The future society constructed by the film is based on the existence of a video-based storage and supervision and access system based on the transparency and memory of personal information. Under normal circumstances, the government and criminal investigators who perform related public security duties can extract any person’s memory data at any time for public security needs and public affairs; and among ordinary people, the extraction and sharing of memory needs to be operated by themselves, so Deception and lies are actually composed of "frank concealment" that cannot be concealed, that is, when the other party asks "show me your records ten minutes ago", they respond with disappointing silence or prevarication. In fact, this new type of concealment does not deviate too far from reality. After all, the "concealment" in many relationships is basically a tacit understanding of willingness to fight and endure.
What makes people more pleasant to watch is that there is no cliché in the plot, where weird objects are implanted in a certain part of the human body (such as the common temples, neck or behind the ears) to achieve technical functions, all about cognition and memory management All of the mechanisms have been internalized in a way that does not need to be stated. In essence, the technical means as "foreign objects" are integrated into life's major and minor matters in a mature and natural way. However, in terms of the presentation of the cognitive process, the film uses too many three-dimensional dynamics in the style of text, diagrams, and presentations. In addition, the repeated playback of some memory fragments in the plot is extremely complicated and clumsy.
In any case, the core conflict of the dystopian plot was born under this seemingly mature technological background. The tampering of cognitive data and the plundering of the subjectivity of memory have become an unknown force that exists outside of order. The main line of the film's suspense revolves around a series of serial murders. Their most bizarre feature is that the killer can replace his own perspective at the time of the attack with the victim. As a result, the victim's pre-mortem record retrieved by the police was actually shot by the victim himself. The perspective witnessed and participated in his own death.
The anonymous person played by Amanda, as the prime suspect in the serial murder, not only hides himself from the government's information supervision, but also can enter and modify the content of their memories according to the individual needs of customers, and make a living from this for a long time. From this point of view, the film, like many works of the same subject, follows the motif "As long as human desires exist, utopia cannot be built", as always, it tells how the illegal desires of people within the law nourish the vacancy of technology. , Making this dark “weed” exist for a long time.
When the identity of the investigator who pretended to be a wealthy businessman secretly investigating the heroine was exposed, his own cognition and memory began to be invaded, smeared and tampered with wanton. I think this is probably the most attractive part of the film, and it is this part that naturally leads to thinking about memory fragility.
After all, even in reality, our true senses, emotions and memories have never been as trustworthy as expected. When we suddenly realize that certain impressions about certain events are actually just our own wishful thinking, when we look at the person or event we wrote "I will always remember" in our old diary, we can't remember what it meant at the time. When we say that we have never loved, when we can’t remember the details of the violation, when we say that seeing is believing is true.
This is a subjective world constructed from memory, a world in which few people can speak just and objectively.
When technology exists as a storage medium within reach of life, it is too easy for people to rely on them to contain the scattered and cherished "real" details in memory. Both the instant experience and the past memories in the film are emphasized as audiovisual presentations. It is a bit one-sided. However, a large part of the things and experiences we want to remember are indeed extended by the audiovisual medium, such as pictures or photos, Sounds and images have become the most accessible destinations for the fragments of life we try to capture and keep.
In this way, a large part of the ontology on which the emotional experience is attached is stored outside the body, and the mental mechanism that tends to save resources is also allowed to develop in this way. Our memory may be closer to the searchable catalog and cannot fully record the experience itself. : When the male protagonist’s good memories of the deceased young child are cleared, he remembers where to extract those warm and sad nostalgic emotions, but the source of the emotions is nowhere to be found due to the data being cleared.
On the other hand, it is precisely because we rely more and more on external media as the carrier of feelings and memories that it is easier for others to tamper with without a trace, and it seems terrifying. We can't prove to anyone that among the "truths" that were felt at the time and available for review afterwards, which experiences are our own, which are given by outsiders, which are reliable, and which are purely distorted.
I still remember one of the party’s slogans in Orwell’s writings: “Whoever controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Regardless of whether the right to screen and interpret the “truth” of experience and memory is in the hands of any party, It should be vigilant.
I also remembered the news I saw a while ago. Only by video surveillance at intersections, the identity information of citizens who ran red lights can be locked and the identification number is accurate to publicly report criticisms. At first glance, it seems that technology is also helping the rule of law, fairness and justice to move towards a better tomorrow. Just shudder.
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