영화 <컨택트>를 보고

아직 이 영화의 원작인 Ted Chiang의 "Story of Your Life"라는 단편을 읽지 않았다. 영화를 보기 전에 가장 궁금했고 또 보고 나서도  가장 이해할 수 없었던 부분은 언어학자인 여주인공이 외계인의 문양 혹은 텍스트를 패턴화시켜 이해하고 또 그렇게 소통하는데 별 무리가 없었다는 것.  또 하나 납득할 수 없었던 것은 그들의 언어 사고를 이해하면서 덕분에 미래를 예지하게 되는데 그 미래의 모습이 결국 현재의 행위에 개입하는 장면. 소설을 읽고 좀 더 생각의 진도를 나가야할 듯 싶다. 관련되어 떠오르는 이론과 작품들. 벤야민의 <역사철학테제>, 비트겐슈타인의 <철학적 탐구>, 테렌스 맬릭의 <Tree of Life>, 조지 엘리엇의 __Middlemarch__, 쿳시의 __Foe__, 이언 맥큐언의 __Atonement__, 가라타니 고진의 비대칭적 대화론 등등...

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the world?"

"A picture held us captive"

"That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."

"The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

I’ve been standing at the window, feeling waves of tiredness beat the remaining strength from my body. The floor seems to be undulating beneath my feet. I’ve been watching the first gray light bring into view the park and the bridges over the vanished lake. And the long narrow driveway down which they drove Robbie away, into the whiteness. I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end. I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet. If I had the power to conjure them at my birthday celebration . . . Robbie and Cecilia, still alive, still in love, sitting side by side in the library, smiling at The Trials of Arabella? It’s not impossible."