Tagarchief: Death

An Atheist Goes To Heaven

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Dan Dennett opened his eyes, and he found that he was in a dazzling green landscape. He looked at himself, his body was completely intact. Even his long white beard was still there. Only his glasses were missing. Still, there was something different about him. His body was more radiant, like he was in some sort of lucid dream. He looked at his hands, as he had done often in lucid dreams, and bright light shone through them. He really was dreaming! Except then why wasn’t he waking up right about now? Lucid dreams were usually very brief experiences.

The last thing he remembered was being in the medical center with his wife. His lovely Susie whom he loved so so much. His interstitial lung disease had drained him of his last powers and he felt like he was slipping away into a deep sleep. Eternal sleep. He looked at his wife one last time. “I love you…” And that was it….

And now he was here, or so it seemed. But what was here? It was not in Maine, that’s for sure. He looked around him and saw the most beautiful trees. They were cedar trees, he thought. But way bigger than he had ever seen them before. There were also huge bushes of flowers in yellow, blue, pink, orange and purple. Dan tried if he could float through the air and found that he actually could. He followed a narrow path alongside a small creek with round white shining stones illuminating the way. There were small clouds also, really close to the ground, and when he passed through them they felt like silk to his skin. The creek made the most peaceful sound he had ever heard and he could also hear birds chirping.

But how can my consciousness still be intact?, Dan thought. During all of his career as one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers, he had proposed that consciousness was constructed by tiny little machines inside the human brain. But he was pretty sure his physical brain would by now be no longer functioning. Had the dualists been right after all? That consciousness existed in a different realm as the brain? But no, he still had his body. He was looking right at it and it felt more real than it had ever felt. What about these idealists, these woo woo cosmic consciousness peddlers? Was mind indeed the primal substance of the universe? There was still some doubt in Daniel’s mind.

He reached a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains covered in flowers. Dan was completely in awe of the astonishing scenery. It was more awesome than anything he had ever seen in his life. Then he gasped as he was approached by a magnificent blue butterfly the size of a man. It came up to him and said in a clear voice: “I am so happy to see you, Dan. So very happy.” The bearded philosopher was shocked; he was now 100% certain he was not in Kansas anymore, or any other place on earth for that matter. “And who might you be?’”, Dan asked. “I am Christopher”, the butterfly replied. “Christopher Hitchens”. Dan’s jaw dropped a mile deep. Then he quickly recovered and he smiled the widest smile he had ever smiled. “Now jump on my back, my old friend”, the butterfly said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

More about life after death: From Here To Eternity And Back Again. About Death In Mental Space

Enter the Void

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld



Director: Gaspar Noé
Written by: Gaspar Noé, Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Cast: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander

Year / Country: 2009, France / Germany / Italy / Canada / Japan
Running Time: 161 mins.

Death is the greatest drug!

Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is hypnotic from the trippy credits onwards. The entire film is shot from the perspective of the heavy drug user and dealer Oscar who dies fifteen minutes into the movie. He gets shot during a police raid in a Tokyo bar called ‘the Void’ when he locked himself in the toilet trying to flush his stash of gear.

Oscar, who was just reading ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’ which he borrowed from his friend Alex, sees his own dead body on the restroom floor and it feels like a genuine death experience. The rest of the film follows Oscar’s consciousness point-of-view that keeps hovering above people he used to be close to, seeing psychedelic images, or just strangers and old friends having sex. He also re-experiences scenes from his own life from an outside perspective. Oscar is no longer burdened by the restraints of a physical body or the flow of time. Philosophically, the laws of cause and effect are one of the main themes of the film.

His main memory is the car crash that killed his parents and left him and his sister traumatized orphans. They ended up in Tokyo where she became a stripper and he became a dealer and user. Oscar observes the aftermath of his death which includes police interrogations, dramatic arguments between his old friends, and lives going seriously off the rails. Watching the human tragedy play out from an eagle eye perspective is playful and refreshing. (Spoiler: It ends with Oscar’s soul reincarnating as a baby).

Noé’s dream project is a successful experimental film with a number of powerful scenes and some stunning visuals. The film’s main problem is that it is more than two and a half hours long! For an experimental movie that is a major sin. But Noé is all about trying new things. Unfortunately, the film became a major flop (not even a million gross worldwide versus a sixteen million dollar budget according to IMDb). Still these beautiful crane shots of neon-lit Tokyo were worth every buck. With some proper editing, this could have been a masterpiece.

Another downside is that Enter the Void is mostly a visual experience. The electronic pop helps to create the unique atmosphere, but there are no thoughts by Oscar after he is killed or other sensations. Therefore, I hope that monsieur Noé will one day create a virtual reality project of his vision. About his elaborate view on death two notions stick. One, dying ain’t so bad. And two, voiced by Oscar in a discussion with Alex about the ‘The Book of the Dead’ on their way to the club is; are we really gonna be stuck forever on this shit hole of a planet?

Rating:

Biography: Gaspar Noé (1963, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born French film director. Noé spent his childhood in Buenos Aires and New York before moving to France with his parents at the age of 12. He studied philosophy and film studies at the École Louis-Lumière in Paris. After this he initially started working as First Assistant Director before becoming a director himself. In 1992 he made his breakthrough as a director with his short film Carne. Noé mainly focuses on short films. Stanley Kubrick’s films in particular serve as inspiration for him. Well known feature length films he directed are the controversial Irreversible and Enter the Void. Noé is married to filmmaker Lucile Hadzihalilovic. She is credited as co-writer for his movie Enter the Void from 2009.

Filmography (a selection): Carne (1991, short) / I Stand Alone (1998) / Sodomites (1998, short), Irréversible (2002), Intoxication (2002, short), Eva (2005, short), Destricted (2006, segment: We Fuck Alone), SIDA (2006, short), Enter the Void (2009), 42 One Dream Rush (2010, short), Love (2015), Climax (2018), Lvx Æterna (2019), Vortex (2021)