Most thematically dense films?

The greatest "unseen masterpiece" film on MAR (?) - This Transient Life (1970) - unseen by me even until a couple years ago......and um, well seen by Martin Stett because that guy is full of surprises......including but not limited to him actually liking This Transient Life

Dumb and Dumber To: When Harry Met Lloyd.

Densest shit I've ever seen.

Tarkovsky and Kubrick couldn't come close to grasping this.

People have spent all these decades thinking about and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey over and over again for a reason.

Also The Seventh Seal and anything Tarkovsky

What do you mean by "dense?" I'm not sure how I would define the examples below, it's just a gut feeling based on what I think of when hearing the word without a definition.

Madoka Magica: Rebellion - God/religion/afterlife/morality, which are all really one topic, but the movie's approach - taking a thematically packed TV show with a devout fanbase and carefully constructing an argument against everything it stands for, striving not to preach but to question the merits of both - is gutsy.



TV shows (which have more room to ask probing questions):

Andor - What abuse must a people take before they rise up in armed rebellion against an oppressor? What power is there in tiny little rebellions that are easily squashed? What are you attempting to get the government to do when you rebel? What moral ground does a rebel seeking freedom for tyranny stand on? (See Luthen's "I'm damned for what I do" speech - made in full belief that his ends do not justify the evils he perpetrates on a moral level regardless of how righteous his end cause, before choosing to do it anyway.) How do the operatives of an evil, oppressive government see themselves and their enemies?



Arcane - A companion piece to Andor, dealing with rebellion and warfare, albeit through a far smaller, more personal exploration of characters as opposed to a larger world. What price is worth paying for freedom? What is the moral obligation of creating technology that is potentially wonderful and horrible? If you have failed in your responsibility to protect the happiness/innocence of a child, is there any way to mend that broken trust? Is that trust/happiness more important than a just cause of helping others wrest free from oppression? Can you still maintain loving relationships with family or friends that you believe are morally evil?



Legend of the Galactic Heroes - The epic to end all epics, dealing with everything political/warfare related under the sun. Is a just autocracy better than a corrupt democracy? Is a scorched earth strategy ever morally acceptable in warfare? What responsibility does a military have towards its people if their government is being ruled by a powerful few (this happens in both the Empire and Free Planets Alliance)? If the majority of people wish to be ruled by another, is the abolition of democracy justified? Can you ask all these questions over a 110 episodes that mostly consist of people sitting rooms and debating philosophy?



Princess Tutu - A nice, easygoing kids show about cycles of abuse, free will, the struggle to live with guilt, etc. Good times!

Yeah, I saw that, but I wanted more clarity.

Movies mostly suck at being satisfyingly dense but I'll name one exception - The Sorrow and the Pity...

Politically dense, exposing the inner workings of multiple parties (the so-called good, the bad, the ugly), with a focus on the French role in WWII. We experience the Parisian elation at being conquered by the Germans, the general atmosphere of decadence--and the degree of anti-semitism--that frightened even the Nazis, but also what went on in the countryside and other areas (not even the Resistance comes out unscathed). No wonder this was banned in France. Philosophically and psychologically dense, questioning the way memory works (pretty much all the interviewees contradict themselves at some point, and many ouright lie), how the fiction of a "rebellious Paris" came to be, so that, by 1969 when this movie was released, a mere 24 years after WWII, the world had a fictitious "collective memory" of German-occupied France and the very recent history. (Memory seems to recede from the truth almost out of instinct, the way Ophüls shows its operations). Narratively dense, spanning four decades, a handful of countries, dozens of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, historians, sociologists... Dizzying in the best sense, and Ophüls makes it come together.