On a movie
Recently re-watched most of the 2013 action-thriller The Numbers Station about a US agent for some organization like the CIA or NSA who is assigned to protect a woman based in rural England who sends out numbers to international agents that are really codes giving them orders.
A few thoughts
- I could not re-watch the whole thing because the DVD kept skipping and freezing. DVDs and CDs are too fragile.
- I had an idea when younger that men are ethical (sometimes) through codes of honor, while women are ethical through sensitivity, but this film makes a woman the expert in codes.
- Breaking codes, especially by the British analyst Alan Turing, contributed to the Allies’ success defeating the Nazis in World War II,
- The lead actor, John Cusack, seems to have started out in teen comedies but later turned to more serious films, similar to the way Bill Murray has toggled between comedies and more serious stuff.
- There is a certain appeal to action movies. I don’t like guns in reality, but they can be thrilling in movies. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley had the science-fiction idea of “violent-passion surrogate,” and it seems to me sometimes that the loud, aggressive driving in my current neighborhood and some violent sports represent this.