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Re: Good flicks?
--- Kelvin T Bailey <kelvinbailey at juno_com> wrote:
> Sounds like your friends missed the point.
> Some lines were ALMOST crossed , that's the point.
Have to agree with Kelvin here. A lot of my friends
had major problems with what they saw as primarily a
movie about an old horny guy lusting after a teenager.
But that wasn't the point of the movie - at least it
wasn't what I took away from it. It was about the
power of beauty to completely change the way you look
at life, to actually pull back the curtain and allow
us to see what is really important as opposed to what
we are so often told is important. In Lester's case,
it was the beauty of the young (there's a quote from
Buechner that's appropriate here but I can't remember
it right now - I'll look for it later). I never felt
it was actually Angela Lester was lusting after, but
rather the desire all of us have to know the beautiful
and the way that knowing makes us feel about
ourselves. It transformed his life (we can argue some
other time about the changes he made and their
significance).
> ... but in general it just seems that people take
> less and less responsibility for the images they put
> in people's souls. Likewise, people become less and
> less effected by images that are, at their core,
> subversive to life/love/holiness.
But you have to remember, we need the dark images to
help us understand the light ones. Yes, there were
some dark images in American Beauty. But those dark
ones are what made the bright ones shine even more.
The dark images aren't subversive to
life/love/holiness in this movie, IMHO. They are
needed as contrast to the images that, as Kelvin said,
affirm life/love/holiness.
As you can tell, this movie made an impact on me.
Yes, there were flaws and cliches as Peter pointed
out. But overall this movie was good for my soul. It
forced me to look at the ugliness I accept as normal
in my life and encouraged me to look for the beauty
that is all around me and that I ignore. What more
could you want? Æ
=====
vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit
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