A few years ago my musician brother lent me a DVD of Steve Reich’s 2002 “film opera” Three Tales. I found it a profound experience, and since it appears to be on YouTube in full now, I’ll link it below for those who appreciate (or can come to appreciate) Reich’s minimalist music and the astonishing associated videography by Beryl Korot.
Essentially it’s an application of the Garden of Eden narrative (Reich is Jewish), highlighting the destructive hubris of humankind through three episodes: the Hindenburg disaster, the A-bomb test at Bikini Atoll (with the eviction of its inhabitants) and, lastly, the cloning of Dolly the sheep, merging through interviews with scientists, rabbis and others into discussion of the prospect of transhumanism. Dolly, of course, was still alive and six years old when the piece was written.
When I first saw heard and saw it, the last episode particularly interested me, as it involves rather chilling interview material with Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker and other secular visionaries. A very machine-like robot (and its teacher) also features heavily, and although it seems very dated now that graceful robots are beating athletic records before bursting into flames, somehow the old nuts-and-bolts mechanism enhances the message. I should point out, also, just how even more dated is Dawkins’s selfish-gene pontification that we are just machines created by our genes.
Anyway, I still find it an immersive and deeply human piece of work (Three Tales, not the robot), so I link it here in case you might enjoy it too.
