"Alive" is not an easy film to watch or to understand. This is not a cheap Armageddon-like disaster flick: everything in the movie really happened and with the same timing that it happens on screen. One might imagine, though, that BECAUSE it is so true-to-life, it would be difficult to tie it together with any sort of unifying underlying theme.
Yet the film is extremely coherent both thematically and plot-wise. I would argue it is coherent because of the coherence of the society from which the survivors sprang: most of them had gone to the same school, all of them had grown up in the same small country and, perhaps most importantly, all of them were Roman Catholics. Would a more cosmopolitan and less tight-knit mix have been able to feel each other out and understand one another enough to form such a coherent survival group?
But this is only the most existential of the many fascinating lines of thought provoked by this beautiful film. What would you do to survive? is another, but it is not a particularly deep question. (You do what you have to, that's what.)
Perhaps other questions might be: what does it mean to be alive? What is it like to be confronted with barbaric conditions and maintain a civilized composure? What strength of character does it take? Or what strength of character does it confer?
And in particular: how can one permit onesself to love one's neighbors so deeply knowing that many of them may soon be taken away by death? Or is that the point? Are the bonds of friendship and kinship just all the more precious for the constant threat of loss?
A truly fascinating piece of art.
Yet the film is extremely coherent both thematically and plot-wise. I would argue it is coherent because of the coherence of the society from which the survivors sprang: most of them had gone to the same school, all of them had grown up in the same small country and, perhaps most importantly, all of them were Roman Catholics. Would a more cosmopolitan and less tight-knit mix have been able to feel each other out and understand one another enough to form such a coherent survival group?
But this is only the most existential of the many fascinating lines of thought provoked by this beautiful film. What would you do to survive? is another, but it is not a particularly deep question. (You do what you have to, that's what.)
Perhaps other questions might be: what does it mean to be alive? What is it like to be confronted with barbaric conditions and maintain a civilized composure? What strength of character does it take? Or what strength of character does it confer?
And in particular: how can one permit onesself to love one's neighbors so deeply knowing that many of them may soon be taken away by death? Or is that the point? Are the bonds of friendship and kinship just all the more precious for the constant threat of loss?
A truly fascinating piece of art.