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Moral deliberations in six modern films.
These six movies deal with moral and ethical dilemmas. "The Matrix" - with the nature of reality, "Titanic" - tackles the moral obligation versus self-preservation and "The Truman Show" - tackles the relationship between God and us, humans. "The Talented Mr. Ripley" deals with the thin line between pathological narcissism and self-promotion, ambition and envy, love and obsession. "Being John Malkovich" deals with this question (among others): are we the owners of our brains? "Shattered" deals with the meaning of self identity nd personal responsibility.
Excerpt
"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is an Hitchcockian and blood-curdling study of the psychopath and his victims. At the centre of this masterpiece, set in the exquisitely decadent scapes of Italy, is a titanic encounter between Ripley, the aforementioned psychopath protagonist and young Greenleaf, a consummate narcissist.
"The Truman Show" is a profoundly disturbing movie. On the surface, it deals with the worn out issue of the intermingling of life and the media.
It is easy to confuse the concepts of "virtual reality" and a "computerized model of reality (simulation)". The former is a self-contained Universe, replete with its "laws of physics" and "logic". It can bear resemblance to the real world or not. It can be consistent or not. It can interact with the real world or not. In short, it is an arbitrary environment. In contrast, a model of reality must have a direct and strong relationship to the world. It must obey the rules of physics and of logic. The absence of such a relationship renders it meaningless. A flight simulator is not much good in a world without aeroplanes or if it ignores the laws of nature. A technical analysis program is useless without a stock exchange or if its mathematically erroneous.
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