Lucy

Lucy is a film by Luc Besson staring Scarlet Johansson (Lucy, lead) , Morgan Freeman (Prof.), Choi Min-sik (Bad guy) and Amr Waked (Good cop).

Lucy is a film about a girl who gets caught up in a smuggling operation of a new drug. She accidentally ingests a large amount of it and so becomes able to use a lot more of her brain than normal.

The film progresses with her unlocking more and more of her brain capacity. So let us look at the transition of Lucy:

Notice the change in aesthetic which follows the change in her character. The film starts with her very kitch. She then progresses to business women in hospitals (clean) and airports (civilised) and in the plane. Then she moves to the university where the film climaxes. The university is old and respectable, a place of learning and progress, with a long memory of humanity. Finally we end up in a white room with a large futuristic super computer.

This uses two contrasts to highlight humanity. The first is the contrast between the primal needs of humanity, fighting, pain, food, and their intellectual/spiritual pursuits. This is seen in the cut scenes which oscillate between her capture and torture and Prof’s lecture. This contrast is also shown in the university with the white room and the fight outside. This contrast tries to capture the whole of what it means to be human in, what we will call, a vertical sense. Animal at the bottom, enlightened at the top.

The second contrast in the film does the same, except in a horizontal manner. Bad on the left and good on the right. This is mostly clearly seen in the lull in the fight in the university. The bad guy says to his minion: “sacrifice yourself so that I can get what I want.” (His actual words are something like: “I need you to do something about this”). In contrast the good cop uses this opportunity to check on how his men are fairing. Are they OK?

Thus we find the director showing us four corners of what humanity is. However he does not allow Lucy to fit in. She goes from primal to enlightened and then out the top. And she is neither good (killing innocents, driving badly) nor bad (not killing the bad guys unnecessarily). However she does take on both extremes: She has a reckless need for people to do what she wants which is contrasted by her sacrifice to enlighten humanity.

Moreover the director allows her to become unfeeling and inhuman. This is seen in her conversation with her mother. They start on the same page able to relate, but as Lucy recount more and more of her experience her mother looses her and cannot relate to her any more. “How can you remember that, you where only one”, and “That is not possible”.

This is also seen in the fight. Both the good and the bad guy looks for her at the end. The bad guy to kill her and the good guy for love. But neither gets her. She escapes the bad guy who does not escape the good guy. He (the bad guy) is left in the state he envisioned for Lucy: dead. While the good guy is left with a sense of loss. Although he seems to be closer to where he started than anything else. He has gained little and lost little.

As an aside there seems to be a comment on good and evil here. The good guy gets the bad guy in the end. Moreover the bad just happened to Lucy, while she sought out the good. And in the end the bad turned on it head and consumed those who started it, while the good remains as it was.

How does Prof. fit into all of this? He observes. He gains learning.

As an aside there is a discussion on the science in the background. The director proposes that humans are not the unit by which to measure, neither is spare nor matter. Rather the unit by which we find an existence is time. He proposes, strongly, that time is intrinsic, while space and time are not. The director seems to be using this (apart from the science fiction appeal) to set up the challenge of what does it mean to be human? Are we just animals? Are we just matter?

So what does the director propose. He proposes that humanity is defined by its restrictions, namely our feeling and insights. He also proposes, through the discussion on time, that our actions are an intrinsic part of our identity.

What does this leave me with?

I must re-evaluate what I think it means to be human. I should temper my desire for transcendence with primal humanness, and temper my lusts after pleasures with thought. Humans must balance both, they are people. Not machines who only think nor animals who only react.

On the subject of morals (what is better, good or bad?). I do not think that this film pulls strongly in either direction. It merely says that bad is bad and good is good, and they have their consequences, but neither is better. (There is obviously a slight bias, but I do not think it is intended.)