So, we agree on the fact that not every human feeling can be easily translated into film, right? You'd need enough exposition into your character, and then you need to make the viewer actually care about what happens to that character enough to emphasize, all that jazz. It's difficult enough as is, and yes - we have developed enough shortcuts to translate emotion into lighting, poses, specific phrases or chains of events, all of which add up to a curious little Morse code that a filmmaker is trusting us (or not trusting us) to decode as soon as possible, to finally get to the meat of the story.
Sometimes it doesn't work out, and you sit there - detached and uninterested, but your brain is still decoding those subtle (or not really subtle) dots and dashes, and you understand what's being said, more or less.
The beauty of human brain, I guess.
There is this movie with Keanu Reeves, it's an interesting watch. A dude is working in a Hi-Tech lab, has a beautiful wife and cute little kids, and after we’re shown a tough shift at his work he is driving them somewhere, and you know how it goes - they get into a car crash, everyone but him is dead or dying, and instead of calling an ambulance or doing normal funeral things about it he decides to steal some tech from his job and upload his family's beautiful human brains into some new home-grown bodies.
Sci Fi, don't ask. Watch the movie, it's great.
But for me, the most important footage of that movie was that opening, that tough shift he clocked into. They are trying to make the brain upload work, no luck so far, so funding is about to be cut, right. As a final attempt, they helicopter in a fresh body - a guy was recently killed in action, so they scan him super quick and put him into a robot shell. Very white and plastic, I-robot style, frutiger aero type shit.
They wake him up, and the guy takes a second to get his bearings, immediately panics, and starts to destroy his robot body, so they have to disconnect him real quick and the attempt is deemed a failure. The scene is shot from the guy's pov and there is some UI floating in front of his vision. I would flip out too.
And that's it, that's the scene.
As you watch him panicking, you can kinda guess what he's thinking: he flinches a bit, realizes that this thing in front of him is also moving, therefore it's him; raises robot hands to his face, sees the amount of absolute bullshit that is happening, and then starts to destroy his arms, as if trying to reach the inside. As if he hopes that plastic plates and cables are just a glove. As if he needs to see actual flesh under there, to believe it's his. As if the difference between his brain telling him he has arms and his eyes telling him he has plastic grippers is so unbearable, he would rather have no body at all.
And yo, when I tell you that opening ripped the air out of my lungs and punched tears out of my eyes quicker than anything that happens later in the story... Never before and never after this movie (and I have watched plenty) have I ever seen exact portrayal of what my dysphoria feels like.
One little scene. The movie has nothing to do with trans people, very much a cis straight title.
This little scene is burned into my retinas, into the frontal goddamn lobe of my human little brain in so much detail, I prolly could redraw it frame by frame. I was finally able to thrust my finger into the screen, evidence-wall-meme-style and show my family that THIS! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE! I FEEL LITERALLY THIS EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY AND I WAS LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT TO YOU FOR TWO AND A HALF DECADES!!!
They were horrified, of course, because that's a visual and a half, but??? It feels so good to see the feeling actually translated into something other people can understand??
It kinda feels like this shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it sure feels like a lot. And I feel a bit better knowing this exists and I can point people to it, to help them understand. Silly human brains, always seeking to be understood, huh...
