Can Movies Inspire?
May 22, 2006 5:24 AM Subscribe
Can a movie change your life? For example, has a movie ever inspired you to find a different job, different partner, try something you never thought you would, etc.? If so, what one and why?
This post was deleted for the following reason: chatfilter, this would be better in metachat.
Well, vaguely, maybe. Guy Maddin's films, particularly Careful and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs have got me more interested in 19th and early 20th century art, literature, and thought. I never would have read Ruskin, Carlyle, or Melville's Pierre otherwise. That's not unique to movies though (reading this book leads to reading that book, etc.)
Watching just about any of Miyazaki's animated features makes me consciously try to be a better person ("What Would Nausicaa Do?") for awhile afterward, but it doesn't really last.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 5:42 AM on May 22, 2006
Watching just about any of Miyazaki's animated features makes me consciously try to be a better person ("What Would Nausicaa Do?") for awhile afterward, but it doesn't really last.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 5:42 AM on May 22, 2006
Ed Harris' Pollock influenced me to get back into painting seriously. The scene where he creates the canvases for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment are about as accurate a depiction of becoming totally lost in the act of creation that I have ever seen.
Whenever anyone asks why I paint, the best answer I can give them is to point them toward that scene.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:55 AM on May 22, 2006
Whenever anyone asks why I paint, the best answer I can give them is to point them toward that scene.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:55 AM on May 22, 2006
When people talk about films changing their lives the two I have heard most often are Kieslowski's Dekalog and The Passion of Joan of Arc directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Personally, watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away inspired me to paint again, but that was purely down to how good it looked rather than any message in the film.
posted by fire&wings at 6:08 AM on May 22, 2006
Personally, watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away inspired me to paint again, but that was purely down to how good it looked rather than any message in the film.
posted by fire&wings at 6:08 AM on May 22, 2006
An hour of fiction on film (or paper, for that matter) isn't going to change anyone who wasn't on the brink of changing. For example...
When "A Christmas Carol" (the book) came out in 1843, it reportedly encouraged a number of people to do good. I don't have a decent text at hand, but here are some examples. I don't see why films cannot do the same. But such changes come in people who are ready to change. After watching such a film, they will emerge from the theater with a buoyant heart and a will to do good, so that they just need a nudge to make them actually do good.
But such changes tend not to last. In real life, Scrooge would have been a bastard again by the first week of January if he hadn't already been a very lonely old man on the verge of a nervous breakdown and didn't have kind relatives and acquaintances to lead him back into the world. (Which is what really happened -- there are no ghosts, not even in fiction, no matter what the authors claim.)
posted by pracowity at 6:21 AM on May 22, 2006
When "A Christmas Carol" (the book) came out in 1843, it reportedly encouraged a number of people to do good. I don't have a decent text at hand, but here are some examples. I don't see why films cannot do the same. But such changes come in people who are ready to change. After watching such a film, they will emerge from the theater with a buoyant heart and a will to do good, so that they just need a nudge to make them actually do good.
But such changes tend not to last. In real life, Scrooge would have been a bastard again by the first week of January if he hadn't already been a very lonely old man on the verge of a nervous breakdown and didn't have kind relatives and acquaintances to lead him back into the world. (Which is what really happened -- there are no ghosts, not even in fiction, no matter what the authors claim.)
posted by pracowity at 6:21 AM on May 22, 2006
Which is what really happened -- there are no ghosts, not even in fiction, no matter what the authors claim.
I'm confused: how can there not be ghosts in fiction?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:25 AM on May 22, 2006
I'm confused: how can there not be ghosts in fiction?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:25 AM on May 22, 2006
On a really small scale:
Watching the skate movies Hoax 2 and Hoax 3 always makes me want to put my skates on and jump down the biggest set of stairs I can find.
And watching, nay, hearing the soundtrack to Back to the Future always gets my blood pumping, wakes me up and allows me to work through that "ok I'm tired and need sleep now" barrier.
posted by 13twelve at 6:28 AM on May 22, 2006
Watching the skate movies Hoax 2 and Hoax 3 always makes me want to put my skates on and jump down the biggest set of stairs I can find.
And watching, nay, hearing the soundtrack to Back to the Future always gets my blood pumping, wakes me up and allows me to work through that "ok I'm tired and need sleep now" barrier.
posted by 13twelve at 6:28 AM on May 22, 2006
I missed an inordinate amount of high school because of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
posted by wfrgms at 6:46 AM on May 22, 2006
posted by wfrgms at 6:46 AM on May 22, 2006
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posted by teleskiving at 5:41 AM on May 22, 2006