The Box

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The Box (2009) - Empathy testing and Water Coffin Triptych. A seriously underrated movie.

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million cash with the press of a button. However pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

Wiki | IMDB



The main characters, Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis, were based on director Richard Kelly's parents. His mother also suffered a crippled foot after an X-Ray mishap; his father worked for NASA and co-designed the camera used on the Viking Mars Landers (as in the movie). The film takes place in December 1976.




Not the greatest production but definitely intriguing high strangeness film which led me to American Symbolist/Golden Age muralist, illustrator, and painter Edwin Austin Abbey.

The Arthurian Round Table and the fable of the Seat Perilous.
Led by Joseph of Arimathea, Sir Galahad approaches King Arthur's Round Table and the Seat Perilous. No man had yet sat with safety in the Seat, as only a blameless occupant can do so without being killed instantly. The knights of the Round Table watch in horror as Sir Galahad assumes the Seat, but the young and pure knight survives. Thereafter, the structure is known as "The Seat of Galahad." -- Adapted from: An outline of this version of the legend by Henry James. [ca. 1893–1895]

Canvases completed in Abbey's studio at Morgan Hall in England and later shipped over to Boston for installation in 1901. Canvas applied to the walls of the Book Delivery Room using an adhesive technique called marouflage.

Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) was a young, highly regarded illustrator for Harper's Monthly magazine, but had never completed any work in oil paint when he was approached for the mural commission. The Philadelphia-born artist lived most of his life in England, where he befriended artist John Singer Sargent. In 1890, Abbey and Sargent dined with Charles Follen McKim, Stanford White, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens in New York, where architect McKim convinced him to consider painting a mural cycle in the Boston Public Library's Book Delivery Room. Upon visiting the library during its construction with McKim, Abbey agreed to undertake the project and signed a contract to complete the work for $15,000 in 1893. He selected a subject of "legendary romance" in The Quest for the Holy Grail, basing his work upon Alfred, Lord Tennyson's version of the Arthurian tale.

The Arthurian Round Table and the fable of the Seat Perilous