Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

Preferred (and quite absurd) wording of the title: The Lost Word: Jurassic Park

Dinosaurs resulting from a genetic engineering experiment are living freely on a Pacific island. The company responsible for said experiment is intent on using the dinosaurs for financial profit on a park in San Diego. The former head of the company tries to avoid this by sending his own group of men there. After some dinosaurs destroy much of the equipment brought on the island, the rival teams unite for their survival.

While the title and basic premise directly evoke Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, the plot is closer to King Kong. There is a more curious parallel, however, with Schindler's List, of which this film is a cinematic anagram, or distorted mirror image, of sorts. Whereas Schindler's List, released on the same year as the first Jurassic Park, was a defense of greed over fanaticism, in Jurassic Park: The Lost World the good guys are its science fanatics fighting irresponsible capitalists whose greed is a threat not only to science but to humankind as a whole. There is a structural correspondence between the two films, with the Nazi Party being replaced by a paleontologist sponsored by a repentant capitalist, Schindler being replaced by a new CEO who wants to milk the dinosaurs for their entertainment value, Göth being replaced by a big-game hunter who wants a Tyrannosaurus Rex among his trophies, Jews being replaced by dinosaurs, and Itzhak Stern of the Jewish Council being replaced by a chaos mathematician. As is recurrent in this filmmaker's work, persecution sets the tone, with carefully elaborated sequences devised for maximizing the tension. Also present is an identification and even empathy with what is, in many ways, alien, another persistent theme in his oeuvre. An analysis of this -- I think I can call it -- ideology, is certainly a task worth taking. It is an ideology from which I am personally quite distant, and for which I could muster an intrigued interest at best.

Rating: 43