No Country for Old Men (2007)

The movie starts with Tommy Lee Jones’ voice over. That’s misleading for two reasons: (1) He’s the sheriff. You’ve seen him in The Fugitive (or even Men In Black) and you automatically assume he’s going to be hot on the tail of the bad guys, closing in, making their lives miserable, giving them a taste of what it’s like to be hunted. That never happens. (2) Jones’ character, Ed Tom Bell is a third generation sheriff. He grew up hearing not only about his father and grandfather’s pursuits, but of their colleagues. Bell talks of law enforcement officers who did not even wear guns. He says he likes to hear their stories. Combine this with the movie title and you might conclude that this is no country for old men, because crime has gotten much worse than it used to be. Andy Taylor’s Mayberry once existed but is now extinct. But we soon learn the opposite is true.

He sent a man to jail for killing a 14 year old girl. They called it a crime of passion, but the killer told him it wasn’t passion. He’d been planning to kill someone all of his life and if he got out of jail, he promised Ed he’d kill again.

Evil is old. Bell knows it, so did his father and his father before him. Evil’s unreasonable, unpredictable, and inexorable. It’s not invisible, just unnoticed. It takes you by surprise or it comes while you’re waiting. You deserve it or you don’t. You grasp its logic or grapple trying. It’s slow, it’s fast, it’s inescapable.

Here evil is embodied by Anton Chigurh. With his pageboy, oxygen tank and deliberate reticence, his weirdness is obvious, but not frightening. Not at first.

We first see him being arrested and cuffed, but inexplicably, he’s not chained to anything. His movement is restricted, but not prevented. When the deputy turns his back while talking on the phone to describe his capture, Anton easily comes up and kills him from behind. Their bodies spin on the floor as Anton strangles. The blood swirls and the killer’s intensity is almost sexual.

He steals the deputy’s car, police lights whirring, he pulls over a motorist who thinks the oxygen tank by the “cop’s” side is strange, but not troubling. “What’s that he asks.” “Can you please step out of the car?” Anton replies and even though Anton is dressed as a civilian, the driver doesn’t begin to think anything is wrong, until perhaps the very end, when Anton raises the hose on the oxygen take and uses it to propel a lethal pellet into the man’s head. My friend thought it was a stupid weapon, but for a serial killer who murders more for psychological art than necessity, it’s perfect. Anton does not prefer this tank over a shotgun because it’s less conspicuous, as he has no trouble parading massive rifles in public places. Rather, the tank gives him the opportunity to watch the fear and certainty of death dawn, then spread, then end, while a gun or knife would have put his victims on instant alert, shortening the game. Cat and mouse is more layered, when you see the mouse just discovering he is prey.

Anton stops off at a gas station and, oxygen tank in tow, he teases the owner. Twisting his words, taking offense where none was meant, until the man soon realizes there’s no answer he can give this stranger that will keep him safe. Anton takes out a coin and asks the man if he’s feeling lucky. This moment was part of the movie’s famous trailer. Its tension is part of what kept me away from the film for 6 years. I didn’t want to know what happened when that coin stopped spinning. I can watch violent scenes, but don’t like seeing them approach. A shoe on the floor is nothing, compared to watching it drop, in slow motion. If you’ve never been assaulted, you can’t empathize with the injury, but hopeless, helpless waiting is something we’ve all experienced in one form of another and it’s stomach-turning. If the shark doesn’t get you, his theme music will. But things end well for this shopkeeper. Anton tells him to call the coin. He delays, saying how can he call it if he doesn’t know what he stands to win or lose. Anton insists. Head or tails? He chooses head. He wins. Anton gives him the coin as a prize, but orders him to keep it in a special place. Don’t let it mingle with all the other coins, because then it won’t matter.

I wonder about the shopkeeper though. He’s in an unpopulated part of Texas. Near the Mexican border. He’s got merchandise, money and few places to hide. If urban 7-Elevens are dangerous, surely isolated road stops are. How’d he protect himself before Anton? And if he didn’t, surely he knew that the day would come when he might regret it. Ed Tom Bell saw trouble on the horizon and this man should have seen it too, but instead of preparing for it, they both seemed to just wait to see what would happen when it came.

Meanwhile we see Llewelyn Moss out hunting in the desert. He comes upon a slew of dead bodies and abandoned vehicles. There’s one man still alive, bleeding, begging Moss for water. “I ain’t got no water,” he answers unapologetically. He notices that the man’s truck bed is full of drugs. They were transporting an illegal load across the border and obviously got double-crossed during the exchange. Moss asks the fast failing man who was the last one left standing. There was a fight, but it seems that that the attacked killed as many people as the attackers did. There are drugs, but no drug money. Where’d it go? Moss decides that whoever took the money would have gone to the shade. He sees a big tree in the distance and stealthily heads over. There’s a dead man there and a brief case. It’s loaded with money and Moss takes it and hurries off.

Back at his trailer home, he eludes his wife Carla Jean’s questions about where he’s been and hides the money, still in the briefcase, under his trailer.

I appreciate that the lead characters in this movie are all smart, but they do some really dumb things. This is one of them. This is a world where people where dirty jeans to a funeral. It’s hot and dusty and no one carries a brief case. Why would Moss have kept the money in there. It draws attention and it’s heavier than a back pack would have been. Plus, he seems to know that there’s $2 million in the case, but he apparently never bothered to count the stash. It’s a ridiculous point that runs the plot and I’d like to tell the Coens that they could have told the same story, only with a more believable cash container. But I guess avoiding the strange and unlikely has never been their strong suit.

Moss goes to bed, but then decides to return to the desert. He lets Carla Jean know that he’s going off on a fool’s errand and may never return. “Tell mama I love her,” he says as he departs. She reminds him that his mother is already dead. Oh, then he’ll tell her himself, if anything happens. He fills a jug of water before he leaves. So, did he return only to take water to the man he left dying? Did his conscious prick him? Is this gesture supposed to tell us that at heart he’s a decent man? Since he scoffed at the man and had no qualms about abandoning him in the first place, I’m not moved by Moss’ belated compassion, especially since the guy was in such bad shape that I’d hardly expect him to live for 12 more hours waiting for Moss to take pity and help him.

Moss finds his way back to the scene of the shoot out and the man he’d left in the car is now dead. He survived the first round of gunfire only to die later. You're never really spared, only suspended. Aqua came too late to save him. Moss sees vehicles in the distance and as they start shooting at him, he has to leave his truck behind. He makes it home wounded and tells Carla Jean that his truck is registered and can be traced back to him, the Department of Motor Vehicles opens at 9:00 a.m. and that’s how much time they have to get away. She needs to pack everything she can, because she’ll never see any of it again.

He puts her on a bus to her ornery mother in Odessa. But once his vehicle paperwork reveals his identity to the killers, they’ll know who his wife is too. They can easily track down her relatives, so sending her to this destination for protection was crazy. He should have sent her anywhere Greyhound goes where she would have no roots that could be trailed.

He sends her off and rather than getting on a separate bus himself, he gets a car and tries to lay low in the local area. He checks into a motel, but takes two rooms, one in back of the other. He hides the money in the hotel vent in one room, then makes sure he can retrieve it quickly from the adjacent room. The plan being the people on his tail will go to the wrong room and he can high tail it out of there from the other room, with the loot.

Ed Tom Bell and his deputy find the dead bodies in the desert. It’s a drug deal gone bad and when they see Moss’ truck Bell, who knows Moss casually, figures that Moss wasn’t involved with the drug sale, but took the money after things went downhill. The deputy wonders if Moss knew what he was getting into. Well, Bell reasons if Moss saw all the carnage that they did, it probably left an impression on, because it sure impressed Bell.

Anton is hired by the people who put up the money for the drugs to find the person who took it. Once he gets the assignment, he promptly kills the people who retained him, traces Moss’ vehicle registration and heads to Moss’ trailer. It’s empty, but reading Moss’ mail, Anton sees the number most frequently called on the phone bill. That number belongs to Carla Jean’s mother. So Anton immediately knows where to find the wife, but better still, he knows how to find the money. It seems that it was packed with a transmitter inside the brief case that Moss never bothered to rifle through. Once that transmitter starts beeping, it will lead him directly to the brief case. Anton opens Moss’ fridge, takes out the milk and sits down to drink it, watching his reflection on the black tv screen before him.

Ed Tom Bell comes along so soon after Anton has left that the milk glass is still sweating. They just missed him and “that’s frustrating,” he exclaims. But also life-saving. When they entered the trailer, Ed instructed his deputy to have his gun drawn and ready, but what about Ed’s gun? He tells the deputy that he’d rather just hide behind him! But considering all of the dead people they found in the desert, their two guns would not have been enough to defend themselves against multiple shooters – or even one shooter with a powerful enough weapon. So, why DOES Ed go in without his gun drawn? Does he want to be like the sheriffs of old who didn’t wear one? Why. That approach only works if crime rates are low or the criminals easily outsmarted. Ed already knows that neither is the case in this situation. Does he just think death is inevitable and evil something that you can only defeat if you never meet it? Otherwise, don’t bother trying.

Ed takes a swig of the still cool milk and also looks at his reflection in the blank television screen. Are he and Anton both just playing roles? If Anton’s role is evil personified, what is Ed’s? He’s not justice. He’s chronicling wrong, but not correcting it or even warding it off. He’s not a narrator because the audience knows more than Bell ever does. Moss challenges Anton in this movie, no one else comes close. Jones’ great acting aside, one wonders what Bell’s purpose in the story is. Does he represent humanity? No more than Anton’s victims do.

Anton’s transmitter tracks the money to Moss’ motel, but the way it’s situated, hidden at a curve in the vent, it seems to be in a different motel room than the 2 that Moss has rented. Anton busts into that third room and finds three men inside who also have a transmitter. He blows them away. They were apparently hired to do the same job as he was.

Moss hears the gun shots and quickly runs away, briefcase in hand. At the next motel, he wonders how he was tracked and FINALLY looks in the briefcase and finds the transmitter. He removes it and I think maybe if he throws it out the window, Anton will think the money is across the street, but Moss knows he doesn’t have time for that. He calls down to the front desk and gets no answer, quickly concluding that the motel attendant has been killed. He sees footsteps outside his door and waits gun at the ready. The feet under the door move away. Was it a false alarm, a fellow guest who has now gone on down the hall? I hope so, but Moss knows better. The hall light is turned off, so that Moss can no longer see the feet under the door. Anton wants him to know as little as possible about when it’s going to happen. The door bursts open. Anton enters blasting. Moss throws himself out the window and runs down the street with his case.

There’s a chase and a satisfying turn when suddenly it is an armed Moss who is after Anton, rather than the other way around. He fires and hits Anton, ending the showdown briefly. Bleeding he buys an overcoat and beer from college kids and crosses the border into Mexico, pretending to be a drunk. I didn’t know that it was that easy for drunks to cross the border, without any proof of citizenship, but maybe so.

He throws the money over the railing near the immigration checkpoint and checks into a Mexican hospital. Anton doesn’t. He explodes a car to distract pharmacy employees, steals the drugs he needs and treats his own injuries.

In a high rise office in the business district, a corporate exec wants his $2 million back. He hires Carson Wells to find the man who has taken it. Carson tells him its easier said than done, because Anton will be after Moss too and Anton plays by a different set of rules. Money doesn’t mean anything to him. He has his own principles and adheres to them in a way that gives him a strange type of honor. Unlike the exec or Carson, Anton can’t be bought, which makes him all the more dangerous. Knowing this, Carson heads off after Moss anyway.

He says it took him only 3 hours to find Moss in the Mexican hospital and if he can find him, he tells Moss that Anton surely will. If Moss lets him know where the money is, he can save his life. Moss won’t. He’s willing to die. But is he willing to see Carla Jean die, Carson wonders. He knows she’s in Odessa and so does Anton. Moss is quiet, but unyielding. He gives Moss his card and tells him he’ll be staying in the hotel across the border.

All roads lead to Odessa. Ed Tom heads out that way too and tells Carla Jean to contact him when she hears from Moss. He can keep Moss safe, he assures her. How so? And why doesn’t he try keeping Carla Jean safe? Ed Tom may not know that the bad guys are after her, but if he knows that Moss will make contact with her you’d think he’d realize that others know the same. By keeping tabs on her, he’s closer to capturing both Moss and the killers, but instead of guarding them Ed leaves Carla Jean and her mother to their own devices.
He goes to visit an old family friend. His grandpa’s deputy, Ellis, who is now paralyzed. He asks him what he would do if he could confront the man who put him in that chair. Probably nothing. There wouldn’t be a point. Ed is surprised. Ellis says all the time you spend trying to get back something that’s been taken from you makes you lose even more. Hmmm. That’s one way to look at things, but Anton’s trying to get back money that’s been taken and he doesn’t seem to be suffering much. As the two men converse, Ellis recalls his Uncle Mac who was shot down on his own front porch in 1909. Ellis hears from Ed’s wife that Ed will be retiring. Ellis wants to know why. At first I think Ed will deny that it’s true, but he tells Ellis that he’s retiring because he feels overmatched. Well, that’s fine but I have not seen him really ENTER the match. He’s not stayed one step ahead of Anton or tried to catch up. He’s been content to follow him, rather than chase. Is he a coward? A man who has entered the wrong profession, one that he inherited rather than chose? I don’t know. The gas station owner that Anton terrorized with the coin had inherited that shop from his father-in-law. He married into it. Maybe we are all heirs to our own destiny, not something that we shape, but that those who shape US do. I don’t know why Ed is there or what I am supposed to learn from his perceptions. If he’s changed, dwindled, if he used to put killers away and now he can’t, then I need to see him trying and failing. I just see him watching.

Carson spies the briefcase that Moss tossed aside over the guard rail. He plans to retrieve it later. Although he was the one who told Moss just how close on Moss’ heels Anton was didn’t bother to watch his own. Back at his hotel Anton waylays him. He tells Anton he can get the money, says, “You don’t have to do this,” and Anton replies that’s what they all say. You don’t have to do this. Woody turns in a fine performance, sweating with fear, but never losing his used car salesman swagger. Carson’s hotel phone rings. Anton answers it, then casually kills Carson so he can give the caller his full attention.

“Who is this?” Moss asks on the other end. Anton knows that Moss knows who it is. He tells him to give Anton the money now. Then, he’ll still kill Moss, but he’ll spare Carla Jean. If Moss doesn’t surrender now, then Anton will treat Carla Jean as if she’s just as guilty as Moss is. Moss refuses. He says that Anton will go to Odessa, but Carla Jean won’t be there. Huh? She’s there in Odessa now. Who’s to say that Anton can’t easily get to wherever she might be in the future?

In the movie’s stupidest turn, Moss calls Carla Jean and tells her to go to El Paso where he will give her the money, put her on a plane and then he’ll confront Anton. Since Anton is, presumably, more concerned with the money than Moss (as far as Moss is concerned, even if the audience knows better), why does Moss figure that Anton won’t go after her, wherever he sends her? Plus, since everyone in the world already knows she’s in Odessa, how does Moss think she can get out of there safely and live long enough for him to put her on a plane to ANYWHERE?

Carla Jean wonders about her mother. She can’t just leave her behind. Sure she can Moss says, the old woman’s so aggravating that she’ll be perfectly safe alone. No one’s going to harm HER. It’s a funny line, but also shows how little Moss knows about Anton. He doesn’t just kill when he has to, for a purpose or to gain an objective. If Moss knew this would it make him more effective against Anton? Well, it didn’t help Carson.

Speaking of which, Anton heads to the skyscraper where the business exec who hired Carson is and kills him, angry that the guy hired another team of assassins and gave the transmitter needed to do ANTON’s job.

Carla Jean proceeds to El Paso on Moss’ orders. Moss charms border patrol by telling him he’s a Vietnam vet (Carson was too) and crosses back into the US. He gets to El Paso first. A woman by the pool flirts with him, but he tells her he’s married. Is that why he keeps looking around? Is it his wife he’s waiting for, the woman asks? That’s half of it. The other half is just him looking at what’s to come, he replies. Well, why did he arrange to have his wife meet him at the same place where danger would be? I don’t understand it. If part of him fears Anton’s arrival, how does he think she will be safe? She’s more worried about Moss and calls Ed Tom to El Paso too, because her husband is in over his head.

Here it seems like a piece of the movie is missing. It’s not the finale we expected, perhaps because this a movie about reaction, not action. Dusk comes we see a dead body floating in the pool. It’s the woman who flirted with Moss. Flash to an open hotel room, with a dead Moss inside. We don’t even get to see him lose. Carla Jean pulls up in a car, sees the yellow police tape and screams.

Ed Tom talks about what went down with the local police chief. The chief thinks that crime is different today and it all started when kids dyed their hair and stopped saying sir and madam. It’s not just one thing. It’s a whole tide of bad things that changes society for the worse. Ed agrees with this, only his history should tell him that society has always known the worst. The chief says that Anton not only killed Carson at the hotel, but the day before he’d killed the desk clerk. He must love to return to the scene of the crime.

This is ridiculous because we had not seen Anton exhibit a pattern of doing any such thing. In fact, in returning to the desert in the first place once he’d already had the money (and could not be traced to its source), Moss seemed more like he was determined to revisit the scene of the crime than Anton. Secondly, if there had been a murder there the day before, in a small town like that, surely there would be evidence of it remaining 24 hours later. Carson would have heard about the desk clerk being killed, known it was Anton and would never have returned to that hotel. He should have been on better alert anyway, but now that we’re told there was another murder besides his at that same location, there’s no excuse for him being caught off guard left.

This return to the scene of the crime plot device is just thrown out to give ED a reason to return to the El Paso motel. He does and stops outside the hotel room where Moss died. It’s still cordoned off with yellow tape. Inside we see Anton lurking in the shadows. Ed draws his gun (oh, he decides to use it THIS time) and enters with trepidation. The room appears to be empty. He goes into the bathroom, turns on the light. It’s empty, with the window locked. He sits on the bed, sighing in relief. He's missed Anton by minutes again, just as he did when he got to Moss' trailer and drank the still-cool milk. Back then, he said being minutes behind Anton was "frustrating," but was it? Was he thankful to have gotten there too late for a confrontation?

He looks down and sees the vent in the room. The cover has been unscrewed and lies on the floor, there’s a discarded coin beside it. We must assume that Moss hid the money inside that vent (as he had before) and Anton found it. But where is Anton now? He was too big to climb into the vent? Wasn’t he? How did he escape?

I assume Moss rented to hotel rooms this time as he had the first time and maybe we thought Anton was in the room that Ed Tom entered, when he was actually in the adjoining one.

Time passes. Carla Jean buries her mother who was surprisingly only 58 years old. For some reason she was portrayed as an older woman and I wonder if there's something significant about her true age. Carla Jean returns home from the funeral only to find Anton waiting for her. She knew he would come, but she doesn’t have the money. He says he will kill her anyway, he promised Moss he would. He promised her husband he would kill her?? Yes. Moss had the chance to save her, but chose to save himself. Even though Anton’s explanation is supposed to be perverted, I somewhat agree with what he says. Whether it meant giving up the $2 million or not, I think Moss unnecessarily put Carla Jean’s life in danger.

Carla Jean doesn’t beg. Anton offers her a way out. He’ll flip the coin and she has to call it. She won’t. She won’t call it. It’s him. He makes the choice whether she lives or dies. The coin doesn’t. Cut to the house exterior, Anton is exiting. He made the coin’s choice.

He is leaving in his car and is hit by a random car. He’s hurt badly, bone extruding from his arm. Moss couldn’t bring him down. Law enforcement didn’t catch him. Mercy never stopped him. But he’s driving away on a peaceful residential street when he’s hit by a car out of nowhere. There are police sirens in the distance. He waves down two boys and buys a shirt from one of them. Tells them they never saw him. Then, he’s gone, injured but alive. We don’t know why he didn’t kill them. He killed 2 men to steal their car. Killed two hotel clerks, but let the woman at the trailer office where Moss lived survive. Urgency doesn’t dictate his victims. What does?

Ed Tom is at home breakfasting with his wife. He’s retired and aimless. He had a dream. Two of them, both about his father. In one he had money and he lost it. He can’t remember the details. In the other, his father was still a young man, younger than Ed was. He was passing by with a horn of fire and he rode his horse into the distance and Ed knew that his father was going somewhere to make a fire out in that unknown dark and cold and when Ed got there, his father (and the horn of fire, I guess) would be waiting. This dream is reminiscent of Moss and his dead mother. He expected to go someplace where he could tell her he loved her himself. But in the end, Ed’s father offered him protection, something none of the other characters – except Anton – ever had.

Ed told Ellis that he’d always expected to find God later in life, but never did. Why does he think that? Because he feels there’s no justice? That right does not prevail over wrong? Maybe he wasn't overmatched by the criminals, but by the evil that propels them, so that good can never conquer bad. That might explain his lackluster efforts to apprehend Anton, but even so why retire? Death doesn’t approach when you’re overmatched, then halt if you retreat. It just comes anyway. He asked Ellis when his Uncle Mac died, after being shot on his own porch, while his killers casually looked on and watched him bleed? Was it right after he was shot or was it later? It was later that night and his Aunt buried him the next day. So, it seems that any escape is only temporary. Unhurried, unworried, death always catches up with you, which is the same lesson Moss learned.

Cloud Atlas, The Book (2004)

Because I hit the maximum character length on Goodreads, I decided to put my review of the Cloud Atlas book here, which will make it easier to find and compare to the movie review which will follow -- as soon as I see the movie!

[contains SPOILERS]

I thought this book would be about reincarnation. Which means, I expected the process of reincarnation to figure into the story's plot and, as characters became aware of its role in their lives, eventually factor into their development and become a catalyst in their meeting with destiny. Instead a flimsy reference to reincarnation is used as a very thin thread, which loosely links 6 disparate short stories.

The author, David Mitchell, is very talented in creating not only diverse narratives, but different worlds, sometimes complete with new languages that are delightful to decipher and interpret. What he clearly couldn't do was tell a compelling, novel length story. So, what we get is themes bookending short tales, rather than an extended plot.

For the most part, the reincarnated souls don't share common personality traits or ethics. They don't learn from past life mistakes. They don't inherit karma. Basically, all they share is a comet shaped birthmark on the left shoulder blade. In a lurid violation of the "show us don't tell us" rule, that's how we are able to identify them as the supposedly same person, from story to story.

In case you get through 75% of the book without realizing its transparent structure, Mitchell helps you along by having one of the reincarnated protagonists, a music composer, spell it out, by using the outline for his symphony (helpfully titled Cloud Atlas Sextet) as an unneeded metaphor for the book as a whole:

"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists'" piano, clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each soli is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky?" Unfortunately, the answer is NEITHER.

While "gimmicky" would not be a compliment, it might require more complexity in the interweaving or overlap between stories than actually exists here.

The series of six begins with ADAM EWING, an American notary from San Francisco (during the Gold Rush era) who handles various estates and is traveling home, from abroad, on a ship that stops at various ports on "uncivilized" black islands being overrun by Anglo-Saxon missionaries and fortune seekers, both seeking to exploit the local tribes. They imprison and kill them, steal their resources, and/or strive to convert them to a code of ethics that is more modern than theirs, but, in the end, no more moral or less savage.

If the natives aren't killed by outright oppression, then it's the foreign diseases that the white ships bring, for which the tribes have no immunity. They are dying off in droves, a fact which those invading their lands care nothing about. Adam distances himself from the tribes people, but also empathizes the more he sees them victimized by his peers. Religious without hypocrisy, Adam tells his shipmates that they should be civilizing the natives, not killing them and is told that the best of the blacks is not too good to die like a pig.

Back aboard ship, Ewing seems strangely enchanted with the beauty of a young shipmate, Rafael. In the end we learn that Rafael is being raped by the more seasoned sailors and ultimately commits suicide to Ewing's horror. I had begun to wonder if Ewing was in love with Rafael himself. He only mentions him sparingly in his narrative, but in a way that suggested that Rafael was more often in his thoughts than in his journal. Ewing's fate is also intertwined with a stowaway', Autua, he is a runaway aboriginal slave. While on shore, Ewing saw the youth being beaten. He only made eye contact with him briefly, during the whipping, but when they did, Ewing saw recognition in the youth's eyes and "uncanny, amicable knowing."

Now, reading this during the first pages of the book, I thought we would experiment more with how kindred spirits are drawn together over time and over different lives, by the sub-conscious connection they're fated to have throughout incarnations, but it's a subject that's not really visited. Moreover, other than the shoulder birthmark, there is nothing in the personality of the characters or that experiences, together or alone, that would help you identify them as the same souls in the other stories. Except for the person who is described as having the birthmark, we don't recognize the other people with whom he/she interacts from one story to the next as being a continuing presence throughout many lives. So, if Ewing and Autua were reunited in future centuries, it's hard to infer that with certainty.

Furthermore, if Ewing seemed so fascinated by Rafael because he's known him before or will know him again -- it's not clear who plays the "Rafael" role in the other stories. Also, how are the Autua and Rafael roles different? Are Autua and Ewing always the characters who rescue each other and co-exist from lifetime to lifetime? Is Rafael always the soul that Ewing fails to save, because he understood and gave too little, too late?

We eventually learn that Ewing is being poisoned by the ship's doctor, Henry Goose, surgeon to the London nobility. Does the soul of this same villain return in the other stories or, sometimes, is life itself the villain? Perhaps, Ewing's life lesson is that he shouldn't have trusted Goose based only on his station in life. When Autua rescues Ewing from the death Goose had planned for him, Ewing vows to dedicate the rest of his life to the abolitionist movement, realizing that no race is superior to the other in intellect, compassion, evil or brutality.

The next hero is ROBERT FROBISHER. I found his (and later Zachry's) one of the two most compelling stories in the sextet. Frobisher's story is told through letters to his friend and sometime lover, Rufus Sixsmith. Even though we don't actually "meet" Sixsmith in this story, he's just an addressee, the depth of his feelings become so clear based on nothing more than offhand references by Frobisher, that by the time Sixsmith is actually introduced to us as an older man in the next tale, he already seems fully-fleshed and our stake in his outcome is a firmly vested.

Frobisher is the black sheep of a rich British family. He's a genius, gifted composer, but a bankrupt and lecher, using both men and women for his pleasure and his financial security. He's been disinherited by his disapproving father and gallivants through Europe, skipping out on hotel bills and concocting a web of lies that allow him to infiltrate the homes of the wealthy long enough to steal and fence their valuables, before they find out his checkered past and chuck him out the door.

We meet him in 1931, when he weasels a position as apprentice to a wealthy, older composer, Ayrs who is living off of his laurels, his creativity having dried up. Frobisher is able to translate Ayrs' stunted compositions to music in a way that revitalizes the elder's dying brilliance. But they're at a stage in their lives, where Frobisher actually has more to teach Ayrs than learn from him. Ayrs steals Frobisher's work, confident that Frobisher's has sunk so low on the social status pole that there is nothing Frobisher can do, except grin and bear it, grateful to have Ayrs' generous roof over his head.

Aware that his hands are tied, Frobisher grudgingly defers to Ayrs, but secretly works on his own masterpiece, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, careful not to let it fall prey to Ayrs' plagiarist instincts.

Meanwhile, Frobisher is sleeping with Ayrs' wife who is becoming more possessive all the time. Frobisher happens upon a half-finished diary in Ayrs' library: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. It fascinates him and he longs to find the rest of the document. Even half-finished he can easily tell that Ewing is being poisoned by his physician Henry Goose. Perhaps Frobisher is able to divine this so quickly due to what he has learned between lives, but overall, he seems less wise and evolved than Adam Ewing. Plus, unlike the other reincarnates, Frobisher is uniquely self-centered, his altruistic leanings quite few.

Has his soul reverted because Ewing naiveté and faith only caused him harm? That would be hard to say, because it was AFTER he was poisoned by Goose that Ewing decided to help others, even if it cost him personally.

Ayrs reveals that he's known Frobisher was sleeping with his wife all along and will actually use that fact to contribue to Frobisher's permanent ruin, unless Frobisher quietly continues to let Ayrs' pass Frobisher's work off as his own. Frobisher has a "meet cute" with Ayrs' daughter Eva, as they hate each other at first site. However, when the young lady softens towards him, Frobisher believes that she has fallen in love. He soon comes to requite those feelings, only to find that he was mistaken. Eva is engaged to someone else and knowing that he has slept with her mother and been shunned by her father, is quite contemptuous of him. Frobisher contends that he is not broken-hearted, but fell out of love as quickly as he fell in it.

Still, once he finishes the Cloud Atlas sextet, he shoots himself. The end is jarring since Frobisher's tale has been a humorous and irreverent one. Yes, he was restless, but we didn't glimpse that he was dissatisfied or depressed. We don't know why he never returned to Sixsmith, the love of his life. For these reasons, his suicide seems quite genuine causing the real life shock and regret you have when you lose someone vibrant who had so much to live for and you (& Sixsmith) would have done so much to save, had you only realized he needed salvation. Only learn later in his tale does Frobisher elaborate about his brother Adrian who was killed in the war. He resented Adrian whom their father always held up as an example to whom Robert Frobisher could never compare. But after his death, he wonders about those aspects of his brother that Robert never knew and Adrian will never get to be. He goes to leave flowers on Adrian's grave, but can't find it among all the headstones of fallen soldiers. He leaves them on the grave of another "F," hoping that maybe the unknown deceased had crossed paths with Adrian, at some point.

We are left to conclude that Adrian, who never played a real part in Frobisher's story, was a big role in his death. After leaving Adrian's grave, Frobisher is in a car that hits a pheasant. Frobisher kills the wounded bird to put it out of its misery, his motive being far gentler than the act itself. I suppose the same can be said of Frobisher's suicide.

In his last letter to Sixsmith he informs him that not only does the universe move in a cycle, not only do patterns repeat, but actual lives do. Literally. They will meet again at the same place they met before and "ten years later I'll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter ..." this belief fascinates me, because I not only believe in reincarnation, but also think (hope?) that I will relive THIS life again too and reunite with people I've lost, in our same roles, only maybe I'll appreciate them more the next time around.

Frobisher's view on this subject comes as a surprise, as there has been nothing in the preceding narrative that suggested he entertained such notions. While it's a nice plot point surprise, it also reflects a weakness in character consistency. Plot-driven stories are usually frustrating, but especially so when there are six mostly unconnected ones.

The next story is Silkwoodish & takes place in the seventies. Sixsmith is an aged scientist who discovers that a nuclear reactor being reacted in a small American community is actually a hazard to everyone, a secret that no one affiliated with the reactor wants to get out. Sixsmith is murdered as he is about to go public with his findings, but not before telling his secret to an intrepid reporter, LUISA REY (the reincarnated Frobisher) to whome he instantly feels a connection. Rey pursues the story, putting her own life in jeopardy to do so. She is finally aided by a would-be assassin who recalls how her father (a police officer) saved his life decades earlier and believes he owes it to the dead man to rescue his daughter. So we have karma and we have Luisa willing to forfeit her own life to save others (in keeping with what Ewing was prepared to do in the end) & we have Sixsmith, but other than that, there's no true connection between Luisa, Frobisher and Ewing -- oh, except for her comet birthmark and fascination with Frobisher's Sextet, which she's sure she heard somewhere before!

TIMOTHY CAVENDISH is next on board. He's a London book editor. He seems to be another reverted soul. Not only is he not saving others, as Luisa did, but he's vaguely racist, which Frobisher did not seem to be. Of course, no one said that Mitchell believed in the Buddhist theory of reincarnation where the soul rises to different levels of consciousness and higher thinking over time, until it finally graduates to Dalai Lama heights. But if you aren't carrying the wisdom of past lives with you into the new ones, what's the point of reincarnating at all?

Cavendish's business is a failing one. One book comes across his desk, Half-Lives: The first Luisa Rey Mystery. Cavendish scoffs that the book contains a suggestion that Luisa Rey is Robert Frobisher reincarnated, but Cavendish writes that off as rubbish. After all, he also has a birthmark below his left armpit. So what? We aren't familiar with the book's writer, Hilary V. Hush (surely a pseudonym), nor are we advised of her connection to Luisa, but Luisa came into contact with mediums, new age spiritualists, maybe she reached the reincarnation conclusion herself, after we left her. His mild interest in Half-Lives is a recurring one but his story takes off when one of his writers is involved in a murder scandal, the sensationalism of which sparks book sales. With the writer himself dead, his heirs accuse Cavendish of pocketing money that should be theirs. They hire thugs to threaten him. His brother sends him to a "safe place" that turns out to be an old folks' home -- actually, prison. We never learn why his brother sends him there. At least we were told that Dr. Henry Goose's schemes against Ewing were mercenary, but why is Cavendish victimized? He had an affair with his brother's wife once, but is what happens to Timothy meant to be his brother's retribution? God's? David Mitchell's?

Traveling to what he expects to be his haven, Timothy encounters many mishaps. In between them, he is riding in a cab when he thinks the driver calls him "Zachary" he replies that that isn't his name (but will be the name of a friend of his, someday). The cabbie responds that he said "exactly," not "Zachary." I sustain a concussion being hit over the head by such heavy foreshadowing.


Once signed into the elder care facility, Cavendish is not allowed to leave. His cruel guards (the nurses, administrators and facility staff) use physical force to detain him, strapping him down, whipping him like a child, even drugging him. It's like a Cuckoo's Nest for the elderly and Cavendish has his own vengeful Nurse Ratched. Trapped there on Christmas, Cavendish sees a documentary on Ypres a once beautiful town subjected to war atrocities. He wishes he had appreciated the joys in life before they were all obscured by clouds. He should have mapped the clouds' location to make the pitfalls easier to recognize. "What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds?"

Cavendish and 3 other inmates plan and execute a fumbling, funny escape. He uses the experience to write his own book, which becomes a bestseller and is made into a movie.

The next story takes place hundreds of years in the future in Nea So Copros, what was once Korea. Instead of enslaving other humans, people have taken to growing artificial beings, known as "fabricants" and using them as slaves. The fabricants feed on "soap" which keeps them in a robotic, semi-conscious state, preventing them from forming memories or independent thought. They only recite the lessons they have been programmed, serving humans without question. This futuristic world has its own language derived from ours. Sunrise = yellow up. TV = ADv. All movies are disneys. All handheld computers are sonys and our reincarnated heroine works for the evil Golden Arches. It's not called McDonald's, but its employees do wear scarlet and yellow uniforms! Their biggest holiday is Sextet Eve. I am not sure this is an ode to Frobisher's music or not.

Sonmi 451 is one of the fabricants. Not only are their senses dulled by the "soap" they are fed, but they are brainwashed in a cult like environment, where they are ordered to follow the word of leader Papa Song, if they want to reach paradise. They are subjected to daily sermons, rituals and videos that reinforce their servitude.

Sonmi lives this robotic life like the others until an unusually aware fabricant, Yoona 939 opens her eyes. Sonmi worked and slept in her dorm room with other fabricants. They lived in a soap-induced coma, not unlike the imprisonment of Timothy Cavendish, only they were not even aware they were prisoners. Sonmi knew no other life outside of work and sleep until Yoona woke her up when everyone else was sleeping and began to show her the secret world that humans inhabited after the fabricants were put to bed. Yoona plotted an escape and was killed in the process. After that Sonmi's own eyes were opened and she began to sense the world around her. Her knowledge grew and she only pretended to go through her old robotic motions. She thinks her newfound sentience is concealed from the world of humans (or purebloods) but she is caught in the act of sneaking around her workplace at night, when she is supposed to be asleep and is recruited by a member of an underground Unanimity, an organization seemingly dedicated to freeing fabricants.

"Free" in a sense, for the first time in her life, Sonmi devours human knowledge, learning everything from Plato to Hollywood era films. The flick or "Disney" that really captures her is about Timothy Cavendish. Ugh! This is such a heavy-handed and unrealistic link between the stories that it tells us more about the book's overall weakness than it serves as proof of the reincarnation.

The more embedded into this underground union Sonmi becomes, the more she learns about the atrocities committed against fabricants, while dew drugged purebloods (cosmetically altered so that they never age) live off of the fabricants' unending toil.

She learns that they are used by college students, much like lab rats on which they run experiments and write papers on their findings, oblivious of the harm, even death, they inflict on their subjects. She learns that tiny fabricants are created to serve as living dolls for the purebloods. Since there are fees levied to deactivate a fabricant, once pureblood are tired of playing with their "dolls" their parents just callously kill them rather than disposing of them in a more "humane" fashion. Finally, Sonmi learns about the biggest lie told to the fabricants: the promise that they will live in paradise after 12 years of service. She watches as fabricants with 12 years of service are taken to a room (expecting to be transported to beautiful retirement homes on a luxurious ship) and violently beheaded and mutilated. Their bodies are turned into the same "soap" that is fed to the living fabricants and also used in the food that the Golden Arches restaurant where Sonmi once worked served to purebloods.

Sonmi is stricken by one cold truth after the other. She sleeps with Hae-Joo, her union guide, Hae-Joo. The sex is joyless and mechanical, but at least it is an act of the living. When the Unanimity tells her they want to use her in their cause to free all fabricants, though their mission will be very dangerous for her, she readily agrees. She writes a manifesto for the union, declaring human rights for all fabricants. Then, she is arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death, all of which comes as no surprise.

She tells her story to an archivist and reveals that she knew that Hae-Joo and the Unanimity were working against her all along. She was a willing martyr. Their goal was to set her up as an example so that purebloods would recognize the threat posed by all fabricants if allowed to usurp their place. When Yoona was killed by humans, they falsely said it was because she posed a threat to a young pureblood boy dining in the restaurant where she served, teaching the humans that unless they kept them enslaved, the fabricants would murder and overthrow them. Similarly, Sonmi was used to spread a moral of the harm that would befall purebloods if other fabricants ever acquired knowledge and coalesced. Sonmi knew she was a tool, but did not believe the Declarations she offered would go to waste.

They were converted into catechism, to teach fabricants and those who would aid them submission, but Sonmi knew that it would inspire rebellion in some and inspire them to fight or die for freedom. She learned from the greatest and recalled, "As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor." Her narrative concluded, Sonmi tells the archivist to turn off his recorder. She is ready to march to her death in the Light House, but not before she finishes the Timothy Cavendish movie, her last request!

Sonmi realizes that for every rebel who is killed, multiple rebels will take her place, not unlike a many-headed snake, like the Hydra (the name of the nuclear reactor in Luisa's story) and it's the same conclusion that Ewing reaches when he realizes that his efforts on behalf of evolution are just one drop in the bucket, but that many drops create an ocean. The characters ponder similar concepts occasionally, but don't share common, or even derivative, goals and outlooks.

Finally, we meet Zachry (a name that Cavendish recognized as referring to him, centuries before his reincarnated Zachry was actually born). Zachry is a primitive islander, not unlike those Adam Ewing encountered on his sea voyage. He and his valleysmen worship the God Sonmi and fear the devil, Old Georgie.

As a youth, savage tribesmen from another village saw Zachry running to where his father and brother were and followed him. Zachry fell and was hidden from them, but they killed his father and enslaved his brother Adam. Zachry never told his family that he led the killers to the lost Adam and Pa, but he lived with the guilt for the rest of his life.

Sometimes Zachry's island was visited by an advanced ship inhabited by people with special "smarts" and technology that far surpassed Zachry's society's. These foreign visitors, called Prescients, would often trade goods with them, but their stays were brief and Zachry's people learned little about them. Then, one year a prescient woman, Meronym, said she wanted to stay and study the villagers. She offered to help out in one of the homes and give them goods, in exchange for an opportunity to witness life on their island directly. The villagers were suspicious and did not want the strange woman in their home with her unknown magic, so they nominated Zachry's family to play home to her, when they were absent at a village meeting.

Because Meronym worked hard and seemed kind, everyone soon took to her, but not Zachry. He thought she planned harm for his people and didn't like the way she was constantly studying them, learning all of their secrets, without divulging any of her own. He knew she possessed advance knowledge, but she would never reveal it, speaking in Zachry's language and acting at his stage of advancement, although he was sure she knew science and technology well beyond his range of understanding. He spied on her, following her to a cave where their family history was kept and accusing her of keeping secrets. Meronym replied that he had secrets of his own [I still don't know how she knew that or if she was just bluffing] and once went into her room and found her "orison" a small computer-like device (dare I say an ipad?) with video and sound. He saw a shimmering woman speaking in words he could not understand and was entranced, but the woman was quickly obscured by a gruff man who appeared on the screen (facetime, I presume), called Zachry by name and yelled at him. He quickly put the device down and ran out of the room, but he knew that Meronym knew he had snooped. He was even more wary of her after that, but when his sister fell ill, he called upon Meronym to help her. At first Meronym resisted. She was there as an explorer. It was not her place to change the course of their primitive lives or anything else. And she could get in trouble if she did so. He would never tell anyone what she'd done, if she would only help. Zachry told her about his role in Adam and Pa's death. It was a shameful secret he'd never divulged to anyone and she could use it against him, should he ever reveal hers. She takes pity on him and gives him the pill that will save Catkin's life. After that, he senses a bond with Meronym.

When she wants to explore forbidden areas of the island which the villagers believe to be cursed, Zachry, though frightened, decides to accompany her. They forge through dangerous jungle and finally come upon spectacular modern buildings full of advanced technology, but vacated. Meronym reveals that she is part of a small group of survivors who lived after the rest of humanity destroyed itself through greed (much like the Lost City of Atlantis). Only the untouched regions of the world like his island tribes still survived. Her civilization advanced to astronomical levels, but fought and destroyed the world, in their quest to kill and conquer each other. She has been traveling to find the few places where the survivors from her civilization can live and procreate. After her revelations, Zachry has visions from Old Georgie telling him to kill Meronym, but he listens to messages he has received in his dreams instead and actually saves her life during their journey, bringing her back to his village safely.

Not long after that, the village is taken over by marauding Kona tribesman, who rape and kill many villagers and take the rest as their slaves. Zachry is captured, but Meronym saves him on horseback, rather than running as he did when Pa and Adam were overtaken, Zachry is determined to return home to see if his mother and siblings could have survived the Kona attack. His home is empty and his possessions either stolen or left in a pile of rubble. Everything they built or spent lifetimes achieving and learning was destroyed in a matter of hours. What had it all been for? He doesn't know what has become of his family and not knowing is worse than certainty of their deaths. His young sisters would have been raped, but what about his aged mother? He sees the corpses of other villagers and the wisest man in his town has been beheaded. His rotten head now rests upon a spike on what had once been his front yard. Zachry has no words to describe his despair and the way Mitchell paints the scene for us, makes these the most moving and heartbreaking passages in the book.

To his surprise, Zachry finds a drunken Kona man sleeping in his bed. Delirious from his looting, he must have passed out and fallen behind the rest of his savage tribe. Zachry remembers a dream vision which warned him about this moment and cautioned him NOT to kill this man. He also knows that he will pay for taking a life. He shouldn't kill the slumbering villain. But he does. He later tells Meronym what he's done and she says nothing, casting no judgment. On the run, Zachry and Meronym become closer. He notices the comet-shaped birthmark on her shoulder. She tells him that the woman he saw on her orison is really his beloved Sonmi, not a God. She was a martyred fabricant from long ago whose archived history had become a mantle for freedom. Knowing that shimmering woman from the video was Sonmi did not make Zachry believe in her any less. What did Meronym believe in? Nothing she answered. Well, what does she think happens when we die? Meronym simply believes that when we die, we are gone. There is no afterlife.

She reveals the whole truth to him, her prescient kind is dying out due to a plague and they had intended to come and settle in his village, make it their territory so he had been right to suspect her. At this point, Zachry doesn't care. After what the Kona from another village just like his own did to him, why should he think that outsiders would be any worse. If they were like Meronym he would welcome rather than fear them in his world. She shows him her orison and she and her prescient leader invite him to leave with Meronym on one of their ships. He says that he must try to help his family, though far outnumbered by the Kona and not even knowing if his family members survived, any rescue attempts on his part would surely be a suicide mission. He vows to escort Meronym through the island that is unfamiliar to her, to get her safely to the spot where her mother ship has been docked before taking off to follow the Kona. On their way to the ship they are surrounded by Kona. There's a bridge they can use to get away, but remembering one of his dream visions, Zachry insists that they cannot cross it. Sonmi told him not to Meronym angrily denounces his dreams and superstitions, "An' did Sonmi know we got a furyin' swarm o' Kona on our tail?" she sarcastically demands. But in the end she gives in and believing in Zachry's word and instinct alone, she does not cross the bridge, but their attackers do. When they run across it with their horses, they prove too heavy and the bridge falls, they drop steeply into the water below where they are killed or maimed to grievously to survive. Meronym and Zachry survive, but his leg is injured and there are other Konas who will follow after them. When Zachry lapses into unconsciousness, she makes the decision to take him onto her ship. Woozy, a bleeding and drained Zachry floats on the water looking at the sky and marveling that clouds are like souls. They change form and color, but are still clouds as they drift across the ages, just as a soul is still a soul. No one can say where the cloud will blow from or where it will go, except God and the atlas o' clouds. (eye roll)

We don't know what life is like for Zachry outside of his village, but we learn that he went on to father children who retell his story with some skepticism. Interestingly, even though Meronym took Zachry to her island, his children speak in his dialect, suggesting that he was somehow reunited with villagers of his own kind. His children acknowledge that their dad was a weird old guy, but they believe in the orison, because they still have it. They found it among Zachry's remains and they still play the mesmerizing Sonmi video, even though they do not understand her language, her soothing image helps to put their children to sleep at night. As for the rest of their father's tales, they have to admit he was a little strange. After all, he came to believe that Meronym was Sonmi reincarnated. How crazy is that?

So, the sextet of stories is presented. I look at the pairings to see if there have been soulmates over time. Autua and Ewing, Frobisher and Sixsmith, Sixsmith and Luisa, Zachry and Meronym. In addition to the brother who betrayed him for reasons we can't guess, Cavendish had 3 friends who helped him break out of the institution, but he wasn't emotionally close to them exactly. He just reached out to them in his despair. Sonmi had Hae-Joo, but he betrayed her, so he was more her Dr. Goose than her Autua. All in all, the destined relationships that one usually explores in reincarnation stories isn't emphasized in this one. It's hinted at, a sense of deja vu, a flash of recognition, and instant sense of camaraderie, but the closest we get to examining a true bond is Zachry and Meronym. If there are links that are supposed to move forward from one life to the next, they don't. Many of the reincarnates are shaped by those they have lost: Frobisher's brother Adrian whose grave he could not locate; Luisa's father; Zachry's father and brother Adam (who shared a name with Adam Ewing, although Zachry is not a reincarnate himself, I think his losses impact Meronym's too); Sonmi's fabricant friend Yoona. Then both Adam and Meronym were separated from family. Meronym had a son who may have died in the plague that was killing prescients. But she did not know his fate and had to struggle with the uncertainty, which is just what Zachry had to do, when he did not know how or if his villagers survived the Kona attack. Most of them had to love and grieve without answers, but that's one of life's burdens in general, not something unique to this incarnated soul.


In sum, what have we learned? What has the reincarnated character learned from Ewing to Zachry? Though centuries apart, the primitive worlds that they knew were not dissimilar. But the same cannot be said of the reincarnated. Yes, Sonmi can be recognized as Ewing, perhaps Louisa can too, but Cavendish and Frobisher are not like any of them nor like each other. Like Ewing, Cavendish and Frobisher are victimized by wily oppressors, but that doesn't ultimately make them concerned with man's inhumanity to man. They grow crafty, but don't evolve. Zachry grows from boy to man, coward to fighter and he's connected to his ancestors and the past. It's his subconscious mentor. So, I suppose we have to accept him as the culmination of the five lives he has lived before. But while the story makes it clear that the world's patterns recycles, the universe grows, learns, collapses under its own weight of greed and evil, and is then reborn, it is not as easy to chart the character cycle of reincarnation. Autua in the first story could be Zachry in the last. Yes, Ewing could be (is) Meronym too, but who and why were all the people they became in between those first and last incarnations? One life does not impact and shape the other, except in passing, not in substance.

Even Sonmi the fabricant we knew is very unlike the Sonmi god that Zachry believes in. Sonmi 451 was not Zachry's patron saint who healed the sick and took the dead to a new womb to be reborn. Of course, legend recreates fact and it is reasonable to believe that the real Sonmi was converted into something different, higher than the fabricant flesh she actually was, just as Jesus Christ may have been. But even if Sonmi becomes mostly fairy tale over time, the reincarnations are supposed to be real. Why aren't they meaningful? What's their point? This is not a story about one soul over time. It's a collection of six narratives, connected to one author, but not to each other. Cavendish and Sonmi's paths inform each other far less than Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Darcy's do, so why label them reincarnations?

Blue Jasmine (2013)

My chief observations about the title character can also be applied to the movie: she's neither right nor wrong, not good or bad, at least not as bad as she could be.

The movie starts with Jasmine talking to her seatmate on a flight, about leaving college and abandoning hopes of a career in anthropology to marry Hal, a promising dreamboat. Blue Moon was playing when she and Hal met, and it's always been their song. As she prattles on, while disembarking and on through baggage claim, while her companion is unable to get a word in edgewise, it becomes clear that she doesn't even know the lady to whom she's talking, but Woody feels the need to hit us over the head with that point by not only having the woman walk away from Jasmine, but express what a pain she was to someone arriving at the airport to pick her up. A moment of subtle humor becomes a bludgeon, when taken too far.

A chic Jasmine directs a cabbie to an address she recites from a handwritten note, while bending his ear. When she arrives at the place, she has to call her sister to confirm that she's at the right hovel. She finds a spare key and over tips the driver for hauling her many Louis Vuitton bags up the stairs. Consequently, we are just as surprised as her sister, Ginger, to learn that Jasmine is broke. How did she manage to fly there first class if she has no money, Ginger asks. Jasmine doesn't know. She just did. And the Louis Vuitton? Don't judge her. She sold many of her expensive possessions and only got pennies on the dollar for them.

Sally Hawkins imbues Ginger with the type of working girl charm Marisa Tomei might bring to the role. Ginger seems genuinely good-hearted. Not slow-witted, but slow to act, easily influenced or silenced, low in self-esteem. She tells her two, chubby and blank-eyed sons that she and Jasmine were both adopted. Jasmine loved their parents, but Ginger didn't get along with them and left home early. Jasmine got the "good genes" was the common family opinion. Jasmine used to be Jeannine, but changed it.

There are frequent flashbacks from Jasmine's past life in the Hamptons with Hal, but for her they aren't flashbacks. She often slips into memory. Her current surroundings fade away and she's back in her mansion or at the stables, mingling with the social elite, saying what she said then. When shaken back to the present, she finds that she's been talking to herself. She's aware of her tenuous grip and tells Ginger that she can't be alone right now, as she swallows anti-anxiety pills.

Ginger's boyfriend was about to move in with her, but has been displaced by Jasmine's visit. This puts him at odds with the newcomer from the start. Of course, it would be easy to say that Jasmine turned her nose down at Ginger's blue collar love, but he's so obnoxious that anyone would. It's true that she's self-absorbed and that's probably more the cause of her current mental instability than a byproduct of it. However, she condescends in places that almost anyone would. Chili wants her out of Ginger's abode as soon as possible, so that he can move in, so from the moment he meets Ginger, he's pressuring her about finding a job. He knows a dentist who needs an assistant -- Jasmine isn't interested. Well, what would she like to do? Well, she once studied anthropology ... she thinks she'd like to return to school... As he looks at the cultured, but unskilled middle-aged woman who currently lives on her sister's couch, while still dreaming of becoming an archaeologist (anthropologist, same difference), Chili's skepticism is natural, but so is her disdain. In fact, Jasmine's reaction to him reminds me of another flower nom de plumed woman: Hyacinth Bucket and her travails with brother-in-law Onslow!

Chili takes Jasmine on a double date with Ginger and a pal of his, who's half Jasmine's size and 1/4 of her intellect. She escapes them into a bottle of vodka. Chili resents her attitude but, at this early stage in their history, his reaction is more based on what he's heard about Jasmine, more than on anything she's done. Ginger told him that Jasmine wanted nothing to do with her, when she was living the high life and only remembers that she exists now, when she needs help.

This opinion of Ginger's is justified. We flash back to Ginger and her ex, Augie, visiting Jasmine and Hal in her Manhattan apartment. Jasmine hopes to wash her hands of the tourists by setting them up in a Marriot and sending them sight-seeing. The fact that they're there during the week of her birthday is most inconvenient, since it forces her to invite them to her birthday party. Jasmine's ennui towards Ginger only lessens when she learns that Augie has recently won the lottery. He has a quarter-million to invest and suddenly Jasmine has all sorts of plans for them. She will get Hal to let them in on his latest hedge fund venture. He'll do them the favor of using their money to make more of it. They've never invested before and this is all they have, so Augie is hesitant, but looking around Jasmine's expensive home, Ginger needs know convincing. Hal obviously knows what he's doing. So, they give him their windfall and they lose it all when Hal is exposed as a Bernie Madoff-styled crook, who defrauded his investors and ended up in jail, when his Ponzi scheme was finally uncovered. We only get snatches of his unraveling at a time, interspersed with Jasmine's current life, but when we put all the pieces together, we learn that Hal hung himself in jail. Since it's only spoken of casually and in retrospect, it's impossible to know what Jasmine felt at the time, what grief -- or guilt -- the memory causes her.

She says that she never knew what Hal was doing financially, that she was his victim like everyone else. It's easy to believe her, because she's too self-preoccupied to scrutinize much. After all, she knew nothing about his affairs for many years.

During the same visit to Manhattan when Ginger and Augie gave Hal their money and sealed their low-class fates, Ginger caught Hal with another woman, while browsing the streets of NY. She agonizes about whether to tell Jasmine or remain silent. She mentions just enough of her suspicions to plant a seed of distrust in Jasmine. She'd always considered her husband too busy for infidelities, but hey, he's played by Alec Baldwin, we know what he's capable of! As she watches him with his physical trainer, his lawyer (described as a Chinese dragon woman, a line that's less comical than curious coming from Woody Allen) and their female friends, she begins to see an amorous undercurrent in these relations that she'd been blind to before.

Jasmine is not exactly painted as the typical grand dame. She loves the diamond baubles Hal gives her, but she loves him too. She even loves his son, in her way. When we first see her with him, we assume that she's the Baroness and he's a bothersome Von Trapp boy, but when she encourages Hal to spend more time with him, she actually means it. She's not naturally jealous or competitive. She's careless, but not unkind. Even with Ginger, she's disinterested, rather than heartless. In the end though, perhaps the two flaws have the same effect and only the most charitable try to distinguish between them.

When she had Ginger invest with Hal, we know that Jasmine probably didn't intend to actually hurt her. She assumed that her sister and Augie would make money, but her primary motivation was that Hal make even more of it. Her goal wasn't to help them, that would just be a happy fallout. She serves her own needs first, without particularly meaning to hurt others, but mindless of the possibility that she might. It's like the legal definition of gross negligence: There need be no willful misconduct. Simple reckless disregard for the consequences to the safety or property or another will suffice.

Pulling herself back into the present, Jasmine abandons her dreams of anthropology but thinks she might make a good interior decorator. She certainly worked with enough of them when decorating hers and Hal's many homes. Ginger, silently wondering how long she will be playing landlady to Jasmine, points out that becoming a designer takes time. No, Jasmine knows someone who got an online degree in designing. She could too -- if she knew anything about computers or the internet. She ends up taking the position of receptionist at that dentist's office Chili told her about, after all. Just so she can get enough money to learn computers and, then, take online design courses. Of course, it's absurd to think that anyone needs to take formal computer classes for online study. Thirty minutes in a chair is sufficient for maneuvering to a website and following the navigation buttons to the course you want. The idea that Jasmine is taking computer classes seems outdated by 15 years. I don't know if it's in the script for humor or a sign of Woody's own detachment from the real world. You don't need to know script any longer. Punch cards and floppies are obsolete. Allen has assistants to browse the internet for him, maybe he doesn't realize that no formal instruction is required any longer. Ginger's friends have no money, no lap top, no wifi, I'm sure. But her sons must access computers at school and she and Jasmine both have cell phones. You could take an online course on your iphone and print out the design degree. It's a poor plot device. It would have made more sense for Jasmine to work to pay for the design class itself, rather than to learn the basic skills needed to virtually attend one.

At the dental office, she tries to learn the office routine and does a half-way decent job, when she's not losing her temper with patients who are truly annoying, it's not just her. The irony is, even scheduling appointments in a computer database or learning to operate a multi-line phone takes more know-how than sitting for online classes does. Jasmine is not the best receptionist, but her boss is impressed with her grace, drawn to the way she wears her clothes (even just the jeans) and carries herself. She recycles the same clothes and handbag, they're old, but tasteful, having originally cost thousands. The classics endure forever, don't they?

When the dentist asks Jasmine out, she obliges to keep her job, but tells him she has a boyfriend, so that he'll keep his distance. It doesn't work and she quits when he starts mawling her. She fights back not only valiantly, but effectively, knocking him back in a scene that's both amusing and uncomfortable. She wasn't doing anything wrong, didn't deserve what happened and, I almost felt, should be applauded for managing to get along in the real world for a change. The sexual harassment she suffered is nothing compared to the harsher abuses people face daily, many with obligations far greater than Jasmine's who aren't lucky enough to land a receptionist position with little effort. It just shows that the world needn't be its cruelest to beat you down. Life's mere randomness can levy defeat. Looking at Jasmine I was reminded of Sister Carrie or Wharton's Lily Bart, whose downfalls were more poignant because it seemed that salvation was in their grasp, they were climbing up, but then reached for a rung too high, instead of grabbing the one surest and nearest. If they'd more quickly accepted slight disgrace they could have prevented utter ruin. Jasmine seemed to be avoiding this mistake when she forsake lofty expectations (or resigned herself to having to work up to them) and took the job in the dentist's office, but fate scoffed at her good intentions.

She explains what happened to a friend at the computer class who suggests she sue the dentist (my suggestion too), but Jasmine wants to move on. The friend, who's dating a lawyer, invites Jasmine to a party. She pesters Ginger into going with her. They both meet knights on white horses. Ginger's is an audio/video installer who thinks she's sexy. Jasmine's is a would-be politician who, like the dentist, is impressed with Jasmine's elan. He, Dwight, can see her as his own Jackie O. He just bought a house and Jasmine offers to give him decorating ideas. She tells him she's an interior designer and a widow. Her husband was a surgeon. Since Hal's fraud conviction and suicide doubtless made national news, one wonders how Jasmine can hope to get away with this lie? Is it her mental lapses that make her think she won't get caught or just poor plotting by Allen?

Ginger so loves being wooed by her audio tech that she starts giving Chili the cold shoulder. Even though they use cheap hotels or plain old vans for their rendezvous, Ginger feels it's a step up from what she's been used to. Jasmine is right. She's been selling herself short and settling for the wrong men. When Chili learns she's been dating someone else he becomes enraged, yanks her phone off the wall and paws at her, while Jasmine demands that he leave. His reaction is proof of the brute she's always seen him as being. Yet, with the lives Hal has ruined, the fortunes and livelihoods he stole, the fact that he was no better than Chili is a fact lost on Jasmine, but not the audience. Chili follows Ginger to the grocery store where she works as a cashier and causes a scene, actually crying when he ditches her.

Meanwhile, Dwight is charmed by the pieces Jasmine picks out for his home. She always knows what to say, what to do, which wine to choose. He asks her to marry him. One could almost read Jasmine's shock as rejection. Dwight doesn't see the fact that she needs to take anxiety pills after his proposal as a good sign, but she just gasps that her outburst is just because she wanted so much for him to love her and now he does. It's a surprising bit of candor. I'd have expected her to play it calm, cool, but her relief is too real for that. I realize that even when she was first charming Dwight, it wasn't a game. She wasn't trying to lure him in. Whether aloof or engaging, she was natural. Her sense of detachment was both mental and social, or social because it was mental. As desperately as she needed to snag a rich man, when she met Dwight, she was somewhere else in her head, at a party long past, hosting with Hal at another house, another time, and genuinely unaware of the gentleman whose eye she'd captured in the present. Her engagement to Dwight might pull her off of the unemployment line, but it wouldn't necessarily pull her back to sanity. This is clear when she takes her nephews to lunch, tells them she'll be getting married soon, but then briefly lapses into dementia that leaves their mouths ajar.

Ginger is stood up for a date with her audio tech guy. When she calls his job he tells her he can't see her anymore. His wife found out, so it has to end. Oh, didn't he mention that he was married? No, Ginger says. He didn't.

Jasmine recalls her last meeting with her stepson. He was leaving college, abandoning the ivy league school where everyone knew who his father was and what he had done. Jasmine begs him not to give up. Hal may have been a fraud, but there's no reason for his son to waste his education and future. The son won't listen to her. He says he knows what she's done.

Dwight takes Jasmine to meet his parents. They are duly charmed and he and Jasmine are window shopping for an engagement ring when Augie comes upon her. Long time no see, Jasmine -- or Jeannine. He'd heard that Jasmine was back in town, living with Ginger, although she'd had no use for her sister in the past and was responsible for everything they'd lost. Augie recalls how Hal killed himself and says he's seen Jasmine's son too. He now works at a shop in the city and Augie knows how the kid has turned his back on Jasmine too. It would have made more sense for Dwight to learn about Jasmine's past online. He didn't need an enemy from her past to walk up and lay it all out so dramatically, but it all turns out the same. Dwight turns on her for lying to him. How did she think she would keep it all a secret? Or maybe she only hoped it would stay a secret long enough for them to marry. Then, it would be too late. Clearly, Dwight's outrage is justified, but if he'd loved her enough . . .is he just fascinated by her image, by the ideal of how his political career might be furthered with her on his arm? Jasmine was deceitful to be sure, in addition to lying about her ex and her career, she also had Dwight meet her at hotels, so he wouldn't see how shabbily she lived with Ginger. However, if she'd been a consummate con artist, she could have won Dwight back over, turned on the charm, stroked his ego, cried to bring down his guard and spur his protective urges. But she doesn't know enough to do any of them. She shrieks and demands to be let out of the car. How will she get home, Dwight asks exasperated. Just let her out. He does and she stalks back to Ginger's, where Chili is back in residence.

The past is rushing back to Jasmine now. She remembers how a friend confirmed to her that Hal was unfaithful. Yes, he'd had affairs, many of them. Jasmine returned home to confront him, rather than apologizing Hal says that he's now in a relationship that's more than just lust. He wants a divorce. He intends to marry his latest lover. Jasmine becomes hysterical, flailing and screaming. Hal tells her she's having a "temper tantrum" and tries to restrain her, but a tantrum implies she's having an angry outburst to manipulate him. Her response is less rational than that. He tells her she'll be well-provided for and then leaves. She desperately fumbles for the telephone and asks for the number of the ... FBI. So, she's the one who turned him in, caused him to lose everything they'd had, go to jail and commit suicide. There's an audible gasp in the audience when this is revealed, but I suspected as much earlier, when the son partially blamed her the scandal. Jasmine may have cut off her nose to spite her face when turning her husband in. She'd vaguely suspected that her husband was bilking people all along and was happy to live off the proceeds, until she wanted revenge. She ratted him out to hurt him, rather than protect anyone else. Yet, if I understand nothing else Jasmine did, I can identify with that telephone call. There was something about Hal's unruffled confrontation that provoked her into wanting to get him in the only place where it would hurt. If he'd lied, if he'd cried and simply feigned remorse, things would have gone differently. But as selfish as Jasmine was, he was even more so, not even putting on a show of regret or compassion. Maybe she could have survived the cheating and divorce. It's the unconcern that did her in.

He's arrested. She has a nervous break down, undergoes shock therapy.

After leaving Dwight's car, Jasmine goes to the shop where Augie says her stepson worked. He's not happy to see her. He says that no matter how much he hated his father, he still blames her for turning him in. He wishes Augie hadn't given her his location. He never wants to see her again.

Chili and Ginger have made up and Ginger has gained resolve. She must blame Jasmine for having put higher hopes in her head, because now she's firmly on Chili's side and demands that Jasmine stop putting him down. Chili is moving in. Ginger must feel that she thought the grass was greener on the other side, but as little as he had to offer, Chili really loved her. What does he get in return? Was she even moved by her tears at the supermarker, or only repulsed? Maybe she was wrong to think she deserved more than he offered. It's hard to know whether to feel sorry for Ginger or not. She was hurt, but she hurt Chili. Jasmine uses her, but she responds passive aggressively, voicing her resentment to Augie and Chili in a way that's only human, but makes her seem like less of the loyal sister, deserving of only sympathy. As with Dwight and Jasmine, it's hard to know how deep Ginger's feelings for anyone really go. Did she help Jasmine out of love or pity or because she was too timid to do anything else? She doesn't seem to get satisfaction from Jasmine's downfall, but was she truly saddened by it? Ginger informs Jasmine that Chili is moving in. Maybe they'll get married. Jasmine angrily denounces the couple's reunion, but Chili has a new sense of confidence now and does not feel threatened. He laughs Jasmine's opinion off, rather than challenging it. Fine she says, Dwight has asked her to move in with him ahead of their engagement anyway.

She takes a swig of vodka, jumps into the shower, jumps out, still drenched. Clothes wet, mascara running, creating a lurid sight that should have at least caused Ginger to ask what was wrong, Jasmine announces that she's leaving and will send for her things later. She walks out and into the street, sitting on a park bench and stirring others to leave when she begins mumbling aloud to herself. Blue Moon was playing the night she met Hal. She used to know the words. What were they? Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.

So now will she lose her weak hold and sink completely into madness or, rather, does it seep fully into the porous fissures were never whole or sealed to begin with?

That's the question, if her finances were back on track, would she have healed or would that just have delayed the inevitable melt down? Did Hal's betrayal cause her to lose it or had the symptoms been there all along? How many of us seem normal, but would break under stress. How many carry a vulnerability that leads to the stress that will make us break? When Jasmine got the "good genes" did they include the one that would spark her own destruction? Crazed or crazy?

I don't know if the film means to take a side on the question, because I don't see Jasmine as having written her own fate. I can't say, she acted irrationally when she called the FBI. A reasonable person might have done the same in the face of Hal's patronizing calm. She may have been a time bomb ticking, but I see her more as one ignited. She walked through life casually dooming Ginger, Augie and bored airplane passengers, but couldn't get out of the way of the Hals and dentists waiting to trip her up.

Had she been a better person, or a worse one, her outcome would have improved, either way.

I've seen more Woody Allen films in the last decade, than I did in his heyday. It's not because I appreciate him more, but critical reaction to his work has finally deflated to normal proportions, so I feel less of a need to reject what I found so over-rated in the seventies and eighties. His movies signify more now, when there's less sound and fury about their merit. I found Crimes and Misdemeanors and Midnight in Paris much more delightful than Annie Hall. Without crime, fantasy or broad comedy, to enhance the plot, Jasmine does fall flat. It's not original, wacky or particularly realistic. Other than Cate Blanchett's performance, which was as entrancing when Jasmine was elegant, as in those moments when she came unglued, and seamlessly transitioned between the two, there's nothing much to recommend. Yet, there remains enough to analyze to make it worth a view.

World War Z (2013)

I haven't gotten into the Walking Dead, Pride, Prejudice and Zombies or any of the many Zombcentric video games, so this movie was basically my indoctrination into the world of the undead and I liked it. It was full of action, tension and suspense, but without being rife with crashes and explosions. Blood and gore happened out of the camera's range. Furthermore, while it had no sex and very little cursing, it was not a kid's movie, mainly because of its humorless intensity. Playing the lead with unadorned humanity, Brad Pitt was more likable than I've seen him since Meet Joe Black. His Gerry Lane was heroic in his goodness, rather than physical prowess.

Gerry is a retired United Nations covert operator. He's cooking breakfast for his family (wife Karin and daughters Grace and Connie), while disturbing news story flash across the screen, but they're the every day variety. Death, strife, terror abound in the footage, but it's common place, not just in Jerry's world, but ours too.

The family bundles into their car and get caught in a traffic jam. Jerry's side view mirror is knocked off. He gets out to investigate. There's something strange in the air, but he can't pinpoint it. Suddenly, police are motorcycling through the stranded cars bellowing for everyone to get back in their cars. Before Gerry can obey or challenge those instructions, bedlam breaks out. Hordes of subhumans began attacking. They're mindless, fast-moving (bucking the slow-moving zombie lore) beings. Their mouths are mostly white orbs, mouths agape for mawing. They don't think, they just bite. People run in hysteria. Once bitten, they turn into the monsters themselves, within seconds.

Gerry takes in all the mayhem around him silently, concentrating on keeping his girls calm. They're a thankless brood. Well, the wife is helpful, but the kids have an unfortunate habit of disappearing in life and death situations, without a word to their parents. The older one is about 12 and asthmatic. She goes into shock. As Gerry tries to drive them away from the violent frenzy around them, one refuses to put on her seatbelt, so he has to worry about her being killed in a collision, on top of a zombie chomping her. She's really more trouble than she's worth.

When they discover that the eldest, Grace, does not have her asthma medicine, Gerry tries to calm her down by having her focus on him, rather than her fear of suffocating. Look at me. Breathe through your nose. She only halfway follows his direction. I know she's scared, but she just seems generally non-compliant and doesn't communicate her fear or hesitation. Although she seemed perfectly normal eating breakfast in the kitchen, once the zombie attack starts, she's silent in a way that makes me wonder if she doesn't have a cognitive impairment. Gerry stops off at a big box store to find her medicine. The place is being looted and the Lane family joins the melee.

Karin runs to get food, while Gerry searches for the medication. Near the pharmacy he's almost attacked by a crazed man, but it turns out it was just a scared drug store employee, trying to protect himself from the zombies. He asks Gerry what he needs and hunts down the asthma drugs for him. In fact, all of the humans in this story are helpful(well, except for the government which ultimately sells Gerry's family out). They assist each other and never play survival of the fittest. Although they may seem antagonistic upon approach, once they find that the other person is not a zombie and is not on the offensive, they yield and lend aid and cooperation. On a larger scale, the broad message is "once you understand the other person's motives, you're alike, not enemies."

Gerry has the medicine for Grace, but hears Connie screaming. Though everyone is yelling, Gerry recognizes his daughter's voice above all others and runs to her. Connie's about 8. She's in the shopping cart. She sees her dad, but doesn't explain to him what the problem is. This is common for all of the female Lanes. They yell "Gerry" or "Daddy! Daddy!" and then say nothing. He has to follow their point of focus with his eyes and figure out what they're trying to show him. In a disaster, this is a waste of precious time. So, Gerry looks around to try to discover what his kid is screaming about and sees his wife being attacked. He wards off the assailants and then they scramble to get the supplies they will need on the run. A police officer comes towards them and they think they might be arrested for looting, but he's actually trying to grab supplies off the shelves himself. The Lanes make their escape.

When they get to the parking lot, the RV they commandeered has disappeared. They head for an apartment building. They have to bat away zombies every few feet. Gerry canvases his surroundings and sees a whino on the street who is oblivious to the panic around him. For some reasons, the zombies don't attack this dilapidated man, but head after all of the people running away from them. In this chaos, Connie wanders away -- and that's what is so frustrating. It's not like she fell or lost her family. No, she just walks away from them. Yet, the parents don't yell at her. In fact, their main focus throughout everything is to keep their children calm. They feel, "If I behave as if I'm not scared, then my children won't be." But you know what? Sometimes, your children SHOULD be scared. They need to know they can't just walk away on a whim. Tell them they will die horrible deaths if they just keep walking away like that. Let them know, if the zombies don't kill them, you will!

Anyway, for no particular reason Connie has stopped cold in front of an apartment door. Her family backtracks, to go retrieve her. She says nothing but just stares, then pounds on the door, demanding that the occupants let her in. Why did she choose that one? Who knows. But the door opens. The family inside (a mother, father and son) see the Lanes and pull them all in to safety. They bar the door. The family offers them food and a place to sleep.

Gerry has called his old United Nations boss who says that they need him. Whole cities have been taken by the zombies and they need to find a way to stop the spread of what is essentially a virus. Gerry's old boss, Thierry, says he will move heaven and earth to come rescue Gerry. They can have a helicopter on the roof of the apartment he is in by morning. Gerry tells the family who is sheltering him that it's better to move. If they stay put, they will be trapped. They are Hispanic and the son, Tomas, translates for his parents. The father doesn't want to run, because he doesn't believe there's any place to run to.

Gerry falls asleep, but when he awakes, he can't find Grace. Alarmed he searches the apartment and she's sleeping with Tomas in his room. Tomas says that she started crying in the middle of the night and he comforted her. Again, why would she just leave the area where her parents were and go off without waking them, knowing they would be distressed to wake and see her gone??

The next morning, when Gerry and his family make the perilous journey to the apartment roof, Tomas' father refuses to join them. As soon as the Lanes leave, there is pounding on the apartment door as the zombies come for Tomas' family. Meanwhile, on the stairwell, the zombies are on the Lanes' heels. Gerry hits at one of them and some of the splatter gets in his mouth. When the family reaches the roof, he is ready to jump off the ledge. If he turns into a zombie, he doesn't want to risk harming his family. He counts to 12 and then steps down from the ledge. From what he has seen, it takes 12 seconds to turn from human to zombie, once bitten. He thinks he is safe. Relieved Karin says to him, "you're ok. You're ok." She didn't shriek like a banshee when she thought he was going to jump off the building and neither did his kids, so I'm not sure the daughters ever fully realized what could have happened in that moment.

As they climb up into the waiting helicopter, Tomas runs towards them. The Lanes shovel him into the vehicle and just as they are about to fly off Tomas' father, now a zombie, tries to stop them. Gerry kills him to free the helicopter. Safe, Karin holds one of their girls while Tomas, an orphan now, buries his head in Gerry's chest.

They are flown to a UN guarded compound. It's high off the ground and guarded with gunmen on all quarters, so the zombies can't access it. Thierry shows the family to their bunks. Karin laughs that it's not much smaller than the first apartment she and Gerry had. Gerry asks Thierry what's happening. Karin quietly tells them that they should discuss that somewhere else (outside of the children's' earshot). Gerry wordlessly acquiesces. He and Karin are not just married, they're partners, teaming to protect their family physically and emotionally.

Thierry and Gerry look at the zombie attack like a virus and Gerry thinks to find out how to stop it, they need to find where it started. Find the first person who carried it. There's a young doctor, just 23, who is the best hope of tracing the origin of the disease. They think a military base in South Korea may hold the answer, but it's been largely overrun with zombies, so to get in the doctor will need an escort. Thierry wants Gerry to fly over with him. Gerry refuses to leave his family. Thierry already told him that he didn't rescue Gerry for old time's sake. Gerry was one of the best men he had and he needs his help. The bunks at the compound are limited to essential personnel. If Gerry does not go to South Korea for him, he will have to remove his family from the compound. Gerry has no choice. He tells Karin he has to go and she responds, "Do you remember what that job was like for you? I'm not agreeing for you to go back." Um, this is not exactly a career choice for him. Haven't you noticed that the world is ending, lady? He tells her that they will be thrown out of the compound if he doesn't go and then she concedes. He gives her a one-way cell phone transmitter and says he will call her once a day.

He hugs Connie. Tells Tomas to take care of the girls while he's gone (sweet, but this movie seems so conscientious about roles that I'm almost surprised that line is in there) and Grace is asleep, naturally, so he doesn't wake her -- which I think is risky, since they may never meet again and maybe she would have liked to say goodbye to her dad. Then, again, knowing her laconic ways, maybe not. He whispers goodbye into her hair as she slumbers, promising to return.

As they are flying to South Korea, knowing that they are the world's last hope for survival, the doctor thinks that's a good time to try out his metaphors. He says that nature is like any other serial killer, she likes to leave behind clues. The answer often lies in something simple that you overlooked. When they land, they have to fight off zombies, the army officers call them "zekes" to get to the base. In the battle, the doctor freaks, shoots himself and dies almost before they're in. So, any chance that he might lead them to a solution seems to be gone as well. The soldiers mock his ineptitude, but Gerry points out that the guy was just 23 years old and he didn't have to risk his life to come there. He volunteered. Well, maybe Thierry threatened to throw him to the wolves if he didn't help the UN as well, so I don't know how much free will the doctor had, but R.I.P.

The base was attacked and most of the men there were turned into zekes and killed. You can see their decomposed bodies imprisoned in cells. The army officers chained the ones they captured up. Even though they're mostly ashes, they are still flashes of movement from them. They are truly "undead." The army officer tells Gerry that shooting them in the chest only slows them down, but if you get them in the head, that seems to disable them. They like to burn them, if possible, just to be sure. He also tells Gerry they are attracted to sound, so they try to be very quiet, so as not to make them swarm. Gerry says it seems to take 12 seconds to convert from human to zombie, but the soldiers say they've seen it take up longer, 10 minutes, even longer. I, of course, feel this is a plot point. I think that they will think someone is safe and is not going to turn into a zombie, but it will turn out that they were wrong. This doesn't happen. Maybe they just through that into the script as a red herring. Still, I wonder why Gerry acts like he didn't hear that part. He still goes around thinking that it only takes 12 seconds to convert and he acts on that assumption, to what I feared would be his peril.

The officers call out their home towns hoping Gerry can tell them if their cities and families are safe in the United States. Gerry has to admit that few places at home are safe.

Inside a cell, he seems one officer chained up who is not a zombie. The other soldiers think he's crazy, but there seems to be a method to his madness. He was at a place where they managed to keep the zombies at bay. He is actually the first person to use the word 'zombie" when describing the monsters to Gerry. At the UN, Thierry and his people didn't seem to have a name for them. He explains to Gerry that all of them pulled their teeth. If you can't fight, you can't spread the zombie disease. That's why he survived for as long as he did. His mouth, is indeed toothless. But even so his group succumbed to the zombies eventually. One place that is safe is Israel. It's surrounded by walls high enough to keep the zombies out. They can't climb walls. He tells Gerry that it's quite a coincidence that Israel has this defense. Gerry points out that they've been building walls for years. Yes, the man says, but they got them finished just in time for the zombie outbreak. That seems like more than chance.

Gerry decides to head to Israel to see if they have any answers. He gets a volunteer pilot for the treacherous journey. The problem is not the flight, but getting past the zombies to get to and from the plane. They need some men from the base to help them fuel. A few guys volunteer. One gives Gerry his class ring to take back to his family. He thinks Gerry has a greater chance of returning home than he does. As they head to the plane, heavily armed, they are trying to make as little noise as possible, because noise attracts the zombies. Halfway there, Gerry's phone rings. It's Karin. The zombies hear and start attacking. Gerry just barely makes it onto the plane. One of the officers is bitten. Oh no, he's a zeke he realizes. His men tell him to let him know when he is ready for them to shoot him, before the worst happens. He says, rather matter-of-factly, "I got this one" and he shoots himself. The lack of tears and grief make the moment more poignant. It's reminiscent of MASH when they learned that Henry Blake had been killed and they had to keep on operating.

In Israel, zombies clamor outside of the wall, but the occupants are safe inside. They are even letting people from neighboring countries in. The leader tells Gerry the more humans he saves, the fewer he will have to fight as zombies. How did they know to build the wall, Gerry asks. He says that they heard a rumor of zombies long ago. And a practical man like him believed it? Well, they didn't believe the holocaust was going to happen in the 1930s. They didn't believe the Arab fights would cause the death and destruction that they did. History showed Israel that skepticism doesn't pay. The leader was one of 10 men on the council. If 9 of them believed something, it was the 10th person's job to take the opposite viewpoint and that's what he did. He started defending Israel as if zombies did exist, although the 9 other council members thought they didn't.

Meanwhile, feeling warm and cozy inside their wall, the citizens are marching and singing. Thick-headed Gerry doesn't think to tell them what he knows about zombies -- that they love noise. Outside the wall the zombies are building a human (well, inhuman) pyramid, getting higher and higher as they stack up against the wall, climbing on top of each other. Eventually, zombies are able to run and use each other as stairs and began to topple over the wall. Suddenly, all peace evaporates. It happens in an instant. There's a stampede and war breaks out as they fight the zombies. Gerry wanted a plane to leave Israel and continue his search for the first person who became a zombie and the leader didn't want to give it to him, but once he's in the middle of a zombie invasion he quickly changes his mind and gives orders to get Gerry out of there.

The zombies move jerkily and turn to menace humans in an instant, just like the ones in Michael Jackson's Thriller. Gerry sees a young soldier bitten. He begins the 12 second count and reaches out and hacks off her bitten arm before she converts. She yowls in agony. Thanks a lot, buster. How'd he know cutting off her arm would work, she asks him later. He says he didn't. It was just a good guess, at which point she should have just shot him. Her name is Segen. He asks if it's her first name or last and she refuses to say. "Just Segen." Well, whatever.

I am sure Segen is going to be one of the people they thought was safe, but who turns into a zombie later, after the 12 second mark has passed. Luckily for Gerry, that didn't happen. They get onto an airplane that was trying to land in Israel, but seeing the raging zombies changes its flight course. Gerry has flashbacks of the herding zombies completely ignoring some people, like the drunken homeless man, a thin boy in the street. I'm not sure, but I think he looks at his own daughter in the supermarket grocery cart, but I don't know how she fits in with the others. He thinks he knows why the zombies didn't attack them. He tells the pilot to take the plane to the World Health Organization (WHO). Suddenly, there's a rumbling and a zombie breaks out of a closet in the plane. Who put him there and wouldn't someone think to mention that he was inside and that, maybe, that door should be guarded. When the stewardess was telling everyone how to use a life vest, she might just want to have pointed out the zombie in the locker. The zombie bites and suddenly everyone else is turning Z.

Gerry sees no other way out. Segen has a grenade and they throw it. Part of the plane explodes and they crash. He and Segen seem to be the only survivors. What are the odds? Their plane landed only a few miles from the WHO, so they walk there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Thierry has heard that Gerry's plane crash and he is presumed dead. He doesn't waste any time telling the Lanes they have to leave the compound. It is for essential military personnel only and since Gerry died trying to save the world at Thierry's request, they have to kick his family to the curb pronto. Karin doesn't remonstrate with Thierry. Hopefully, her silence and blank eyes were enough to rain the shame down, but alas it probably wasn't. Guilt is never the punishment it should be. Karin and the kids are packed onto a refugee plane.

At WHO, Gerry is chained up. He was injured in the plane crash. They removed the metal shard from his stomach and he has been unconscious for three days. He explains who he is. Segen was not unconscious and I don't know why she didn't explain to WHO that Gerry was a good guy, but once he makes a phone call to Theirry they start to trust him. Gerry learns that his family has been sent to Nova Scotia and, somehow, manages not to call Thierry every name in the book. He knows his family is not safe, no matter what they claim.

The WHO staff has been badly reduced. Many of them are zombies, which the humans have tracked in some of the labs. Gerry tells WHO his theory is that the zombies don't bite sick people. If they sense you are terminally ill, they avoid you. The WHO scientists say there is precedence for this in nature. Predators sometimes don't prey on diseased animals. They somehow know that they might endanger themselves by doing so. So, what if the zombies are the same, how is that an anecdote for the zombie bite. It's not an anecdote Gerry says, but it will be camouflage. If everyone is sick the zombies won't bother attacking them. It won't get rid of the zombies, but it might stop the creation of new ones. Do they have any fatal substances there that Gerry can use to test that theory on the zombies. Yes, they have meningitis, cancer cells, all sorts of fatal stuff, but it's in another building and that building is full of zombies. They will have to go over the skybridge to get there. Segen, Gerry and one of the doctors grab weapons and go and the other doctors seal the skybridge after them. They have to get to one particular vault where all the dangerous cells are kept.

They end up accidentally making noise, which attracts all the zombies to them. Although, even in the dormant (non-attack) phase zombies are still moving. Don't they knock into things and make a lot of noise themselves? I don't know why they don't run to each other. Humans aren't the only ones who create a clamor. Segen and the doctor run through the skybridge and back to safety. Gerry uses the distraction to get into the vault he needs. But for some insane reason he leaves his weapon outside the vault. He didn't even need to use both hands to get in. He needn't have put down his weapon at all. Yet, that stupid gesture is what the plot needed for a climatic ending. So, unarmed he goes into the vault. There's a lone zombie outside pounding to get in. There's only one way out. He injects himself with an unknown, but lethal injection. I think he could have doused himself in the deadly stuff like cologne. Wouldn't the zombie just have smelled death and sickness on him and steered clear. Why did Gerry actually have to inject it bodily? To heighten the stakes I guess.

Gerry injects himself, writes a sign for the doctors who can see him on a monitor. It says, "Tell my family I love them." The doctors visibly flinch in premature mourning. Corny yes, but I like it too and I start crying myself. If Gerry's theory is incorrect, he will die either way. If the zombies don't get him, the deadly injection will.

Gerry opens the door between himself and the zombie and waits. The zombie sniffs him, but doesn't attack. He walks right past him as if he's not there. The doctors watching on the monitor are incredulous. Gerry scoops up a bunch of the deadly bacteria and heads out towards the skybridge where dozens of zombies wait. They let him walk right through. Back with the WHO doctors, Gerry gets an antidote. He is reunited with his family in Nova Scotia, but we're told it's not a happy ending. It's just the beginning. They haven't cured the zombie problem, they've just kept it at bay. People receive shots that trick the zombies into not attacking, but it hasn't gotten rid of all of them. It hasn't helped them find the origin of the disease and kill it at its root. They're only safe for now.

I hear this movie is quite a departure from the book. Would I have liked the book more or less? I wonder, but not enough to actually pick up the book and find out. The film though was fast paced and mostly satisfying. Dumb moves were made, but not nearly as much as you see in most action movies. The honest reactions, along with Gerry's determined integrity kept the movie grounded, no matter how many mountains of CGI zombies scurried like ants. When the response is genuine, it doesn't matter how unrealistic or undead the threat they pose, the fight is still worth winning. And watching.