After the Dark

I think that most people watch movies and read books and only see what's on the surface. They don't take the time to look deep, to read between the lines. A few weeks ago I watched a movie called After the Dark, it was released in the US in February. If you haven't seen it and enjoy movies that challenge the mind I would suggest seeing it. The movie takes place at an international school in Jakarta, it starts on the last day of the students senior year and their last official philosophy class. The teacher proposes an experiment in which the students have to imagine a scenario where an apocalyptic event has occurred and the class of twenty students are all given roles in which they must decide which ten of the most significant roles shall be saved in a bunker for a year in order to reboot the human race. I watched the movie before I checked out the reviews on the IMDb website, and I'm gad I did. Most all of the reviews are bad, people state that the movie is poorly done and that the entire thing was horrific. These people I don't think truly saw the movie for what it was, it wasn't intended to excite the audience it wasn't intended to captivate the audience; it was intended to force the audience to see something that we often forget. The basis of philosophy is reason and logic, the movie attempts to prove that life is not philosophical. The class conducts the experiment three times; the first time their decisions for who will be allowed in the bunker are based solely on what roles would be most beneficial for the restart of the human race. I don't want to ruin the movie for you if you intend to watch it so I will simply say this, their first attempt ends in failure for one simple reason they fear the unknown. The second time they are presented with a second part to their role and the experiment is made a little harder with the students having to produce a child while in the bunker for a year. This time their decision on who is allowed in is based on their roles as well as their ability to produce a child, this attempt also ends in failure because they inevitably accept their fate. With the final time one of the students proposes a different decision making process. She chooses individuals not based on their roles or what they can do to reboot the human race but what they offer as a whole. This time ends much differently. These three experiments show different aspects of humanity, the first and second showing that logic and reason end in failure because we fear the unknown and we inevitably accept our fate. The finale time ended differently because those chosen brought forth life and happiness and they accepted the unknown and didn't fear their fate. The end of the movie is a little weird and at first I didn't like it or understand it, but the more I thought about it the more I realized why they did it. The end shows that the philosophy teacher, although he teaches and follows logic and reason he just like the rest of us is only human, and we as a human race choose emotion and feeling over logic and reason.