I had this dream last night that I was standing in a large room with an entire wall of windows looking out over a field. There were trees, pine mostly, spread across the field sporadically. It was a sunny day with a few white clouds here and there. Not fluffy clouds though; sharp, angular, long clouds. Lightning started to shoot from these same clouds , and set the trees in the field on fire. As the smoke and flames billowed up from the burning trees, it turned the clouds black and the clouds burned too, so they looked like fiery charcoals in the bright blue sky.
Anyway, I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep for a little bit, thinking about the dream, and it reminded me of Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which I haven't thought about in awhile, and in my half-awake state I began thinking about that film in reference to what's happened in the Gulf, and I realized that while the film was obviously meant as a parable about 9/11 and terrorism, it has stuff to say about our recent hurricane experience as well.
I thought of the scenes early on, with the lightning strikes, with the strange swirling of the sky, the families all moving into their backyards to stare knowing there is something just wrong about that storm system. The sense of foreboding through weather. The wind moving in the wrong direction, towards the storm.
The eerie silence of everything being shut down.
The lawlessness that follows, and the complete absence of authority figures throughout the film. The Army does show up, but we see very very little of what they do, and they don't manage to save anyone or win anything. The government is absent and helpless. It is up to the individuals, the father, the families, to save themselves.
In the end, only chance saves anyone. The reporters muck through the wreckage, the Army burns and is captured alongside the civilians, and germs, infection, pesitlence, lays waste.
Anyway, I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep for a little bit, thinking about the dream, and it reminded me of Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which I haven't thought about in awhile, and in my half-awake state I began thinking about that film in reference to what's happened in the Gulf, and I realized that while the film was obviously meant as a parable about 9/11 and terrorism, it has stuff to say about our recent hurricane experience as well.
I thought of the scenes early on, with the lightning strikes, with the strange swirling of the sky, the families all moving into their backyards to stare knowing there is something just wrong about that storm system. The sense of foreboding through weather. The wind moving in the wrong direction, towards the storm.
The eerie silence of everything being shut down.
The lawlessness that follows, and the complete absence of authority figures throughout the film. The Army does show up, but we see very very little of what they do, and they don't manage to save anyone or win anything. The government is absent and helpless. It is up to the individuals, the father, the families, to save themselves.
In the end, only chance saves anyone. The reporters muck through the wreckage, the Army burns and is captured alongside the civilians, and germs, infection, pesitlence, lays waste.
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