Summary

Apologies that the guy in the spaceship looks more like Kenny than HAL, but them's the breaks folks - OMG HAL's killed Kenny!

As a kid in 1950s I saw The Living Desert which used a device called a camera to show us [documentary style as for Fahrenheit 9/11] the "Unknown Unknown" wonders of a typical desert from season to season.  It was said to be "good for its time", but was soon forgotten.

Some 60 years later I saw Avatar which was a Yippee [BlockBuster] for Sci-Fi freaks and used a device called CGI to show us the "Unknown Unknowns" of life after TEOTWAWKI on Earth.  It was said to be good for its time, but as soon as CGI blue pussycats are replaced by CGI orange pandas it will be forgotten, without a sequel.

In between sits this movie, and on the surface there is little one can say about it, and even the "cool techy terms" like Stargate were simply pinched from Dr Who's phonebox, so the whole movie is simply Gay.

However, after a slow start, it has gained a huge following, for reasons that appear to be Unknown Unknowns.  But having said that, the answer seems to REVOLVE around that very piece of WMD space junk from Don Rumsfeld, and for those that don't know [or do not WANT to know], it goes like this:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.

— United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

The above statement was made by Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002 at a press briefing where he addressed the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.

So my overall take on movie is a PROPHETIC documentary on the exponential growth in technology AND deception from 1968 to 2001, only outstripped by the growth of apathy.

Of course that is simply the time honored mantra of Hitler, then adopted by America, of "It is most fortunate for governments that the people do not think".

So when I read the Forums for this movie it reads as an example of "The Great God Gun" where the posters, mostly young but not all, are totally mesmerized by the technology side, to the point of actually believing that prophesy as 100% fact, but in total denial of any credence at all in the deception or apathy prophesies, or in most cases no recognition that those issues were even IN the movie.

On the other hand I simply see the technology aspects as a "smokescreen" as if this WAS Dr Who, but the deception, apathy AND associated symbolism stand out like the proverbial dog's balls.

So having cleared the air I will now detail the elements of this "Circle of Existence".