SCHINDLER LIST

Schindler List is a movie that is more than just a story of a man and his heroic deed, but also to show today’s world on the dangers of hatred. It has been emphasizes in the movie as in how cruelly the Nazis treated the Jews. It has been also pin point on how one man can make a difference as is the case with Oskar Schindler. However, perhaps the main objective of Schindler List is that the world should never forget Oskar Schindler and what he did for the Jews as well as for mankind.  Schindler’s impact is so great that even the numerical facts are astonishing. In fact if one compares the number of direct descendants of the Schindlerjuden to the number of Jews alive in Poland after 1945, it is evident that there are more Schindlerjuden today than the total number of Jews in 1945 Poland.

One psychological event that took place in this movie had to go through dangerous ease of denial. The Jews in Schindler’s List, as they are forced into the ghetto and later into the labour camp, suffer from a denial of their true situation. The denial afflicted many European Jews who fell victim to the Holocaust. They leave their homes in the countryside and move to the ghetto because the Nazis force them to. Once in the ghetto, however, they believe the bad times will pass. Their denial of their situation continues in the labour camp, even as killing surrounds them.

Schindler’s List will definitely give everyone a personal effect, well mind in fact it does affect me personally. What seems to be interesting in Schindler’s List is the question of morality. It will make one to question himself, would I be as heroic as Oskar Schindler if I were in his shoes? This movie had given all the opportunity to look at ourselves and analyze what's inside. 

Oskar Schindler:  They won't soon forget the name "Oskar Schindler" around here. "Oskar Schindler," they'll say, "everybody remembers him. He did something extraordinary. He did what no one else did. He came with nothing, a suitcase, and built a bankrupt company into a major manufactory. And left with a steamer trunk, two steamer trunks, of money. All the riches of the world." 

GANDHI

“To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body,” this quote is an example of how Gandhi firmly believed in freedom and equality for people. Gandhi believed his main obstacle in life was to end discrimination towards every one.

South Africa was one stage in Gandhi’s life in which he tried to end racial persecution. Being thrown off a train when he sat in the first-class section was the first time that Gandhi experienced racial persecution here. After his realization that the Europeans in South Africa did not want Indians to be in a high status position, Gandhi tried to oppose them. he did this by burning his “pass” that was issued only to the non-Europeans. Other Indians immediately followed him even though it was against the law. This event was the first of many times that Gandhi used passive resistance to illustrate a point. He set up meetings for Indians to gather and protest non-violently. Even in his young years, Gandhi believed that all people should be treated the same and learn to love each other. “In nature there is fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us.”

Gandhi lived in South Africa for about twenty-two years, but when the oppressive laws were changed, he made his way back to his home country, India. It had been a long time since he had lived in India and upon arrival he dressed as a commoner and was greeted by thousands of people. Gandhi immediately became a part of Indian politics and his opinion had a great effect on most of the country. Gandhi tried to include the poverty-stricken people in classifying India. He realized their needs and made efforts to help them financially. Gandhi reached out to the inferior castes and began his fight to end discrimination and British control of India. Gandhi once said, “just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.” Passive resistance is still Gandhi’s approach to gaining freedom from the British and stopping violence in India but discrimination keeps getting in the way. Judging people by their religion or colour of skin leads to violence and oppression which are problems in India. Gandhi gets put in prison many times in his lifetimes because of his push for Indian independence. Muslim-Hindu hostility was ended shortly when Gandhi tried to unite the two religious groups by fasting until they stopped the violence against each other and the British. He wanted the British to end their rule on India, and for the Muslims and Hindus to cooperate with each other in the independence of India. India was granted its independence on August 15, 1947.

Although Gandhi was a man of faith, he did not found a church, nor did he create and specific dogma for his followers. Gandhi believed in the unity of all mankind under one god, and preached Hindu, Muslim and Christian ethics. As a youth, he was neither a genius nor a child prodigy. Indeed, he suffered from extreme shyness. However, he approached life as a very long series of small steps towards his goals, which he pursued relentlessly. By the time he died, India had become an independent country, free of British rule, in fact, the largest democracy in the world, mostly Hindu with sizable Muslim minority. Today, Gandhi is remembered not only as a political leader, but as a moralist who appealed to the universal conscience of mankind. As such, he changed the world.

DEPARTURES

Departures is a movie with a personal touch that may evoke many sort of emotions among those who had the chance to watch it. Recently, the movie has won an Oscar for best foreign language film which makes it extra special. The movie is about Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), who is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved due to bankruptcy and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for a new job and to start over. He answers a classified ad entitled “Departures” thinking the advertisement is about travel agency, only to discover that the job is actually for “Nokanshi” or “encoffineer”, a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his job and begins to perfect the art of “Nokanshi”, acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.

Death is one of the greatest mysteries of life. Its inescapability has been a source of wonder, fear, hopefulness, and puzzlement throughout history. Humans, being the only species consciously aware of the inevitability of death, have sought from time immemorial to cope with this unique insight. In traditional context, death was conspicuously visible throughout society and people went to great lengths to remind themselves of how fragile life is. Reminders of mortality were everywhere, whether they are in literature, paintings, oral traditions or the cemeteries and churches where the physical remains of the deaths intersected with the daily activities of the community.

In the current modern century, the social and psychological landscape was transformed, redefining the culture, social and personal experiences of death. As individualism, secularism, materialism, and technology have become driving forces for the current modern generation, as the experience of dying and its meanings have been dramatically recast. Individualism replaces community in daily life, community presence and support is withdrawn from the dying and grieving processes. Secularism as a way of life offers many opportunities and great pleasures, but is ultimately unable to offer meaning and comfort at the end of life. Like secularism, materialism poorly equips individuals and societies to grapple with the mystery of death. In addition, technological achievement and dependence have enabled humanity to actively fight against death, thus forestalling death for countless numbers of individuals.

SYBIL

Sybil is a famous, Emmy award winning film starring Sally Field as Sybil, a real women possessed by 16 different personalities. This movie remains as a superbly acted, one-of-a-kind achievement that has yet to be surpassed as the definitive cinematic treatment on multiple personality disorder.

Sybil started life as a 1974 bestseller by Flora Rheta Schreiber, an absorbing account of the pseudonymous Sybil’s struggles with multiple personality disorder and the 11 years psychiatric treatment that helped to integrate her sixteen personalities into one. The book’s authenticity has been called into questions in recent years, but the real “Sybil”, the late Shirley Ardell Mason, insisted up to her death in 1998 that every word in the book was true.

In any event, I’d probably like the movie adaptation better if it were more faithful to Schreiber’s account. Primary among my whinge is the final integration of Sybil’s many selves, in the book a long setback filled process that the movie compress into a single afternoon in a park. This makes it difficult to elaborate the treatment considered in the movie as it was pretty brief and incomplete.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to call this as the finest movie I’ve seen, and probably the best possible interpretation of this material. In some ways it even improves on the book, most notably in the performances of Joanne Woodward as Sybil’s committed shrink and Brad Davis as her confused boyfriend; in contrast to their literary counterparts, who came off as little more than personality-free ciphers orbiting around Sybil, both actors create fully-rounded, compelling characters.  And, that leaves Sally Field as Sybil. This is certainly one of the best works she has ever done; her frequent changes in character, from the mousy Sybil to the more refined Vicky, the assertive Mary Lou, or little girl Sybil Ann, are totally convincing. 

PARENTHOOD

Ron Howard's bittersweet comedy genre movie "Parenthood", lays out an entire catalogue of psychological stresses that involves family life in America, and asks if being a parent is all worth the while. It definitely have to be! All children are not  the same and not all parents adapt the same feature of parenting style. It's all depends on the respective individuals personality and attitude. The movie "Parenthood" revolves around five types of parents, which involves Gil Buckman (Steve Martin), the lead character, who apparently portrays an authoritative parenting style who deals with his free-will children as a "non-strict" parent. Helen, a divorcee with two teen children, adapts an indulgent way of parenting, tries to deal with her children who seems to have their own way of teenage problems. Her daughter Julie,who is only 16 years old, sleeps with her drag-racer boyfriend under the family roof and her 13 years old son Gary, a skateboard fanatic who carries around pornographic videotapes in a crumpled paper bag. Having this problems, Helen tries to be supportive but at the same time doesnt have a base control towards her children.

Gil's other sister, Susan, is a school teacher with an obnoxious husband, Nathan (Rick Moranis), who is pretty much obsessed with raising his 3 year old daughter to perfection by using flash cards showing chemical symbols. His way of parenting code portrays more or less like an authoritarian parenting style. A further complication for the Buckman clan is the unexpected arrival of a family member, Gil's younger brother, Larry (Tom Hulce), with his illegitimate son, Cool. Larry as a compulsive gambler, forgets about his son Cool, and dumps his son under his parents supervision. His character of not being responsible in terms of lack of attention and care-taking portrays him as a uninvolved type of parent.

This movie had shown us different types of parenting styles in various family roof, and not all seems to portray it clearly but the basic aspects of the styles were present in the movie. Some manage to cope well with it and others learned a lesson through their activities. This movie has also shown recognition in no matter how grown-up and self aware we may be, we inevitably bring the emotional wound of childhood into the family dynamic. Even being the most sensitive parent, the film reminds us that limit will always be there. No matter how hard you try, you can't live your children's lives for them.

Women have choices, and men have responsibilities. ~ Gil Buckman

THE FISHER KING

Consistent with one of Terry Gilliam’s work, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil, The Fisher King once again deals with grand themes against the backdrop of an alienating and dehumanizing social environment. The movie begins with Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), the sardonic and biting radio DJ, berating his caller and listeners from a studio in New York. While speaking to one of his fan named Alan, Jack launches into a lengthy tirade in which he mock down the “yuppies”, declaring they deserve to die. However, on the same day the 11 o’clock news reports a violence scene where Alan (Jack’s caller) went on a shooting rampage earlier in the day, killing several people at a trendy New York nightspot frequented by “yuppies” types.

That awful scene had made Jack to feel extremely guilty for the deaths of those in the clubs. Three years later, Jack’s guilt is exacerbated further when Parry (Robin William), the husband of the murder victim, saves him from a suicidal plunge into the Hudson. Throughout the rest of the movie, the fateful relationship between both of them unfolds, providing the springboard for Gilliam’s brilliant exploration of such fundamental human problems as sin, repentance, and redemption as well as the search for personal fulfilment.

The focus on the search for personal fulfilment in an increasingly bureaucratized and alienating world is played through the more basic debate surrounding human motivation. The character Jack Lucas gives us a portrait of egoism incarnate, a covetous and self interested radio DJ who is perpetually anguished despite his material success. On the other hand, parry, the homeless mad man (the fool) who finds satisfaction through apparently selfless and noble acts. The Egoism-Altruism dichotomy is made even more explicit as Parry relates the story of “The Fisher King” to Jack. The story concerns a king with visions of glory and fortune who spends a lifetime searching for the sacred Holy Grail, only to find himself emotionally scarred and cynical as he nears the end of his life.

At this point, a fool comes along. Finding the king thirsty, the fool offers the king a drink of water. As the king drinks the water from the fool’s cup, he finds himself not only emotionally healed but also in possession of that which he had chased for so long, the Holy Grail. The point of “The Fisher King” story is clear, where the single minded pursuit of personal satisfaction, such as egoism, is doomed to failure. Only through other pursuits can true happiness be realized.

'Cause after all, women can have babies, which is kind of like creating. And which also accounts for the fact that women are so attracted to men... 'cause let's face it... the Devil is a hell of a lot more interesting! Believe me, I've slept with some saints in my day, I know what I'm talking about. So the whole point in life is for men and women to get married... so that God and the Devil can get together and work it out. Not that we have to get married. God forbid.' ~ Anne Napolitano

The Castle

Filmed in 11 days on a budget of a half-million, The Castle is one of the greatest example when it comes to good story line translated to film without big stars and special effects. the movie is basically about this family (the Kerrigans) who seem to be the worst off in the country and they own a house in a suburb of Melbourne, which apparently next to the airport runway. They are all uneducated, except for their daughter who went to TAFE and the oldest son is in the prison. The beauty of this family and the entire movie about them is that this may be the best family in the world. Despite their social standing and their limitations, the Kerrigans are absolutely content in their lives and are totally a solid loving family. 

The comedy is definitely one of the plus point of the movie as it was brilliantly written. and as the story moves along, the Kerrigans' showed their reaction to how wonderful life is and how to cherish every moment of it without concentrating on the negative side and just the positive side. In this movie Darryl (lead role) has shown us the true message of appreciating ones house as his own castle no matter where its located or how it looks like. When the city planners decided to buy the Kerrigans' place, Darryl fights for his house via the law, although he offered a great sum of compensation. That shows how one man appreciates his house and how he values his home as a priceless castle. 

The movie walks a fine line with its depiction of the Kerrigans' blissful life. In the film, we can feel the genuine sense of attraction for these characters on the part of the filmmakers; their decency and uncomplicated sense of family unity is celebrated rather than derided. They also succeed because they draw pitch-perfect performances from their cast, with the actors bringing a wonderful sense of enthusiasm to their roles. It surely a must watch film, true entertainment with plenty of good messages.

"It's not just a house, it's a home. A man's home is his castle." ~ Darryl Kerrigan