Review Of The Movie Alphaville
The movie Alphaville is a science fiction based on the story of a city where all kinds of emotions and feelings are banned. Whoever lives in this city is not supposed to feel emotions of any kind. This city is ruled by a computer which is called the “Alpha 60”. The Alpha 60 was programmed in such a way that it was supposed to brainwash the entire population of Alphaville. The only aim of this computer is to wipe the city clean of all emotions. The city is very strange but that is normal (in this movie).The scene that we are supposed to write about is the one in which men and women are executed in the swimming pool. In this scene the men are being executed for one reason, that is, “acting illogically”. Their crime was to act with emotions. Their crime was to stand for something they felt for strongly.
The aim of Alpha 60 was to eradicate all emotion and it this was its way of doing it; killing those who feel it. Executing them publicly was the computer’s way to make a statement to the entire city. What I failed to understand was why the ratio of the executions was fifty men to one woman. Was it the men who felt so strongly or was it that the women obeyed all rules? The only answer that makes sense to me is that it was because all the women were needed to be robots of some kind. They were called “seductress third class”. Men couldn't fill this job description and hence killing them was easier and would not incur any losses. However if the women were killed more than men or even equivalent to them, then there would not be any “seductress third class” ; they would not exist.
Overall I felt Alphaville is a movie which was made a long time ago but it feels like this movie is much more real for our time. Everyone we know is a robot of some kind. By robot I mean not having time for emotions or even for your own self. All of us are behind something or the other and we are very strongly driven towards it. So much so that we would do anything to get it, even if that means crossing lines and limits. Everyone is in a rat race which never ends.
