I got "the Congress" while looking for anime and what a stunning surprise it was. Visually stunning, well worked out characters and a very actual topic that raises questions about being and the power of pharmaceutics and media companies over people. But also about loss and making important choices. Now I admit that the start of the movie is a bit weak, flying kites (return theme) near an airport fence...well OK. The discussion about and the scanning, a bit long. But then the movies sets of... The graphics are a psychedelic trip like "yellow submarine" from the Beatles. You get confused on what is real and what is the relation is, until it all comes together...worth watching again

First thing of all: a drug that gives us all our wishes the way we want is not good for economy, for the entire world economy. The main pinnacle of our occidental economy is the fact that people BUY, constantly, with a great variety. People buy all kinds of products not because they need to buy it, but for two main reasons: for social status, or for tradition. It's not just a choice of an individual if she or he is going to buy a new food, drug, mobile-phone, book, etc. Doesn't matter how perfect an Apple phone (Iphone) can be, sometime you either buy a new one, or the one you have gets broken and you buy another. It's for some social reasons that people buy. First, it's because the occident have created a society in which such consumerism is possible with De La Division du Travail Social (The Division of Labour in Society), second, it's because we are born in a family in which it's OK to buy a mini skirt or something like that (for example, if you're born in a Quaker family, you going to have a bad time with freedom to choose what you buy), third, if we are lucky about the previous possibilities, we still buy according to what kind of social group we are integrated, for example, if I'm a skater, the things that I'll buy will be slightly different from what a "headbanger" buys, or a rapper from Brooklyn, etc. And here I get into the second point about what the movie gets wrong about society. What I want to say is that we do not only seek individual pleasure, we also seek social status, we are constantly trying to reaffirm our position on our social groups, and we act accordingly with it. Although the individual has much more liberty to choose and act than it had before the modernity (the consequences being not so good as it seems, as Durkheim shows on Le Suicide), we still are seeking new ways to be more easily socially integrated, that's why the people who use Facebook the most are people with more social life (as some studies have concluded), and even on Facebook we have dozens of crews, and that's why new kinds of social integration are constantly being born and reaffirmed (the boom of "what's up" for example). I don't know if this movie would be scientifically possible, I would not doubt, since technology is improving beyond our sights, but what I do know is that it's sociologically impossible, for two main reasons: it would break the world economy, and second, it's not sociologically viable. And a third point that I won't discuss much further, what about the State? Only in anarchy that would be possible, and it doesn't seems that all order was abandoned in that world, the Contemporary State is a bourgeois State, it needs, as a corporation, to maintain the profits of the dominating class. Beyond this sociological analysis, I must say that the story is a little bit confusing, that "revolt" or "revolution", I could not get it if that was meant to break the new system that was about to happen but failed, or if it just changed the way of how things were going to be, like a single company was selling these drugs but then it became free for everyone. Second, I did not get it that thing about Robin being frozen to wait for a world in which she could be cured (the disease appearing to be "seeing the world as cartoon" or just the "random dreams" she was having?), it seemed just a bad excuse to get her separated from her son for a long time. Although its sociological failure, the movie have a good picture, and it's an interesting sci- fi. And it shows a very important thing about post-modern society: that we are blindly trying to seek happiness and understand what we need by individual ways, we forget that what we need since we invented religion is being socially integrated, not just individual pleasure. As Durkheim shows on Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, we praise society, not a god, and being moderately socially integrated is necessary for our health, as he shows on Le Suicide.

Warning: Possible spoilers included.First, let's get the title out of the way. The movie has nothing to do with politics.That aside, it's an amazing piece of movie-making. The premise, that when an actor appears in a film, the actual actor is no longer needed, is fascinating. For a fee, that person gives up everything that he or, in this case, she is. The purchaser of that identity is thereafter free to use it in any way, without further permission.And use it, the fictional movie maker, a mash up of the names Miramax and Paramount, does, creating an ageless superhero when the person shown is actually an aged lady. But that crass form of identity theft and manipulation goes even farther as the movie company creates ways to steal everyone's identity to create a cartoonish world of name droppers and fantasy creatures, all shown in some of the most remarkable animation ever on a screen.All in all, The Congress is an odd, but fascinating look at a future when we give up all we are in exchange for entertainment. Worth an Oscar? No. Worth watching. Yes.

Contemporary Criticism of any given Contemporary Subject is usually Fraught with Half-Realizations and Wild Prognostications of said situations. In this one, the Digital Entertainment World Siphoning off the Souls of the Animate, Pharmaceutical Masking, Socialism, Fascism, Escapism, and Multiverse. It's all Thrown in a Blender Spiced Up with this and that and Pureed into a Barely Digestible Combination of Incoherence and Incomprehensibility. The Long Story's Plot is Divided, Diverted, and makes about as much Sense as a Psychedelic Experience. Flashes of Insight that are Difficult to Adhere and Retain. A Beautiful Landscape of Ultra-Colorful Images and Distortions Displayed Rapid Fire.The Animation Sequences are of Fleischer Studios and Peter Max with Dashes of just about Every other Style from Twentieth Century Cartoons and Artists. It is a Mind-Boggling Bent of Glimpses from the Past. This all takes Place in the Future and Careens Onward in Twenty Year Quantum Leaps.It is an Ambitious Concept that has Robin Wright Playing Robin Wright and as a Digital and Organic Link making a Deal with the Devil (Hollywood). The Movie Borrows many Concepts but Fails to make much of the Dreamy Insights and Philosophies.The final Result is a Stunning Looking Stew, Half-Baked and all of those Tasty Ingredients are Served in a Pretty Presentation with Style, but the Consistency is Lacking and in the End it is just too much and Spoils the Experience that Reaches for the Profound but ultimately Lacks a Clarity.