Blogpost 5: Immortality in Movies

There were times that we wish to become immortal or to live forever. Sometimes, we even daydreamed about on how we will spend our lives forever. But does living forever worth the cost? How far would you go in order to gain eternal youth? There are some movies that show the good things and bad things of immortality.

The movie "Death becomes Her" gives us knowledge that immortality can be bad for us. The movie was starred by Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. The movie is about the rivalry of two women who tries to eliminate each other and discovered that they both drink the same magical potion, they become immortal and life will never be the same for them. The focus of the movie is what is it like to have an eternal life, is it good or bad? It is explained that the two woman doesn't want to look old but to look young forever so that's why they ended up drinking a potion that makes them immortal. While their loved one doesn't want to drink the potion because he would get bored having the two ladies as his company for the rest of his life and he can't take to see his family and friends die.

When I was searching about an article that relates immortality to the movie, I found an article that caught my attention entitled "The Problem with Immortality" in the site of "The Vampire Project". The article talks about the movie on how they are related to vampires gaining immortality. It stated that "the pain of someone's immortality reminds us to enjoy our mortality, where we would otherwise take it for granted". In the "Death Becomes Her" movie, the eternal youth is granted as long as one stays alive. When an immortal dies, the body becomes rot but their soul stays intact same as their mental facilities. The author relate it to vampires by saying that their bodies did not remain to be young forever. By the end of the movie, the two women's bodies have completely shattered form abuse and it all left were their talking heads, with no hope for release. In their case, death will be the greatest gift for them but because of the greed of eternal youth, death denied them. The film serves as an allegory for those people who want their looks and youth to be as they are forever and it is possible to lose their humanity in the process.

To sum it all up, I realized that being immortal is not really good to us. Immortality undermine whatever achievements you have because you will have an infinite time to achieve them. Being immortal is not really about having a body that could outlived forever but only a soul.