We’ve seen films before that explore the teenager trope and their troubles, the high schooler and the mistakes and misfortunes in the classroom, blending it with the school environment.
But what if it went further than that? The problems become bigger, internal struggles tend to break the balance and become external in force. Anger and frustration become a tool, and you find yourself becoming both the tormented victim and the cruel tormentor. This isn’t a superhero story, but instead a chronicle of events that film the conversations, the actions, the thoughts and feelings behind the closed doors. This is a more personal account of what happens when you become powerful, and the choices that leave a mark on those around you.
This is Two Takes and this is One Shot. An analysis of the film, Chronicle.
Spoilers are ahead.
The Philosophy Behind The Curtain
The brief mention of Schopenhauer and his works on “The World as Will And Representation” ironically talked about after Matt sings ‘Price Tag’ by Jessie J, actually both hold the same sort of philosophy, just expressed in different ways. There is a message of concentrating more on unity and love, whilst also being aware that things like money are present, but they cannot bring you what you are looking for in the long run. It’s just that, Schopenhauer’s work is more pessimistic in nature.
The work of Schopenhauer is incorporating the intention that we should give up on the notion that all physical and emotional desires will be obtainable in a person’s lifetime.
We are beings of pure Will, which, in a shorter version, means a mindless, aimless, non-rational impulse at the foundation of our instinctual drives, and at the foundational being of everything.
We view ourselves within our bodies as having this double-aspect quality; it is given as representation – as a physical object we can objectively see externally – and as Will – subjectively by our immediate awareness that we consciously inhabit a body, can intentionally move it, feel our pleasures directly from it, as well as pains and emotional states in an internal aspect.
Let’s give you an example. Like our hands. We can objectively perceive our hands as an external object, as a surgeon might perceive it during a medical operation, and we can also be subjectively aware of our hand as something we inhabit, as something we move wilfully, and of which we can feel the inner muscular workings.
Schopenhauer regards the world this way, to have two sides. The world as Will, the world as a whole and in of itself as a unity, and the world as Representation, the world of appearances, of our ideas, or of objects that is a diversity.
The world is your representation, it is what you make of it, designed by its will, which affects everyone in their own personal way.
A circle of absolute freedom but of endless striving and impulse. What we have will never be enough, and we will never have enough. Quite a daunting thought, but like I had said earlier, Schopenhauer’s work is quite pessimistic.
But why are we concentrating on or even comparing a German philosopher’s inspirational work with the work of Jessie J? Because in Schopenhauer’s explanation of the liberation of the arts that can summon a man to a more will-less way of viewing things, and one of those arts is music, hence the inclusion of Jessie J’s song. The concept is the concentration of valuing the non-being more highly than being, hence, the summoning of the arts, from architecture all the way to music, that can play a part in ceasing the passions of the will for a short time. It’s not about the money, after all.
After the singing, the seriousness of a (unfortunately) poorly explained conclusion of Schopenhauer’s work, has Andrew concluding that he should just give up on life
and Matt’s mistake to agree to and not elaborate, ignores the rest of the philosophy and the thoughts about genuine liberation.
This genuine liberation can result in breaking through the boundaries of individuality imposed by the ego (the realistic balance within the mind that mediates between the desires of the Id and the moral conscious of the Super-ego). Derived by a Buddhist way of life, its the feelings that correspond to the acts of compassion, selflessness and human kindness, whilst also feeling the suffering of other beings as his own, is on the way to the abnegation of the will to life, that is achieved by saints, and hopefully, others too.
Connection Through Suffering
At the beginning, we see the kindnesses and compassion Andrew, Matt or Steve can be somewhat described as base level. Steve does it through his popularity, Matt does it so he’s not bothered by people, and Andrew does it in the hopes of being liked. It is interesting that we follow the protagonist with a broken home because it’s through Andrew’s apparent ‘hidden’ suffering at home that can define his next steps.
Andrew’s family life shows suffering, we know this almost immediately, whether internally with his mother’s pain, or externally by his father’s inability to stop blaming everything for his problems, especially his son. I guess it’s the aspect of control through suffering, by physically and verbally abusing someone who cannot fight back, that gains some momentum, some equilibrium for his father. He lashes out against Andrew because its the only thing he can control.
Only when does Andrew strike back do we realise that things as a whole, within this world of suffering, has lost control, has broken out of this type of secret living behind closed doors. When Andrew finally lets someone in, by explaining in so many words to Steve that his dad beats him, it is Steve, up in the clouds, finding Andrew through a bond, through his connection of Andrew’s suffering, that has Schopenhauer’s theory coming true. That a step in the right direction is to realise and to feel the suffering of others, which is happening with all three.
It was unfortunate that Steve died the way he did, through Andrew’s lack of control of something bigger than himself.
The nosebleeds, repeatedly happening when something is wrong, has Matt most likely feeling and finding Andrew to try and subdue him. It’s their connection through others’ suffering that has them going through the stages of rejecting the will to life, to find that true liberation. And it is here, and through many other conversations and flying battles that shows the difference between Andrew’s spiral of believing they are something more, by embracing the representation of the world and self denial of his actions, and Matt’s knowledge that they are not, by rejecting the will of the world, trying to make Andrew see that he is hurting those around him.
But this can go further.
When they first go through the underground cave, Matt jokes about the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, but everyone is too distracted to comment on it. But, after researching it, again, another hidden gem that presents another way of thinking about their journey. Yes, we know this is a somewhat teenage superhero movie that has Andrew becoming a villain through his own torment, but I feel there is more to explore here.
The Cave
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a storytelling technique to convey his philosophies within a symbolic moral tale. Let’s explain it.
The allegory begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and them are people carrying puppets or other objects that cast shadows on the opposite wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they have known nothing else. Plato then suggests that one of the prisoners could become free. This freed prisoner finally sees the fire and realised th shadows are fake. He then would escape from the cave and discover there is a whole new world outside that him and the other prisoners were previously unaware of. The prisoner would then believe that the outside world is so mic more real than that in the cave. He would try to return to free the others. Upon his return, he is blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight. The chained prisoners would see this blindness and believe they will be harmed if they try to leave the cave.
The concept is devised by Plato to explore the nature of belief vs knowledge. It’s the concept of having the student find out this knowledge by themselves, rather have it told by a teacher; it is up to them to find what is real and significant, and most importantly, allowing the student to apprehend it for themselves. Knowledge, in some aspects, can be presented as scary, such as The Matrix or Us. But in this concept, the knowledge, like in The Truman Show, can open one’s eyes to the possibilities of the potential.
The Cruel Tormentor and Tormented Victim
This inclusion of this type of philosophy, almost hidden in plain sight in a somewhat super hero movie, actually makes a-lot of sense.
It’s the power that is given to teenagers, at a difficult stage in their lives, what with the representation of the world presenting problems left right and centre. And following Andrew through a cam corder shows our protagonist to have this hesitant willingness for good things to happen to him, opening himself up to each situation, and then, when given power from an unknown source, has the suffering he has felt internally to essentially burst out and externally impact anyone who he comes across, with the anger having him wanting to be listened to, to be looked at, but by a camera.
An object of representation, away from his own self.
He has not filtered that he, himself, is enough; he instead drowns in his pain, and explodes his anger outward with his powers.
And for Andrew, after having uplifting conversations with his friends about Tibet, of the path that Buddhists make to find this liberation from within (which is the end goal for Schopenhauer’s philosophy), Andrew draws the conclusion that he is an apex predator. Why?
Because with his growing frustrations that overlapping in his private life (his sick mother and drunk father), as well as his school life (popular for the magic show, infamous for vomiting on another student), collide to create things outside of his control. A storm that kills Steve. The killing of Steve, obviously unintentional, makes a divide in responsibility. Andrew denies involvement to Matt, but begs for forgiveness at Steve’s grave. However, after being ostracized, even more than we saw at the beginning, Andrew concludes that he shouldn’t feel guilty for using his powers on those weaker than him. A natural life cycle, which in this case, is anything but.
Compare that with Matt’s journey, which we see a little of, his thoughts on the matter are more on point with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The acceptance of struggle in his life, through his eyes, shows his lack of involvement, until Matt decides to take charge of his own life and that of his powers. From silly pranks that eventually lead to someone almost drowning, it is Matt who sets the ground rules. Matt is the one that tries to reason with Andrew, and in the end, he has to kill him, crying as he does it.
Matt stopped the suffering Andrew was causing, stifled Andrew’s own suffering, whilst having to live with his own. Matt has grown more aware, more honest, more true. He leaves the camcorder, a representation of Andrew looking at a Tibetan monastery because that was Andrew’s original wish. Matt comments on his actions, apologising and essentially saying what he wished he had said more to Andrew in person, that he loves him, even now.
They have both felt changes within themselves and those around them. Their representation has formed differently from when we are first introduced to them. And whether one has chosen to become an apex predator and to throw away the connection between themselves and everyone else, placing themselves as other, because they have tried so many times to find the love for others; or to view themselves as the same as everyone else, to essentially begin to participate and grow a fondness for the potential of openly seeing others as more than what they represent. It is here that we see both Andrew and Matt open up in very different ways. There is a quote that I have found whilst researching Schopenhauer’s philosophy that I feel blends their stories together, presenting more than simply a hero and villain arc.
Here it is:
“By compassionately recognising at a more universal level that the inner nature of another person is of the same metaphysical substance as oneself, one arrives at a moral outlook with a more concrete philosophical awareness. This compassionate way of apprehending another person is not merely understanding abstractly the proposition that ‘each person is a human being’, or understanding, abstractly (as would Kant) that, in principle, the same regulations of rationality operate equally in each of us and oblige us accordingly as equals. It is to feel directly the life of another person in an almost magical way; it is to enter into the life of humanity imaginatively, such as to coincide with all other as much as one possibly can. It is to imagine equally, and all in force, what it is like to be both a cruel tormentor and a tormented victim, and to locate both opposing experiences and characters within a single, universal consciousness that is the consciousness of humanity itself. With the development of moral consciousness, one’s awareness expands towards the mixed-up, tension ridden, bittersweet, tragicomic, multi-aspected and distinctively sublime consciousness of humanity itself”
This Isn’t a Superhero Story
And it is here, in this chronicle of a story about teenagers acquiring super powers, that we see many sides to something. How one is open to the knowledge, one died before their potential was shown and how one is blinded by it.
How three friends can define what they truly are by the things around them, by how they see themselves, and how they project who they are. Gaining super natural abilities was the start of something with a-lot of potential, and it is here that we might be able to see the villain arc, but for me, its the struggle of obtaining power and maintaining oneself throughout it all. The problems were already there, and each person was their own island, floating in their own mistakes or missed opportunities. An event takes place, forcing three different people on three different paths to collide and take note, all down to someone having a camera at the time. Being at the right place at the right time? Maybe. But in this chronicle of circumstances, it shows how one crucial event can have so many different outcomes. This isn’t a superhero story, and I guess we have to remember that.
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