What Time Changes Me

I watched Lucy (Besson, 2014) for a third time this afternoon.

To truly digest what I felt about it, I wrote my feelings down outside under the warm but gloomy sunshine, and I entitled it "About the film Lucy and beyond. " (I guess this is a rough title).

If only I can convert my feelings into a JavaScript and share it with you all right now... that will be a superb Sci-Fi scenario.

The first two times watching it as a younger teenager, I was wowing the whole time and was feeling something bourgeoning in my heart. I wanted to be a scientist who studies brain, computers, or italicized time.

The third time this film had galvanized me once more.

I have nothing to say because there is just so much to say. Languages can’t help describe any of my feelings, and I can’t possibly think of any other way to articulate the impact the film has on my life.

I watched the film, but beyond watching it, I comprehended the language of the film. Since becoming a Film and Media Studies major, I began to see, listen, feel, and experience so much more.

For example, in the first scene when Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is talking to her new date Richard (Pilou Asbaek). Richard impatiently urges her to send the silver case in herself while Lucy hesitates because the case seems to contain something vitally important and dangerous. To increase tension and foreshadow Lucy's destiny, an associative montage is inserted, showing a deer is eating grass while a leopard is staring at it with bloodily fierce eyes from a distance.

I didn't capture that moment when I was 14. But now as a growing film student, I began to notice the meanings behind the techniques and the value of each single cut.

Parallel editing is implemented to increase tension. The moving pace of the film is fairly fast, and the use of parallel editing is frequent. Firstly, to inform the audience of the consequences of using the brain power, Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) is explaining several postulations in a large lecture hall in Paris. While in Taipei, a bag of 1000 kilograms of CPH4 (a powerful chemical that doesn't exist in reality) is leaking inside Lucy's stomach, and its gigantic influence on her neuron connections is visually illuminated through hyper-kinetic and colorful visual effects. We can foresee that Lucy is going to use 100% of her brain power and be a superwoman.

Secondly, parallel editing is employed to show simutaneous action so as to heighten tension between protagonists and antagonists. When Lucy is articulating why time is a unity, she creates a screen and a car is speeding up on a green field.

"Film a car speeding down the road. Speed up the image infinitely, and the car disappears. So what proof do we have of its existence? Time gives legitimacy to its existence. Time is the only true unite of measure."

Her lines are followed by a shot of the image of the bad guy - he is the head of the gangsters and he is holding two guns walking forward.

Lucy continues: "It gives proof to the existence of matter. Without time, we don't exist."

The green field is silent on the screen.

Then Professor Norman murmurs: "Time is unity."

Then, suddenly the gangsters begin to shoot downstairs inside the lab building.

So I guess the silence preceding sudden loudness is a frequently used technique to create tension and and suspense.

Beyond the filming techniques I observe in the film, I also begin to understand the presence of time. Aristotle says that no one can step into the same river twice. And as a non-sensical matter that is flowing and proceeding all the time, what should I do with it?

For Lucy near the end of the film, she has metamorphased into everything around her so she is everywhere. Eternal life awaits for her and even we don't see her, she can text you, call you, change the electronical waves, or use any super power she has. I am particually amazed by her texting the police-officer, saying that -

"I am everywhere."

As an ordinary human girl who only uses no more than 10% of the brain (this is based on the logic of the film, not scientifically tested LOL), I think I am quite lucky that I am still alive and experiencing all up-and-down emotional turbulances. In the film, Lucy gradually loses human emotion when she is evolving. She doesn't feel joy, fear, anger, anxiety, and love. Plain face replaces the once-vivid human face that can display varioud expressions.

Do I really want to live eternally? Even if I did, I didn't want to be emotionless like Lucy. But she did achive eternal life, so I have mixed feelings towards her destiny. She has become the literal God, connecting herself with the history of the universe, the nature, the human-kind, and everything dwelling within.

Feeling startled, mournful, and selomn, I think of that person again - my fetish. He once told me to see Knives Out (2019) even when he thought it was boring because everyone’s take from films are so different. And he is utterly right in this view. Lucy is on his list of the films he valued throughout the past decade. And he categorized into “the most underestimated film.” He is right in that, too.

My friend (also a "film-mate"), Alex, told me that no one can comprehend each other’s feelings because they can’t possibly experience these feelings - in this sense, empathy, even as we try our best to say it to express our concern, or try our best to use it to comfort each other, is not a panacea. And she asked my opinion towards her sister.

Surprisingly, I changed my mind. Yesterday I would try to persuade her to love herself. Now I totally understand what she wants and why she desperately wants it. It’s an infatuation. Just like I was so infatuated with that gentle, handsome witty boy with a child-like soul. Alex said that no one can actually understand why I love him or why I wouldn’t give up missing or crying or writing about him to move on. I guess it’s a more than an fetish.

It has rooted in me, like a habit. I wear socks and shoes, he is my water and juice. I hear the wind caressing the leaves, and he is the bird chirping in between.

You know what I feel about him right now? It’s my feeling toward nature. All passions are still there but they are converted from desire to motivation, and now, to a sense of tranquility and serendipity.

Listen, listen to the sound of the nature. Birds jump from one branch to another.

Green leaves dance in the gentle breeze, radiating spring songs through the warm sunshine.

Insects sing after devouring their lunch even they have no idea what’s next for dinner.

Clouds stick on the blue wallpaper, inadvertently moving.

And silently he marvels: “Superb.”

He is the birds, the leaves, the sunshine, the moonlight...

He is every possible beautiful lovely thing.

He is.