Change Your Image
rogermehus
Reviews
Experimenter (2015)
Is there a Biblical reference?
Very interesting exploration of conformity and obedience. If you go mining for meaning, you can see a parallel to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic parable of Abraham and Isaac. You can identify Milgram with God, the tester with Abraham and the learner with Isaac. All three major religions respect and praise Abraham for his obedience to God. And yet, in real life, in the experiment, we criticize the tester for his lack of empathy, lack of concern, lack of ethics relative to the learner. Does the movie ask us to look at the parable and question the concept that Abraham passed the "form" of the test of obedience, but failed God's true "function" of His test of Ethics?
Omar (2013)
John LeCarre' twists and turns with a "win-win" ending!
A John LeCarre' thriller with evolving and unexpected twists and turns resulting in a Win-Win Ending! Initially it appears to be a take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with intermittent nods to other Shakespeare plays. It expands to include two committed freedom fighters and one "Walter Mitty" who wants to impress "Juliet" who likes everyone and wants to be involved in the freedom fight herself (implications related to the ending). The action and related suspense races off through narrow alleys when one plans an assassination, another steals a car forcing "Walter Mitty" to produce . . . to commit the assassination. From this point on, we only see what others see, limited information that is subject to multiple interpretations resulting in unintended interactions with the master spy pulling one set of strings (who is pulling the others). Quite literally, the last "shot" leaves the ending open to interpretation depending on your internal perspectives: Omar as the heroic Martyr . . . or . . . both know the first bullet is a blank and the second is real . . . only one knows the third is blank. A fine example of Alan McGlashan's "Paradox" – Truth at either end of the spectrum! "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so!" Shakespeare
The Kite Runner (2007)
Spoken & Unspoken Theme or Message
Like Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" - with both a spoken and unspoken prayer for me, "The Kite Runner" has both a spoken and unspoken message. The spoken message is a message of redemption. After returning to Afghanistan to rescue (and be rescued by) his half-brother's son, Amir finds a degree of contentment upon "becoming good again." It was not until I continued to reflect upon the movie that I recognized the unspoken message. I was troubled by what drove Amir to find the courage, the backbone, the character to stand up to his "General" father-in-law when he was disrespectful regarding his half-brother's son. Although I can see where finding contentment from "becoming good again" contributed to finding the character to stand up to the "General" - of itself - it did not seem sufficient.
Throughout the movie, Amir desired to be like his father, to have his father's character and to be respected by his father for the character that his father recognized in Hassan. Amir saw his father as an individual of towering and unassailable character, which he was. One of the reasons Amir did not see himself with the character of his father, was because he saw himself with flaws that would prevent the attainment of those heights. It was not until Amir learned that his father was not without faults (fathering a child with his servant's wife), that he recognized that his father's flaws did not prevent his father from developing and attaining character. It is this recognition (the unspoken message that we can have flaws and still have character) that allows Amir to find his own character to stand up to the "General."
In essence, the unspoken message is telling us that we, as individuals, may have deficiencies, but that should not stop us from developing, enhancing and embracing our own character. We are too often overly critical of our own shortcomings, and do not give ourselves credit for the quality person that we are. If we are not perfect today, there is always tomorrow! This is an ongoing, ever evolving, ever improving process. The past cannot be changed, only tomorrow can be improved!