Starring: Scarlet Johansson, Morgan Freeman
Distributor: Icon Films
Runtime: 90 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2014
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Lucy seems a rather quiet name for a film by Luc Besson, more famous in recent decades for his producing and direction action features. However, he has had a continued interest in science and science-fiction, most significantly in The Big Blue and his well-regarded The Fifth Element.
While he does exercise his flair for action sequences, especially in a rapid car chase through the streets of Paris, he is interested in themes of evolution, behaviour of prehistoric animals, of apes and their gradual development, the nature of the human brain, its capacity and humans not using their brains to full capacity, rather 10%. So, he has created an action parable about the capacity of the human brain.
Lucy is a science-fiction film. However, it might be called philosophy/metaphysics-fiction, especially with its cosmic overview of animal and human development as well as it speculations about what might happen to a human being using full capacity. At the end, when Lucy has exercised the hundred percent and she is asked where she is, she replies that she is everywhere. She is omnipresent and omniscient. A symbol of God?
During the early sequences, Besson has inserted quite a number of images of animals and their behaviour, drawing from the beautiful films about nature and the world, Baraka and Samsara. When Lucy is introduced, and her boyfriend is trying to persuade her to deliver a locked case to reception at a Taiwanese office block, the director inserts visuals of animals circling each other, wary, fearful, and the superior animals pouncing. We realise we are not just in a simple story of a young woman, an American in Taiwan, who gets caught up in action adventure.
Lucy is played by Scarlet Johansson, following her non-visual performance as a computer companion in the film, Her and her mysterious alien in Under the Skin. At first, she is apprehensive, especially when confronted by the Taiwanese chief drug dealer. Then there is the mystery of the blue bags in the case, a drug whose origin has not been specified, part of the mystery of what is going on. Obviously the Taiwanese need to know what the drug is and so insert the bags into a group of mules, including Lucy.
Up till now, routine but mysterious. Then Lucy’s bag begins to leak with dire effects on her on a plane and at the Berlin airport. But, Lucy is changing, makes her way to Paris with the Taiwanese in pursuit. A French captain of police is interested in her case, driving with her in an intense chase through the streets of Paris and being something of a bodyguard.
After the drug setup, the film moves to the science aspect, introducing Morgan Freeman as an expert on science of the brain, and, with his elegant delivery, we learn quite a deal about the functioning of the brain.
Lucy wants to have a record of what has happened and the Professor supervises her link with a computer, the screen noting the ever increasing use of all of her brain.
And then, the film leaves us with some philosophical speculations about human capacities, the exercise of the brain – and how humans could transcend their mundane behaviour and existence.
Which means that Besson has provided a science and philosophical parable, outstanding in its visual impact, challenging in the questions that it asks and that it implies.
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