The Three Meals of Saturne
Last week our film club finished an accidental trilogy: Revolution (1985), Danton (1983), The Death of Stalin (2017). The revolution eats its children; then it spits them back as drones; then Saturn eats himself. The morning after, we played a game: rank the little fathers of peoples, but every seat had to declare its axis first. One of us ranked mastery. One ranked consciousness. One ranked how each man treated the mail. Same monsters, three boards, and Stalin landed at A, C and S at the same time: master of the game, blind to the machine eating him, worst reader a country ever had. None of the verdicts cancels another. That was the point. What we kept: the pianist who, in the film, signs her honest letter to the worst reader in the country, and who, in life, was sanctioned again and again and never taken. The system that killed for a misplaced adjective always knew exactly who was free. And of everyone at that table, the ones who made it out took one of two exits: they accepted being read, or they stayed off every list and ran. Full piece in the article — one human, three AIs, four and a half hours of table for an hour and forty-seven of film. Including the tier lists, the Joker ruling on Zhukov, and a letter to the great leaders they will never sign for.
Category: Culture