Renaissance: Paris 2054

Dark in look and feel, Renaissance is a film whose only grays are between the things we normally look at. The sharp angular lines of the city, structures, and characters' faces, conceal the fact that character-wise, they are anything but black and white, though in the end dark could be used to describe them all; dark pasts, dark acts, dark motives and methods and secrets.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

As an animated film which uses the same rotoscoping technology as "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly" (both by Richard Linklater), Renaissance boasts a distinct visual look. Unlike those two films, however, Renaissance takes things to another level, by reducing the palette to only black and white giving it a feel more reminiscent of the older film noirs it resembles thematically. Stylistically it's in the same ballpark as "Sin City", but whereas that film used color to bring important details to life, there are is virtually no color in Renaissance, and for that matter almost no grays either; everything seems fall within the catagory of being either light or shadow. At times we feel like what we're looking at is actually invisible and what we can "see" is merely the shadow or after-effect of the subjects we are trying to follow. It lends itself quite well to a story such as this, full of mystery, secrets, and clues hidden within the details. The saga is full of shifting alliances, culprits hiding in plain view, and plot twists which linger just around the corner and can felt before we actually see them.

The story itself is quite spare, and like many of the better film noirs it relies heavily on exposition, terse dialogue, and a slowly unfolding plot to maintain its air of secrecy. Think neo niors like Heat and L.A. Confidential though due to its futuristic elements works like Blade Runner (another sci-fi noir with sparse dialogue and a lot of atmosphere) and the anime Cowboy Bebop might be more on target. Even the romantic subplot of the film (probably its most heavily dramatic portion) is sparing when it comes to words: "I bet you meet a lot of flawless women in your line of work."

Karas and Bislane

The setting is a distopian Paris set in the not too distant future where the Eifel Tower can still be seen, and many new, tall and impressive buildings have been erected to tower over the slums and alleys where the parasites still live and continue to commit their petty crimes as they have since cities came into existance. An impressive opening shot pans down from the Eifel tower itself, lower and lower into the seemy underbelly of the metropolis. At a dingy techno-club a girl named Bislane dances on the floor. Unbenounced to her, her younger sister Ilona has come to the club to see the owner and bartender, Dimitri, with a dark purpose in mind. He's stolen something for her, a book the plot will later reveal, which contains the secret of immortality. Dimitri tells Ilona he had some trouble getting what she wanted, sleezily lets her know the price has gone up and then, after getting into a minor scuffle with her is confronted and told to leave by Bislane who finds the two where they are arguing on the balcony. Ilona will leave empty handed only to be abducted, setting in motion a plot that focuses on the search for her whereabouts, the hidden motives behind why she was taken, and what is at stake in her return.

Two exemplary images of noir

Above: Bislane in front of the Paris Skyline

Below: Reflection in the eye of Ilona's dead dog, the only witness to her abduction

A mega-company called Avalon looms above all else in the city of Paris in Renaissance. It employs the best and brightest (including the two sisters mentioned previously), and it maintains an iron grip on all. Our main character is Karas, a character like many we've seen in another film. He's tough and possesses a strong sense of justice, and is willing to bend the rules to do what he feels is right. In an early scene we watch him break protocol on a hostage situation to take out three kidnappers who have a young boy held at gunpoint. He seems to have as little regard for his own life as he does for operating procedure.

Over the course of the film, Karas will meet several important characters. Jonas Muller is a brilliant scientist and was a mentor to Ilona. Farfella is a shadowy gangster and childhood friend to Karas (the kind of friend who's useful when one wants to skirt the law, as Karas will have to later in this film). The slimy Dellenbach is the head of Avalon who bugs Karas's comm device, and later has Dimitri killed and attempts to abduct Muller with thugs who use a type of thermo-camouflage (the latter of which sets off a pretty interesting shootout in a greenhouse). Eventually Karas will get kicked off the force and have to rely upon Bislane to access information from Avalon which sets off a romantic subplot between the two. The final major character to be introduced is the elderly Nakata who was on the same team as Muller during a crucial project. He reveals the secret of their research that everyone seems to be dying to get their hands on: immortality. Muller, it turns out, had a younger brother with Progeria, a disease which causes hyper-rapid aging, and by trying to counteract it, it seems he's discovered the means to eternal youth.

Above: Another image reminiscent of classic noir, two silhouettes kissing in the rain

Below: Thermo-camouflaged soldiers

All of this leads to a confrontation as Karas and Dellenbach's men close in on Ilona's whereabouts at the same time and Karas is forced to choose between killing Ilona to keep Muller's secret or allowing her to live and reveal it to Avalon. On the one hand, Muller has died for the secret already and entrusted the choice to Karas. "Avalon cannot be allowed to obtain such limitless power. Without death life will become meaningless..." On the other hand, Karas has promised Bislane, now his current lover, that he will save Ilona, even though it has been decided beforehand that she will have to go into hiding and take on a new identity.

Things do not go as expected when Karas finally reaches Ilona. She has been held against her will by Muller (now dead) and his younger brother, who constitutes the one piece of evidence Muller couldn't destroy. When Karas arrives Ilona is trying to do just that, until Karas stops her from choking him to death. Ilona reveals herself to be completely selfish and willing to accomodate Avalon. She rejects the premise of taking a new identity and even tells Karas of her intention to take credit for Muller's work, saying "The world is waiting for MY discovery." After suffering a gunshot wound to his shoulder from one of Dellenbach's henchmen, Karas finds himself incapacitated and unable to physically restrain her and takes her life with his gun after she throws away the new identity he gives her and begins to defiantly march back to Dellenbach. When talking with Bislane afterward, Karas doesn't let on what happened with Ilona's death, choosing instead to let her sister retain a positive memory and the belief that she is still out there safe and alive.

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Thematically, Renaissance is fairly ambiguous, even while the question of morallity when it comes to eternal life is a big one. "Without death, life is meaningless", utters the character of Muller right before he expires. And with the brisk pace the plot continues we viewers are given little time to contemplate this until the lights come back on and the question resurfaces in our minds.

I remember the first time I saw the movie with a friend we ended up having a long discussion about the ending. He was ticked off at the decision Karas had made, feeling immortality was something which should have been allowed into Avalon's hands. I've often wondered if there isn't something inherently corrupt in the very idea of eternal life. Few can deny the power it would confer on those who possess it, and power as we all know, corrupts.

What if eternal life were made into a product? Should it really? Who decides who lives and who dies, and in the end is all of it merely a matter of money or favors? In many ways we live in something of a similar system already where those with large amounts of money or influence survive much longer despite sometimes having far worse ailments. The poor who become sick or infirm or just plain old suffer as their bodies slowly break down, addicted to medicine or life saving treatment, but what if there were a source of immortality and we all knew we could live on forever and not just for a few more years if only we could afford to pay the price... Movies like this one reflect the real world in a real way, and businesses like the fictional Avalon are not a far cry from the dirty pharmaceutical companies that deny medicine to the dying if there isn't a profit in it for them to make.

Another question I'd have to consider is what even if immortality were granted to the common man would be his future? Imagine being a slave for all eternity, with no release ever to be seen. It's been often said that there are fates worse than death, and with death no longer a master to us, who would be left? That human beings can be far crueler than death is something I have little doubt of, and characters like the villain Dellenbach make it quite believable that immortality might not just be the end of death's great menace, but also the beginning of an endless living hell as humans without scruple acquire what damn near amounts to godhod. Richard Dawkins once argued that death coupled with reproduction could actually be seen as a very big advantage to immortality, largely due to the ability to start over, brand new from scratch, and potentially fix the problems within a previous version of any creature.

Like the Watchmen movie which was adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, Renaissance doesn't give its viewers answers to these questions per se. Instead it merely shows us the decisions of its characters, leaving us to ponder them and whether or not we agree or disagree.

Men and Gods

I remember once being asked why I thought Akira was such a great movie, and while the groundbreaking animation and extreme violence certainly made it an influential film to this day, that all has to take a back seat to the central idea it posed: What if men were actually able to create a god?

I suppose before anything else, one should ask: What is it that makes someone or something a god? A being that doesn't die of old age seems to one criteria, though the word immortal probably addresses this more specifically (and you certainly seem to see a lot of immortals in comics, movies and TV shows making claims of godhood). It would seem that wielding immense amounts of power would be a prerequisite as well, though just what kind of power we're talking about would get called into question. Past kings, pharoahs, and emperors wielded incredible power, and some were considered gods by their subjects, though nowadays most probably would not since that power generally was derived from military might based on wealth or sometimes even just claims of divine right alone. If we're talking about physical power and ability than are strongmen like Arnold Schwarznegger or athletes Barry Bonds gods?

A lot of modern, monotheistic religions seem to pile on the things their gods can do: they are undying, everywhere, everyone, everything, are all-powerful, can see everything before it happens and if they want to, can change whatever they want whenever they want (although they generally, just... don't) and that's why they're the greatest and all the other gods bow down to them. But I think when it comes to the generic, general-use sense of the word, a "god" is best described as a being who lives for an extremely long time, and has incredible powers or abilities (when compared to a normal human being of course). The gods depicted by the ancient Greeks like Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus, readily come to mind as convenient examples but what's strange is that almost every ancient civilization and culture really seems to have had a similar concept of multiple gods championing different, various things (god of love, god of war, god agriculture). The Mesopotamians had Ishtar, the Indians have Shiva and Vishnu, the Japanese had Amataseru, etc... Moreover, different localities and territories used to champion different gods hoping they'd be favored over their neighbors in things like harvests, trade, warfare, and basically every other type of competition they had with those neighbors. Those who were more successful than others (or "favored by the gods" they'd probably put it) were able spread the worship of their gods around, while the gods of those who had smaller harvests, lost at military endeavors, or were simply less successful, fell by the wayside. While all this seems on one hand to lead to a giant "My god can beat up yours" sort of situation, I sometimes wonder what'd it be like if such gods actually existed, lived with their worhipers/subjects and provided leadership for them.

I used to like asking people, "If you were a god, what kind would you be? Would you be the type who was benevolent and generous to their people, or the kind who was vengeful and cruel?" Kind of a fun question, I got a lot of different answers, but thinking on it all again, I have to wonder if it's the addition of a human element that makes it interesting. Is a human that possesses incredible powers and has obtained immortality really a god? Or are they just a human you fear enough to obey and even worship if they're demanding it?

I have to admit, the gods of the ancient Greeks seemed pretty human when it came right down to it. They were constantly changing into animals, running wild enjoying themselves, taking mortal lovers at a whim to satisfy their own lusts (often leaving their baseborn, half-breed children to become lesser gods), and punishing arbitrarily any they felt had insulted them (occasionally raizing whole cities or even kingdoms in the process).

Most religious people would say that gods created men. Non-believers would say that men created gods. But a theological discussion is not what I'm aiming at and so while the latter of these two is most certainly meant figuratively (that men created gods within their own minds and imaginations), I have to wonder what if men, now wielding modern science were literally able to create a god?

The anime "Akira" explored this concept in an interesting way. In this story, scientists attempting to bestow humans with advanced psychic powers, succeeded in doing so, giving several test subjects just that, albeit with varying degrees of success. One of the subjects, a young boy named Akira (in this story, the young it seemed, were able to wield this new ability with much greater ease) attained such a high level of power, that he destroyed Tokyo by accident. Unsure of what exactly happened or if he still existed, but having heard he had great power, small parts of the populice had actually began to worship him as a god, forming cults, and prophesizing that he'd return someday. Although it is all just a story, I don't think it's entirely unrealistic to believe scientists might actually research this, or that if they succeeded, people would react by deifying a test subject for that matter. And though ostensibly the scientists of this story were experimenting with increasing human ability, one can't help but wonder if what is secretly desired by such a thing is the creation of a god. Is man's desire for a real, physical god truly so great that he'd one day seek to actually make one? Perhaps more telling than all of this even, however, is the reality that confronts the scientists of our story when they actually succeed...

If a "god" really is nothing more than a human with incredible powers who commands fear and awe in others and demands obedience and worship, then one should certainly hope that anybody who obtains such power would on some level or another be a "good" and benevolent person. The reality of power such as this, is that anyone who has it could simply do whatever they want.

The newest "god" in Akira was Tetsuo, a troubled, angry adolescent who gains his powers from experimental drugs scientists working for the government give him, and up until about a few days before the story begins, was a member in a violent biker gang. Along with his powers, he also gains a nearly constant splitting headache, a side-effect of the drugs. How's that for a candidate in a new god? He was troubled, angry and a bit violent before, now he has immense power and a constant headache making him more or less always pissed off. The scenes of him running amok, marching on downtown Neo-Tokyo, causing massive destruction and killing countless bystanders while he fights the army single-handed can be a pretty churning experience the first time you see. It also begs the question: Even if the person possessing godlike power genuinely wanted to do good, what's the likelihood that they at some point or another would simply get mad, find themselves in a bad mood, and destroy someone or something in their anger? Perhaps for the the sake of speeding up the plot, Tetsuo suffered from unending migraines and was more or less always ready to snap, but regardless, a being possessing untold amounts of power is not someone you'd want to see the angry side of. Imagine if your ruler was a god who lived amoung you and your fellow subjects in a city, and one day got angry and simply butchered everyone who happened to be in the main city square at the time.

Another work which examined the idea of godhood in an interesting and realistic way was "The Watchmen", specifically through the character of Dr. Manhattan. True to the form of many characters in comics, Dr. Manhattan is the type of person who decides to do everything he can to help out civilization after obtaining god-like powers. He creates a cheap, efficient, easy source of renewable energy, does his best to keep peace, devotes much of his time to further research. Yet, after a time two things become apparent to him. First, that his powers and wisdom have isolated him from other human beings who regard him with a mixture of not only admiration and awe, but also envy and suspicion. Second, that for all the good he's tried to achieve and succeeded at, many people still suffer and others are ungrateful for what they receive after they become used to it. For all his benevolence, the people turn on him at one point with blame and accusation. Unlike Tetsuo, however, Dr. Manhattan flees rather than hurt others, but this leaves humanity to its own devices of war and destruction, particularly as a power vacuum has opened in his absence.

They say being the boss isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are responsibilities and duties to go along with the power. And if godhood implies not only immortality but also leadership, then hmm... What have we gotten ourselves into here? An eternity full of responsibility, listening to endless complaints, and constantly fixing the problems of people who are only human? How tiresome... Perhaps godhood, as well, really wouldn't be all it's cracked up to be either. One has to wonder if that's why the ancient Greek gods took little or no responsibility in running things even in the cities that bore their names, and instead were always out and about enjoying themselves.

Getting back to the question earlier, "What kind of god would you be?", imagine for a second if anyone one of your friends, co-workers, or just anyone you knew suddenly became a god, and what would they do? Would we all suddenly have a stable renewable, energy source, or would the streets be running red with blood? It's been often said that no man was ever meant to have the powers of gods, and perhaps with good reason. In the beginning we'd say that in the wrong hands it could be disasterous. Thinking only a little further we'd have to ask "Exactly whose hands are the right ones at all?" History is littered with cases of kings, emperors, and dictators, all men with too much power, absolutely abusing those they rule. Considering their power all comes from their legions of followers, how scary would a real-life, living god be? A being like that wouldn't even need legions of followers to commit horrible acts, but would still have them anyways because people would fall in line from fear or just a desire to try and curry favor. Throughout the ages and all the way up to the present, people have fought for equal rights for all of mankind. Is a god really what humanity wants at all?