Watching Movies of Life - the Movie Meditation
These descriptions of certain emotional states of mind are intended to encourage us to watch specific aspects of our life as if they were a movie. A five star movie in this list is not rated necessarily as a highly entertaining, mainstream movie. Instead, a good movie suggested here may more accurately reflect the drama of life in all its facets -- the shadow of an emotion as well as its positive side. Find out what moves you and learn to simply let it be. Meditation is watching, unidentified and non-judging.
J -- Open For Something Totally New
The shadow side
Being a real ass, Mr.Right is always right and eliminates what is wrong, tendency of being violent, humiliation and indignity, racial hatred, prejudice, judging people, suspiciousness, fear of being eliminated, having no secure place in life, living a worthless life, undeserving, withdrawing to absolute privacy
The light side
Trusting, being at ease and totally relaxed, protecting and enjoying one's privacy, also accepting the privacy of other people, having found a value system that is bigger than oneself, knowing no limits, being transparent, being a genius.
Movies with these themes
Schindler´s List
The film begins with the relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to the Krakow ghetto shortly after the beginning of World War II. Meanwhile, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an unsuccessful businessman, arrives in the city from the Sudetenland in hopes of making his fortune as a war profiteer. Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, lavishes bribes upon the Wehrmacht and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a close collaborator in Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), an official of Krakow's Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the Jewish business community and the black marketers inside the Ghetto. They loan him the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced. Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his new-found wealth and status as "Herr Direktor," while Stern handles all administration. Stern suggests Schindler hire Jews instead of Poles because they cost less (the workers themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to the State). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto though, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or even being killed...
Shawshank Redemption
In 1947, a young banker named Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover based on strong circumstantial evidence and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the notorious Shawshank Prison in Maine. At the prison, inmate Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding is rejected for parole after having served twenty years of his life sentence shortly before Andy's arrival. Andy gradually becomes acquainted with Red's circle of friends, and Red himself, who is known for cleverly smuggling in contraband. After a month of adjusting to his new life, Andy approaches Red and orders from him a rock hammer, so as to pursue his hobby of rock collecting, and later, a large poster of Rita Hayworth...
Powder
Jeremy Reed, whose nickname is Powder, is an albino (a medical condition in which there is no pigmentation of the skin) who has incredible intellect and is able to sense the thoughts of the people around him. Jeremy's mother was struck by lightning while pregnant with him. She died shortly after the strike, but Jeremy survived. Because of the lightning strike, Jeremy's body possesses a powerful electromagnetic charge, which causes electrical objects to function abnormally when he is around them, as well as when he becomes emotional. Also, because of his electrical charge, no hair can grow on his body. Because his mother is dead and his father disowned him and left him with the hospital where he was born, he grew up with his grandparents, who kept him in a basement and would not let him leave the house, so he turned to books for solace. He was taken from his home when his grandfather was found dead. Child Services agents took him to a boy's home because he was now effectively a ward of the state...
Glory Road
Newly appointed men's basketball head coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) from the Texas Western College in El Paso, not having many financial resources to recruit the most coveted high school athletes, decides to find the best players in the country regardless of the color of their skin to form a team that can compete for a national championship. Some of the young men he and his assistants recruit, from places as far away as Indiana, Michigan and New York, possess a lot of talent, but are very raw when it comes to organized college basketball with its greater focus on defense and ball distribution, and can more be described as streetball players. In the end, his Texas Western Miners team comprised seven black and five white athletes, a balance that raised eyebrows even at his own university. Haskins puts his players through a very tough training program, threatening to cut anyone who doesn't work as hard and passionately as he demands, while trying to integrate his white and black players into a single team with a common goal. Haskins also has to deal with players being distracted by occasional trips over the nearby Mexican border and one of his star forwards and team leader having a major heart problem that could potentially cost his life at any moment when playing...
The Painted Veil
Kitty Garstin (Watts) is a very pretty, shallow young woman from a well-to-do London family, under pressure from her parents to find a husband. Soon after she meets him at a party, she marries Dr Walter Fane (Norton), an earnest, socially awkward bacteriologist on leave from China, although she does not love him.
The Fanes move to Shanghai, where Dr Fane is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. Soon bored, Kitty meets Charles Townsend (Schreiber), a married British diplomat who is a serial womanizer, and has an affair with him. When Walter finds out, he gives her an ultimatum: accompany him to the Chinese interior to assist with a cholera epidemic relief effort for which he has volunteered, or face a divorce on the grounds of her adultery...
Remark
Although the movie list is inspired by Tibetan Pulsing typologies on the human mind, it does not claim to be completely accurate in its assessment.
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