Send Help Sends the Right Message
The Benevolent Universe Wrapped in a Horror Film
On occasion I like to go a local theater to see a good new movie. It is usually one I’ve heard good things about, but not always. In the past I’ve discovered great movies and finding that memorable gem makes the duds worthwhile. That is also how venture capital works, but I digress.
One such excellent film from a several years ago was The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman and Zendaya. I was familiar with Jackman from his movie role in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical version of Les Misérables, but this week I chose a movie based on one thing only, the synopsis from the theater website:
On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it becomes an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.
OK, cool. A battle of wills and wits for survival. Right up my alley, or so I thought. Send Help is psycho-thriller horror film which is not typically up my alley. But I loved it despite the caricatures and the easy comparisons to Castaway and Lord of the Flies.
Typical of today’s anti-reason culture that demonizes money and profit, the two primary characters are set up as adversaries with the boss as the villain at an investment management firm. Convincingly played by Dylan O’Brien, Bradley Preston has the name that all “woke” nobodies will hate and the arrogant demeanor to go along with it. His polar opposite is the nerdy workaholic Linda Biddle who is wonderfully portrayed by Rachel McAdams. So far, so campy. And camp is where they end up, but it ain’t band camp.
What I learned from this ham-fisted setup, besides the patronizing pleas for servant leadership, is that the conflict between Biddle and Prescott is real, relevant, and runs deep within our postmodern welfare states. In fact, the moral and intellectual gap between the CEO and Linda Biddle - who had earned a promotion to COO, is similar to the dramatized relationship among siblings Dagny and James Taggart in Ayn Rand’s 1957 masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged.
However, for a contemporary portrayal of good versus evil, a parasite like Bradley Preston could have been cast as a prosecutor like James Comey who jailed Martha Stewart. Or a hack like Senator Elizabeth Warren who is on the warpath against every Linda Biddle from Strategy and Planning she regulates through her authoritarian Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
But that’s a minor point compared the valuable lessons this movie has to offer. The deserted, tropical island on which Biddle and Preston became stranded is hostile, at least until Biddle transforms the natural surroundings into shelter, a water supply, and then food. Next, because Preston is badly injured through no fault of his own, her benevolence nurses him into greater strength and self-maintenance. But this is a psycho-thriller horror comedy, so it doesn’t end like The Blue Lagoon.
The long-held beliefs and habits that give a person their identity do not go away without great resistance or great introspection - and like nearly everyone, Preston resists greatly and introspects weakly. As a result, director Sam Raimi creates a fine set of circumstances for moral justice. Psychologically, Biddle gave Preston what he had earned, but she did not complete the task. That was appeasement. It is wrong. But if she had, the movie would have been over and Raimi had other plans.
To reveal any more would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say the highly competent accountant in Strategy and Planning was rational, profit motivated, compassionate, productive, benevolent, and selfish - meaning her life was her highest value. And the title of the movie - Send Help, is a ruse. Biddle discovered her superpower, and it was her mind.
She did not want or need help. On the island, moral justice was not served, but for the movie, poetic justice was served.