Movies: What If We Learn From Them?

Lessons from movies are all around us, all we have to do is learn.

Movies are stories told in motion picture with voices and sounds. Technology allows better and better ways of telling us a wide variety of stories. These stories may be based on events that actually happened, situations that might happen to anyone of us, or scenarios that few even ever imagined. Movies are not real life but there are nuggets of wisdom to be gained from words spoken by the actors and lessons to be learned in stories told on film.

The rich medium used to tell a story in a film can be very powerful that movies can make the audience laugh or cry or scream. Movies can be far more that just entertaining in ways that they affect their viewers. What if we learn from them? Movies can engage us in a situation that can foster learning.

I will not attempt to make a list of the best movies to learn from. I like watching movies and I know that I can have a very long list. For now, I'll share just those lessons about life I learned from the ones that I watched recently.

I was so touched by the conversation of Carter and Edward as they went to see the Pyramids of Giza in the 2007 film The Bucket List:
Carter Chambers: You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were admitted or not.
Edward Cole: Okay, I'll bite. What were they?
Carter Chambers: Have you found joy in your life?
Edward Cole: Uh-huh.
Carter Chambers: Answer the question.
Edward Cole: Me?
Carter Chambers: Yeah, you.
Edward Cole: Answer the question: Have I found joy in my life?
Carter Chambers: Yes.
Edward Cole: Yes.
Carter Chambers: Has your life brought joy to others?
Edward Cole: Ah, this type of question, I ... I don't know, uh... I think about how other people gauge, uh ... Ask them.
Carter Chambers: I'm asking you.
Like Carter, I was quick to say “Yes” in response to “Have I found joy in my life?” but I wondered if I have brought joy to others, or if I had, can they still remember? There is one thing that I am sure of though. I will most certainly find joy in my life when I bring joy to others.

In the 2011 film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, my mouth is stretched into a smile as hopeful thoughts fill my head when I hear Sonny Kapoor's favorite passage “Everything will be all right in the end, and if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.” In the same movie, I thought that a person with a positive attitude is sure to agree with Muriel in this conversation:
Evelyn Greenslade: Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected.
Muriel Donnelly: Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff.

 

Watching the 2003 movie Under the Tuscan Sun wowed me.
I have always considered that there is sense in the saying that “love is blind” that I was so moved by this conversation:
Frances: Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid.
Martini: No, it's not stupid, Signora Mayes. L'amore e cieco.
Frances: Oh, love is blind. Yeah, we have that saying too.
Martini: Everybody has that saying because it's true everywhere.
From the same movie, Katherine said something I consider golden: “Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present.”

These words from Frances are my absolute favorite from the same film: They say they built the train tracks over the alps between Vienna and Venice before there was a train that could make the trip... they built it anyway. They know one day the train would come. Any arbitrary turn along the way, and I would be elsewhere. I would be different. What are four walls anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can happen... even late in the game. It's such a surprise.

In the 2007 film August Rush, August said, “The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen.” I say that lessons from movies are all around us, all we have to do is learn.