Entry #15: Shape Politics

NOW THIS IS A STORY ALL ABOUT HOW I WATCHED A MOVIE ABOUT SHAPE POLITICS AND felt the need to blog about it so let's go.

So, this is another backlogging entry, but I really wanted to talk about this movie because holy goodness I saw some things.
This film is called Flatland, based on the novel Flatland: a Romance Between Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot. Really quickly, I want to clear up that there are two versions of this film that were both confusingly released in 2007. One, Flatland: The Movie (pictured above), I saw in 8th Grade and is WAAAY easier to understand than the other version: Flatland. Today, while in search of the former, I found the latter on Youtube.
The story is about two-dimensional shapes that exist on a flat plain, unaware of any other plain of existence. Our protagonist, Arthur Square (or just "A Square"), is a square layer who deals with rebel cases and, like his polygon pals, is under the charge of circles. Circles are higher class citizens. A Square soon learns about other plains of existence, such as Lineland and Spaceland: the plain of 3 dimensional beings.
This is where the similarities between both movies stop, however. One goes on a pretty direct route of explaining different geometrical dimensions. The other one...oh dear the other one...the other one is like trying to read a geometry textbook and a play-by-play account of Imperialism at the same time while also on some kind of hallucinogen. It is exactly that weird. I think JonTron can sum up my initial thoughts pretty well:

So, after taking a lot of time to comprehend what I just watched, I was reminded of the weird films we watch in class and how we aren't really supposed to understand them completely. This film gave me the same "well, that certainly was...something" feeling that Tale of Tales and The Stain gave me. There were so many things this film was trying to say, it ended up becoming a word salad of unfinished morals. It talked about class systems, rebel movements, politics, warfare, it even brings all of existence into question. Needless to say, it wasn't what I expected from a movie about shapes.
I'm not sure how faithful either movie is to the book, but the book is available for free on Kindle and online PDF, so I'm gonna see what it has to say. I'm sorry I can't elaborate fully on the movie because, really, I don't know where to start. If any of you are up for watching a movie with the same caliber of weirdness as Tale of Tales, check it out. The whole movie is on Youtube and it's a pretty provoking piece.

Also, to somehow tie this to our discussion of women in the media, women are depicted in Flatland as lines that have to yell loudly so they're noticed so they don't accidentally stab anyone. So, that's a thing.
Toodles~!