Ofelaš (Pathfinder)

A tale told for at least a thousand years, composed in the isolated Scandinavian countryside, during winter but past the blinding darkness, domestic peoples meet wild barbarians.

There's nothing romantic about these rogues as they travel the land murdering free people for plunder, with no regard for tradition or livelihood, they make war on those living peacefully.

A gifted young hunter (Mikkel Gaup as Aigin) arrives back at home after they've arrived in gluttonous mass, and is barely able to free himself but still leaves a trail for them to follow.

He quickly makes it to the next village where they agree to pack up and leave, swiftly moving to the mountainous coast, some preferring to stay behind and fight.

But the maniacs prove too much for them and they're struck down with vicious precision, except for the young gifted hunter who reluctantly agrees to function as guide.

At the new sheltered encampment the free people settle in with harmonious accord, anxiously awaiting the return of their kinsfolk in gregarious revel and hesitant longing.

They're theoretically safe because there's only one path that can be followed to find them, through the treacherous unforgiving cliffs, and none of the barbarians knows it.

But unfortunately the young hunter does and one night they suddenly look up in horror.

The covetous belligerents having fiercely appeared.

With little time for them to escape.

You would think we had universally moved past the counterproductive desire for war, from systematically bombarding a free people with missiles for some unknown insane imperial purpose. 

Isn't it enough to simply have your domain and then try your best to flourish within it, celebrating old traditions while developing new ones, polymorphous regenerative imagination.

Imperial aggression means constant worry ubiquitous vigilance inanimate strife, since those your army repugnantly attacked will never stop fighting 'til they see you removed.

How does Russia hope to hold Ukraine for decade after oppressive decade, will Ukrainians not consistently engage in bellicose insurgency every single day of the illegal occupation?

Russians could be sitting at work conducting trade with Ukraine and heading home at the end of the day, to their family and friends a chill film some conversation the laidback curious creative life.

That's what a successful man does he doesn't violently invade another country. And force people to unilaterally listen to him. That's the way of the violent coward.

And as long as Russia occupies Ukraine Russian cowards will have to fear insurgency.

When they could simply be peacefully living at home.

Hopefully it never comes to that.

Zardoz

Imagine COVID-19 as reflective of desires to keep demographics stratified, with no intermingling amongst different collectives, even though at the moment isolation is paramount.

The title sounded cool and it stars Sean Connery.

I imagine John Boorman didn't like ivory towers much.

Or the politics of the left in the early '70s.

Zardoz expresses such sentiments anyways with blunt instinctual derision.

It's absurd menacing political satire.

Confrontationally conceived.

In a hypothetical future, the elite have sealed themselves off within an impenetrable exclusive zone, where they live immortal lives of plenty, or at least with everything they need.

Outer regions know only chaos in maddening woebegone conflict.

The immortals have struggled to achieve enlightenment and have compiled vast repertoires of scientific knowledge, but some of them have grown restless, bored, tired of the limits of infinite perfection.

Fortunately for them, an enforcer stows away on the giant head that travels between realms, hiding beneath the grain, intent on acquiring wisdom (Sean Connery as Zed).

He introduces a unique element.

Curious carnal contrariety.

The immortals have cast off emotion you see, and live within stoic reasonable boundaries, with no children or families or nurturing, just rarefied rational discourse.

Subversive intentions plaque somnambulistic.

Those in control have qualified everything.

Gross exaggeration pervades the rigid Zardoz, but I still wonder how it was received at the time? I've certainly never heard anyone discuss it and don't recall it ever showing up in rerun.

I imagine it was cutting edge sci-fi for the '70s, at least some of the visuals are quite impressive, not the giant head itself so scandalous, but there are noteworthy technical features.

I still wonder if it was meant to be taken seriously, on some level I don't quite comprehend, but so much of it seems like solemn farce, like barbarians inside the gates.

But what seemed like solemn farce in recent memory is trying to transform reasonable debate these days, and what used to seem absurd is taken seriously, the public sphere in free-fall flux.

If people are currently worried that desires to function self-sufficiently are threatening the proliferation of the nuclear family, perhaps they were in the '70s (and long before then) as well, although I remain to be sure uncertain, even if I'm leaning towards "they definitely were".

A future where people suddenly want to stop breeding, generally, no matter what ideology predominates, seems highly unlikely to me, however.

There's just too much comfort in relaxed recreation.

With agency attached to the conjugally bold.

Nice that the opportunity to not have a family exists though, medieval pressures must have been stifling.

Can't say I recommend Zardoz.

Although it's certainly out of this world.