Rating: 4/5
Russell Simmons presents “Vampires are philosophy doctorates”
Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is a philosophy doctoral student working on her dissertation. Her cohort, Jean (Edie Falco), might be her only friend. The two walk the streets, quiet and fearful.
One night, on Kathleen’s walk home, an alluring woman named Casanova draws Kathleen into an alley.
Tell me to go, and I'll leave you alone.
But Kathleen only cries as Casanova bites her neck and draws blood.
Collaborator.
Kathleen reports the woman to the police and then ambles home, her neck loosely bandaged and still bleeding, with tears and convulsions. The next few days are hell as Kathleen’s body and mind change, as though she is experiencing withdrawal from a drug she’s never consumed.
She comes across a man passed out on the street. She draws his blood with a syringe. Back home, she finds a vein and injects the blood into her body, giving her relief from the torment.
It makes no difference what I do, whether I draw blood or not. It's the violence of my will against theirs.
Kathleen decides to take the existential philosophy that she has studied and embody it in her actions. She is an ego creating her own will to power, her morality based on what she knows.
— How could you do this? Doesn't this affect you at all? — No. It was your decision... It's not my indifference that's the problem. It's your astonishment that needs studying.
But on the fringes of that philosophy is a religious underpinning — a Catholic background that permeates the thoughts. A determinism that says god has already decided who will go to heaven and who to hell. Sinners are unconscious of evil, predestined for hell. Suffering and guilt are signs that god is working on your salvation.
Look sin in the face and tell it to go
Victim after victim she takes, not to take their life but to inject her philosophy into their bloodstream. She is an evangelical, inviting others into the suffering that may lead to their salvation.
Prove there's no evil, and you can go
One night, she tries to take Peina (Christopher Walken), but like Jesus in the desert, he knows her philosophy and turns it back on her. He claims to have fasted from blood for 40 years, learning to survive on a little.
I'll teach you what hunger is
He drains her of nearly all of her blood. She cannot die this way, so she will only suffer pain. And what is pain to a demon spending eternity suffering in hell? Self-revelation is the annihilation of self. If there is no ego, there is no will to enact on others. In this practice, Peina has almost become human again — walking in daylight and drinking tea.
You're not a person. You're nothing
But Kathleen cannot stand the pain of detox and runs out and draws more blood.
The dual nature to the addiction — it satisfies the hunger that evil engenders, but it also dulls our perception so we are helped to forget how ill we are. We drink to escape the fact we're alcoholics. Existence is the search for a release from our habit, and our habit is the only relief we can find.
She turns towards her doctoral dissertation, finalizing what she has come to understand. That philosophy is propaganda — an ego attempts to influence an object — to change its worldview.
Essence is revealed through praxis — our impact on other egos
And with that, she gathers her converts, and they put their philosophy into practice.
We're not evil because of the evil we do. We do evil because we are evil. And what choices do such people have?
But god isn’t done with her yet.
Guilt doesn't pass with time, Jean. It's eternal.
This movie has the worst opening credit song I’ve ever heard.