Lucy: Her Journey to Understanding

Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it? -Lucy
1
Lucy is a sci-fi movie that focuses on the idea that the human brain is
capable of using only 10 percent of its capacity. Lucy, the main character of the
film, is an ordinary college student studying in Taipei, Taiwan when her boyfriend,
whom she just started dating with, hand-cuffed her to a brief case that she must
then deliver to a Korean drug lord. Because she is a witness to the reality of drug
trafficking operated by Mr. Jang, she is forced to work for him as a drug mule and
transport a pack of very strong drug to different countries. This pack of drug is
sewn into her stomach by force and she has no choice but to do what she is told
as every mistake will surely lead to her death. However, her fate was changed
when one of the mob members kicked her in the stomach area and caused the
drug to flow into her blood stream. This made her develop extra-ordinary skills
and she used these skills to put an end to the Korean mobs drug trafficking
business.
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The story of Lucy is no doubt a philosophical one. According to Anne
Thurston, the paradigm of our faith is our journey from blindness to sight to
insight (Thurston). This paradigm explains that we, Christians, do not see the
world as it is. We are too focused with money and power that we fail to see and
realize that the world we live in is a world of sin. However our faith is a journey
and from blindness we are able to see. This seeing means that we get to know
the reality of this world. We have the power to see, and thus to know, that there
exist a world of nothingness. A world where people live everyday for survival. A
world where people have to deal with death almost everyday. However, this
seeing is just a head knowledge kind of seeing. It is understanding in a cognitive
level, just as you know math and physics. Our faith journey does not end there.
Other than just knowing the world in which we live in, there exists a greater need
to understand it ontologically. This means that you must understand it
affectively, with emotion and feelings. It must have an effect on you wherein you
cannot contain your feelings that it moves you to action. This means not being
able to sleep at night because you are bothered by how much you have, and how
little they have. This understanding of reality is the most important part of our
faith journey. To understand the sufferings of others, and to make their suffering
our own. This paradigm is explicitly shown in the movie entitled Lucy.
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First, blindness. In the beginning of the movie, Lucy is just an average
college student who goes to parties, meets guys and studies after the weekend
has gone by. She knows that the world she lives in is a world of poverty and
oppression, yet she does not understand what that means ontologically. Poverty
and oppression has been around even before she was born that it seemed to be
a normal phenomenon. However her journey changed from blindness to sight
when she was dragged to the drug trafficking industry. Lucy out of unfortunate
turn of events saw the reality of the poor and oppressed as she was dragged to
the room of the Korean mob. She saw bodies of dead people lying on the floor in
one room, and bodies of experiment people in the adjacent room. These
experiment people are forced to take whatever drug they are about to sell in
the market. They are treated less of a human and more of an animal. Lastly,
after her operation she was able to see the third group of people. These people
seem fine and well at first glance, yet a pack of drugs has been forcibly sewn into
their stomachs and they must do as what they are told or else they will be faced
with death. In just one day Lucys world took a spin. She, an average American
student who just had a great time partying the other night, possibly even taking
drugs and alcohol, with her newfound love is now suddenly surrounded by groups

of non-persons, carrying a pack of drug in her stomach and facing death in

almost every second in her now very counted life.
However, she does not understand yet what the world of the poor and
oppressed really is. She was too occupied with surviving in the mess she was in.
She is confused, and lost. She repeatedly tells herself while having a bag over
her head just breathe. Yet I do not blame her. Naturally when faced with a
situation like that, panic is the first thing youll do. Her journey to insight started
when one of the Korean mobs kicked her in her stomach causing a huge amount
of the synthetic drug to flow over her body. The effect was extraordinary. She
gained extraordinary strength, she gained extraordinary knowledge, more
importantly, she gained the power to see oppression and poverty from the
perspective of the oppressed and poor. In the film, the poor are those who, just
like Lucy, are deprived of social, natural, physical, financial and human assets in
order to become artisans of their own fate.
Learning's always a painful process. Like when you're little and your
bones are growing and you ache all over. Do you believe I can remember the
sound of my own bones growing? Like this grinding under the skin. Everything's
different now. Like sounds are music that I can understand, like fluids. It's funny, I
used to be so concerned with who I was and what I wanted to be, and now that I
have access to the furthest reaches of my brain, I see things clearly and realize
that what makes us "us" it's primitive. They're all obstacles. Does that make
any sense? (Lucy, 2014). Here we see Lucys journey to insight. She
understands what makes humans truly human, and this is a very painful process.
Jon Sobrino even likened it as to having layers of our skin removed one by one
(Sobrino 1991). Moreover, Lucy also saw the hope that is found in the world of
the oppressed and suffering however she did not know how to apply this
newfound hope to what is happening to the world. This is why she needed
Professor Norman, a professor who researches about the functions of the brain.
Lucy gave him a call and told him that she read all of his work and that he is
right. Norman was astounded at first but he believed her. Lucy then asked her
what she must do, and Professor Normans answer was a simple one. He said if
you're asking me what to do with all this knowledge you're accumulating, I say,
pass it on just like any simple cell, going through time (Lucy, 2014).
Lucy then made a decision to pass the knowledge she has been
accumulating. This is not very simple because it involves risk and commitment.
First, she is running out of time. She is dying and she only has around 24 hours
to live. Second, she needed to acquire all of the drugs to be successful with her
mission. This drug symbolizes knowledge as it is only through the accumulation
of this drug will she acquire all the knowledge about this world. Third, there are
many threats the police and the Korean mob. She took into consideration all
these three elements time, drugs, and the Korean mob and police. Passing on
the knowledge then entails great suffering, yet she decided to carry on. All this
can be compared to the Emmaus story. The disciples needed time to understand
the meaning of Jesus death. To elaborate further, it took them three days and a
stranger to be able to make a story out of all the events. They were able to see
cognitively and affectively the meaning of Jesus death. This means they were
able to understand the connection between the scriptures, the story of Moses
and all the other prophets, Jesus teachings and deeds, and Jesus death. The
breaking of the bread is a very important happening in the whole Emmaus story
as this leads them to their ontological understanding of all the events that took
place. Also, this made them remember their mission. In breaking of the bread
Jesus told them: do this in memory of me. Here we see the disciples becoming
witnesses once more. They witnessed the good news of the Lord and it is their
mission to spread this good news. In the movie, it is Lucys mission to acquire

more knowledge and pass it on. And she did. She managed to gain the full 100%
capacity of her brain and passed on the knowledge to a group of scientists and
professors. She sacrificed her life in order for the knowledge to be available to
other people. Just as the disciples sacrificed their life so that other people could
hear the good news of the Lord.
Lucy made a sacrifice in order for other people to gain an understanding of
this world of sin. Her knowledge of everything required her to act in order to
shape the future. She did this by passing on the knowledge she has acquired so
that other people can benefit from it and in turn lessen the suffering brought by
ignorance of this world. She lived out the question is there anyone that suffers
less because I am there? And she succeeded with a challenge as she challenges
all of us: Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with
it. (Lucy, 2014)
Reference:
Anne Thurston, The Journey to Emmaus: Parable as Paradigm.
Lucy. Director Luc Besson. Perf. Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. 2014.
Film.
Jon Sobrino, Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity, (1991).