We need art to inspire us when we lose hope, to connect with us when we despair, to remind us of our sublime humanity. Whenever I struggle to make my way through adversity, I look to others who have overcome and triumphed. Watching movies is escapist, yet also very instructive. It helps to compare our plight to endure our existence with their very fight for survival.
We gain perspective in contrast to our two tales, our misery against theirs. Perhaps their story musters in us a will to press on. This develops in us relativity and thus we see the world differently, grateful for our epic struggle compared to theirs. We are enriched, and thus strengthened.
Osama In Taliban ruled Afghanistan, females cannot earn a living and are forced to beg on the street. A little girl transformed into a boy by cutting her lustrous hair, 'Osama' works in a shop after her mother pulls some favors. When the Taliban sweep through town to collect all the boys for schooling, Osama's struggle begins in earnest. If we are in Afghanistan to help girls get educated and become independent women, this may be a fight worth fighting.
Europa Europa Serendipity is the theme of this beautiful Jewish boy who becomes at turns Hitler Youth, Russian orphan, and Holocaust survivor. Set in WW II, the arc culminates in Zionist Israel as the tale is told.
Fresh A shrewd boy from the ghetto struggles to save his sister from the depravity of poverty and the cruelty of inner city life.
Slumdog Millionaire A Slumdog boy in the shanties of Mumbai, orphaned by sectarian violence, survives with his cruel but cagey brother. Hoping to maintain his connection with his estranged love Latika, he becomes a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Each question reveals a harrowing tale of depraved indifference. Ultimately, his virtue is redeemed by his joyful reunion, for even his brother is reformed.
Red One scene haunts me: The unfurling of a banner that graces the face of this lovely French model as her life unravels like thread from a slackened spool. The ubiquity of her image juxtaposes the secret lives of her neighbors. While she knows all about them, they are wholly unaware of her. Her eyes gaze eternally upon them until all is seen. At last, the falling of the banner is the closing of her eye.
Blue A threaded storyline runs through this French trilogy: a hunchbacked old woman struggling to throw away trash in a streetside dumpster. How the main character treats this woman reveals her integrity. The widow of a philandering man who also lost her child in the movie's opening scene is genuinely good. Despite her devastation, she sees this dignified old woman struggle and mindlessly helps the hunchback as she continues on her path to purge the excess of what was her former fraudulent life.
Cinema Paradiso Set in a small Sicilian town, this boy has two great loves. The old man running the movie theater who helps the young lad escape from rural obscurity through the magic of movies. And the young woman whose father spurns this poor boy smitten with his beautiful, wealthy daughter. Reflecting on his success through narration, his acclaim and fame as a movie producer is a blighted attempt to capture her atttention after love is lost.
Two Women Sophia Loren plays a mother struggling to protect her daughter from the ravages of war. Set in WW II Italy, she and her daughter are raped in a church by Allied forces, jeopardizing their ability to love the same young man whose affections undergird the story.
The Razor's Edge This movie is most apropos for us at this time, despite its post-WW I setting. Many of us, once successful both socially and financially, are living in a new reality. While not all is lost, what remains of us and what is of value? We live on the "razor's edge" of success and failure, wealth and poverty, fulfillment and emptiness. Our internal struggle for equilibrium belies our outer image of comfort. The world sees us as having it all, but we know what's missing. We wonder if our former life can ever be regained. Or if we should even bother.
The Joy Luck Club Four Chinese women whose tortuous formative years in China bely their American daughters lives of seeming privilege. Each daughter struggles to make sense of their own failures as she inevitably learns of her mother's plight back in China. Every woman's story helps her daughter gain a sense of herself from what each has loved and lost and learned along the path back to motherhood.
It's a Wonderful Life We have no way of knowing what positive impact we have on others. What would happen if we were never born? Thinking himself a failure to his family, believing he's worth more dead than alive, George Baily takes his own life. Saved by an angle in training, Clarence shows George what a wonderful life he has and the profound impact he's made on so many others. Succeeding at last, the story ends with the jingling of bells that means an angel has earned his wings.
Cold Mountain As Nicole Kidman said in her speech at the Oscars, art matters in the way it inspires us. Set during the Civil War, she and Renée Zellweger as polar opposites of refinement and crudeness, unite against the local ogre exploiting single women in the south while their men are away fighting in The War of Northern Aggression. Southern women are anything but wilting lillies.
Black Book A beautiful Jewess joins Holland's Resistance by embroiling a German officer in a love affair. A story of betrayal by our intimates, it reveals the redemption of intimacy when combined with self-sufficiency, observant insight, and indomitable will.
Monsoon Wedding A young Indian woman is torn by a torrid affair with a married man with her imminent arranged marriage to an appropriate man. Revealing the culture clash of young people who belong to a conservative family and the insidious indulgence of the Western influence, we follow this young woman as she reconciles her torn heart in an epic cinematic feast.
Raise the Red Lantern Polygamy is tyranny in the highest order. A beautiful young Chinese girl is sold as the multile wife to a wealthy man collecting concubines. The plight for status as the most favored wife sets the scene of internecine fighting among women for the scarcest of resources - dignity.
Gladiator Fighting to return home and ultimately to his family, an heroic general in battle is captured and enslaved in ancient Rome. To earn his freedom, he must win battles as a gladiator and then the approval of a treachorous Ceasar. This is the story of our lives, however less spectacular.
Empire of the Sun A wealthy white colonialist boy gets separated from his parents in war-torn China during WW II. He's interned in a Japanese prison camp and survives through sheer moxie. By the time he is reunited with his parents, he cannot reconcile the man he has become with his childhood of privilege he once knew.
Saving Private Ryan Three of four boys are killed during WW II, and the fourth must be found and saved for his grieving mother. A theme throughout the movie is man's connection to his woman and the eternal need for her love. As a young soldier lay dying, he calls out for his mother whom he shamefully neglected as a child. Another man asks his wife in his old age, have I been a good man? He implores her, have I earned it?
G.I. Jane Demi Moore is at her inspirational best in this movie, despite its flawed premise that women should serve alongside men in combat. A glass ceiling bar none, this superior female Naval officer is given the chance through political manueverings to train with Navy SEALs. She's a test case designed to fail. Against all oddds, she competes toe to toe with America's most elite men, earning her chops and gaining their respect. Moore's physique alone inspires awe, as does her true grit.
The Last Emperor This is a cautionary tale for we who cling to our former glory in a time of seismic change. We must adapt to the new emergent world and successfully compete in it. Or we become the last of the emperors and die as peasants in relative obscurity.
12 Angry Men In the crucible of a courtroom drama, 12 white male jurors deliberate the fate of the accused, the prodigal son of the underclass. Each man is forced to come to terms with his bigotry. Called into scrutiny is a father's estrangement with his son, man's obliviousness to his neighbors, people's isolation in the city, and humanity's disconnect to itself.
Conspiracy The most momentous moment is the telling of a man letting go of a grudge. This man loved his mother with unending devotion and hated his father with an all consuming passion. When his beloved mother died, he did not cry. When his despicable father died, he cried without stop. For when his nemesis ceased, so did his identity. With no one left to shape his hate, how would he define himself?
Schindler's List Set in a black and white movie of the Holocaust, the only color is seen by a German officer's mistress. A pretty little Jewish girl plays in the street below, her tiny bright red coat cast against a colorless expanse. A pile of corpses forms at a concentration camp, as does a pile of their previously worn clothes. Punctuating the pile of grisly grey is the tiny bright red coat.
Life is Beautiful A devoted family man tries to protect his young son from the horrors of the Holocaust while separated from his loving wife. In idyllic Italy before their internment, the young lad played with his toy tank. Win the contest in their concentration camp game and the boy gets a real tank of his own. Sacrificing himself to preserve his son's innocence, the parental love is what makes life beautiful.
Kill Bill - Volume One Uma Thurman is at her best playing a vengeful woman righting a most grievous wrong. Slaughtered on her wedding day while pregnant by her compatriot assissins, she returns from the dead to even the score. Wriggling her toes from a paralyzed state to defend herself against a convalescent rape, she makes every muscle in your body ache in tremendous empathetic support. That scene alone has you vow against victimhood. Or so you hope.
True Romance One of the most redemptive scenes in cinematic history. A young woman, attacked mercilessly by a mercenary in her hotel bathroom, fends for herself in a final act of self-defense by thrusting forth a corkscrew from her Swiss Army knife. Her attacker, heartened by this, frees her as she finishes him.
American History X When hate and humanity intersect, you have an epiphany. Bigotry is based on preserving what little we have left. When all is gone, and there is nothing left to fight for, we must reconcile with the wreckage. From this, we rebuild from the old what we care to keep and from the new what we hope to create.
Fight Club As sentient beings, we group among like kind. Called emergence, it's a bottom up formation found among mold spores and city centers. This coalesence forms both ant colonies and corporations alike. Forming franchises of Fight Clubs is the ultimate repudiation of revolution as anarchists conform to the coporate mold they fight to free themselves from.
La Femme Nikita You must watch the original French version with English sub-titles to get the best translation. Among its most amazing scenes of transformation, an elegant French woman teaches a forcibly reformed criminal girl the power of feminine beauty. With this power comes the price of falling in love. To what do we devote ourselves?
On the Waterfront Another cautionary tale to those of us chasing a paycheck while eroding our integrity. A talented boxer paid to throw a fight as a contender for the coveted belt, he sold out. He realizes too late that it wasn't worth the price. In a pivotal scene reclaiming his righteous place in the world, he defends himself by insisting "I coulda been a contenda!" We all could have been. But for which fight?
A Streetcar Named Desire How many formerly beautiful women among us live like Blanche DuBois? Clinging to their youthful beauty under the dim lighting of paper lanterns strung above, casting a flattering light. Hiding the reality of aging and the accumulation of lust from hopeful suitors, each deluding themselves of their own fatal flaws. Even when reality is shattered and the ugly truth revealed, she holds to the elbow of a man and says sweetly, "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers...."
Gone with the Wind The most inspiring scene among many is of Scarlett O'Hara, gripping a withered carrot in her fallow family plot, vowing "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" The most unlikely heroine emerges as an unstoppable spirit who embodies the feminine ideal, flaws and all.
Citizen Kane A media mogul is wealthy beyond measure. Hidden from his apparent opulence is emotional isolation. As a man, he remains a sad child, lost and lonely. Torn from his loving mother and raised by a cold industrialist, his sole source of comfort is his sled he rode as a boy. Lying alone on his deathbed, he calls out for his companion "Rosebud... Rosebud...." For she is not his unrequited lover or long lost mother, but his childhood toy.
Braveheart The power of womanly beauty is its inspiration to make men act in fulfilling his destiny. For a man's most proud possession is his beautiful wife. With her, he creates a legacy of sons to carry his name and daughters to provide more heirs. We call this marriage. Two things undermine this arrangement: polygamy and cuckolding . William Wallace fought to free Scotland from their own obsolescence when the crown reinstituted 'ius primae noctae' or 'first night' that allowed the court to have sex with young brides on their wedding night. This threatens to wipe out Scottish blood because "the trouble with Scotland is that it is full of Scots...."
Swingers We as humans have a fundamental need to love and be loved. Our most courageous act is to risk rejection in order to find that love and make its effort meaningful. One of my favorite scenes is that of heartbroken men in LA at a bar. The biggest swinger of them all advises his forelorn buddy to look at women not as scary with big, huge claws to maul men but as sweet, tender little bunnies that need to be gently held. Taking his advice, he sees this lovely woman as she morphs into a precious, nose twitching rabbit begging to be approached. He does and we all go "awwwwe...."
American Beauty Two messages emerge for me. Closeted married men ruin lives; their own and worse, their wives who cannot reckon with the confusion of such profound personal rejection. The other is the bag wafting in the wind in that hauntingly beautiful scene capturing the capricious nature of fate.
Harold and Maude In what could only be explained by the brilliance of comedy told through British stiff upper lips, this movie changes your life just for watching it. A death obsessed Harold atttempts a number of actually hilarious suicide attempts. So weary with her son's antics, his mother insists he marry and goes so far as to fill out a dating questionnaire on his behalf. Her blithe responses to its questions alarms us viewers while Harold self-immolates just beyond the window. When he meets the aging Maude as she accepts her inevitable death, Harold decides to live life to the fullest. Wondering how Maude can be so happy at the end of her days, all is explained by a brief glimpse of her concentration camp number stamped onto her arm. An ironic scene is Harold driving to see Maude in the hospital in his Jaguar he converted into a hearse. In what appears as a conversion come too late, we are reminded that to love is to be truly alive. Even when living through its loss.
Gloria A hardened Mob moll, Gloria finds herself protecting a little boy who witnessed his family's massacre. Maternal instincts kick in and they're on the run. The story is a poignant reminder of our innate ability to love and protect especially our young, even when they aren't our own. As I write this, I watch these birds who built a nest off my balcony. Today, I saw a mama bird standing atop that nest as wee little birdies perk up with their beaks open. When we despair, life emerges and it is beautiful.
Hysterical Blindness Whatever the veneer we wear from wealthy Buckhead to weary Bayonne, we women are the same in the ache we feel for wanting love in our lives. It's painful to watch best friends Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis and wonder of yourself how many times you've been wasted at that bar, how much of you was wasted, too. We hope that in time, we go from bed to better, and no longer sleep alone.
Blade Runner A more superior form of humans were created, called Replicants. As intelligent as the humans who created them, they were used for slave labor in conditions too hazardous for people. Becoming self-aware, they mutinied. Blade Runners were to kill any Replicants. When a Blade Runner falls in love with a Replicant, it calls into question our humanity. What makes us human? Is it our capacity to develop ideas, to feel pain, to form attachments, to experience grief? In our daily lives of manufactured reality, are we Blade Runners or are we Replicants?
Here here and well said! ;-)
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