As I mentioned in passing in an earlier post, I saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army on opening night with a couple of friends. I thought it was a great movie, a lot of fun (especially the scene involving a Barry Manilow song). Jeffrey Overstreet offers his thoughts on the movie and links to other reviews he found insightful here.
I just came across this interview with Guillermo del Toro in USA Today where he makes a number of comments I found interesting, as well as offers details about his future projects.
“I’m eager to explore themes that lend themselves easily to metaphor,” he says. “The fantastic is the only tool we have nowadays to explain spirituality to a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion. Superhero movies create a kind of mythology. Creature movies, horror movies, create at least a belief in something beyond.”
and…
“People tend to think that big things only happen to big people,” he says, finally. “That 11-year-old girl is powerless. That 12-year-old kid is a nincompoop. The great quests, the great decisions only happen to great people. I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us. … I’m interested in the essential importance of the small decision. … You can be a cashier at a 7-11, or you can be the person at the Kentucky Fried Chicken counter. But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else. I bet that is true.”
Totally agree with the small decisions bit. I think part of the problem in our society is that we don’t realize how much we are connected and how our small decisions actually do impact people.
And I’ve also been thinking about the other lately, too. Very interesting words.
Amy, Jeffrey Overstreet talks a lot about the role that myth plays in our lives and why myths appeal to us (for instance, in this lecture at the Festival of Faith and Writing.
And one of the central themes in Frederick Buechner’s writings is how those small decisions and actions impact others, and ourselves, often without our even realizing it. In Telling Secrets, he writes, “As I wrote those two autobiographical volumes [The Sacred Journey and Now and Then,] I found myself remembering small events as far back as early childhood which were even then leading me in something like that direction but so subtly and almost imperceptibly that it wasn’t until decades had passed that I saw them for what they were – or thought I did because you can never be sure whether you are discovering that kind of truth or inventing it. The events were often so small that I was surprised to remember them, yet they turned out to have been road markers on a journey I didn’t even know I was taking. The people involved in them were often people I had never thought of as having played particularly significant roles in my life yet looking back at them I saw that, for me, they had been life-givers, saints.”
I’ll be writing more about that tomorrow for my post for the 40 Day Fast.
Yikes, it sure makes for a lot of responsibility to live full lives of integrity! Thanks for sharing those wise words.