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.
L -- The Wise Emperor
The shadow side
Being used, men which disgrace women, women which dominate and exploit men, being paternalistic against the weak, war, wanting to conquer, getting depressed, being exhausted, worn out, nervous breakdown, looking for fulfillment in others, being homeless.
The light side
Vitality, the receptive female and the strong male which unify, carrying the strength of both inside, tantra, the highest luxury, being an emperor, being charming and powerful, being able to completely renew oneself, enlightenment
Movies with these themes
Enough
Slim is a working-class waitress at a southern California diner. Mitch, a customer, defends her honor from obscene comments by another customer. They quickly fall in love, marry and have a baby girl named Gracie.
Mitch is a rich and powerful man, however, and soon Slim begins to discover a dark side to him. One day she discovers that he has been cheating on her. Though Mitch apologizes to her, his infidelity doesn't stop. Slim discovers this when she smells his mistress' perfume on him one day when he comes home from work. As Slim berates him for cheating on her, Mitch slaps her and then punches her in the face. Mitch believes that his money and power will give him anything, and he threatens to kill her, saying that he refuses to live without her. The police cannot help, because the best they can do is jail him for a short period, and meanwhile she would risk losing her daughter to state family protection programs. Slim would also be at the risk of Mitch killing her while out on bail...
Muriel´s Wedding
A socially awkward, slightly overweight, and naïve "ugly duckling" obsessed with the music of ABBA, Muriel Heslop is the target of ridicule by the more sophisticated girls she considers her friends. She also is a perpetual daydreamer who yearns for a glamorous wedding and marriage to a man who will help elevate her from her personal limitations and free her from a tedious life dominated by her demanding and often psychologically abusive father Bill, a corrupt politician who lashes out at his subservient wife Betty and their unambitious children every opportunity he gets...
Freaks
The central story is of a self-serving trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) who seduces and eventually marries a sideshow midget, Hans (Harry Earles), after learning of his large inheritance. At their wedding reception, the other "freaks" resolve that they will accept Cleopatra in spite of her being a "normal" outsider, and hold an initiation ceremony, wherein they pass a massive goblet of wine around the table while chanting, "We accept her! We accept her! One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! One of us! One of us!" The ceremony frightens the drunken Cleopatra, who accidentally reveals that she has been having an affair with Hercules (Henry Victor), the strong man; she mocks the freaks, tosses the wine in their faces and drives them away. Despite being humiliated, Hans remains with Cleopatra...
Dead Poets Society
Seven boys, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles), Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), Richard Cameron (Dylan Kussman), Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) and Gerard Pitts (James Waterston) attend the prestigious Welton Academy prep school, which is based on four principles: Tradition, Honor, Discipline and Excellence.
On the first day of class, the students are introduced to their overwhelming curriculum. However, their new English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) tells the students that they can call him "O Captain! My Captain!" (the title of a Walt Whitman poem) if they feel daring. His first lesson is unorthodox by Welton standards, whistling the 1812 Overture and taking them out of the classroom to focus on the idea of carpe diem (Latin for 'seize the day') by looking at the pictures of former Welton students in a trophy case. In a later class Keating has Neil read the introduction to their poetry textbook, a staid, dry essay entitled "Understanding Poetry" by the fictional academic Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph. D., which describes how to place the quality of a poem on a scale, and rate it with a number. Keating finds the idea of such mathematical literary criticism ridiculous (going so far as to call it "excrement") and encourages his pupils to rip the introductory essay out of their textbooks. After a brief reaction of disbelief, they do so gleefully as Keating congratulates them with the memorable line "Begone, J. Evans Pritchard, Ph. D" (much to the surprise and disbelief of one of Keating's colleagues). He later has the students stand on his desk as a reminder to look at the world in a different way, just as Henry David Thoreau intended when he wrote, "The universe is wider than our views of it" (Walden)...
Little Buddha
Little Buddha is a story about the quest of a group of monks, led by Lama Norbu (Ruocheng Ying), to seek out the reincarnation of his great Buddhist teacher, Lama Dorje (Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen). Lama Norbu and his fellow monks believe they have found a candidate of Dorje's reincarnation within a boy named Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger) in Seattle. While Jesse is fascinated with the monks and their way of life, his parents, Dean (Chris Isaak) and Lisa (Bridget Fonda), are wary, and that wariness turns into near-hostility when Norbu announces that he would like to take Jesse back with him to Bhutan to be tested...
The Color Purple
Taking place in the Southern United States during the early- to mid-1900s, the film follows the life of a poor African American girl, Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg), whose abuse begins when she is young. By the time she is fourteen, she has already had two children by her father (Leonard Jackson) (later discovered to be her stepfather), who takes them away from her at childbirth and forces Celie to marry a local widower whom she calls "Mister" (Danny Glover), but his name is Albert Johnson. Mister, who had his eyes on Celie's younger, more attractive sister Nettie (Akosua Busia), treats Celie like a slave, making her clean up his disorderly household and take care of his unruly children. Mister beats and rapes her often, intimidating Celie into near silence and submission. Nettie comes to live with them, and there is a brief period of happiness as the sisters spend time together and Nettie begins to teach Celie how to read. This is short-lived, however; after Nettie refuses Mister's predatory affections once too often, he kicks her out...
Provoked
Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Aishwarya Rai), a battered Punjabi homemaker and mother of two, living in Southall, UK with her 2 children and abusive, alcoholic husband, Deepak Ahluwalia (Naveen Andrews). Unable to bear the brutality and repeated rapes at the hands of her spouse, she sets fire to him, unintentionally killing him. Charged with murder, her case comes to the notice of a group of South Asian social workers running an under funded organization called the Southall Black Sisters.
After being sentenced to life imprisonment, she befriends her cellmate, a caucasian woman named Veronica Scott (Miranda Richardson), who teaches her English. Veronica is also friends with several girls in the prison and stands up for Kiranjit against the local prison bully. Veronica realises what a good person Kiranjit is and enlists her brother, Edward Foster QC (Robbie Coltrane), a highly respected Queen's Counsel, to aide in Kiranjit's appeal. Edward, in turn, realizes Kiranjit's importance to his sister and the importance of her case. His sister's request has additional meaning given that Veronica would not let him help her with her own appeal due to their on off relationship since childhood...
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is San Diego's finest anchorman. He works along with his friends and co-reporters Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), who works as the lead field reporter, sports reporter Champion "Champ" Kind (David Koechner), and weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) at Channel 4 News. After a successful day of work, the team is notified their show has reached #1 in San Diego ratings, leading them to throw a wild party (even though Garth Holiday (Chris Parnell), Ed Harken's (Fred Willard) assistant, was told by Ed not to let this happen). During the party Ron sees a woman and attempts to seduce her but fails miserably.
The next day Ed, the executive director of the news station, is forced by the network that owns the station to bring a female worker onto the team. He hires Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), a news reporter from Asheville, North Carolina, who turns out to be the woman Ron tried to woo at the party the previous night. Brick, Champ and Brian attempt to seduce Veronica using inept and arrogant flirting, but they all fail. Ron ends up asking her out under the guise of helping out a new co-worker, which she accepts. During their date, Ron starts playing the jazz flute in his friend Tino's (Fred Armisen) club. After a change of heart, Veronica sleeps with Ron after their wildly successful date...
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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