Arcology

So I'm halfway through an obscure French movie with the unfortunate title "Eden Log". Weirdly, even though I'm like 99.999% sure (yes, five nines) that it's a French movie, all the dialogue is in English.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it for a few different reasons.

For one, it's a kind of "vision quest" narrative. The protagonist starts out deep in the earth, in total darkness, naked, hideously disfigured (what little we can see of him) and capable only of meaningless jerkings and incoherent grunts. As the story unfolds, we follow him towards the surface. The darkness gradually recedes before increasing amounts of light. His movements become more coordinated, purposeful. His disfigurements turn out to be caked mud, which he washes off. He clothes himself. He begins to speak intelligible words, complete sentences. A little bit at a time, he learns more and more about the world he's been "born" into.

I find this narrative arc fascinating, especially if the story is well-told. This movie seems to be doing a pretty good job of it, slowly but steadily incrementing the changes, the "growth" of the character. I am enjoying the way they keep improving the lighting on the set, and adding new props, and the way the script conveys the idea of growth.

Speaking of growth, the third reason I'm enjoying this movie is that it seems to be about some kind of arcology. An arcology modeled after a tree, both in design and in philosophy. And I think that arcologies are pretty neat, at least in theory. So any halfway-decent story set in an arcology, or about an arcology, gets my attention.