to institute representation as a signifier, as a transcendental subject radically deluded, one can sense existence itself as a fundamental point, which can overbalance the entire structure it finds itself in. when ws turns the most crucial element of imbalance into pure abstraction, he shifts the very fabric of representation towards a tangible force, absolutely essential for the actual transformation to take place.

it takes this boisterous abstraction (alice as a representation of humanity, not humanity itself, alice as cinema) to enable capitalism to dismantle itself. what is interesting here is that the act of resistance may be essential, but what effectively murders capitalism is its own reflection on the mirror. neoliberalism as an organism, the virus may have spreaded fast through culture (at the pace of modern life), but its cure is being slowly imprinted: in a similar fashion, but in new terms.

formally, ws takes a very abrupt shift from retribution's clean, carefully constructed, minimalist approach: absolutely frantic, an esthete drifts his camera through a wasteland of bodies, ruins and desolation. using artifice as instability, the movie cuts wildly, the kinectic energy isn't contained within the frame necessarily, but through the actual abruptness of the changing of angle.

what makes alice identify herself as human isn't her physical constitution or her origins (unlike the security-obsessed world she finds herself in), but her empathy towards the other. identification in cinema usually has a continuous alternation between the 'i' and 'you', in a reciprocal relation of affection, in a lacanian/lévinas-like concept of looking in the mirror and experiencing love. what we have here is very similar, but love doesn't develop itself through glance, but through abstraction, through memory. humanity as remembrance.