Hacker Cinema
Defending Your Life
1991 · Film · 111 min
Directed by Albert Brooks
Is there love after death? After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia offers him a chance to finally feel alive.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I am most definitely not a rewatcher of movies, at least not regularly. There are precisely two though I have seen many, many times:
* The Emperor’s New Groove. I have no idea why I find this movie so funny. It feels just so perfectly timed, quotable and something that I relate to. I still laugh at pretty much every joke. * Defending Your Life. Very similar to the above. Albert Brooks’ dry humor is just so perfect. This one gets funnier the more times you watch it. Underrated, IMO.
Banks's Culture works in particular because Banks mainly wrote about contact (friendly or otherwise) with non-Culture societies. The general thesis still holds: man is not truly content without conflict and challenge. Hard SF provides a way for utopias to not stagnate and become boring: once humans have secured long life, prosperity, and harmony for themselves, they seek adventure in the big wide universe outside their dominion.
This also applies to conceptions of heaven, the best description of which I found in the movie Defending Your Life, in which the worthy deceased ascend to become "citizens of the universe" and tackle bigger, cosmic challenges with their vastly increased intellect.