This is not a film review, but a review on film, and its predecessor, photography. Beyond written words, paintings and sculptures, which conveniently record fiction, humans probably invented various other forms of media, including film, first to capture reality. Even the first still or photograph taken was a scene of something in real life, before ‘moving pictures’ came along to document actual moving stuff.
But as time went by, humans realised the compelling power of pictorial and video ‘proof’ and ‘representation’. They thus began to manipulate photos and films with ‘special effects’, for mere entertainment… and more nefarious purposes. As such early effects were simple, obvious and crude, they seemed silly. However, with deepening of the Dharma-Ending Age, comes less reverence for truth(fulness)…
With steep advances in technology while morality proportionately regressed, the vicious cycle is now complete. Increasingly more humans manipulate media, including (anti-)social media, to manipulate other humans, who manipulate more with the manipulated… With photoshopping of pictures and deepfaking of videos easier done, even our eyes and ears cannot be fully trusted today.
If even ‘live’-recorded interviews can be staged with half-truths and downright lies to gain sympathy or popularity, truth is increasingly the domain to be accessed by the mind alone, not by sight and sound. Increasingly so, before too quickly making up our minds on any issue after ‘reviewing’ a few conspiracy theories, we should check if there are adequate surrounding facts that make or break each version of ‘reality’.
