Chess Match (23)
By:
June 29, 2010
David Smay sends us this screen-shot from the 1971 cult SF movie, The Omega Man. Here, U.S. Army Colonel Robert Neville, M.D. (Charlton Heston) relaxes after a long day of killing nocturnal homicidal mutants with plague-induced albinism. Smay says: “To me it’s one of the most emblematic and sort of goofy uses of Chess as a signifier of The Complete Man.”
Twenty-third in an occasional series.
“signifier of the complete man”—that about nails it!
Yes, complete.
-ly bored, isolated.
Trying to pantomime all of civilization to carry it forward (& keep himself company).
No one set of shoulders, no matter how broad or “renaissance” is going to bear the weight. Thus we have the somewhat wiggin’ hero/yet-again Moses seeing but not living to enter the promised land of young humans giving it their post-apocalyptic year zero best.
Don’t let that styling Chuck Heston throw you–that man’s hurting.