Hacker Cinema
The Counselor
2013 · Film · 117 min
Directed by Ridley Scott
A lawyer finds himself in far over his head when he attempts to get involved in drug trafficking.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Damn. I immediately got chill bumps reading this. I'm not one to fawn over so-called celebrity deaths, but here, we have lost a philosopher and a thinker who also told great stories. It feels like ideas and perspectives will be lost forever, referring to the ones he never wrote down or spoke about.
I have always been in love with McCarthy's deep philosophy in his writing. I like the following two examples, not for any particular relevance of their content but just for the deepness that they get at.
One is one of the final scenes in the No Country for Old Men film adaptation by the Coen brothers, and the dialogue is in the book as well. Sheriff Bell visits his cousin Ellis about feeling overmatched by the violence he's seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdOPJKocMWg
> "What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."
The other is one of the final scenes in The Counselor, which is, as far as I know, McCarthy's only screenplay, at least that was actually filmed and released. The Counselor is on the phone begging for some way to get his wife back from the cartel, the Jefe of which explains the impossibility of the request regarding situation he has created: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIn7y4ejIFM
> "It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There's only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago. I don't mean to offend you, but reflective men often find themselves at a place removed from the realities of life. In any case, we should all prepare a place where we can accommodate all the tragedies that sooner or later will come to our lives. But this is an economy few people care to practice. ... You continue to deny the reality of the world you're in. You are at that crossing. At the understanding that life is not going to take you back. You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, this world that you have created will also cease to exist."
This is pure brutality in the form of prose and dialogue.
Love The Counselor. The screenplay was also published in book form and is worth reading with or without having seen the movie.
Don't forget to give a watch to The Counselor. It had dreadful reviews because as a movie it's a total failure. But taken as a Cormac Mccarthy novel narrated by skilled actors and visually imagined by Ridley Scott it's a success, in my opinion.
I think the main issue is that we have simply outpaced ourselves in that our technological progress far exceeds our emotional progress, which is essentially locked in to our biological makeup. So I think your latter point is on point. I don't know how to solve these issues, and I don't think we can.
Humans were not made for the technology we've gifted ourselves. I am reminded of Christmas Island that is mentioned in Planet Earth II, episode 1. It describes an island with a crab that flourished there for millions of years. Human settlers brought a type of non-native ant to the island, the yellow crazy ant, and it turns out that the ant can easily kill the crabs, which have zero protection against the ants' attack. This shows there are moments in which life presents change in which there is no going back. The crabs are not able to evolve quickly enough against the ants, and the ants must be controlled by humans to even give the crabs a chance.
Why I was reminded of this is because I feel technology is the ant, and us humans are both the crabs and humans who brought the ant. There's a quote by David Attenborough that stuck with me: "the greatest threat they [the crabs] face is change".
I feel we've reached a turning point in which we've changed things forever, and I see no indication that things will get better or that we'll be able to adapt. I feel we are simply biologically limited, both in intelligence and emotional composition, to handle the worlds we continue to create.
And now I am reminded of a speech by El Jefe in The Counselor, written by Cormac McCarthy. It shouldn't be surprising that McCarthy is a resident scholar at The Santa Fe Institute, the only author to have such an appointment to my knowledge.
> Actions create consequences which produce new worlds, and they’re all different. Where the bodies are buried in the desert, that is a certain world. Where the bodies are simply left to be found, that is another. And all these worlds, heretofore unknown to us, they must have always been there, must they not?
> Counselor, at some point, you have to anknowledge the reality of the world you're in. There is not some other world. This is not a hiatus.
> I would urge you to see the truth of the situation you’re in, Counselor. That is my advice. It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There’s only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago.
> I don’t mean to offend you, but reflective men often find themselves at a place removed from the realities of life. In any case, we should all prepare a place where we can accommodate all the tragedies that sooner or later will come to our lives. But this is an economy few people care to practice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_crazy_ant#Impact_on_Christmas_Island
https://youtu.be/X89AXNO6TBw