Hollywood Embraces High-Tech Alienation

While the movies have always had a love-hate relationship with technology (think of the wonder and terror of “Metropolis,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner”), lately they’ve taken a decidedly pessimistic turn, perhaps spurred by millennial anxieties and dot.com overstimulation.

In “The Beach,” which opens Friday, Leonardo DiCaprio descends into his own state of madness and make-believe when paradise becomes a living hell. Without any real-life experience to counter his loneliness and isolation, he relies on the virtual reality of movies, cartoons and video games for solace.

“The Beach” director Danny Boyle says “technology is the big replacement” for other cultural and spiritual values in our time. “It is so embracing. Our movie is about needing people,” he says. “We are at the mercy of our own detachment, and it’s our responsibility to offer something better as we enter the new century.”

“The Beach” is one of several recent movies that deal in one way or another with issues involving technology, virtual reality and what it means to be human in a sometimes inhuman world. The films deal with societies in which reality has become more virtual, communication faster but more superficial, and intimacy more difficult.

* In “Eye of the Beholder,” surveillance expert Ewan McGregor obsesses over Ashley Judd’s unusually vulnerable femme fatale and follows her around the country in a Twilight Zone of high-tech voyeurism. These two oddly compelling soul mates have no idea that their descent into madness and make-believe has robbed them of their capacity to love.

* In “Bicentennial Man,” Robin Williams plays a caring and sensitive robot in the not-too-distant future struggling with a quirk in his mechanics that makes him nearly human. His quest to become human merely underscores how much has been lost in our preoccupation with technology.

* In “Titus,” Julie Taymor’s mind-blowing take on William Shakespeare’s play “Titus Andronicus,” the presence of certain technological anomalies serves as a stinging reminder of our timeless capacity for aggression--the movie is set in an unreal time, one that links ancient and fascist Rome and the contemporary world. Chariots, motorcycles and tanks simultaneously flash across the screen, and angry teenagers play video games. The effect is a kind of virtual reality where violence has become the ultimate spectator sport.

All four films try to point a way out of our technological alienation by suggesting it’s not only safe but essential that we reach out to strangers and loved ones alike.

In “The Beach,” based on Alex Garland’s cult novel about Gen-Xer angst, life has become less tangible. The pursuit of greater pleasures and sensations has replaced human interaction. Everyone feels disconnected--which is why American tourist DiCaprio runs away to Thailand and then to a secret island nearby, where a group tries to reinvent utopia.

But there’s trouble in paradise without a moral compass. Fun is a never-ending pursuit, and pain is to be avoided at all costs. With “Apocalypse Now” and “Looney Tunes” cartoons as his only points of reference, DiCaprio transforms the island into his own imaginary video game.

“They go there and live in a bubble of contentment,” director Boyle continues. “But it’s a refuge, not a real society, where the imperfections of humanity get left behind. They are just shopping. It’s about the failure of utopia.”

Perhaps the most telling image in “The Beach” occurs when DiCaprio enters a coffeehouse and goes to a computer and opens his e-mail. He’s surrounded by other patrons also absorbed in the Web. No one is interacting with each other; it’s a sad sight.

“I don’t think you can go to someone else’s land and claim utopia,” Boyle says. “Even as a filmmaker, I feel the prevalence of technology and what it does to us as people. We make movies and we’re wrapped up in it. We want the audience to feel that intensity. But we can’t run away from our responsibilities.”

Nearly everyone is out of touch with his or her feelings in the holiday season film “Bicentennial Man,” including the affluent Northern California family Williams serves. As Andrew, the robot, Williams is “more human than human,” as they say in “Blade Runner.”

Sam Neill, the patriarch of this well-intentioned 21st century clan, is a clockmaker consumed by his craftsmanship (time is taken for granted by everyone but the immortal Williams). He inspires Williams to become a craftsman. But there’s a crucial difference: Williams is consumed by people, not objects. Unfortunately, his struggle with discovering his inner human breeds isolation and disconnection.

Isolation and disconnection are at the heart of “Eye of the Beholder,” the new techno-noir thriller written and directed by Stephan Elliott. In the story, McGregor has totally cut himself off from direct contact with people and can only communicate by phone and computer with his company office (k.d. lang plays the warm and witty girl Friday). In her psychotic way, Judd keeps her emotional distance while murdering her way across America in different guises.

“I’ve been on a millennium kick for a while,” concedes Elliott by phone from his home in Sydney, Australia. “I sit there and argue with people about how isolated we’ve become and where we are headed. I am not so optimistic.”

Elliott concocted the whole technological dimension to his adaptation of Marc Behm’s hard-boiled novel after reading about a teenager in Tokyo who locked himself in his room for two weeks, immersed in the Internet. “I get so wrapped up in my own digital world with answering machines and e-mails,” Elliott admits. “I found myself shutting down during this film.”

“Eye of the Beholder” has a timeless look that captures Elliott’s remembrances of America’s cinematic past: a blending of different styles and eras that morphs into an alluring dream world. The audience feels as disoriented as McGregor, who collects snow globes from every city to help him keep track of his trek.

Technology figures into not only the plot of the “Eye of the Beholder,” but the filmmaking itself. Although “Eye of the Beholder” was principally shot in Canada, familiar American landmarks are digitally morphed into the shots: Chicago has a ‘30s grittiness, New York possesses a ‘40s sophistication and Alaska contains the chromed claustrophobia of ‘50s diners.

“I was so surprised to discover that America wasn’t the place I remembered from the movies,” Elliott explains. “Everything looks terribly homogenized. A lot of pink brick and shopping malls.

“One thing that hurt was doing the music by computer from Cambridge to Montreal. It was done at a breathtaking speed, but I was so removed from it. Digital technology is really taking the fun out of it. Do I want to keep doing this? That’s what I keep asking myself.”

*

First-time movie director (but veteran stage and opera director) Taymor is also concerned with the troubling signs in our society, but she had no such qualms about using high-technology in “Titus,” which opened in national release last month. She turns the Bard’s bloody black satire about violence and revenge into her own timeless expression--a dialogue between the past and the present. Or to put it another way, she creates a multi-sensory continuum revealing how nothing ever changes, including our capacity to transcend our dark side with surprising human kindness.

Imperial and fascist Rome melds into one; chariots flash across the screen along with tanks and motorcycles; microphones are as commonplace as video games. It is a world all too familiar with its acts of inhumanity.

“It is set in a created time so it won’t be anachronistic,” Taymor explains by phone, taking a break from working on the DVD version of “Titus” in Los Angeles. “I wanted to show that Shakespeare is of all time. The meaning of his heightened poetic language still resonates with us today. The world you see is the world you’ve created.”

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“Titus” begins with a contemporary youngster violently playing with toy soldiers suddenly transported back in time to watch a series of horrors unfold in Rome. And it ends with that same youngster walking off into the horizon holding a baby in his arms--the hope of the future. He has gone from observer to participant and has been altered by the events he’s witnessed.

Anthony Hopkins plays his father, a Roman general, who goes from hero to villain, while Moor slave Harry J. Lennix goes from villain to hero. The boy constantly watches his father. But in one revealing scene that Taymor has rewritten, he kills a fly and then talks Hopkins out of his defense of all living creatures by appealing to his rage.

“It’s about the realization of justice; the consequences end in massacre and death,” Taymor says. “Violence has become entertainment, which is the connection with the boy. What is evil? What is good? It’s all about balance.”