LUCY (2014)

LUCY. Luc Besson, dir., script. France: Canal+, Ciné+, EuropaCorp, TF1Films (prod.) / Universal (USA dist.), 2014. See IMDb for complex distribution. 89 min.

Science-fantasy premised in what is now the urban folklore that human beings use only a small portion of our brains/intelligence, usually put at 10%. The protagonist, the modern woman Lucy, absorbs large amounts of a substance natural only in minute doses and achieves increasing access to her mental powers, resulting finally in abilities sometimes called "Psi powers" — although the term is not used in LUCY — and finally achieves the powers of a god. Significant here for Lucy's becoming more «mechanical» as her intelligences (sic) increase and the association of the god-like Lucy with a computer and finally merging with a computer and possibly the cybernetic world network. Paradoxically — or Besson just screwed this up — Lucy is simultaneously everywhere and various "whens" and possibly within a large USB flash drive. Note time and clocks and that the divine Lucy meets hominid Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis pre-human Mother of (Hu)Mankind. The merging of human Lucy with the computer is imaged as a kind of engulfing of some pretty old-fashioned French mainframes by something like super-viscous but super-fast extruded petroleum exudates.

CAUTIONS: (1) The presentation of Chinese gangsters is in the Hong Kong tradition but by most other standards far over the top. (2) Morgan Freeman's Professor Norman argues for the 10%-of-our-brains idea, which may encourage the gullible to take the idea seriously.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 15/VIII/14