What are your life-changing movies?

December 25, 2007 8:36 AM

What film(s) had a profound effect on your life?

What movies have challenged your way of thinking so much that you are a different person because of them? I'd like to know why if you'd like to share that as well.

posted by missjamielynn to media & arts (14 answers total)

"millions". it's not an especially fantastic movie, but the main character's attitude about what to do with money really blew my mind.

also, "v for vendetta". is violence ever warranted?
it made me think about that.
posted by gursky at 8:48 AM on December 25, 2007

it didn't change my perspective any, but i was dating someone that had the documentary control room profoundly change their perspective when i showed it to them.
posted by andywolf at 9:07 AM on December 25, 2007

When I was 8 or 9, I watched "The Snow Goose" and cried and cried and cried at the end. The themes of loneliness, exclusion, sacrifice...all affected me profoundly. The young girl's friendship with the old man and her willingness to see past his disfigurement encouraged me to be a kinder child. I distinctly remember making a conscious effort to befriend the odd, the disabled and the poor kids in my class after seeing that movie and I have tried to be a champion of the underdog ever since.
posted by Biblio at 9:12 AM on December 25, 2007

I can't tell you why, because I don't know why, but Lawrence of Arabia* did a number on me at an impressionable age. It wasn't particularly Lawrence himself that impressed (though that's part of it); it was how spectacularly well-made that movie was. All the parts -- story, character, plot, cinematography, music -- so well strung together. It was long, but nothing was superfluous.

------------------------
*Director's cut; super big screen.
posted by notyou at 9:15 AM on December 25, 2007

Bad Day at Black Rock w Spencer Tracy. (Not a western, despite the title and the setting.) A thriller from the 50s in which the train suddenly stops one day in this little broken down town in the west where the train never stops and this one-armed stranger gets off. The few broken down people in town are going nuts trying to figure out what he's doing there. He's looking for this Japanese-American farmer, and can't find him, and soon finds out that the whole town has a secret, one it's willing to kill him to keep.

Why is it life-changing? Because my icons of cool used to be Antonio Banderas in Desperado and Chow Yun Fat in just about anything. Then one day I looked around at what my country had turned into. Tracy's such a resolute tower of moral strength in this movie. He's one man, with only one working hand, but the whole corrupt shell of Black Rock shatters against him because he stands up and refuses to back down from what's right. I find that's something that would get me through these times a lot better than looking all stylish with a handgun and a long, dark coat. And an America full of people whose hero was Spencer Tracy would be something to be proud of.
posted by Naberius at 9:15 AM on December 25, 2007

I know this sounds odd, but I feel that the movie Eraserhead had a lot to do with my choice not to have children (well, one of many factors, but one forever imprinted in my mind).
posted by TochterAusElysium at 9:22 AM on December 25, 2007

Seeing Stand By Me as a 7 or 8-year old influenced the way I came to think about friends and friendship. For me, friends have always been family. This is especially true, I think, when blood relations are not doing a stand up job. When I think about how far back this goes for me, or where it might come from, I think of the relationship between Gordy and Chris.
posted by sneakin at 9:23 AM on December 25, 2007

(Bracing for "chatfilter" deletion. But I hope not.)

Adaptation
Taught me to see more beauty in life; that I may never find "the answer" so it's best to just enjoy life on its own terms without overthinking it; that I did not have to let the opinions of others determine my level of happiness ("You are what you love, not what loves you."); that there is healthy balance between caution and reckless abandon; that you have to pursue what you love ("In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way.")

2001: A Space Odyssey
I saw this at college campus as a young teen, several years after its release. It was my first introduction to anything that really challenged me to think about life's origin; evolution, God, alien intelligence, and the ultimate destiny of mankind. I watch the DVD several times a year, and it always makes me think and gives plenty of opportunities for discussion.

Citizen Kane
This taught me that it's important to choose carefully what is important; what holds value. That all the money in the world can not take the place of losing happiness. That "it's no trick to make a lot of money... if all you want to do is make a lot of money." It also made me keenly aware of composition, lighting, and symbolism in film.

Apocalypse Now
We all the capacity for good and evil. But we always have a choice. I am not predestined to any one fate, but at any point I can change my course and choose my future.

Changing Lanes
It's easy to want to get back at people, and to "settle the score." But the score can never be settled. You have to do the right thing, whether it benefits you or not. I have always believed this and tried to live in that way, but this film showed the big consequences of what are seemingly small things. (By the way, this was marketed as a "revenge movie" but it really takes on some big themes, is excellently directed and filmed, and the acting by Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson is incredible. This movie shows that Affleck really is a great actor, despite his "pretty boy movie star" image.)

The Shawshank Redemption
Persistence. Patience. Perseverance. How to find a way to survive impossible situations, until you can find a way out.

The Conversation
Attempting to close yourself off from other people does not really protect you from harm; it only offers the illusion of protection while you become isolated and friendless.

No Country for Old Men
We can never see what the future may hold. It's impossible to control life, and bad things may be headed our way. This is not a reason to be despondent, but rather to live life to the fullest now, and to know when to step out of the ring and seek to live in peace.
posted by The Deej at 9:30 AM on December 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

Remains of the Day taught me about choices not made. Plus it is acted superbly by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
posted by brandz at 9:35 AM on December 25, 2007

Taiwanese director Edward Yang (R.I.P.) authored a number of truly beautiful films. Most well known, and for good reason, is Yi Yi. Equally moving, amazing, and well-known are Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and the Italian miniseries The Best of Youth, all of which have a left a deep and profound impression on me. They are the best of art, the best of entertainment, and will leave you wiser and a better person.
posted by mr. remy at 9:36 AM on December 25, 2007

In the Name of the Father
"Persistence. Patience. Perseverance. How to find a way to survive impossible situations, until you can find a way out." And that life can be fucken unfair.

The movies that made me cry for days after seeing them: Once Were Warriors, Dancer in the Dark (also for its genre-bending (musicals can be sad!)) and the Australian doco Losing Layla (they were carrying poor dead Layla around for a week before the home funeral).

Urotsukidôji, because, well, gross.
posted by goo at 9:41 AM on December 25, 2007

Harold and Maude. I saw it at some point in my early/mid teens and I realized that I wanted to live my life in such a way as to be Maude when I grew up.
posted by pazazygeek at 9:54 AM on December 25, 2007

"2001: A Space Odyssey," which I first saw when I was four (when it was originally released) and then over and over throughout my childhood, introduced me to the numinous.

"Yellow Submarine" made me want to draw and still infects my style.

"Fanny and Alexander" (the director's cut is out on video) made me realize that I could hide and suppress my childhood demons, but they'd alway be with me.

"Juliet of the Spirits" introduced me to the surreal.

"City Lights" introduced me to economy of narrative (note how simply Chaplin set up the complex meeting between the tramp and the blind girl, using just a few images to explain how she mistakes him for a rich man).

"Top Hat" introduced me to wit.

"Veritgo" taught me that explaining the truly mysterious doesn't do anything to destroy the mystery. I can't explain that statement logically, but every time I see the (SPOILER) scene in by the redwood, in which Kim Novak says, "Here I was born, and here I died..." I get shivers down my spine, even though I know the mundane explanation for why she say it.

"The Shining" made me fear madness ("All work and no play...")

"Metropolitan," a light comedy, was deeply important to me in a way that's hard for me to explain. When it came out, I was going to New College, a hippy college in Florida. Because I'd dropped out of school and travelled for years prior to this, I was older than most of the other student. I was also way more conservative. I don't mean politically conservative. I've always leaned to the left that way. I mean in terms of lifestyle. I mean that, though I had formally been into the unkempt hippy culture, I was not tired of it. I longed for grooming, clean-shaven faces, "civilized" behavior, and smart, witty discussion that didn't contain the word "dude."

There was nothing wrong with my fellow student. I was just in a different place. But their style depressed me and the issues they were going through (being away from their parents for the first time, etc.) bored me (as I'd already resolved them years ago). I had almost no friends. I couldn't afford a car, so I couldn't get off campus. The web didn't exist. Then "Metropolitan" came out. It showed me that there was a different way young people could behave, a more urbane way. Even though it was a fiction; even though it (gently) mocked its characters; I longed to jump into the movie -- as Mia Farrow does in "The Purple Rose of Cairo" -- put on evening clothes, and hobnob with the swells. That movie, which I saw over and over (having to go to the theatre each time) kept me sane through a bleak period in my life.
posted by grumblebee at 10:02 AM on December 25, 2007

Blade Runner: as a early teenager with a just discovered science fiction hunger, knowing little and with access to even less of it, seeing this gave me the fundamental insight that the future could be neither an utopia nor a dystopia (both things I had just read or seen enough about in the last few years before) but it would probably be another sort-of-fucked-up still-interesting find-your-own-niche occasional-epiphany place. Like the present, hah!

Magnolia: for someone who is pretty bad at dealing with people, understading their motivations and hang-ups, and just dense about the whole forgive-and/or-forget business, it helped me greatly to find a perspective and a way of looking at things. Plus, Aimee Mann discovery, pretty much same reasons and payoff. What did I do with my life before this, that I didn't have this woman's discography and in heavy rotation?

Vertigo: "Holy shit that was awesome." "Hmm, film theory and analysis books, what silly thing will they come up with next, these social sciences people." "Hey, it uses Vertigo. Wonder what does it say." "Holy shit that was awesome." "I'm buying these three, yes. Cash." "Hey, this film critic gives an analysis course at the uni. Yay, he's using Vertigo." And life was never the same, as they say (and my BSc in comp sci finished months later than should have been, curse you film culture!).
posted by Iosephus at 10:29 AM on December 25, 2007