Jupiter’s Moon

Warning: Spoilers!

When we included refugees in our lives in the west, we didn’t quite think of all the implications it could bring. Terrorism being the biggest fear, sending some European authorities into a rather forceful response. The opening sequence serves as an introduction to the clashing forces in frame: Refugees and authorities.

Jupiter’s Moon has a problem with labelling a group of people as opposed to treating them individually. Much like it’s flying character, it looks at the issues from above. It’s acknowledgement of terrorists disguised as refugees comes in the form of a suicide bomber subplot. The important thing to notice here is how the suicide bomber is not some faceless plot device. He is an individual our main character, a doctor, interacted and helped escape from the refugee camp.

The terrorist, comes from refugees. But also does the opposite of this: a figure of hope. A messiah… He is actually none of those and all of them at the same time. Much like creation of a myth, the boy who gets shot by the authorities is made into a myth, a figure for a ‘better’ tomorrow by the hands of others. The film pays careful attention to not make him conscious to the myth he becomes. Instead, he is a scared little boy that came from a group of people we might label as one thing or another, much like the one at the very end of the film.

The last little ending invites the audience to open their eyes to the individuals in a group. Whether we like it or not refugees are here.

Also, not only refugees but us too deserve our individual voices and better versions of what we grudgingly accepted as ‘I’.

This is implied many times as he floats above, where we don’t really look as we continue our lives (perhaps an allegory for religion — but again it can be what you want it to be), but also when in a gorgeous one-take, as he floats down from the top of the apartment, his shadow is projected on the walls where the occupants of lonely apartments fail to notice a flying man — a special thing about an individual, which condemns them to their unrealised existence.

Many interpretations of this film falls into the trap of language. Language is a tool of labelling. Of course the conundrum is how do you talk about something without talking about it? I won’t answer that question because it has no answer. That’s not the point. By being aware of traps of language, we can avoid labelling this film as …ism propaganda.

The doctor’s girlfriend, the nurse, never sees the boy fly. Albeit very well motivated, this situation causes her to try to reinstate some normalcy where there shouldn’t be such a thing, she calls the police on the boy, now labelled as a terrorist.

You see, as the corrupt cop who shot the boy in the first place learns in the end, perhaps treating people as who they are might make us look up, instead of down.

It’s also encouraging us to see it’s too dangerous to treat people as a group because like Jupiter’s 46 moons, one of them might go on to change the world.