"Looper" is a film about fate, regret, decisions, revenge and the old maxim that the child is the father of the man, but mostly it's about time travel, so let's travel back in time: to 10 years ago, before the director Rian Johnson's celebrated 2005 debut film, "Brick" (or his follow-up, "The Brothers Bloom"), to the moment he first had the idea for "Looper".
He had expressed regret concerning the fate of the Australian Aborigines in a Telegraph article in 1888 and also opposed Sir Henry Parkes's poll tax on the Chinese, and now opposed the continuing restrictive measures passed in 1896 and 1898.
If at times this sometimes disheveled novel strikes one as a meander through memory, magic and regret, his fate gives it a bitter bite.
Not only for the plight of the characters but for the whole superb conception, its understanding of love and regret and fate, and its warm sympathy for the frailty of human nature.
For example, people who highly agree with statements such as "I am fully in control of my own fate," or, "I never regret my decisions," are deemed to be self-enhancing.
In Book IV Dido confesses her love for Aeneas, who (though he regrets his fate) is then forced by the gods to set sail again.
Gulag prisoners who knew the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" regretted that fate had put them in this time and place, and not in slavery in the American South a hundred years before.
She expresses regret about the fate of individual performers and concern for both listeners and for the impact on the culture at large.
The country was awash in cries for justice, calls for vengeance and, not uncommon, expressions of regret for the fate of an old man who never seemed quite as loathsome as some of his fellow autocrats, the standards admittedly grim.
Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word "deconstruction," its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory.
They made clear that, although they regretted the bitter fate inflicted upon European Jewry by European dictatorships, the issue of European Jewish survivors ought not to be confused with Zionism.
