So I finally saw Limitless, the premiere team-up of Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Pretty good — definitely different. It’s one of those relatively (note, relatively) short movies that are pregnant with material for further exploration, so I can see how it would spawn a television series for CBS.
We meet Eddie Morra (Cooper), a struggling young writer on the verge of homelessness. By chance, he runs into his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who tells him about a new drug being developed by the pharmaceutical company for which he works.
The drug is called NZT-48, and it is supposed to help people access the full potential of the human brain (as opposed to the 20% that we normally use).
After a dose of NZT-48, Eddie is able to knock off the novel he’s been struggling with in just a few days. Not only that, he also learns to speak several languages with perfect fluency, dives into risk-taking adventures he can “think” his way through, and navigates the stock market to near perfection.
Seeking further opportunities and requiring more capital for current pursuits, Eddie ends up associating with some unsavory characters — including a Russian thug named Gennady (Andrew Howard), the business tycoon Carl Van Loon (De Niro), and a shady henchman from the NZT-48 company who keeps following him around.
Also, the drug begins to take its toll. Eddie experiences hallucinations, as well as a sort of “fast-forward” effect on time; he often finds himself unable to account for the last several hours of his life, or how he got from one place to another.
And (SPOILER ALERT) there is a bloodbath towards the end of the movie.
Okay — if you know me, you know I tend to look at movies through the lens of Catholic anthropology (among other things). So what do I think we can infer from Limitless?
As this movie progressed, I got thinking about our culture’s general tendency toward excess. We value limitless freedom, limitless possibility. We like to think that we have successfully thrown off the shackles of traditional morality and convention, and that we are bound by no limits that we do not ourselves impose.
The problem, as the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen once observed, is that limits are what give us our identity — just as the boundary lines of a state or territory are what allow us to identify it on a map.
Eddie Morra learns this the hard way. In his desire to be everything, he soon begins dissolving into nothing.
But as Augustine, Aquinas, and many others are fond of reminding us, error has only a derivative reality. Error is to truth what the parasite is to the host, evil to good as the cavity to the tooth.
All of humanity’s wayward desires, no matter how twisted or reckless, are mere caricatures of good and true desires, of ambitions that are at once greater and humbler, and yet buried beneath the chaos of our troubled psyches.
So what do we want that we see reflected in the use of NZT-48? We see our desire for the Limitless. We want not only good things, but Goodness itself; we want not only true things, but Truth itself; we want not only beautiful things, but Beauty itself…and all this with no limit and no end.
The Limitless is real, and has a name: God.
I understand how this sounds. It sounds hackneyed, pedantic, flat, and a number of other unflattering adjectives.
But that’s because we — and by “we” I mean even Christians — don’t really understand what sainthood means. To be a saint means to be united in one’s deepest being with the very Power that grounds and sustains all things, from the atom to the quasar to the highest fiery seraph. It means to be filled with the All Who is everywhere present, all-powerful, and without beginning or end. The Light from within then throws the individuality of the person into sharp relief, so that s/he can truly rock the world by serving as a unique Note in the Almighty’s great Symphony.
Unfortunately, as the great mystic St. John of the Cross said, this power sleeps in the hearts of most believers. Most of us don’t understand the Power that makes a home within us, and seeks to impact the world through us.
We may never be able to tap into more than 20% of the human brain, but we can (and should) learn how to tap into this much greater store of energy.
Limitless shows us (consciously or not) what happens when we take our innate desire for the Limitless and misdirect it, thinking we can achieve it ourselves and find it in this world. At first, things are great. We feel exhilarated, liberated, and affirmed.
But given time, we start to lose it. For example, thinking we can overcome the limits of time and space, we find the reverse happening. We may not have Eddie’s “fast-forward” experiences, but we do get to a point where we look back on an appreciable span of time that has passed and find that we have done nothing (or that we would have been better off doing nothing).
Additionally, our misdirected desire takes on an insatiability that mimics the infinite desire for the true Limitless. Eddie himself makes this observation (indirectly) while in conversation with his high society friends, talking about how even the most successful politico-military leaders in history were never satisfied, but always sought further conquest.
Eventually, our insatiability will wear us out. Not only that, but by tearing a hole in the fabric of our lives as they should be it will invite evil influences, much as it did with Eddie Morra.
There is so much else I could talk about — especially with regard to the ending, which leaves a lot of questions to be answered. But perhaps the TV series will answer some of these questions; and perhaps I, in turn, though no great fan of network television, should check it out.
*********************************************************************************************************************
Acknowledgements
- “Limitless Poster” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Limitless_Poster.jpg#/media/File:Limitless_Poster.jpg
- Ven. Fulton J. Sheen reference from the talk entitled “There is Life in the Womb“
- “Benozzo Gozzoli – Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas – WGA10334” by Benozzo Gozzoli – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benozzo_Gozzoli_-_Triumph_of_St_Thomas_Aquinas_-_WGA10334.jpg#/media/File:Benozzo_Gozzoli_-_Triumph_of_St_Thomas_Aquinas_-_WGA10334.jpg
- “Eustache Le Sueur” by Eustache Le Sueur – Original uploader was Lamré at sv.wikipedia. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eustache_Le_Sueur.jpg#/media/File:Eustache_Le_Sueur.jpg
- Movie stills obtained through a Google image search
the film was a few years ago, and the best part is that these drugs are becoming more common and better and better. Modafinil, Provigil, or limitless forte are the most obvious examples.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your comment.. Yes, that was an aspect of the ending that, for me, left some questions open: The fact that Eddie seemed to have adjusted to the drug to the point where it no longer adversely affected him. The question is, is it good for mankind to have these kinds of powers? It is certainly chilling to think what Eddie Morra could do as a power-hungry politician, for instance. All the other symptoms of NZT-48 could be thought of as warning signs, or even as *buffers* against these bigger concerns…much as the three-headed dog, Cerberus, guards the gates of hell in classical mythology.
Have you seen the TV show, by any chance? I’m thinking about maybe checking out one or two episodes, at least, but haven’t gotten around to it…