Firstly, I’m sorry for the emotions, my childhood turning point evokes. The pic is an example of mine. I wasn’t going to include it, but I feel like it gives a good visceral example of deep messages in movies (of course actual philosophy, and non emotionally devastating examples apply, too). I just watched a clip on a study on some elderly men, taken to a time warp hotel, and asked to pretend it was that time, and it had huge positive effects on their physical capabilities and mental capacity. And it reminded me of the power of hope, it’s not just embedded in the happy ending, where everything works out ok. Or the promise of it. Hope is also the core of resilience, necessary for driving each step that carries you along the yellow brick road.
I’ll share mine here, so you get an idea what I’m asking. I was devastated watching the scene above, as a kid. But also, I saw Atreus ability to keep going, not only not giving up, and therefore not sinking in a place that takes you if you do, but then also carrying the weight of the grief of his life companion. And he was now alone, realising his mortality and facing, what he is told, are impossible odds. He still keeps going. I think, to child me, there was so much power in seeing something is possible. I believed I, too, could survive anything. And even if I were alone, I could still survive anything, because that power came from inside me, no one can take that from you. “Don’t let the darkness take you” the darkness is an external force. It wants to creep in and convince you to buy it’s snake oils.
There is so much power in convincing people the “darkness” is inevitable, there is nothing else. I see it all around me, embedded in the propaganda, convincing us not to resist, that resistance is futile. Half of the battle is in our own heads, and the brainwashing swamps we wade through, now.
What are your tools of resilience, your keys for undoing the fight or flight, all the horrifying videos around us are designed, to evoke, to keep our thinking brains detached, and only our “run hide” brains active, so we can’t think, so we can’t plan, so we just sink in and accept?
What’s helped you get back up, when you have fallen? From whatever sources, I just feel like, maybe now is a time, it’s important to share a shoulder to cope on. Or even just moved you, to an extent it changed your perspective or way of thinking?
The book Enders Game. I was will bullied in grade school. As was Ender. The overall theme is that it’s effectively impossible to maintain a defensive posture indefinitely. Be that always ready for dealing with bullies at school or home, to dealing with an alien threat becoming nearly impossible in three dimensions.
Ender comes up with the philosophy that you have to win, but not just win that fight/battle, you have to win so decisively that there won’t just be another fight later. While this turns out to be effective, it also results in genocide.
This resulted in a restrained version of the philosophy in me. When diplomacy fails, fight for your life, but know when you’ve won, know when you’ve prevented the next fight(s). And most importantly, know when to stop.
Speaker for the Dead really took the lesson Ender learned to a new level. Shame about the author being a douchebag because those were some formative tales for me.
It’s so weird that he’s so homophobic. Ender’s Game is incredibly chock-full of homoeroticism.
I mean… Not that weird. Have you seen the grindr stats when the RNC is in a city?
If you think that scene was distressing, go watch the original German version, it’s next level.
For someone who’s only watched the German version, what’s the difference?
They added music and removed the sounds of the horse in distress.
The German had extra dialogue, different music and is better in my opinion.
WHAT… now I know what I want to put on my list for the family movie night.
My kids have been both and we all agreed the original German version is better.
FYI: the original German version is in English, so no subtitles to worry about for kids.
Edit: This was a good watch and the reason we watched the German version. https://youtu.be/kw3q65OxtCQ
Yep, I added it to my list and so many of them were agog at this particular change. We’ll see if they vote for it or not.
wait. is it the same movie, just different edit?
Yep.
Different editing, music, some voiceover differences, you’ll laugh your arse off at the racing snail guys voice, and some difference in the order and length of the scenes.
Jawul
I see it and raise it to: read the book. The horse speaks.
What’s the difference? I really want to know. That scene in the photo evokes so much sadness and despair!
All you need is 1 happy thoughtNobody tell them how it went for Robin…
That he died of suicide caused by depression decades after the movie was released? What do you want to say ?
His suicide wasn’t caused by depression. It was caused by progressing Lewy body dementia, which has a whole bunch of shitty effects, and depression is just one of them. His disease also wasn’t properly diagnosed until the autopsy.
Ran out of happy thoughts
That it’s true doesn’t make it funny
Robin has millions of people happy thoughts. He deserves better than your pathetic im14andthisisedgy crap.
For me, it wasn’t a movie, but a song. The Winner by Bobby Bare felt like it re-wired my brain. I was never too afraid to tussle, always open to it. I think I heard this song at the right time; child was getting older, I was getting older, it all just hit right. I don’t exactly shy away from fights, but I certainly don’t go out of my way to seek or start them any longer.
Camus’ The Stranger really spoke to me. It sort of felt like it described me in ways that I hadn’t known until I read the story.
Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn’t much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.
At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.
In that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself–like a brother, really–I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.
Darlin’, forever is a long, long time. And time has a way of changin’ things.
The Fox and the Hound
The Matrix really made me understand where Descartes was coming from. When we say something is “real” it’s always subjective and cannot be objective. That’s an incredibly difficult concept for most humans to truly grasp.
We learned that in school, movies like that taught me that it was a difficult concept for humans to grasp.
Billie Eislish did say it more succinctly though, damn.
Wut?
Literally just a line in one of her songs, nothing deeper.
It’s a great connection. Beyond Descartes, the Wachowskis explicitly cited Buddhist philosophy as a primary influence, specifically the concepts of Maya (illusion) and Samsara (the cycle of suffering which people unfortunately tend to misunderstand a lot).
The “There is no spoon” scene is a direct nod to Sunyata, or emptiness. It suggests that “reality” isn’t just subjective; it lacks inherent existence. In this view, it’s not just the world that is a construct, but the “self” perceiving it as well. Lana Wachowski has also stated that the trilogy was designed as a “meditation” on the nature of choice and the self, influenced by their interest in Eastern philosophy.
There’s also an Upanishadic mantra in the third movie soundtrack, appropriately:
Asato mā sad gamaya (from the unreal, lead me to the real)
Tamaso mā jyotir gamaya (from darkness, lead me to the light)
Mṛtyor mā’mṛtaṃ gamaya (from death, lead me to immortality)
Unpacked here (a bit, but it’ll correct the likely, immediate misconceptions people unfamiliar with eastern philosophy would get)
It also touched on the systemic oppression of the modern world, and showed how most people just go along with it … I was a young adult when it came out and that really shook up my word view.
There’s a scene in Wings of Desire… but before I tell it to you, let me set the scene…
Wings of Desire is set and filmed in Berlin while it was still divided. Angels are silent observers, able to read the thoughts of its citizens.
One old man is fixated on a town square he was fond of, but has been demolished during the wall construction:
“I can’t find Potsdamer Platz. Here? This can’t be it. Potsdamer Platz is where the Café Josti used to be. In the afternoon I’d go there to chat and have a coffee and watch the crowd after I’d had my cigar at Löhse and Wolff, a famous tobacconist, right around here. So this can’t be Potsdamer Platz.”
As I get older and more landmarks slip away, this resonates even stronger.
“The Lotus Card-Room? What a great place that was… people had been going there, oh, almost a hundred years. And that bar! Brought around Cape Horn they say, such a marvelous place. Bought by a developer and torn down for a hotel that never got funded.”
(the bar survived)
The ending of Chinatown really prepares you for a world where evil assholes own everything and continue to get away with anything.
Also, extremely ironic in that way.
Helms Deep is pretty much an ode to fighting back against overwhelming odds and the power of hope. That battle combined with Sam’s words about goodness being worth fighting for. Also, Gandalf’s words in Fellowship about choosing what to do with the world given to you has always stuck with me as motivating words when things seem bleak.
I also really enjoyed the scene in Everything Everywhere All at Once where Waymond talks about how kindness is a strength.
Could probably keep going but those are standing out to me today.
Chinatown holds up so well to modern viewing. Incredible film. When I first watched it I had already heard that last line used over and over as a joke in general culture. Hearing that line for the first time in context is like a punch to the gut. One of the best endings ever.
Not even reading your comment(cuz maybe spoilers) but I saw you’re talking about Chinatown and I’ve been meaning to watch it, so I will be doing that tonight! Thanks for the reminder!
AAARTEEEEXXX
The X-Files episode, “Beyond the Sea” made me anti-death penalty. Brad Dourif plays a mass murderer on death row who claims to have visions that could save two missing girls. The show doesn’t go for the easy out - he’s guilty of horrible things and he’s trying to cut a deal. Scully’s skepticism and faith collide - she thinks he’s playing a cruel game, but if she doesn’t go along, he will be put to death, which is against her Catholic beliefs. One of Gillian Anderson’s best (and favorite) episodes.
The end result is a surprisingly profound meditation on the value of life, the difference between justice and revenge, and the depravity 9f state-sanctioned murder.
Honestly, a lot of the Scully-focused episodes are great.
This classic xkcd led me down a long rabbit hole years after reading it that ended in the belief that the universe itself is an abstract instantiation of pure mathematics, and exists only in the sense that any such self-consistent mathematical structure must exist from its own point of view. I won’t get into the details here because it’ll turn into a long incoherent rant, but the general gist is that the idea in the comic should work - but then that the rocks themselves aren’t even necessary: The fact that a universe can exist is enough for it to exist, even if no one ever simulates it. Just like the question “What is the 10(10100)th prime number?” exists and has a definite answer, even though nobody will ever and can never calculate it, the answer to “What does a universe, with these initial conditions, and these laws of physics, look like at t = 13.7 billion years?” has an answer too, and it looks like you reading this comment.
Mine are from movies which you wouldn’t expect to get sage advice
Shanghai Noon “That which you promised, you must perform”. Jackie Chan’s character says this at one point and it really stuck with me since I was a child. It’s a broken English version of “your word is your bond”. I never promise something to someone that I can’t accomplish. It does drive some people I know a little crazy.
“You never see the hard days in a photo album, but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next”. This radically changed the way I perceived the world. It helped me accept that it’s really hard to grow as an individual in life without strife.
The concept of Leaver and Taker societies throughout history as laid out by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael and The Story of B opened my eyes (further) to what a cancer capitalism and inequality are to the world.
Dune taught me esrly lessons on the interconnectedness of life.
Kurt Vonnegut taught me to laugh at just how absurd we walking sacks of chemicals can be. I also learned about Humanism because of him.
George Carlin taught me gallows humor in the face of a society that was not formed with people’s welfare in mind.
Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett taught me it’s nkt only ok to be silly, sometimes it’s the only apropriate thing to do.
Monty Python taught me that life’s a bit absurd, and death’s the final world.
There’s lots more but these are the ones that came to mind immediately.
The concept of Leaver and Taker societies throughout history as laid out by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael and The Story of B opened my eyes (further) to what a cancer capitalism and inequality are to the world.
I always found the idea of the garden of eden story being a warning about the takers that made it into their culture kind of fascinating.
Artax? Really? Fuck you!
You didn’t have to post this shit but you chose violence. Fuck you for making me cry in a holidayYeah fuck that shit. I was on a good stretch of not thinking about Artax death for I don’t know 1 or 2 years and this post comes from nowhere like sucker punch. This is like the twisted version of The game. Dammit.
