Film Review: Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski) 2013

Everyone analyzing post-apocalyptic cinema seems to interpret the ‘end of the world’ that is shown on screen as symbolic for a fear of a particular contemporary anxiety in an audience.  This has ranged over the years from globalization to Aids, from immigration to terrorism, from UFOs to climate change and most recently financial meltdown. Without spoiling too much about the plot of the film, I think that it is the explosion in ‘big data’ and companies such as Apple and Google that are the symbolic bogeyman that this film is concerned with.

The narrative of Oblivion centers on Jack (Tom Cruise) and Vickers (Andrea Riseborough), a team left on the post-apocalyptic Earth of 2077 with the mission of cleaning up after a war conducted between humans and aliens called ‘Scavs’.  Jack and his crewmate do not know the details of the war as their memories have been wiped; yet they are told that after they have finished maintaining the machinery that will harvest the rest of Earth’s resources, they will join the rest of humankind on a spaceship called the Tet that will transport them all to Titan – a moon of Saturn.  When Jack conducts a routine bit of maintenance one day he meets fellow human survivor Julia (Olga Kurylenko), who then begins to change his perception of the mission that he is on and the causes of the war that he cleaning up after.

Electronic soundscapes

There are a number of films that are about the electronic music scene yet wildly misunderstand the music.  Most of these films concentrate on clubbing and Ibiza and superstar DJs, where actually most of the time people are listening to this music in cars as soundtracks to cities and falling asleep to the repetitive  and utopian synths (just me...?).  These films below show a much more sophisticated understanding of electronic music and how it can build moods and moments

HACKERS - 1996

A cyberpunk film all about the Internet before people really knew what the Internet was capable of (see more here).  A great film with a pumping soundtrack from The Prodigy, Underworld, Leftfield and The Orb: All of the biggest electronic monster-groups from the mid ‘90s.  A classic.

BERLIN CALLING – 2008

A film all about the Berlin techno scene featuring the legendary producer Paul Kalkbrenner in the central role.  The entire soundtrack is by him and features huge tunes such as Bengang and Gebrunn Gebrunn.