Jonathon E Part II
There was one part of Rollerball that always puzzled me. The set up is a party that Energy Corporation is throwing to show the career highlights of Jonathon E, Rollerball champion. It is when he was supposed to announce that he was retiring from the game which is what the executives have ordered but Jonathon has refused to do. The televised highlights have been rerun several times and the party has slowed down. All of the drugs and alcohol consumed and the trips to the bedroom over, the crowd is looking for some kind of entertainment. The camera pans to a group of partiers heading to an open field with what appears to be a handgun.
The lady with the gun waves it wobbly at a tree and pulls the trigger. The ground about 50 feet in front of her erupts in flame. She steadies herself and aims again at a 100 foot tall pine tree that bursts into flame. The crowd goes wild and soon everyone is aiming at trees and shooting the pistol. A whole row of pines are shot at and explode as the camera holds on them and they burn furiously. What’s left are the trees minus the needles. They are still tall but now bare. The lady who originally shot the pistol is crying.
The scene always seemed out of place to me until I talked it over with my wife. The trees are the individuals of society. They are tall and proud and happy with their lives. The pistol is the action taken by the executives that creates havoc in their lives and strips the life from the trees. What you get is something burned out and dying. This is what the world of corporate communism has created. It is stagnant, burned out and dying. It is what happens to any utopian society. When the spark of individualism is suppressed, people stop being creative and the wheels of innovation come to a grinding halt. It is like the explosion that created the fire and what is left is the dead and dying hulk of a once proud and beautiful tree.
Or was just a cool way for the director to create explosions and film them. Everything is open to interpretation. Welcome to the Earthly utopia. I hope I never live to see it.
Icool
Cobb
The lady with the gun waves it wobbly at a tree and pulls the trigger. The ground about 50 feet in front of her erupts in flame. She steadies herself and aims again at a 100 foot tall pine tree that bursts into flame. The crowd goes wild and soon everyone is aiming at trees and shooting the pistol. A whole row of pines are shot at and explode as the camera holds on them and they burn furiously. What’s left are the trees minus the needles. They are still tall but now bare. The lady who originally shot the pistol is crying.
The scene always seemed out of place to me until I talked it over with my wife. The trees are the individuals of society. They are tall and proud and happy with their lives. The pistol is the action taken by the executives that creates havoc in their lives and strips the life from the trees. What you get is something burned out and dying. This is what the world of corporate communism has created. It is stagnant, burned out and dying. It is what happens to any utopian society. When the spark of individualism is suppressed, people stop being creative and the wheels of innovation come to a grinding halt. It is like the explosion that created the fire and what is left is the dead and dying hulk of a once proud and beautiful tree.
Or was just a cool way for the director to create explosions and film them. Everything is open to interpretation. Welcome to the Earthly utopia. I hope I never live to see it.
Icool
Cobb
posted by Cobb at
7:22 AM
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