Favorite movie scenes 72

Heartbeeps (1981) is a brilliant film. It's about a charming couple of robots (played by Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters) who meet when they are waiting to be turned to scrap. First they look at each other from the corner of the eye, then they strike up a conversation and finally they decide to just run away, with no other plan but to keep on "living". They are so sweet and polite, and much like Blade Runner the movie portrays a dystopian future where people's lack of humanity is exposed by those who are supposedly non-human, the robots. They hold up a glass and you don't like what you see.

Eventually they get to experience love for each other. It's right at a point in the story where they are beginning to malfunction -- I think they're running out of power or something, but anyway they're shutting down. She is already like a statue, incapable to move or speak, and it's at that point that the robot realizes that he loves her. Just as he is beginning to say the words he runs out of power. You can only make out the sense of what he was going to say. It's very moving. You wonder if, although unable to reply, she still had enough power to hear him, if before shutting down she at least knew how he felt.

One of the most fascinating details in the movie is a robot who was programmed to be an entertainer and his only way of expressing himself is through jokes, he can't do normal conversation. He smokes a cigar, he's crass and he's vulgar, but then you realize that's just on the surface. Underneath he is a sensitive soul trapped inside the computer program. Even if someone that he loves is dying all he can do is tell a joke that is somehow related to the theme of death, as tears roll down his cheek, because his programmers didn't leave him with anything else.

It's a very profound observation about mankind, and how you have to look underneath the surface of people's behaviour to what's really going on. A lot of the times people don't really want to act a certain way, but they have no other skills, so to speak.

I think some people are always looking for flaws and being critical out of sheer frustration. I think it's depression. More than anything they wished they could love other people but most of the time they find themselves unable to, and this is immensely frustrating. So they lash out as you for not making them love you. As infantile and unfair as that may be, that's why they criticize with such viciousness, it's pure pain. That's what I see in someone who attacks, say, a band or a movie that they didn't like. He's actually saying "Damn you for not making me love you, when I needed to love so much".

If you're an artist and you find yourself criticized in the harshest terms, remember that. If you can understand this you will feel sorry for them from the heart and without cynicism. Think that you are alive, while they are half dead.