Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

tieman64 "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti An HBO TV series written and created by Mike White, "Enlightened" stars Laura Dern as Amy Jellico. Amy works within the marketing department of Abaddon Industries, the company aptly named after the Biblical "Abaddon" (a bottomless pit and place of destruction)."Enlightened" opens with Amy quite literally losing her mind. Driven insane by bastardly bosses and crummy corporate credos, Amy escapes to a "spiritual retreat" in which she learns "hippie values" and in which she has idyllic visions of sparkling waters and floating turtles. Why, Amy thinks, can't the whole world be like this? As such, Amy returns to Abaddon with a new evangel; she will impose upon the world a new reality, a new way of thinking, a new ethos! Everyone else thinks Amy's nuts. Toward the end of its first season, "Enlightened" becomes a comical political tract. Howard Zinn for the "Sex and the City" generation, Amy becomes a revolutionary outfitted in Prada and knock-off Gucci. Amy's original corporate values – a kind of Randian social Darwinism which trumpets extreme individualism and in which the only ethical precepts are those which sanction cutthroat competition – are thus swiftly replaced by more "enlightened" values (love, peace, respect, community, environmental concerns etc). Because Amy's scatterbrained and a little bit confused, these values are ill-defined and only superficially understood by Amy herself. Indeed, Amy initially treats these values as fashion accessories, little trinkets and badges of honour to be worn and displayed. Soon, Amy begins to display all the behavioural patterns of a cult-member, the poor girl clinging to these values in an attempt to be "born again" a "better", "saner" more "humane" person. White even goes to lengths to portray Amy as being hypocritical, vindictive and often angry. So what's great about "Enlightned" is that it portrays Amy's "enlightenment" as being a form of "instability". Her "enlightenment" is not a rational ideological choice, but rather the accidental byproduct of social rejection, social violence, personal stupidity, emotional wounds and of various self-defence mechanisms. In short, it is the world which radicalizes Amy and which then deems her insane for being radical. At the same time, White makes it clear that Amy's "craziness" is in fact a type of beautiful sanity. It is only in the eyes of an insane world that Amy appears a crackpot. As such, Amy is aggressively demonized, mocked and belittled by her "sane" co-workers, all of whom have been fully colonised by Abaddon's logic, jargon and values. These "sane" co-workers, of course, are slowly revealed to be deluded nuts. Or as George Orwell ironically pointed out in "1984": "Sanity is statistical. It is merely a question of learning to think as they thought." Abaddon wants you thinking like Abaddon thinks."Enlightened's" second season watches as Amy attempts to reform Abaddon Industries. She attempts to implement a form of "green", "compassionate" and "sustainable capitalism", which are of course oxymora. When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses, and, as activist Lucia Ortiz once said, asking "capitalism to transition to a Green Economy is like asking a tiger to become a vegetarian". Amy's wishes are thus a systemic impossibility; any system predicated upon exponential growth (in production, energy consumption, market expansion, interest based money creation etc) must ignore a variety of ecological, moral and social concerns just to stay alive. Already, for example, Earth Overshoot Day - the day on which we've used more of the planet's resources than it's able to replenish in a year — is steadily arriving earlier and earlier; it now takes an Earth and a half to support our current rate of resource extraction. By mid-century, under "modest" projections for population growth, we will need three Earths (about 85 percent of the world's population lives in countries that are overusing what they're able to replenish).So Amy is ultimately unable to slay Abaddon. Amy and a LA Times reporter (Dermot Mulroney) may run an expose on the company, but her values and its are incompatible and there can never be meaningful reconciliation."Enlightened" finds Laura Dern doing her best work outside of David Lynch. Her character – a wholly original creation - is a roaring mass of contradictions and conflicting emotions, all of which Dern expertly conveys. Unfortunately White's series is a good five or six episodes too long, contains far too much padding and White would arguably have done better to adopt a more comedic tone. Indvidiaul episodes were directed by a number of well-known auteurs, including Jonathan Demme, Nicole Holofcener and White himself.8.5/10 – Daring and sophisticated. See White's "Year of the Dog", which sketches a similarly complex portrait of animal right's activism.

TonyCamonte84 'Enlightened' is not particularly easy to get into, which may be the reason for it not being discussed more often as a great show. I felt it flew a bit under the radar, but as I watched both of its seasons I realised that's not due to its quality.It took some guts for the writers to focus an entire show on a completely unlikable person such as Amy Jellicoe. 'The Sopranos' have a mob boss as the protagonist, 'Mad Men' a habitual adulterer, 'The Wire' focuses on gangsters and equally morally bankrupt policemen, politicians, etc., and Dexter is centred around a serial-killer, but all those shows manage to create sympathy for their protagonists by showing them as very flawed in certain aspects yet also very likable in others. We root for Dexter Morgan, Tony Soprano or Don Draper, but find little to create sympathy or empathy with Enlightened's egotistical, annoying, and narcissistic protagonist. It's a gamble, but one that pays off, I feel.Very few other shows manage to create such a good balance between comedy and drama, and portray a character as honestly without over-dramatising the bad nor the good sides. At its best 'Enlightened' is a spot-on character study of somebody you would never want to meet, that tells you a bit more about human nature. At its worst it still manages to be very entertaining, funny, as well as well-produced, superbly acted and fluidly paced.I, for one, like the first season a bit more, as I felt the 2nd season suffered from focusing on the plot too much, which left the characterisation a bit under-developed in season 2. Nonetheless, even that was very good television with moments that bordered on brilliance. It's a shame HBO canceled it, as I thought it was among the best shows on television alongside the still-running 'Mad Men' and 'Boardwalk Empire'.

Nathan L I must say that I was amazed of the quality of this show, the great actors, dialogs and script overall. To be honest, it is the first time I felt like not watching a TV show, but actually living it.Amy is a middle aged woman, trying to find herself after various failures : with work, partner, family... she's trying to do the right thing, to change though being the same in many ways.This show is very similar to what many people must have lived : looking for some kind of redemption. No matter what is your job, no matter your religion, sex, or financial situation. Many try to do better, to be better.Finally, Amy reminds us something important : that to live is not only about doing things, but also thinking about them.Outstanding Show.

Red_Identity I started Enlightened around a week ago, mostly because the Golden Globes put it on the spot. As far as first seasons go, this was an excellent one. It balances comedy and drama extremely well. Some episodes are more dramatic, some more comedic, but it always remains top notch. Laura Dern in the character of Amy is completely fantastic. She owns this character, which is perhaps one of TV's most fascinating and confusing. Amy has our sympathy, we still want her to succeed, and she always pretty much wants to look at things in a positive way. The problem is though, she isn't the person she wishes. She makes you feel her problems, yet also cringe and shake your head at the way she approaches aspects in her life. She's a good person who wants to do good things, but she can also be extremely selfish and lacks any sort of self-awareness. Even in her most sticky situations, you want to root for her but you see her like many of her co-workers do... in a negative light. Dern sells it all. Diane Ladd is also pretty fantastic as her distant, yet also sympathetic and sometimes infuriating mother. But even she gets her own episode, which is perhaps the show's most touching and dramatic episode.Overall, this is an excellent mix of drama with both dark and light comedy. I feel it's sort of underrated and has gotten lost among other big-name shows.