Undergods

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Ali G. @Aligh96 Dec 23 The film is more than a cinematic work; it is the visual incarnation of a nightmare that the philosophers of history and psychoanalysts of the twentieth century, each in their own tongue, had warned of. In this gray dystopia, we confront ruins that seem to have been promised by Spengler in The Decline of the West: the winter season of civilization, where the Faustian spirit has reached the end of the line, leaving behind only a cold, bureaucratic corpse of the "City." If Aristotle considered man a "political animal" whose telos is realized in the polis, the citizens of this film are metamorphosed animals for whom politics is not a realm of virtue, but a battlefield for survival. Here, the "City" is no longer that safe haven Plato delineated in the Republic; rather, it is a labyrinthine cave with no exit, whose inhabitants have forgotten even the desire to see the sun. The shadows on the wall are not images of truth, but the hallucinations of a sick mind. The film's nested narrative recalls Freud's concept of the Unheimlich (the uncanny); the home is no longer a sanctuary, but a wellspring of dread. Characters in these dilapidated apartments seem to have merged with their "Shadow," of which Jung spoke, drowning in the collective unconscious of a failed civilization. But the most terrifying aspect of the matter must be sought in the work's political theology. If Augustine viewed human history as a battle between the "City of God" and the "City of Man", in Undergods, the City of God has evaporated, and what remains is an earthly hell where even amor sui (love of self) - the motive force of the earthly city - has transformed into self-loathing. This world is the world after Hegel's "end of history," yet not that end which promised freedom, but the end of dialectics and the onset of pure stasis. The human subject here is Heidegger's Dasein, literally "thrown" into being (Geworfenheit), yet contrary to Heidegger's expectation, it finds no possibility for "poetic dwelling"; technology and bureaucracy have devoured its Being. This decay can perhaps be considered the most precise depiction of Husserl's "Crisis of European Sciences," where the Lebenswelt (life-world) has been crushed beneath the feet of instrumental logic. And finally, it is Eric Voegelin who perhaps provides the best key to understanding this necropolis: the triumph of a type of modern Gnosticism which, by denying transcendent reality and attempting to "immanentize the eschaton," has created an order where, in the absence of God, demons (or the very Undergods) have ascended the throne. This film is a mourning for humanity in the age of the eclipse of the sacred. In order to Understand the Deep Message of Undergods (2020) via St. Augustine’s The City of God I suggest you to listen to this podcast: youtu.be/LRGUsq3Jjn0 See more Erin C Jun 8 There may be genius woven through this film. Who knows. But it did not connect with the viewer and that is the primary mission. See more Bob 02/14/2024 Brazil without icing. Or maybe even cake. See more streng g 04/15/2023 "ART"-Movie Thats everthing you need to know. See more Jordan G 03/19/2023 Meandering, with each story bleeding beautifully into the next, we don't spend a lot of time with any particular character. Instead, the stories told each add unique insight in building a bleak, yet authentic, world. See more Jeffrey P 03/13/2023 The dystopian setting is interesting but that is all you're given time to be interested in. Too many different stories without proper build and too quickly paced to connect with any of them. The ‘glue' holding it all together isn't very good, almost non-existent. See more Read all reviews

Undergods

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