Hacker Cinema
The Dark Forest
2021 · Film · short · 10 min
Directed by Martin Del Carpio
"To honor the memory of his father who passed away in 2019, Martin Del Carpio opts for the medium of film once again, and delivers his most lyrical work to date. At once deeply personal, carefully veiled in a delicate fabric of pure emotions, and absolutely immersive in its dreamlike, mysterious beauty, 'The Dark Forest' transmutes its author's innermost life into an admirable piece of introspective cinema. Opening with Dante Alighieri's quote which inspired the title, it takes the viewer on a short, yet transcendent journey through the bushes of symbols and trees of thoughts, in the company of a lovely (and cunning?) forest spirit embodied by Carly Erin O'Neil whose poise and grace translate as otherworldly." —Nikola Gocic
1 positive1 neutralfrom 2 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
2 comments on Hacker News
I think your criticisms are all valid, but I still loved it.
A lot of sci-fi is plot driven, characters are just vectors for the ideas, and I found the big ideas in The Dark Forest really interesting. I'd never thought to critically about the Sagan/space optimist "people in bear suits" view of alien contact before reading the book (in spite of seeing plenty of space horror movies). And for all its faults, it maintained a tension and mystery that kept me interested to the end.
I also had trouble keeping names and even genders straight, the only character I had a connection to was Da Shi (the hard boiled cop).
I have been wondering about the translation — I actually accidentally started The Dark Forest a month or so ago, before realising it was the successor to The Three Body Problem and putting it down again. There's a different translator and whilst some of the dialogue felt a bit clunky, I was quite swept up by it — I'm looking forward to taking it back on and comparing!
Thanks for the note about the criticism of the state — it's very evident and I did find it a bit surprising. I'd simply assumed it was perhaps 'allowed' to criticise Cultural Revolution-era China as such great strides had been made since then.. but now I think about it ‘Tiananmen Square’ and contemporary censorship hints otherwise. Interesting, thanks — particularly as another of Cixin Liu's works appears to be have been made into a bombastic blockbuster movie, presumably with State encouragement ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8LAwozrXPo )