BEFORE: My second day working at the Tribeca Film Festival, or at least just ONE of its venues. They sure do employ a lot of people, or perhaps they're volunteers, but that's kind of great for me, because those people are doing most of the work around the theater, and all I have to do is supervise them, it's easy-peasy, sort of. It's still a LONG shift, I pulled 12-hour shifts twice this week, and that's still exhausting, plus I'm eating the majority of my meals at the theater via take-out, so I have to eat relatively cheaply, or else I'll spend all the money I'm making at this job just on the food while I eat, working at that job. Staying home is cheaper, because then I don't spend money on take-out, but then I earn less - so, it seems I need to spend money to make money.
Now, big problems last night trying to watch "Swan Song", which I thought was on Hulu. But then I had trouble signing on to Hulu, because suddenly our Sony Playstation (which I use to watch Hulu and Netflix on the big TV) demanded that I do a system update, but after the update, I couldn't sign back in because I didn't know the Playstation.com password, and without that, Hulu wouldn't work. Sure, I could watch Hulu on my phone, but that's so SMALL compared to the BIG TV.
Then I double-checked, and found out "Swan Song" isn't even on Hulu, it's on Apple TV. There is A film titled "Swan Song" on Hulu, but not the right one - that one stars Udo Kier and is about a hairdresser walking across town or something. Both films with the same title were released in 2021, so I guess that's how I got them mixed up. OK, so then how do I watch the right "Swan Song", or will I have to find another film to link to that matches back up with my chain? I'd rather not do that, I just got my chain from here to August all worked out - but I joined Apple+TV last year, just to watch that film "On the Rocks" with Bill Murray, and then I quit right after, so they couldn't charge me $4.99 per month. You don't suppose they'd let me have another free trial, do you?
Mahershala Ali carries over from "Eternals".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Replicas" (Movie #3,678), "Never Let Me Go" (Movie #4,141)
THE PLOT: In the near future, a terminally ill man explores a heart-wrenching, emotionally complex solution to save his wife and son from grief by duplicating himself without them knowing.
AFTER: Yes, it worked, I can't believe it! Apple TV+ let me sign on AGAIN for another free trial, and as long as I quit within the first 7 days, there will be no charge. Of course, the fine folks at Apple probably believe that once I see how much great programming is on their service, and how simple and convenient their service is to use, I'll sign up for $4.99 per month - or perhaps they're betting that I'll forget to quit and they'll get at least one or two months of subscriber fees out of me. SUCKERS! I quit the free trial immediately after watching "Swan Song", and if there's another movie on their service, I'll just sign up for another free trial! So, umm, why does anybody PAY for this service, when they can just have one free trial after another - I've had two so far, maybe I'll go for three if I need to! Jesus, does this scam work for all the other streaming services, too? Why pay for ANY of them, just keep free-trial-ing them out of business, I say...
Anyway, now you know, you don't have to pay for Apple TV+, and there are TWO movies named "Swan Song" that were released in 2021. Buyer beware - make sure you watch the one you want. Seriously, one of these films should have changed their title, to avoid confusion in the marketplace.
"Swan Song" is kind of the reverse, or "answer film" to "Never Let Me Go", which was about a bunch of clones that were raised to (eventually) understand that they were going to die. "Swan Song" is about a man who realizes that he's going to die, so he pays a company to create a clone of himself, which will take his place. I guess they're both riffing off the same theme, in a way.
This is set in the future, which of course is always tricky, trying to do a little guesswork about the advances of technology, with a projection based on the current state of tech that we have today. Good news here, we're going to have those driverless cars very soon, and they'll just take us wherever we need to go, just like Uber but without the Uber drivers. And most everyone will be working from home, so that's maybe a pandemic-based projection. And we're going to have clones, but as stated above, they have a very specific purpose, to replace the terminally ill. I suppose this is somewhat logical, if you need a new heart they can transplant one, if you need a new ear they can now grow you one on your arm or something - you just have to wear long sleeves during the process so you don't gross everybody out. Cloning here is just the ultimate transplant, in a way, they just grow a whole new YOU and copy the memories over. And if things work out, they just mind-wipe the last couple of weeks, so the clone doesn't remember waking up in the lab and meeting its original template person.
I guess there are ethical questions here, or maybe philosophical ones - these were first raised in the film "Multiplicity", only that was a comedy, and this one isn't. If the clone is grown from the host's DNA, artificially aged to match the host, and then implanted with all of the host's memories, is the clone the same as the host? Yes? No? I don't know? While both of them exist, one is the original and one is the copy, so no? But the same genetics, the same age, the same memories? That's where things get tricky. And if the clone replaces the original in the family, sleeps with the host's wife and she can't tell the difference, is she cheating on her husband?
In this case, where the host has a terminal illness, the swap has to be made before he dies, that's the whole point here, to reduce the trauma to the family, so that life can continue for them as before. But is this really the BEST idea, in the long run? There's no guarantee that clone won't die tragically some other way a month later, like get run over by a bus or drown in a swimming pool or get eaten by a shark - there are no guarantees in life, after all. His wife and son still might need to face this same problem later on, so they could just be kicking the problem down the road, instead of solving it. It's tough to say.
Plus, we're dealing with a very specific set of conditions here, Cameron has a terminal illness, and medical science can't FIX the illness - he's having seizures, so let's say it's a brain tumor that wasn't caught in time. The clone can be created without the tumor, but creating the clone can't be cheap - so is the money better spent on making the clone, or curing Cameron's condition? I just want to see the paperwork on this, that's all I'm saying.
Regardless, this is thought provoking, because it gets into how far a person is willing to go to give their family a better life - after the swap, Cameron has to watch his family from afar, knowing that's another version of himself spending time with his wife, raising his son - it's him, but it's also NOT really him. Could you remove yourself from the equation if you determined that's what was better for your family, and then spend your final weeks or months in isolation, without the people you might rely on for support at the end of your life? Another really tough question - this whole film's like a giant thought experiment, I suppose.
Also starring Naomie Harris (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Awkwafina (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Nyasha Hatendi (last seen in "Replicas"), Adam Beach (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Lee Shorten, Dax Rey, Jayr Tinaco (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Jessica Hayles, Mikayla Lagman, Celia Aloma, Luke Camilleri.
RATING: 6 out of 10 contact lens cameras
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