Redemption is voluntarily atoning for an act in which one feels guilt over. The person seeking redemption decides to make things right and it is a decision based on their moral compass. Reformation, on the other hand, is the social engineering of one’s thoughts. The person reforming is forcibly conditioned to change an aspect of oneself that negates the brand or image he wants to present to a conservative mass. It is the whitewashing of a character, manipulating a false image. The film’s thesis is clear: You can’t change someone who doesn’t want to be changed. Sooner or later, the mind will break free.
The film explores the disruption of the natural order of life in order to gain dominance.
American Gothic, the party in the film’s Lost Weekend arc establishes the film’s foray to the stark auditing and visceral throngs of primitive savagery and the principal reality. All the glamour is striped. The real faces of the characters are exposed. They want to run away as fast as they can to escape persecution and responsibility. Their flaws and dirty laundry are exposed against nature’s background. Easton exploits them to expose their true visions, a metaphor for breaking the programming. And in the descent to madness we find the exploitation of their sanity are what sets them free from the confines of their false reality.
How far will one go to run away from all his problems and emotional entanglements that ground him in reality?
ESTABLISHING QUOTE:
Animals may lay low but they do not go quietly into the night. They fight.” —” EASTON CALDWELL
In the end, through Easton orchestrates a performance art through the production of his film. As the events of the actual film unfold, Patrick sever ties with reality. Gemma is imprisoned and watches her husband’s constraints and abuse as he breaks the programming and showcases various displays of dissociative identity disorder.
Obscura 