If you haven't seen the movie Lucy, I recommend you go online/on demand/Netflix/whatever network you use to watch movies and watch it. It's been so controversial between critics and viewers alike that I wanted to check it out myself and get my own opinion on it. I love it, and I think it's more than just a movie about drugs and dangers. It shows life lessons (see below) that are sometimes overlooked and forgotten. Warning: this article contains spoilers.
1. Don't get in with the wrong crowd.
Of course it's easy for the viewer to get a bad vibe from Lucy's boyfriend within the first few minutes, but Lucy is overwhelmed with his accent, fortune and drug dealing? If Lucy hadn't been with him, she never would've gotten into this whole mess. Dang it, Richard.
2. Share your knowledge.
Some of us like to internalize things (me) and we don't like to express our ideas or opinions. Maybe we're comfortable sharing our true feelings through writing, but it's really hard for us to share things we aren't certain are correct, because we don't want someone telling us that we're wrong. Lucy has taught me that it's incredibly important to share each gift that we've been given, to go deeper into our brains and find out what we're capable of doing.
3. Initial circumstances do not determine your outcome.
Within the first few minutes of the film, from when she was kidnapped, I thought she would be killed immediately. To my surprise, she stayed alive through all of the drug surgeries and beatings. Throughout the movie, I was scared for her safety (even though she wasn't) because I thought the drugs would kill her. And if not the drugs, then someone would. Turns out I was completely wrong. She isn't technically killed at all, yet she somehow disperses all over the place: "I am everywhere" (umm, hello? Could we have some more explanation!?)
4. People don't always notice when something is wrong.
When Lucy is on the phone with her mom (in the middle of surgery might I add), her mom states nothing of Lucy's well being except for her concerns about partying too much. It seems obvious that Lucy is on some kind of drug, seeing as how she's remembering back to her very own birth, but her mom fails to see this. This is true in life; a lot of times we think our problems are obvious to the world, and we don't understand why the world isn't helping us or asking us what's wrong, but they don't blatantly see our problems like we do. Sometimes we have to ask for help.
5. People forget what it's like to be a human.
Lucy said it clear as day. “I don’t feel pain. Fear. Desire. It’s like all things that make us human are fading away. It’s like the less human I feel… all this knowledge about everything; quantum physics, applied mathematics, the infinite capacity of a cell’s nucleus. They’re all exploding inside my brain, all this knowledge. I don’t know what to do with it.” The more knowledge that we acquire, the more likely we are to forget what makes us human in the first place. Look at math geniuses - they forget how to interact with other humans sometimes, and they forget all of the things that make us human. As Lucy made clear by kissing the cop, we need to have little reminders to show ourselves that we are human, and that feeling emotions are an incredibly natural and important part of life.
