Westworld

Saw Westworld, a sci-fi based on a book by Michael Crichton (the Jurassic Park guy) about an amusement park where robots make your fantasies come true in three exotic locations. There's Medieval World, which caters to grand opulence, Roman World, which caters to sexual debauchery, and West World, which caters to your violent fantasies. Our heroes are two dudes in the West World who smilingly shoot the crap out of the sheriff and the villainous black-hat, both. Whereas the majority of the film is shot in a slightly rollicking way, the robots' deaths are incongruously shot in somber close-up and slow motion. The park caters to our base instincts, the robots are taken apart as soon as they misbehave, and soothing female voices assure us that nothing can go wrong. When the inevitable robot-revolt comes, it feels richly deserved.

The film is shot in the composed, straight-faced way that a lot of 70s films were. The contrast of the workman-like shots and the absurd content of the film makes things feel a bit surreal at times, particularly during abrupt tonal shifts, as with the robo-deaths mentioned above. At one point the lab-coat-ed techs activate a bar-fight sequence. We are meant to feel like this is a romp, but to convey this, the film uses looney-tunes-ish sound effects. It's unclear if the scene is supposed to be kind of lurid and confrontational or if that's just accidental.

The film raises all kinds of interesting questions. If we allow our emotions to be manipulated by robots, then are we not somehow tainted when we are cruel to them, or use them for our own gratification? The nature of the robo-revolt is kept obscure. Is there perhaps a ghost in the machine which has at last rebelled? Is there a danger in creating machines more capable than we, or in creating machines that are capable of provoking our sympathy or our fear? Interesting stuff. As I'm fond of saying, this film does not really explore those ideas, it only brings them up. It's an interesting film. A novel place to visit.