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.
K -- One Who Loves The World
The shadow side
Worrying about money, being afraid of future, looking for respect, buying recognition, varnishing truth, resorting to excuses, having lost self respect, greed for money, conquering nature
The light side
Creating a paradise, searching and finding what got lost, having self respect, being just, balancing pros and cons, finding the middle way, appreciating and taking care of things, being in harmony with nature, knowing the beauty of the world and not being caught by it, 'this very body the lotus paradise'
Movies with these themes
The Wicker Man
Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage), an American police officer, receives news from his ex-fiancée Willow (Kate Beahan) that her daughter Rowan (Erika-Shaye Gair) is missing. He persuades a seaplane pilot to take him to the mysterious Summersisle. He inquires about Rowan, but no one gives him a satisfactory answer about her. He also sees a man carrying a large bag dripping with a dark red liquid, but he cannot ascertain the bag's contents.
Visiting a café run by Sister Beech (Diane Delano), he continues his inquiries and it is revealed that he is allergic to bee stings. A few minutes later he meets Willow, who advises him not to believe the other islanders' answers about Rowan, and that they regard her (Willow) with suspicion...
Snow Falling on Cedars
Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the state of Washington coast in 1951, the plot revolves around the murder case of Kazuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American accused of killing Carl Heine, a respected fisherman in the close-knit community. The trial occurs in the midst of deep anti-Japanese sentiments following World War II. Covering the case is the editor of the town's one-man newspaper, Ishmael Chambers, a World War II veteran who lost an arm fighting the Japanese. Torn by a sense of hatred for the Japanese, Chambers struggles with his love for Kazuo's wife, Hatsue, and his conscience, wondering if Kazuo is truly innocent...
Erin Brockowich
Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer, Edward L. Masry (Albert Finney), if he can find her a job in compensation for the loss. Ed gives her work as a file clerk in his office, and she runs across some files on a pro bono case involving real-estate and medical records against PG&E.
Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case, convinced that the facts simply do not add up, and persuades Ed to allow her further research. After investigation, she discovers a systematic cover-up of the industrial poisoning (Hexavalent chromium) of the town of Hinkley's water supply that threatens the health of an entire community. She finds that PG&E is responsible for the extensive illnesses residents of Hinkley have been diagnosed with and fights to bring the company to justice...
Frantic
Harrison Ford plays Dr Richard Walker, a surgeon visiting Paris with his wife for a medical conference. At their hotel his wife is unable to open her suitcase and Walker tells her she has picked up the wrong one at the airport. While Walker is taking a shower his wife mysteriously disappears from their hotel room. Still jet-lagged, he searches for her in the hotel with the help of a polite but mostly indifferent staff, then wanders outside to look further on his own. A street-person overhears him in a [café] and tells Walker he saw his wife being forced into a car. Walker is sceptical until he finds his wife's ID bracelet on the cobblestones. He contacts the US embassy and the Paris police but their responses are bureaucratic and there is little hope anyone will look for her. As Walker carries on the search himself (with input from a very sympathetic but wary desk clerk at the hotel) he stumbles onto a murder scene and then the streetwise young Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner) who mistakenly picked up his wife's suitcase at the airport. It transpires that she is a career smuggler but does not know for whom she is working, and thus reluctantly helps Walker. This begins his frantic attempt, with the young woman's help, to learn what was in the switched suitcase and trade whatever it was for his wife's life...
The Emerald Forest
Powers Boothe plays Bill Markham, a dam engineer who has moved to Brazil with his family to complete the construction of a large hydro-electric dam. The construction of the dam requires large areas of forest to be cleared, even more to be flooded. Its completion will bring more people to the areas who will clear the jungle for agriculture and living space.
Markham takes his family to the edge of the forest for a picnic one day, to show them the jungle. It is then that an Indian from one of the indigenous tribes known as the Invisible People notices his son, Tommy, aged seven, has bright green eyes the colour of the forest. The tribesman decides that it is unfair to leave the child with these strange people, who, in his opinion, are destroying the world with their constructions, and abducts the child. Bill Markham pursues them, but his son is gone...
Judgement at Nuremberg
The film examines the questions of individual complicity in crimes committed by the state. It does not shy away from difficult issues. For example, defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Schell) raises such thorny issues as the support of a U.S. Supreme Court justice for the practice of eugenics, and Winston Churchill's words of praise for Adolf Hitler.
One noteworthy scene is the testimony of Rudolph Petersen, a German civilian baker, who, considered mentally incompetent, was sterilized by the Nazis in accordance with their social laws. As played by Montgomery Clift, Petersen's nervousness about recounting the horrific tale of his past is visible from the start; he shifts and fidgets constantly on the stand and stammers in his speech. The tension is further amplified when he is cross-examined by defense attorney Rolfe, who reveals that Petersen was removed from school for an inability to learn and because his mother was also deemed mentally incompetent...
Wall Street
An ambitious stockbroker, Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen), is desperate to get to the top. He schemes to become involved with his hero, the extremely successful but unscrupulous corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas).
Gekko is a ruthless and legendary Wall Street player whose values couldn't conflict more with those of Bud's father Carl (Martin Sheen). In an effort to win Gekko as a client, Bud visits with Gekko on Gekko's birthday and pitches him a series of stocks which Bud had been analyzing for some time. When Gekko turns down all of these ideas, Bud gets desperate, and provides him with some inside information which Bud had learned in a casual conversation the day before from his father, Carl. Carl is a maintenance chief and union representative at a small airline, Bluestar, and tells Bud it will soon be cleared of a safety violation after a previous crash. The ruling will bring the airline out from under government suspension, allowing it to expand its business...
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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