Nord.pubWhat philosophy or movie scene, had a lasting affect on you, changing or giving you a new perspective?
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/7b0bd44d-96ff-4137-ac11-2aaf4fe683b2.jpeg
Firstly, I’m sorry for the emotions, my childhood turning point evokes. The pic is an example of mine. I wasn’t going to include it, but I feel like it gives a good visceral example of deep messages in movies (of course actual philosophy, and non emotionally devastating examples apply, too). I just watched a clip on a study on some elderly men, taken to a time warp hotel, and asked to pretend it was that time, and it had huge positive effects on their physical capabilities and mental capacity. And it reminded me of the power of hope, it’s not just embedded in the happy ending, where everything works out ok. Or the promise of it. Hope is also the core of resilience, necessary for driving each step that carries you along the yellow brick road.
I’ll share mine here, so you get an idea what I’m asking. I was devastated watching the scene above, as a kid. But also, I saw Atreus ability to keep going, not only not giving up, and therefore not sinking in a place that takes you if you do, but then also carrying the weight of the grief of his life companion. And he was now alone, realising his mortality and facing, what he is told, are impossible odds. He still keeps going. I think, to child me, there was so much power in seeing something is possible. I believed I, too, could survive anything. And even if I were alone, I could still survive anything, because that power came from inside me, no one can take that from you. “Don’t let the darkness take you” the darkness is an external force. It wants to creep in and convince you to buy it’s snake oils.
There is so much power in convincing people the “darkness” is inevitable, there is nothing else. I see it all around me, embedded in the propaganda, convincing us not to resist, that resistance is futile. Half of the battle is in our own heads, and the brainwashing swamps we wade through, now.
What are your tools of resilience, your keys for undoing the fight or flight, all the horrifying videos around us are designed, to evoke, to keep our thinking brains detached, and only our “run hide” brains active, so we can’t think, so we can’t plan, so we just sink in and accept?
What’s helped you get back up, when you have fallen? From whatever sources, I just feel like, maybe now is a time, it’s important to share a shoulder to cope on. Or even just moved you, to an extent it changed your perspective or way of thinking?
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Nobody tell them how it went for Robin…
That he died of suicide caused by depression decades after the movie was released? What do you want to say ?
His suicide wasn’t caused by depression. It was caused by progressing Lewy body dementia, which has a whole bunch of shitty effects, and depression is just one of them. His disease also wasn’t properly diagnosed until the autopsy.
Ran out of happy thoughts
That it’s true doesn’t make it funny
Williams’ suicide was caused by a severe form of progressing dementia, with which depression is just one possible effect. It was also misdiagnosed, so he didn’t know for sure what kind of shit he was dealing with, just that it majorly sucked.
Robin has millions of people happy thoughts. He deserves better than your pathetic im14andthisisedgy crap.
The Matrix really made me understand where Descartes was coming from. When we say something is “real” it’s always subjective and cannot be objective. That’s an incredibly difficult concept for most humans to truly grasp.
It’s a great connection. Beyond Descartes, the Wachowskis explicitly cited Buddhist philosophy as a primary influence, specifically the concepts of Maya (illusion) and Samsara (the cycle of suffering which people unfortunately tend to misunderstand a lot).
The “There is no spoon” scene is a direct nod to Sunyata, or emptiness. It suggests that “reality” isn’t just subjective; it lacks inherent existence. In this view, it’s not just the world that is a construct, but the “self” perceiving it as well. Lana Wachowski has also stated that the trilogy was designed as a “meditation” on the nature of choice and the self, influenced by their interest in Eastern philosophy.
There’s also an Upanishadic mantra in the third movie soundtrack, appropriately:
Asato mā sad gamaya (from the unreal, lead me to the real)
Tamaso mā jyotir gamaya (from darkness, lead me to the light)
Mṛtyor mā’mṛtaṃ gamaya (from death, lead me to immortality)
Unpacked here (a bit, but it’ll correct the likely, immediate misconceptions people unfamiliar with eastern philosophy would get)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoEcSc064YY
It also touched on the systemic oppression of the modern world, and showed how most people just go along with it … I was a young adult when it came out and that really shook up my word view.
We learned that in school, movies like that taught me that it was a difficult concept for humans to grasp.
Billie Eislish did say it more succinctly though, damn.
Wut?
Literally just a line in one of her songs, nothing deeper.
I’m still unsure what you were referring to, though. I know one of her songs, that’s it
The X-Files episode, “Beyond the Sea” made me anti-death penalty. Brad Dourif plays a mass murderer on death row who claims to have visions that could save two missing girls. The show doesn’t go for the easy out - he’s guilty of horrible things and he’s trying to cut a deal. Scully’s skepticism and faith collide - she thinks he’s playing a cruel game, but if she doesn’t go along, he will be put to death, which is against her Catholic beliefs. One of Gillian Anderson’s best (and favorite) episodes.
The end result is a surprisingly profound meditation on the value of life, the difference between justice and revenge, and the depravity 9f state-sanctioned murder.
Honestly, a lot of the Scully-focused episodes are great.
If you think that scene was distressing, go watch the original German version, it’s next level.
Edit: The movie version ending of The Mist probably tops my list.
Edit 2: Here’s the YouTube video that made me aware of the German version.
For someone who’s only watched the German version, what’s the difference?
They added music and removed the sounds of the horse in distress.
The German had extra dialogue, different music, slight difference in scene order and is better in my opinion.
WHAT…. now I know what I want to put on my list for the family movie night.
My kids have been both and we all agreed the original German version is better.
FYI: the original German version is in English, so no subtitles to worry about for kids.
Edit: This was a good watch and the reason we watched the German version. https://youtu.be/kw3q65OxtCQ
Yep, I added it to my list and so many of them were agog at this particular change. We’ll see if they vote for it or not.
What’s the difference? I really want to know. That scene in the photo evokes so much sadness and despair!
Jawul
wait. is it the same movie, just different edit?
Yep.
Different editing, music, some voiceover differences, you’ll laugh your arse off at the racing snail guys voice, and some difference in the order and length of the scenes.
I see it and raise it to: read the book. The horse speaks.
The ending of Chinatown really prepares you for a world where evil assholes own everything and continue to get away with anything.
Also, extremely ironic in that way.
Helms Deep is pretty much an ode to fighting back against overwhelming odds and the power of hope. That battle combined with Sam’s words about goodness being worth fighting for. Also, Gandalf’s words in Fellowship about choosing what to do with the world given to you has always stuck with me as motivating words when things seem bleak.
I also really enjoyed the scene in Everything Everywhere All at Once where Waymond talks about how kindness is a strength.
Could probably keep going but those are standing out to me today.
Chinatown holds up so well to modern viewing. Incredible film. When I first watched it I had already heard that last line used over and over as a joke in general culture. Hearing that line for the first time in context is like a punch to the gut. One of the best endings ever.
Not even reading your comment(cuz maybe spoilers) but I saw you’re talking about Chinatown and I’ve been meaning to watch it, so I will be doing that tonight! Thanks for the reminder!
The book Enders Game. I was will bullied in grade school. As was Ender. The overall theme is that it’s effectively impossible to maintain a defensive posture indefinitely. Be that always ready for dealing with bullies at school or home, to dealing with an alien threat becoming nearly impossible in three dimensions.
Ender comes up with the philosophy that you have to win, but not just win that fight/battle, you have to win so decisively that there won’t just be another fight later. While this turns out to be effective, it also results in genocide.
This resulted in a restrained version of the philosophy in me. When diplomacy fails, fight for your life, but know when you’ve won, know when you’ve prevented the next fight(s). And most importantly, know when to stop.
Speaker for the Dead really took the lesson Ender learned to a new level. Shame about the author being a douchebag because those were some formative tales for me.
It’s so weird that he’s so homophobic. Ender’s Game is incredibly chock-full of homoeroticism.
I mean… Not that weird. Have you seen the grindr stats when the RNC is in a city?
Camus’ The Stranger really spoke to me. It sort of felt like it described me in ways that I hadn’t known until I read the story.
The Fox and the Hound
South Park S3E10, Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery.
The whole episode is a Scooby-Doo parody, and it’s alright. But the joke that got me thinking was this:
Jonathan Davis: All right gang, we have to split up and look for clues!
Stan Marsh: How should we split up?
Jonathan Davis: I know! Let’s have everyone who enjoys having obstacles in their life which they can overcome go this way, and everyone whose insecurity sabotage their potential to overcome those obstacles go that way.
[Everyone says “OK!”, then splits up into two roughly equal groups]
Kyle Broflovski: Wow! That was easy!
They just all knew which group they were in immediately. Got me thinking about which group I was in.
Still one of the best episodes to this day
Two come to mjnd:
Star Trek 2 - The Wrath of Khan.
Spock gives his life to save his friends, willingly and without pause. And his best friend has to say goodbye to him.
Of course, the first time I saw it I didn’t know what was coming next, so to me it was final, and devastating.
It prepared me well for things that happened IRL later on.
Secondly, because I don’t want to be 100% on a downer, the finale of Labyrinth. “You have no power over me” nudged me towards the idea that many people who profess to be in charge of you only have that power because they say they do. And you can take that back for yourself.
Threads and The Day After taught me that there are people out there that would rather be right, than alive.
Threads and Where the wind blows taught me that there is no living after a nuclear war. Just a excruciating decline and collapse
The final scene of Threads really fucked me up, I already had birth trauma and that scene gave me proper wake-up-screaming nightmares for months.
CoCo fundamentally changed the way I think about death and the value of memory. I went into it knowing almost nothing about Día de los Muertos, so I wasn’t expecting it to affect me as deeply as it did.
The idea that someone can disappear forever only when they are no longer remembered hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. It was such a sad thought, but strangely comforting too. Sad because it means there is a kind of “second loss” that can come with time, but comforting because it suggests that the people we love are never truly gone as long as we carry them with us, speak their names, and keep their stories alive.
That idea stayed with me long after the movie ended. It made death feel less like a hard ending and more like a responsibility of love through memory.
Plus, the music is amazing.
That movie was recommended to me by several Mexicans when I was in Mexico a few days before the holiday. It seems they did an excellent job representing the meaning and the spirit of the celebration. So the cool thing is you do, now, know Dios de Los Meurtos.
Beautiful movie.
Plus it introduced me to the song La Llarona (covered by many people) for a haunting October sound
This classic xkcd led me down a long rabbit hole years after reading it that ended in the belief that the universe itself is an abstract instantiation of pure mathematics, and exists only in the sense that any such self-consistent mathematical structure must exist from its own point of view. I won’t get into the details here because it’ll turn into a long incoherent rant, but the general gist is that the idea in the comic should work - but then that the rocks themselves aren’t even necessary: The fact that a universe can exist is enough for it to exist, even if no one ever simulates it. Just like the question “What is the 10\(10\100)th prime number?” exists and has a definite answer, even though nobody will ever and can never calculate it, the answer to “What does a universe, with these initial conditions, and these laws of physics, look like at t = 13.7 billion years?” has an answer too, and it looks like you reading this comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis
The Groundhog Day taught be a lot about acceptance and trying to make the best of whatever situation I’m in.
Mine are from movies which you wouldn’t expect to get sage advice
Shanghai Noon “That which you promised, you must perform”. Jackie Chan’s character says this at one point and it really stuck with me since I was a child. It’s a broken English version of “your word is your bond”. I never promise something to someone that I can’t accomplish. It does drive some people I know a little crazy.
Just Married https://clip.cafe/just-married-2003/you-never-see-the-hard-days-in-a-photo-album/?srsltid=AfmBOop0kV1cEVjME4ebWIeDGUdeiUOrEsMFPHz04anjAXGn4SF7GbJd
“You never see the hard days in a photo album, but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next”. This radically changed the way I perceived the world. It helped me accept that it’s really hard to grow as an individual in life without strife.
For me it was the unalterable cyclic time travel in 12 monkeys, coupled with the rebellious themes. That movie hit hard and made me think when i was young (probs like 10?). Hands down favorite movie, and i credit it with a lot of my philosophical view of the universe. I believe everything is deterministic, and if you were to know all the information about every atom in the universe at any slice of time, you could entirely predict the future. Its completely untestable, of course, but it makes sense to me. After all, everything is physics.
But then there’s quantum physics
Thats fine, if you have the power to know where every atom in the universe is at a given time, as well as its trajectory and momentum, it would still be knowable. You’d need to have some pretty damned advanced knowledge for that anyway, so from a practical standpoint it doesn’t matter that we couldn’t reconcile it with our present models. They could be completely wrong, for all we know.
In a way the universe does know the position and momentum of every particle… I feel known
We are the universe’s attempt to study itself. Introspection, writ large :)
This led me down a neat rabbit hole
https://youtu.be/vES5t-k_xeE
If you haven’t seen it I’ll recommend you give Devs a watch. It’s a compelling take on a similar theme.
Artax? Really? Fuck you!
You didn’t have to post this shit but you chose violence. Fuck you for making me cry in a holiday
Yeah fuck that shit. I was on a good stretch of not thinking about Artax death for I don’t know 1 or 2 years and this post comes from nowhere like sucker punch. This is like the twisted version of The game. Dammit.
The concept of Leaver and Taker societies throughout history as laid out by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael and The Story of B opened my eyes (further) to what a cancer capitalism and inequality are to the world.
Dune taught me esrly lessons on the interconnectedness of life.
Kurt Vonnegut taught me to laugh at just how absurd we walking sacks of chemicals can be. I also learned about Humanism because of him.
George Carlin taught me gallows humor in the face of a society that was not formed with people’s welfare in mind.
Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett taught me it’s nkt only ok to be silly, sometimes it’s the only apropriate thing to do.
Monty Python taught me that life’s a bit absurd, and death’s the final world.
There’s lots more but these are the ones that came to mind immediately.
I always found the idea of the garden of eden story being a warning about the takers that made it into their culture kind of fascinating.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” -V for Vendetta
I used to think about governments in terms of the things I had to do for them (pay taxes, jury duty, carry my license while driving) or else what they’d do to me (fines or jail, usually). This quote helped me understand that this transaction is not one-way and that if a government fails its people then the people should hold it accountable.
Whether that’s healthy for a given person, realistically possible, or if there’s enough people who’ve been wronged to hold it accountable are different questions, of course.
For me, it wasn’t a movie, but a song. The Winner by Bobby Bare felt like it re-wired my brain. I was never too afraid to tussle, always open to it. I think I heard this song at the right time; child was getting older, I was getting older, it all just hit right. I don’t exactly shy away from fights, but I certainly don’t go out of my way to seek or start them any longer.
That Japanese one from the Ghibli movies.
Edit: the ideology i mean.
So whimsical!
The Kara No Kyoukai anthology influenced my imagination and how I view my inner world of art.
The perfect blend between minimalist, simple yet elegant design that is set in an urban setting.
AAARTEEEEXXX
Artax and Atreyu, this scene always made me cry. Luckly enough there is a Falkor
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape gave me a good perspective on caring for my loved ones, especially ones who have a hard time caring for themselves.
Seven Pounds
Watching how a single person, a single life, could positively impact the lives of so many people got me to be a registered organ donor.
Nowhere in your post do you state the name of the movie. What film is this from?
The NeverEnding Story. Bring tissues. https://youtu.be/Xwmn2pdr78M
Ah, ty! I think I saw that movie once (maybe?) growing up. For some reason it was never a part of my childhood. I’ll give it a whirl!
It’s about grief and depression. Oh and having a shitty dad. The depression part hit too hard when I was a kid and didn’t understand how bad my depression was.
Heathers taught me something. Maybe that smoking is cool? No no that’s not right… Something about bombs… Or… Hmmm.
You Got the Touch scene from Transformers (1984) taught me about what it means to be a leader and to sacrifice for your ideals. Optimus Prime was my hero.
The critique of fascism that is the Enclave, specifically in Fallout 2. As much as they are my favorite bad guy faction that is partially because of how well the critique works. They have the cool weapons, they have the style, and the have an awesome front man in the form of Frank Horrigan, but when it comes down to it they’re a bunch of weirdos hiding on an old oil rig clinging to ancient symbols while planning on commiting omnicide so they don’t have to actually work for anything.
Similarly the NCR is a great critique of liberalism in New Vegas, falling into the same pitfalls as the old world but with the potential to improve. For new world hope to bloom wherein the Enclave hold onto old world blues.
Or maybe I’m looking too far into the funny power armor and super mutant post apocalyptic games. Though I don’t think I am because the Interplay alumni are all philosophy and history eating crackheads and I see through them!
Man you’re making me want to replay New Vegas but I’m not sure I have that sort of time commitment right now. But it is so good tho…
There’s a scene in Wings of Desire… but before I tell it to you, let me set the scene…
Wings of Desire is set and filmed in Berlin while it was still divided. Angels are silent observers, able to read the thoughts of its citizens.
One old man is fixated on a town square he was fond of, but has been demolished during the wall construction:
“I can’t find Potsdamer Platz. Here? This can’t be it. Potsdamer Platz is where the Café Josti used to be. In the afternoon I’d go there to chat and have a coffee and watch the crowd after I’d had my cigar at Löhse and Wolff, a famous tobacconist, right around here. So this can’t be Potsdamer Platz.”
As I get older and more landmarks slip away, this resonates even stronger.
“The Lotus Card-Room? What a great place that was… people had been going there, oh, almost a hundred years. And that bar! Brought around Cape Horn they say, such a marvelous place. Bought by a developer and torn down for a hotel that never got funded.”
(the bar survived)
There have been many since I started paying attention. Books, movies, whatever. Some were just well placed for the moment in the story and temporary, some were better philosophically absorbed. Wish I could pick something specific, but none come to mind. My favorites revolve around succinct and illuminating commentary on or demonstration of human nature and personal understanding. Bad or good.
I should start saving some of these in notes. Doesn’t do me much good not remembering.