Life-changing movies

I have not written about movies for a long time. It is widely held that some books and movies are life-changing, though in these times, I doubt whether those who make such remarks about any movie or book even understand what that really means, or actually mean it - for more than a day or two - let alone remember their own remarks a couple of years down the line.

I am of course the sort of person who hates the habit of perpetually talking in empty hyperbole (an exclamation like that every sight, every event, every person, every ice cream is 'amazing' makes me want to puke), but some books and movies have been indeed life-changing, or at least deeply thought-provoking, in a very long term, even permanent sense. I shall briefly discuss only two such movies here. Strange to say, I watched both when I was halfway through adulthood, not in teenage, when minds are typically much more impressionable.

One was a subtitled version of the 1950 Japanese classic Rashomon directed by Kurosawa. It shows how incredibly difficult the job of a judge is (and terribly pertinent to all our lives, for aren't we compulsively judging people and being judged all the time, despite Christ's timeless admonition?) One crime has been committed, and there are several eye-witnesses, who, while deposing before the court, insist that all them are telling the unembellished, unvarnished truth (and there is no pressing reason to suppose that anybody is, not at least deliberately and wickedly), yet they tell such very sharply different stories that it is almost entirely impossible for the judge to make up his mind 'beyond all reasonable doubt', which modern jurisprudence insists upon, and pass a serious and definitive sentence: the tension and conflict is resolved in a rather bizarre way, which I shall urge you to find out for yourself.

The other, also a classic now, is the 1957 American work 12 angry men, directed by Sidney Lumet (re-made in colour, 1997: not quite so impressive). It can be, in the opinion of countless people, especially today, when most have never mentally matured beyond 12 and would rather watch mindless action flicks, a very 'boring' movie to watch: 12 jurymen sitting around a table and arguing out for hours a case where their unanimous verdict can send a young, alleged murderer to death row. It starts with 11 of them quickly voting in support of the execution, and almost ends when there is just one man holding out, and one man tenaciously, desperately teasing out the real reason for his almost maniacal recalcitrance - turns out he wants all delinquent kids to suffer and die because his own son cruelly 'betrayed' him and broke his heart. It is a triumph of the power of the will on the one hand, and a deeply disturbing and moving study of the tortuous, passionate, self-deluding, often utterly illogical ways in which human minds actually work. From witch trials to pogroms and genocidal attempts, much can be thoroughly and forever understood if you really absorb the movie into your bones.

What I have taken from these great works is the lesson that I should always be ready to admit - first and foremost to myself - that I may be wrong, I may have done wrong, and that I should therefore be deeply, permanently sorry, meaning that I shall NEVER repeat my mistakes and wrongs. But also an equally valuable lesson: that I need not heed any human's judgment of me too seriously - because much of the time they are venting their own prejudices, trying to rationalise their own failures and weaknesses, covering up their own guilt and shame and inadequacies, and fulminating against someone that is not really me. As the poet said, and those lines are becoming more and more pertinent in my life with every passing year '' 'tis God shall repay/ I am safer so".