements that make a scene great, then the film itself is what gets remembered and not the particular scene(s) that earned its merit.  The same could be said of chapters in books, or songs in albums.  Great movie scenes capture moments in time that can resonate strongly with any intelligent species' thoughts and emotions.  Each of these moments caused the beings to reach deeper levels of spirituality, and a reverence for the ones who'd created such brilliant things.  Soon they weren't even watching whole films, only particular parts of them that gave them pleasure, like in The Godfather, when there was a sequence of split-frames between a baptism in a church and the murders of mobsters, and the priest asked Michael Do you renounce Satan and all his works? and he said Yes despite knowing he'd ordered the killings; or when Forrest Gump told Jenny, lying on her death-bed, about the time he was running in the desert and said When the sun comes up I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began and she says I wish I could have been there with you and he says You were.  Other moments rose from the rubble in leaps and bounds; classic treasures painted in black and white; Cagney prancing across the stage in Yankee Doodle Dandy- one of the most iconic images of the American musical, created at the height of the New York art scene; Chaplin playing with an inflatable globe in The Great Dictator, bouncing it off his fingertips and head and bum in the most airy fashion, eyeballing the nations on it like they were candy for his taking; that unforgettable ending in Cinema Paradiso, when Salvatore watches all the forbidden love scenes that his best friend had kept hidden from him all those years; Astaire and Rogers twirling about in a romantic frenzy in Top Hat, with each of their ligaments in full suspension of community, born for the stage and somehow never entirely leaving it; Bergman pleading to Bogart in Casablanca, asking What about us? and him replying We'll always have Paris with all that nostalgia in his eyes; and finally, the most heartwarming of all, that moment in It's a Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart becomes the richest man in town, everyone sings Auld Lang Syne under a glossy Christmas tree, and his daughter says Look daddy, teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings. 

There were times when the talent of incredible actors riveted their eyes, like The Joker's interrogation scene in The Dark Night- the background siren raising in intensity with each passing second; or Peter O'Toole's passionate yet elegant outburst as Henry II in The Lion in Winter: My life when it is written will read better than it lived...; Samuel Jackson's holier-than-thou diatribe against a guy who cheated Marcelus Wallace, "quoting" Ezekiel before slaying him, saying with a voice as powerful as God's: And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!; Robin Williams' classic monologue in Good Will Hunting, when he tells Will about all his experience and exposes him for his lack of it, which never failed to leave them wondering what the Sistine Chapel smelled like or who Michaelangelo was; or the most riveting scene in Silence of the Lambs, when Clarice opens up about her past and Dr. Lecter becomes uncannily receptive: You still wake up sometimes don't you?  In the middle of the night, to that awful screaming of the lambs? and Marlon Brando's passionate condemnation of his countrymen on the marble steps of the Forum in Julius Caesar: How judgment thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason! 

There was artful cinematography and music that resonated with it perfectly; like when Winona danced like a snow queen as Edward Scissorhands sculpted an ice angel in her honor; all those delightfully boyish moments in Hook when Peter Banning re-found an ounce of his innocence, the music soaring with a kind of dreamy wonder that only children can know; and for romantics, that iconic moment in Titanic when Rose pretends she's flying aboard the front of the ship, while Jack holds onto her and pulls her in for a kiss just as a sunset lights up the sky with a violent red that can only be the color of true love; the opening scene of The Lion King, when the sun rises over the sky and all kinds of animals march on Pride Rock joyfully anticipating the presentation of their newborn prince; or that time when Julie Andrews sang Do Re Mi on a picturesque Alpine hill to the happy Von Trapp children, wearing drapes for clothes: a woman so blessed with a talent for singing that it raised the very hills off the ground and gave them life; and that bone-chilling scene from Once Upon a Time in the West, when the most beautiful woman in the world sorrowfully approaches her murdered family in the dusty melancholy of the desert wind.  How did they create such wonderful things? these beings would think. 

There were moments from those interesting sci-fi action films that came out at the peak of the special effects era; Lacrimosa playing during the creation sequence in Tree of Life; the re-entry scene in Gravity when Sandra Bullock gets tossed about like a pinball as her escape pod burns through the atmosphere, complemented perfectly by some high-octane space-opera music orchestrating the neo-fetal metaphor that the film tried to suggest; Achilles and his Myrmidons sacking the beach of Troy with every ounce of their golden muscles shining by Apollo's light in the fire of that demigod's bravery- a force unstoppable in a land of heat and sand; or in Jurassic Park, when John Hammond strolls up to the camera on the grass and says Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Satler, welcome to Jurassic Park just before Grant looks out upon a lush plain full of roaming dinosaurs; and that moment in The Never-ending Story when the Rockbiter pulls up and gapes in awe at the beauty of the Ivory Tower, saying I never knew it was that beautiful as some otherworldly synth music begins, meaning to show them what heaven might have sounded like. 

There were scenes of immense happiness or tragedy that left them in tears, usually toward the ends of the best films; the joy of parents being reunited with their children in Hotel Rwanda became a sort of sacred moment that nobody could repress tears of happiness for; the time in Chariots of Fire when a runner says I believe God made me for a reason, but he also made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure just before crossing the finish line, where his face expresses the purest release of achievement and fatigue- two things that best described humans after they'd accomplished the greatest things in life; the symbolic masterpiece of Pan's Labyrinth, when Ophelia's tears mix with her blood and some water that's shining under the moonlight in a forgotten pagan temple, and when her spirit rises up off the ground into the afterworld, where her Father greets her on Judgement Day, praising her self-sacrifice the same way God must have praised Jesus' after he was crucified; and in the closing moments of Dances with Wolves, when a Native American who had grown to love a white man, expresses with great passion that he will always be his friend no matter where he goes in the world.  There were confrontations of death, like in Blade Runner when the replicant unexpectedly saves Deckard and tells him I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attacked ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched c-beams glitter in the dark at Tannhauser Gate... All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die; and at last, the ending of Gladiator, when Maximus delivers Rome from evil and feels himself drifting over a wheat field into the villa where his family lived, all while roses fell about him on the floor of the Coliseum in the real world.  It was a time when the greatest of philosopher-kings, Marcus Aurelias, became vindicated on the screen: Is Rome worth one good man's life?  He believed it once, make us believe it again. 

O murderous governors of the cosmos, wasn't this the way it should have been?  Would humans have made these things if they'd never been true events?  Why, oh why, couldn't they have been real?  But they were real.  These moments the alien species watched made them reject their own substance, as if the shame of being void of filmmaking were a crime against intelligent life everywhere.  The films showed them something that couldn't be described; something marked by so many ironies of emotion, struggle, and ideology that the mere notion of such beings seemed impossible.  Yet unbeknownst to them, a resurrection was underway that defied the natural order of things.  Their collective unconscious had re-molded human imaginations into figures with material forms, just as it had it done in the past.  What they never realized was that they were the ones being watched on screen; that they were the creations of the very species they'd unconsciously resurrected.