On a Friday night few weeks ago, me and my boyfriend decided to stay at home, eat well and watch a good movie. We chose a movie called The Darwin Awards, which turned out to be exactly what we wanted. It was good, entertaining and humorous. And it offered an intresting point of view to those who are qualified for those unrespected awards.
The Darwin Awards is an actual website, http://www.darwinawards.com/ . The site tells storied about people who accidentally kill themselves by doing something incredibly stupid. The name Darwin is linked to them, because they are doing a favour for the gene pool by removing themselves from it, so there stupidity genes wont be transferred to next generations. The website is full of incredible stories, the movie featured only a few and a couple of close calls.
The movie is starred by Joseph Fiennes (best known from playing Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love) and Winona Ryder (no mention here where we know her from!). Let me just say that these two did awesome job with their roles. Both characters were built nicely but still with room for imagination. Fiennes is Michael Burrows, a criminal profiler terrified of blood. He accidentally lets a serial killer get away and is fired from the San Francisco Police Force. He is fascinated by the Darwin Awards website, and decides to combine his intrest and talent of profiling. He meets up with a insurance company's manager, and convinces him to give him a job at profiling those people who have a high risk of accidentally taking their own lives. He is teamed up with Siri (Ryder), to investigate current cases.
Naturally for drama reasons, the two don't get along. Siri doesn't like Michael stepping on her toes at investigations and interviews, but is soon convinced when Michael's theories are proven true. The couple faces some weird and unbelievable cases, and learn something about themselves on the way. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I won't go into more detail. After all, I can honestly recommend this movie. It was entertaining, and got me thinking.
Now when I get to this analysing part, I might spoil something, so consider yourself warned.
I think Michael was fascinated by the Darwin Awards because in a way, he envied them. He lived a very protected life himself, knew all the things that can go wrong and was always prepared. The Darwin Award winners may not have thought about the concequences, and therefore were just plain stupid, but they also had the guts to try, and more of, to live. When someone is always prepared for the worst, fears everything and is afraid to try, that person will also have a pretty boring life. And stressful, when they have to worry all the time. They might live longer, but the quality of that time will be questionable. After all, all the risks make life more fun. It still doesn't mean that you should do something really stupid. Brains is a good thing to have. Also, about midway through the movie Siri suggests that Michael is a real candidate for the Darwin Awards. And indeed, through the whole movie he get into situations that could be fatal, but he always somehow manages to survive.
So what do we learn from the movie? Trying is a good thing, but always remember to also think. Being imaginative is a good thing, being stupid is not. Also, don't take life for granted. Don't ever think that "it can't happen to me" or "I can't get hurt". Because it CAN happen to you and you CAN get hurt.
All in all, the movie was good, night was fun.. the junkfood wasn't so great, though. But at least we tried something different :D
