2012: The end of the world is nigh

Would you choose to live or die?

What if you knew that the world would be experiencing a global catastrophe that would likely kill everyone on the planet in, say, 24 hours, what would you do? Would you fight for survival? Or would you just surrender to the inescapable power of nature? That’s one of my favorite what-if questions—one that has been bugging me since the 2004 tsunami and, more recently, the Ondoy and Parma tragedies, where many of us saw what few of us, if not none, had seen before: a major portion of Metro Manila submerged in water.

I’ve written about 2012, the disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich, before. Now that I’ve seen it, my what-if question is compounded by others: If the world as you know it is ending in a matter of hours, would you really want to know? Or, better yet, would you tell others?

These questions divide some of the major characters of the film, namely American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is the first to learn of the impending natural disaster from his Indian friend Dr. Satnam Tsurani (Jimi Mistry); the people he alerts next, White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) and US President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover); and, a little later, first daughter Laura Wilson (Thandie Newton).

Understandably, Anheuser is of the opinion that informing the world would create unecessary anarchy. Helmsley, on the other hand, gradually begins to realize the value of having time to settle your life issues, perhaps to say goodbye to someone or to ask for and give forgiveness or to prepare yourself if you do choose to fight for your life. President Wilson also begins to question the fairness of it all: Do the people deserve to know? Who decides who would live? How would they choose who and what to save? At what cost?

All these questions and the debates they trigger are given a human face by Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) and his semi-dysfunctional family, who almost accidentally stumbles upon the information that the apocalypse is nigh during a camping trip at the Yellowstone National Park. Jackson, his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet), their two young children, and Kate’s current boyfriend Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) race out of California to secret ships or “arks” in the Himalayas, first by limosine, then by a small plane, then by a large freight plane. How they do that is, well, stuff for the movies.

What’s predictable but nevertheless striking is how, in the end, only humanity matters. Chaos ensues when one of the arks encounter trouble and another ark refuses to let people in. People start fighting, pushing to be let in. Only Helmsley calms everyone down by appealing to everyone’s humanity—saying nothing is worth saving if it all boils down to humans being inhumane. “What would we tell the children?” he asks.

In the meantime, a guard is swayed into letting Jackson and company sneak into the ark, again, with the two children as the main focus. Their attempt is semi-successful. They manage to get in, but they also jam a door that needs to be closed for the propellers to work.

Things come into a head when Jackson has to go on a suicide mission—or else the whole ship would crash into Mt. Everest and everyone would perish. The survival of humanity would take its cue from Jackson’s sacrifice.

I’d long been looking forward to the film the way I’d looked forward to Titanic. It only promised great special effects and a sufficient dose of commentary on the state of humanity. Thankfully, it was spared of what usually comes with large-scale disaster movies (yes, like Titanic): a passionate romance, new or rekindled, that makes an unexpected hero out of a character. There is love, sure, but it can wait until there’s a tomorrow to look forward to—which is closer to reality, if you ask me.

This brings us back to my what-if questions. If I knew that the world would be ending in 24 hours, the most that I would do to survive is follow my survival instinct, but I would yeild to nature’s ebb and flow. I’ve heard it once said that a peaceful death is that of an animal who accepts its fate as nature dictates. Outside of a heavenly welcome through the Pearly Gates, I’d go for that kind of dying.

And would I want to know? Maybe only in the final few days, so I could make sure I’d be at home, with family. There’s no better way to go, if you ask me.

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