When was the last time you saw a great movie? A movie that gave you reason to stop and ‘consider the lilies’, a movie that made you think and rethink your life, a movie that challenged you to change, maybe just to spend more time being thankful?
Here’s a recommendation: Go watch one of these movies (ones I’ve seen recently) and then reflect on them, discuss them, read about them. Try doing so while listening to Phillip Glass’s first string quartet or George Crumb’s “Black Angels” quartet.
Let me know what happens.
Bin-jip (3-iron)
Proof
Winter Passing
Joyeux Noël
Fight Club
De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)
Sideways
El Crimen del padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro)
I watched “Napoleon Dynamite” and said….”Boy…..I SURE DO need to change.”
Really….it’s hard for me to think past the story. I see a movie. I see a story. Any points it brings up go right by me…..probably because I’m stupid or just don’t feel like finding the points in a movie.
I prefer to take a story as it is and ignore whatever subliminal (or not so) messages being thrown at me. Apparently Wagner’s operas have heavy politics underlying them. I haven’t followed any of the operas with libretto…..yet, but according to “The Complete Operas of Richard Wagner”, Mussolini was inspired to start a facist government after watching a performance or “Rienzi”.
Me? I just think it’s cool music! But, I’m “the apostle of simplicity”, so what would you expect?
So is Napoleon Dynamite what made you take up dancing, Aaron?
Seriously though, I think we do a disservice to art when we interact with it only on a superficial level. What about the Bible? How do you interact with it? Just read it once and get the overview? While I would agree that the Bible is inspired, it is still literature, a form of art. You will not exhaust its full potential in only one reading. Same with a movie, a CD, or another book. Not everything registers in the first exposure.
Take time to be impacted and changed by art. What do you have to lose?
The End of the Spear really hit me hard. Have you seen that one? I haven’t cried that much since The Passion. I had to sit in my seat for a long time afterwards without talking before I could get up and leave the theatre. Your thoughts?
I saw End of the Spear on opening day with my grandmother, who was friends with some of the couples in the movie. I thought it was an interesting film, but I wasn’t really impressed by it.
One thing I was reminded of and found interesting about it was the fact that, although they had guns on the plane, they decided ahead of time not to use them because they belived if they killed the natives, they would go to hell. So they chose rather to die, instead of taking a non-believer’s life. That’s pretty far from what American christianity teaches today.
Sidways? I haven’t heard of that one.