CONSCIOUS CINEMA
we engage in during one lifetime ultimately have
impact on others, for better or worse, leaving an in-
delible mark on who we are, our relationships with
one another and the quality of existence we enjoy.
Curiously, though, certain aspects of geography
lend themselves especially well to films related to
the subject of connectedness (or the seeming lack
thereof). That’s particularly true of Los Angeles
and its environs, which provides the backdrop for
a number of pictures focused on this topic, illus-
trating the presence of our inherent interrelated-
ness or our quest to find it. These themes play out
through the many entangled stories of personal
connection found in such movies as “Grand Can-
yon” (1991), “Magnolia” (1999), “Short Cuts”
(1993) and “Crash” (2005). These films depict the
humor, pathos, longing and inseparability that
inevitably bind us to one another, whether we’re
aware of it or not.
Our craving for connection has become an increas-
ingly significant cinematic theme, as seen in “Dis-
connect” (2012), an offering featuring a series of
intertwined stories much like those set in the City
40 | HAPI Guide
of Angels. The primary difference, though, is that
this release focuses on the seeming separation
we’ve allowed to develop among us, ironically
from a technology that was supposed to bring us
closer together – the Internet. Through the film’s
diverse story lines, however, we come to see how
our perceived separation is, in fact, an illusion that
has arisen because of our beliefs, notions that
have fulfilled our expectations, no matter how es-
sentially erroneous they might be.
This theme gets taken a step further in “Anesthe-
sia” (2015), another collection of entangled sto-
ries involving characters in search of connection
but who have become so embittered or disillu-
sioned with the disjointed lives they’ve created
that they’ve intentionally sought solace in various
forms of distraction to deaden the pain and an-
guish they feel. Through drugs, alcohol, extramar-
ital affairs and self-inflicted abuse, the players in
this film all seek to escape their circumstances,
only to find that they ultimately can’t, that the path
to happiness involves addressing what’s missing in
their lives in the first place – a bona fide awareness