Remake and Original

On The Beach (2000)

A deeply flawed remake of the brilliant original filmed forty years earlier.

I love that old film because of the way it makes me feel, and want to live.

This newer version still has that, but as a pale echo. The ending is a cynically tacked-on ‘happy’ one (in a film about nuclear holocaust and human extinction), and the very last line of dialogue is a blatant lie that annihilates human agency, in the name of some warped hollywoodland vision of what ‘love’ is, or to sell tickets, or whatever.

Also:
The original book by Nevil Shute, read aloud.
I listened. I get why it inspired a movie in the first place. The On The Beach of 1959 will still always be the canonical version of the story for me.

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