Favorite Films: Moral Inspiration

“Compassion is the basis of morality.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher

In contrast to my previous post on the growing amorality enveloping society and that of my prolonged discourse — for which I ask forgiveness — here are some films I’d like to recommend that offset the tide. These cinematic pieces remind us of the power that kindness, truth, and goodness holds, and that art — when thoughtfully and morally attended to — can be used to inspire us all towards greater clarity, compassion and empathy.

Sweet Bean (Directed by Naomi Kawase)

In the hands of another director I suspect Sweet Bean might have come across as excessively sentimental. But here, director Naomi Kawase constructs a simple tale with such thoughtfulness and care that its characters and situation feel not only believable but genuine. Centralizing on only three characters, Sweet Bean follows the personal trials of a vendor named Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase) who struggles running his little dessert shop which makes dorayaki, a sweet bean paste-filled pancake popular in Japan. His most regular customer is a lonely, seemingly disconnected young high school girl (Kyara Uchida) who considers dropping out and leaving home. Sentaro gives her the “rejects” that don’t sell. But Sentaro’s own life is also lonely and disconnected. And although we’re not told the details, we get the sense he’s doing this job only because he has to, for financial reasons and also as a repayment for a debt that goes beyond money. But one day, his life changes when an elderly woman named Toke (Kirin Kiki) comes applying for a job. But despite offering her services for incredibly low pay, Sentaro kindly turns her down seeing that she’s old and appears slightly disabled. Still, she leaves him a gift in gratitude for his consideration — her own homemade sweet bean paste that tastes so amazing that it changes his mind. Working together they make new Dorayakis that become a huge hit with the public but soon trouble comes. And in that trouble we reveal that beneath the veneer of politeness, people of this little town carry as much prejudice and pettiness as anywhere else. In the challenges that face the characters, both physically and psychologically, we begin to learn the meaning of trust, kindness and the devotion to one’s passion. I do not wish too give much away in what is a very simple story but I must say that the actors in Sweet Bean bring such sincere emotion to the scenes that it shakes you. When watching films, I’m rarely reminded of the power of attentiveness being able to change lives like it does in this one. Here, there is such a guileless display of love; love of craft, love of one another, love of life.

Babe (Directed by Chris Noonan)

Babe is magnificent. Both surprisingly dark and incredibly uplifting, it’s a triumph of goodness and a morality tale superior to any other children’s film ever made (perhaps only the original 1940 Pinocchio comes close). The film’s central character and hero is a pig named Babe, a little runt picked from a litter of hogs to serve as a lottery “Ham” prize at the local country fair. Yet out of that comes the beginning of a journey, one of a humble creature destined for greatness. Babe is so pure, so innocent that he defies the common selfishness and violence that permeates society including animal farm life; the little pig truly has a heart of gold. But how do you make a character so good and honest interesting enough to follow or believe in? Well, in the hands of producer/creator George Miller and director Chris Noonan, we have a film so magical and surprising, it’s beautiful to witness. The sets, compositions and sly storytelling give the film a children’s book feel, unraveling one small chapter of its mystery at a time. And despite clever humour and playful sequences Babe carries with it an ominous tone, where real danger or death lurks at almost every turn, for such is the life of a little pig on a farm. Using animatronics, trained animals and limited CG mouth/facial manipulations, the creators have managed to breathe great life and soul into these seemingly simple barnyard animals who take turns being critics, friends, mothers and guardians. With an excellent voice cast and supported by an Oscar-nominated performance by the ageless James Cromwell as farmer Hoggett, we have just the right amount of realism and fantasy that has you smiling and rooting for this wonderful and courageous sheep-pig.

Dances with Wolves (Directed by Kevin Costner)

There has never been a film like Dances with Wolves and there likely never will be again. Directed with nuance and respect, Costner’s film pays beautiful homage to the land and original indigenous peoples of North America. Shot on location in South Dakota along the great plains of the continent, Dances with Wolves has an epic feel to it and a timelessness that makes one ponder both our history and our future. The story begins with John Dunbar, a Civil War soldier wounded and about to have his leg amputated, making a desperate act to end his life during a standoff between two war parties. Not only does his suicide act not get him killed but results in him being decorated and his leg saved. He requests as his reward for his perceived heroics the opportunity to serve in the great open plains — in Indian country — “before it’s gone” as Dunbar remarks. As such, his real story begins. After arriving in the abandoned military outpost, he befriends a band of Lakota Indians, discovering firsthand that the natives are nothing like what he has been told. Here, he learns their way of life and slowly begins to find himself, not only as a soldier but as a man. He adopts a new name — Dances with Wolves — given to him by the natives due to his unique interactions with a lone wolf who visits him periodically at his post. Of course, conflict arrives just as he begins to find peace as Dunbar’s honour gets tested in battle with enemies both foreign and familiar, including his own people, the American soldiers. Dances with Wolves is a triumph of the human spirit; it is an exploration of self-discovery, of nature and our place in it. It shows the great wisdom that can come to us if we observe and listen, and when we choose to live without prejudice or expectations.

The Shawshank Redemption (Directed by Frank Dabaront)

Frank Dabaront’s trio of films The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Majestic are all films that inspire self-reflection, truth, and hope. Of the three, Shawshank is the most magnificently made. Wrongfully accused of murdering his wife, banking executive Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is sent to serve a life in prison. There, he befriends con-man and convicted murderer Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman) and becomes part of a charming gang of convicts who share humour and tribulations together as part of life behind walls. As it turns out his wittiness and intelligence actually trap him; he becomes not only a confidant to his newfound friends, but also that of the warden, a cruel duplicitous man who uses Andy’s financial expertise to launder the river of dirty money that runs through the prison. Featuring a great screenplay, excellent directing and superb acting, it’s a film that’s so enjoyable that you don’t even realize the depth and beauty of its message — one not simply of redemption but of freedom, and not freedom restricted by any concrete walls but freedom from the prisons we make inside our heads. It’s tale is about breaking away from our conditioning which is the most difficult thing in the world to do. Both Dufresne and Redding face this dilemma and until they each act with the courage to meet that challenge they will remain imprisoned. Finding out how they face their challenges keeps us glued to the screen. If it weren’t for the terrible title, I suspect many more people would’ve seen this movie. It did so poorly that it didn’t even recover the cost of making it. Today, it’s easily regarded as one of the greatest films ever made on hope and human dignity.

Ikiru (Directed by Akira Kurosawa)

What a film Ikiru is. Some feel this is the great Japanese director’s most powerful and humane film. It’s hard to argue with that. Starring seasoned actor and Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura, the film begins with a man’s discovery that he has terminal cancer. Having lived an existence of alarming mundaneness and limited awareness, the diagnosis compels Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat, to find some sort of meaning in the final days of his life. The problem is he doesn’t know where to begin; he doesn’t know how to have fun nor how to connect or share with other people. Neither has he made any contributions to society through craft or charity. His life has been nothing but paperwork being shuffled back and forth between desks. That is the limited achievement of his life after nearly 30 years of work. And so begins the journey of a man — near the end — to find the beginning. He has to look back and around in what seems like for the first time, an overdue examination of his entire life. Played with tremendous depth and poignancy, Shimura’s rich performance as the sorrowful Watanabe both shocks and grips you; you can’t help but feel immense empathy throughout the film, and yet at the end of it, inherit real hope and inspiration. In Japanese, Ikiru means “to live.” And here, we’re given the opportunity to discover what that really means.

To see more Favorite Films go here.

Art & Ethics

James Cromwell and the sheep pig in Chris Noonan’s magical fable Babe. Has there been a character as courageous and so pure in mind and heart as Babe?

“A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man’s carnal truth is handled as something artificial.” — Albert Camus

Dare we talk about morals? I think in the times that we live in today, which seems so artificial, we have to. Globally now, we’re all very engaged in commercialism, both mentally and in practice. Physically, it has lead to immense specialization; the advancement of expertise and construction in areas of science, art, media and technology that has contributed to great progress materially, especially for rich developed countries. But the price we pay for this material progression may very well be an immeasurable increase in psychological suffering and moral degeneration not to mention the negative impact on our planet. Something is missing inside and we all know it. Some might even say that we as a species have become soulless. Never in history have we had such a monstrous disparity between the haves and have-nots. Never before have we been so overtly obsessed with the self, which is, as discussed before, already the default setting in human consciousness. Racism and sexism, from both the past and the present, makes the news headlines regularly while the amount of gun violence seems to mount weekly (there’s been 254 mass shootings in the USA alone as of this posting today, less than halfway through the year). Perhaps a culture that conditions us towards constant desire and excess while parading nationalism must inevitably lead to violence. But it all begins on the inside. It makes one ponder Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the first part of his epic poem Divine Comedy and the Seven Deadly sins. Let’s take a look at them individually:

The Seven Deadly Sins:

· luxuria / Lust: The prevalent and obsessive pursuit of pleasure abound is not only condoned but promoted. The lust for power, money, sex, and superficial beauty permeate the airwaves and the internet through advertising and entertainment. We link success to being able to indulge regularly in mindless and superficial pleasure.

· gula / Gluttony: The promotion of fast food and encouragement of constant and endless consumption has fundamentally lead us to a statistical epidemic in public health. Physical and psychological illness is mounting not only in wealthy countries but stunningly also in developing nations. We’re stuffing ourselves with garbage and do so by the truckload. I have a relative who has 8 cars — talk about uncontrolled excess.

· avaritia / Greed: Always more and never enough is predicated by the constant policy pre-occupation with economic growth. We may have descended to becoming a society that not only endorses endless accumulation but glorifies the act of it. Think of planned obsolescence. We want the right to limitlessly produce as much as we can, own as much as we can, and do it as fast as we can and call it success and freedom. Greed has deep ties to insecurity.

· acedia / Sloth: Fighting entropy has always been a challenge but younger generations today hate work and this includes the work to discover ourselves through deep contemplation and humility. We treat work now as only a means towards something rather than as a joyful and meaningful activity in and of itself. It’s hard when everything is so mechanical and potentially exploitative but we’ve forgotten that the act of doing, building, and creating is not only practical but also noble and spiritually rewarding.

· invidia / Envy: How many of us are envious? How can we not be critical, judgemental and petty when we endorse a socio-economic ideology of competition where winning is the only thing that matters? When we gauge ourselves and society by comparison, it automatically divides us. What happened to love thy neighbour? You can’t when you have to be better than your neighbour. Envy externalizes our own bitterness and unhappiness.

· superbia / Pride: Instead of global unification as a species we are regressing back towards tribalism; families, communities and nations alike are proudly promoting the superiority of their own kind. “Me first” clearly means everyone and everything else comes after. Is not pride the Devil’s favourite sin because we are deceived into to thinking that having pride is actually a good thing? How often do we say that we must be proud to be this, that or the other? Pride stands in direct opposition to humility and detachment from the self.

· ira / Wrath: When we live to conform and adapt to an increasingly mechanized society, conditioned to be anything but our true selves, how can there not be conflict, both inwardly and outwardly? The constant mixed messaging is bound to confound; from the time we’re children we’re told to follow the rules or be shunned by society but at the same time we’re to idolize those celebrated individuals who succeeded by breaking those same rules; eat and drink all the time but look lean and fit; work obediently and tirelessly in the rat race then party wildly on Friday/Saturdays nights for relief/balance; then make up for our questionable selfish behaviour by being good/charitable on Sundays where we can repent our sins and buy spiritual insurance for the afterlife. There’s so much cognitive dissonance. No wonder psychological counselling is a booming field; there’s practically an epidemic of anxiety and depression among people young and old the world-over. Each year 800,000 people commit suicide, a rate of one suicide every 40 seconds. (Actually while writing this essay, my wife texted me that someone had just done so on her ferryboat ride home, a man choosing to perish under the currents in the cold dark sea.) And, of course, with so much internal conflict, it’s also bound to express itself outwardly so hate and physical violence explode. Blaming others always becomes the cheap and easy out when we don’t take personal responsibility. We’ve had over 5000 wars in human history yet have learned nothing from the experience.

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

― Mark Twain

The art we make.

Now what does this have to do with art and this blog? Well, we are artists and artists are human too. And all this conditioning of self and excess colours our thoughts and heavily affects our rather sensitive souls — and artists must remain sensitive to create. Furthermore, it is our skills and passions that create the symbols that aid in the communication of ideas — thru our art, music, performances and stories — we affect the world and not just reflect it. If the ideas we promote with our talents are either intentionally or unintentionally harmful then we have contributed to the problem. People forget that some of the most powerful and effective tools and symbols ever created were used by the most dastardly corporate, political, and military regimes. This continues today and technology has both strengthened the power and reach of our influence. Everything you do matters.

Most people don’t realize that before becoming the famous luxury brand we all know today, Hugo Boss manufactured these effective and imposing uniforms for the Nazi party during World War II.

The other day I watched a new film that featured characters so morally repulsive it made my stomach churn. The protagonist was one perfectly adapted to a belief and acceptance of a society that was absolutely absent of ethics, respect, or empathy. Although well-acted and decently written, it left an awful taste in my mouth that made me ponder: what kind of world have we created for ourselves? And this was the second such movie I’ve seen of that ilk recently, the other being about a man who cunningly schemed and destroyed another man’s life taking all that he had including literally his home, job, family and, ultimately, his life; the bad guy protagonist was intelligent, opportunistic and victorious in the end. I couldn’t sleep when it was over! The themes of such films, where the unethical triumph, delivers a horrific message. I felt less disturbed by Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange — which revolted audiences when it came out over 50 years ago — than by these new films which seem to accept this kind of amorality and even make it look cool. Kubrick was at least delivering a clear warning about the existence of evil and our society’s ill attempts to deal with it; his films always tackle issues of humanity in unique ways.

Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was a frightening exposé of the evils that lay within man and society. The fact that Kubrick’s work was so artistic and creative actually invited not praise but condemnation, even as the intention/message was clearly to shock and make us think.

When Oliver Stone made his 1987 satire Wall Street, Michael Douglas’ infamous character Gordon Gecko was publicly viewed as a reprehensible con man. His famous speech “Greed is Good” — if spoken today — would probably serve as a call-to-arms and ringing endorsement of our neoliberal, everything-to-be-commoditized selfishly-indulgent world. When Martin Scorcese’s own attempt at satire, the film Wolf of Wall Street, arrived in theatres in 2013 (nearly 26 years later), it ended up serving as an inspiration rather than a warning; business programs in colleges and universities nationwide — including my own former Faculty of Commerce where I graduated decades ago — witnessed a huge surge of enrolment after audiences saw Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort and his merry band of degenerates have so much sinful fun. Are we now a generation that endorses — through indifferent complicity — amorality as a new norm? This is frightening to ponder.

Martin Scorcese’s well-acted and brilliantly made satire Wolf of Wall Street was almost too fun for some, drawing not disgust but instead lustful excitement from numerous young members of our current society.

Now artists always have a choice: we can use art for psychological coercion or we can use it to inspire good or awaken and educate us on the perilous discourse we’ve taken. Regarding positive action, I often think of Richard Attenborough’s great documentary series Planet Earth which is both breathtakingly gorgeous and immensely educational as a great example. But here I’d like to recommend instead spending time to watch Writer-Director Adam Curtis’ mind-blowing 4 hour BBC mini-series The Century of the Self. Curtis goes deep into the early roots of Propaganda, the title of the book by Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) that changed human behaviour more than anything else in history. Bernays’ treatise, based off his uncle’s work on psychoanalysis, along with the experiments conducted by Anna Freud (Sigmund’s daughter) together served as the primal seed for modern education and marketing (Bernays cleverly re-labeled propaganda into public relations). It also instrumentally inspired Adolf Hitler to form his own Ministry of Propaganda run by his right-hand Joseph Goebbels in the Nazi Regime during World War II. In Curtis’ The Century of the Self we are richly and artfully shown the history of propaganda in our society and how we ended up as we are today — a global culture of conformist desire and excess, obsessed with consumerism, completely absorbed with the individualized self. Watching it, it seems we as a populace didn’t stand a chance. Not only does the film enlighten, it’s also extremely entertaining, proving once again that art can be both captivating and important at the same time. The film should be mandatory viewing for all.

Here is the direct link to the film.

Adam Curtis’ BBC documentary is imperative viewing for artists and non-artists alike.

“The soul is dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

— Marcus Aurelius