Whoever saves ones life saves the world entire – Schindler’s List

Without looking at the background history, I was curious about what is the story behind Schindler’s List, and what so special about the list that created by a person. Not until almost the end of the movie, I got to know that it is a list of people that Schindler had saved.

 

Schindler's List, 1993

 

The whole movie was very long that took almost half a day to re-watch it again. Nevertheless, the story is so impactful that will keep audience attentive throughout the whole movie. It depicted a business man, Oscar Schindler, who was initially selfish and money-minded, do whatever good just for own benefit. The fact that this person is very smart to build his own career from zero to own a factory which hires 350 employees and more after, he then spent all of his money to save people who were unrelated to him. He changed to become a savior of 1100 Jews after watching thousands of people died because of war.

The movie has portrayed the evil and cruel side of war, especially the tortures, and killings without any mercy. Goth, the SS-Lieutenant appeared to have obsessive killing behavior without feeling of remorse. His behavior makes me ponder that what makes the cognitive thinking of soldiers to be such evil. Refer to classic prison experiment by Zimbardo and electric shock experiment by Milgram, these researchers held perception of doing good for more people, therefore it is okay to sacrifice small number of people. “It’s situations that make ordinary people into evil monsters, and it’s situations that make ordinary people into heroes,” said Philip Zimbardo. Perhaps there is a need to have evil in existence in order to show the heroic side of people?

“Whoever saves ones life saves the world entire” (Schindler’s List, 1993)

A simple man, hero of the nation – Ghandi

The first time I watch this movie in class, I fell asleep for many times. So I thought it will be boring when I watched from top to toe again. I watched the whole movie without a knowledge of the history of India, as well as the background of this little man. Surprisingly, this historical type of movie has provided me some insights of non-violence and the challenge of being a leader of hundred thousands of citizens.

 

Ghandi, 1982

 

Ghandi, from a high status lawyer who stays in London, visited South Africa and India, and he has created a whole new evolution to respective countries. The way he persuade others, seeing him changed his outfit from formal coat to the poor Indians’ clothes. He says in order “to be like them, I must dress like them”. Also, it can be seen that persuasion comes from the way we talk and present ourselves. In the beginning of the movie, he had his first public speech and not many people being convinced. But as he gain more experiences, he was able to convey message that he intend to express to the public. And as he protests, he gained credibility from others as well. That actually makes his name widespread from South Africa to the whole country of India.

The principle that he encouraged is non-violence and peaceful non-cooperation in order to obtain independence of India from British. Regardless of how worse of treatment that he received from British, he experience and embrace the pain and hurt, at the same time fight for justice and self-respect. Most of the time, people tend to revenge when we get offended badly. But because of having the tendency to put revenge on others, we lose direction of what we intend to achieve in the beginning. And that signify his saying, “An eye for an eye making the whole world blind”.

Other than focusing on the hero, the woman behind him is also a very respectful person. While her husband convincing the public, she contributed as well by leading the women to protest for the good of India. She is a conventional person, who follows husband’s ambition and giving him whatever support that he needed. Though there might be certain times where she was not agree with her husband, for instance she thinks that rake and cover the latrine is work for untouchables. Despite she thinks that it is unacceptable, she obeyed to her husband. When she was interviewed, she confessed that “her dignity comes from following her husband”.

Overall, I would say that it is really hard to foster change in others, especially things are hardly under control. Seeing how hard of Ghandi to promote non-violence to public, unfortunately conflict be exaggerated and might causes people to lose their mind and failed to control their behavior (separation of Muslims and Hindu, becomes today’s Pakistan and India). Therefore, passionate people like Ghandi are always needed as we still have long way to go.

 

 

 

Are you able to face death? – Departures

People dies. Everyone knows this fact, but not everyone can accept it, especially when the person who dies is our closest.

 

"The gift of last memories." (Departure, 2008)

 

This movie provided me a lots of thoughts as the two major issue in the movie are very much related to me.

First, it talks about the main character’s ambition and the career that he chose to go for. The main character, Daigo, who is a cellist in an orchestra has lose his job accidentally bumped into undertaker occupation. He soon find this job meaningful and decides to make this job as his career. However, people has a bad impression on this job. Even his wife thinks that doing the work of undertaker is unclean and will be looked down by others.  The difference of status between as a cellist and undertaker is too vast that the job of undertaker seems to be socially unaccepted by others. However, people do not realize that there must must someone to take that job, and people will not get to know how important the existence of undertaker not until they experience it (family member pass away), hence respecting the meaning of this career and its contribution to the society. I am not saying that I have totally no negative perception towards it, but it is a phenomenon that we need to be aware of.

It is very much related to me as people surrounding has the typical perception towards students who study psychology as well. They think that psychology students are either read people’s mind, or treats patients who are mentally or psychologically abnormal. I am more fortunate in this case is that I have a supportive family who given me greatest freedom to pursue my interests. However, now that I am already in my last year of degree, I am starting to worry about my future career. I do not want to be like the main character in the movie, to not able to have own interest as his career. I hope that I am always able to do things that I love, and enjoy being involved in it.

 

The second big message in this movie is how is the living respond to death of loved ones. The movie shows a few families grieving death in different ways. Some are able to farewell with their beloved family member with smiles and joy, while most of them were crying because there are sorry and regrets. I never experience losing someone that I love. And I have been thinking how will I cope with death of loved ones. I do not think that I’ll be able to grief over the death as I cannot afford to lose that people who are important in my life. Perhaps I am a selfish person, I hope people who I love can accompany me forever. That is why I agree when people said that people who die early are more fortunate than people who live long, as people who are left behind need to suffer the lost of loved ones.

 

 

 

Are you multiple-faced too? – Sybil

A healthy person might have multiple faces under different environment. For instance, how you behave in front of family might be different from how you behave in front of your friends. We can choose to act like how we want ourselves to be. But what if you are out from control from your own personality, where for this moment you are a weak and soft person, but the next hour you have changed to someone who are hot-tempered and manipulative person, a person who even yourself is not familiar with?

I’ve seen a part of the movie before, as the first time I heard about this movie was during first year of degree in class. I thought it is quite an interesting movie, so I searched for it on Youtube.

 

Sybil, 1976

 

It’s about a girl who has dissociative identity disorder, who did not aware that she held multiple identity in the beginning of the movie. All she knew was she could not keep track of time, where some memories for some period of time were lost. It was all due to her childhood abuse by her mother. Her multiple personality disorder diagnosis was revealed when she met her psychiatrist, Dr Wilbur.

And most of the story usually ends with happy ending, whereby she was able to confront to her past and met her other identities.

The treatment used by Dr Wilbur in the movie was hypnosis most of the time. It seems that no medication was consumed and it is surprised to see that the doctor is able to detect easily the other characters in Sybil. There are a few true cases in the past that shows an individual has multiple personality without their conscious. Again it derives from the past experience that an individual have gone through that causes these symptoms. Therefore, childhood is a crucial stage that shapes psychological development of a person.

 

 

Which one are you being brought up with? – Parenthood

I watched this movie before in another class about children’s contemporary issue in a changing society.It actually provides me an insight on how parents educate children from ten year ago to now. In a family, father and mother can uses different parenting styles respectively. In some situation, one side can be an angel while the other side take up the devil role.

 

Parenthood (1989)

 

In this movie, it actually portrayed a big family with respective parenting styles. Gil and Karen who are authoritative, Susan and Nathan who are authoritarian in expecting their daughter to do what they want, Frank who spoil his son, Larry for giving the most freedom and always clear up the mess for him, and etcetera.

Instead of discussing what parenting style is the best for children, we shall see the well-being of adults nowadays who were shaped by different parenting styles when we were young. Referring to the example of the movie, the main character, Gill is a tensed person and do the best for his family. Because he received less attention from his father, he hopes that his children’s childhood will not like him, they will be strong, confident and happy. His father’s attitude somehow motivates him not to be like his father, and therefore, he seems to feel hard to accept the fact that his son has emotional issue because he thinks that it may seems to his dad that he is a failure.

For my case, I feel very fortunate to have a balanced way of parenting style. My mother allows great freedom to me to do what I want to, while on the other hand, my dad will be more restrictive. If he wants it that way, that is it. Through the years, as I experience these way of parenting from my parents, I realize that certain way works for certain time. How to make it balance, and at the same time maintain close relationship with your children is definitely not an easy job.
Think of how you want to be treated when you were young, and treat your child like how you want it to be.

 

 

 

Story behind the insanity – The Fisher King

The Fisher King, 1991

Each of the main characters in this movie has their respective abnormality, from their behavior as well as mental state. Starting from Jack, the famous radio DJ, has a sense of narcissistic and insensitive to care for others. Because of his bad critics on air show, he indirectly prompt a caller to cause a mass murder in a restaurant.

As he meets Parry, whose wife died in the mass murder and causing him to suffer from PTSD and psychosis. Parry has the symptoms of hallucination by seeing red knight chasing him and immersing himself into another character to find the “Holy Grail”. Jack’s girlfriend who seems to have symptoms of paranoid and insecure in their relationship. Because of their many years relationship but Jack is still not ready to get married, she is always afraid that Jack will leave her. Thus she becomes very anxious when Jack did not came home for one night. Also, the girl who Parry secretly stalked on, called Lydia has motor skill deficiency. The examples such as she cannot hold food using chopstick, and whatever things that she touches falls easily.

It’s interesting to see that from the movie people who have their respective problems can communicate well and ended up building a close friendship. The movie shows Jack initially thinks that Parry is insane but because of sense of guilt, presence of Parry urges him to provide help to Parry and makes him understands Parry’s “world”.

Another highlight of the movie shows how deep and how hard to accept the fact that his beloved person had left Parry. He suppress the  thought of acknowledging the death of his beloved wife and thus imagining himself into another character. As he is able to reach the “Holy Grail”, it somehow symbolizes he is brave to accept the reality and it is fine for him to miss his wife.

Do you fear to fear, or fear to lose?

This is probably the toughest post for me to come out with.

The moment lecturer said a horror movie will be screened, I secretly screamed in heart.

The comment i have now after watching Sixth Sense is, actually it’s not as scary as I imagined. But to be honest I did screamed a few times because I was scared by the a few sudden scenes. During that movie, I was actually avoiding from watching everything. But as it goes to almost the end, I was touched with the twist of story, that the main actor was actually dead and the whole story gets clear and everything seems to make sense already. And from there, I’m no longer hiding myself under my jacket, and is able to concentrate on the story of the film.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

One of the scary scene I managed to peek on is actually the one of the “dead people” has serious head injury, which is something that I should be able to face. It is the technique of how the movie portray the uncertainty elements and fear of the actor that makes us think that it is something too scary that I cannot face. Another element would be the background music and sound effect that induce fear in audience.

Back to the story, it shows the main actor of the story, Malcom a child psychologist who get shot by his patient, did not realize that he is dead, not until after helping Cole, a little boy who tries so hard to overcome his fear of seeing dead people. The fear that I want to talk about, is whether people have the courage to face danger of uncertainty (not knowing the negative consequences that might happen to them) because people often exaggerate the bad things that might happen on selves. Most of the time, the bad consequences are under people’s expectation.

Another concept of fear that shown in the movie is whether we are able to overcome the fear of losing something. In the movie, Malcom provided an insight to me that if I were him, will I be able to accept the fact that I’m already dead and whether I am willing to let go the people that I loved the most.

The Castle (1997)

On the contrary, The Castle makes my day much more happier. The old style comedy is much more entertaining yet deliver some meaningful messages. The story focuses on importance of family and how each member’s role in a family shapes the family interaction and each member’s feeling towards each other. The role of the father in this movie gives credit and encouragement to each person, makes all of them feel worth. And his attitude of not giving up in protecting his “castle” definitely motivated some people to attach more with family.

Mississippi Burning – Why is the color matters?

Initially, the movie title actually gave me an impression that it will be boring. Hence, I did not have much expectation to look forward to the movie.

However, what I want to tell the world is that the title actually has its meaning, and this is definitely one of the good movies that you should watch!

Mississippi Burning (1988)

 

This story basically presents the discrimination behavior and greatly high level of aggression from the whites on the blacks in a small city. The beginning of the movie already catches my attention, when the blacks and whites uses different water  dispenser, labelled with “white” and “colored”. And then the movie continued by showing burning on houses and policemen fire a few shots on black and jews civil right workers. It is then revealed that the high status politicians and chief police officer that lead the killing. The ugly and dark side of behind story is slowly exposed to media after investigation of two FBI agent.

Three civil right workers - Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Shwerner found missing on June 19, 1964.

 

Instead of applying all the psychological theories, I would like to mention this small yet courageous event in the movie. There is a part where the police secretly burn a black family’s house, the father woke up the eldest child, instruct him to take out other family members to a safer place. After the young boy bring their family out from the burning house, he returned and found his father being hung on the tree. The part where how his father is being attacked and forced to hand-tied and being hung on tree induced strong impact of sad emotion to audience. And then seeing the child came back and carry his father’s body down from tree, telling his father that everything will be fine. Imagine how brave is the child when the moment he sees his father is dead hanging and he can still take action in a rational way. Imagine how the experience that he had during this years will shape his thinking and attitude towards other races. Without a proper solution, the attitude and act of discrimination will not end, by seeing how one group of people is being bullied toward such extreme cases.

 

"You know, if I were a Negro, I'd probably think the same way they do" (Anderson, Mississippi Burning).

 

There are more to talk about this movie. Despite all these events, I will not deny that I have racism bias. But if I am to experience in such situation, the question that I will ask is, if your own race behave the same as what you think the other race does, then why is the color matters?

 

 

 

Are you ready to Forget Paris?

Now I know why is it named Forget Paris.

Paris as its impression given to people, a place where love and romance blossoms.

A place where passionate love begins.

Indeed, this movie is not typical chick flick movie which portrays dramatic story line. However, it is interesting in a way that the movie shows the reality of love relationship, especially challenges in dealing with how to make your relationship last and healthy. The story shows a couple who encounter each other in Paris, a romantic city and how this couple deal with long distance issue, conflict in interest and goal, as well as different life style and habits.

Referring to Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, as a romantic relationship progress, how to ensure your passionate love can be successfully evolve to companionate love (with intimacy and commitment), even to consummate love (intimacy, passion, and commitment)? As the relationship continues, the couple is more exposed to each other, regardless of positive or negative part of self.

At this point of time, some people would choose to change in order to adapt to their partner; while some would choose to stay firm to be themselves, expecting their partner to adjust themselves for them. And when these conflict arise, it very much depends on how both party take the initiative to solve the problem. Corresponding to conflict resolution behavior theory, if one takes avoid to speak out or keep every dissatisfaction of the relationship to him/herself, conflict will gets bigger and bigger as time goes by, and this is also a factor why people find it hard to maintain a relationship for long.

What I heard from a person’s experience, “You actually get to experience four tastes in spending your life with another person from different background, and that is true love”. The process of overcoming differences definitely is not an easy job, but that is what makes your relationship memorable.

Forget Paris (1995)

Accepting a person as a whole into your life is far more romantic than giving what you have and what he has.

what does it takes to be the WHALE RIDER?

Whale Rider (2002)

After Strictly Ballroom, I was expecting other movies that would catch my attention more after a whole day of activities. Apparently, this movie did sustain my attention until the ending. Somehow I feel contented and feel blessed for what we have for female status and rights in today’s society.

This story portrays the Maori culture which is patriarchal holds a legend about their ancestors ride on whales. The main character, who is the granddaughter of  the tribal chief (Koro) named Paikea, knows herself is not her grandfather’s expectation. But she never gives up to impress her grandfather, hoping that one day he will be proud of her.

The family relationship is salient in this movie through the portrayal of grandfather and granddaughter, father and son, old couple’s dissonance in love and hatred to each other.  For example, the grandfather is always expecting his son (Porourangi)  to take over his position but he neglects what his son really wants. This causes Porourangi to leave the village to chase for his own dream, leaving his daughter (Paikea) staying with Koro. Koro’s attitude towards his granddaughter evolves from frustration to love and care. Despite he loves his granddaughter, his social role as the tribal chief forcing him to disapprove Paikea as the chosen one, just because their mindset is restrained by their culture that leader must be a guy.

The statue symbolizes an ancestor of Maori rides on a whale and reaches on this island.

The gender identity further illustrated through how the old couples interact in the movie. The grandmother of Paikea has a thought of getting divorce with her husband ever since Paikea was a baby. She cannot stand her husband’s dominant and stubborn attitude especially when comes to issue of controlling on her son and unfair treatment towards her granddaughter. A very funny statement from her when she tries to argue against her husband.

“You might be the boss out there, but i’m the boss in this kitchen.” (Nanny, Whale Rider)

The courage shown by Paikea somehow reflects the cowardliness of adults in the movie, especially comparing her to her grandfather. When she gets rejected by Koro to learn in his school, she is able to face the challenge positively. She does not stop believing in herself, and does what she can to save the tribe. As compared to Koro, when he faces challenge in finding the true leader, he is clueless and then he begins to give up and not doing anything.

What I like about this movie is the story successfully encourage audience that the innocence and courage of a child is more powerful than society norms and cultural bias. It provides motivation and a hope that effort from each person and clear mind can change the world too.