The Mystical Movie Guide: Special Essay
A New Context for Peace through Film Appreciation
or
How can I watch movies while there's a war going on?
written 4/4/2003 (why, what is the date where you're reading this?) by Carl J. Schroeder, © 2003
I think it's time for a big Reality Check. While the Mystical Movie Guide extols the virtues of fantasy-type films, there is war going on in the Middle East that could drag on for years (I'm not cynical or optimistic, I just don't buy the narrow view that the conflict started yesterday and could end tomorrow). Global relations and economies will likely suffer for decades to come. So what's a movie lover supposed to do now? Rent and sit through some classic depressing anti-war polemic? I think the war planners (and I mean all of 'em, I'm not taking sides) should have done that. Or maybe we can just fiddle while Rome burns, feeling guilty and helpless for enjoying movies that some would call escapist?
I think we can be more free than the extremes would allow us. Consider some of the French fantasies made during the Nazi occupation. Profound and inspiring creativity made it past the censors, for movies light in tone yet beautifully rich and clear. One of my favorites is "Fantastic Night" (1942). The soul will express itself where it can, and a great service is done by those who can attest to this in full consciousness. If you're still up for a uniquely mystical anti-war polemic, you can consider "The Burmese Harp" (1967), in which a Japanese soldier escapes capture disguised as a Buddhist monk and learns to pray for the dead, or "J'accuse" (1938), in which a man tries to stop WWII by summoning the spirits of WWI to march on all of Europe, or "Civilization" (1916), in which a submarine captain dies and allows Christ to return in his body to preach against war. I start sobbing just thinking about these films.
Now more than ever is a time to face both the current and ultimate realities that are at play here on Earth, with eyes and hearts fully open, minds fully awake. Ours is a spiritual planet. This is God's world, from a God who goes way beyond narrow limitations of gender, culture, or belief. Now is a time to protect and uphold the human dignity sleeping in the human arts. There are dreams for a better existence waiting to be validated in the cinema of many visionary groups (more than any other medium, it takes a community to make a film). That's why the Mystical Movie Guide tries to discover and recommend profound cinema from all nations and all subcultures, representing every time and place. Film is remarkably international, having spread after its invention in the late 1800's more globally and quickly than anyone anticipated. New movies are now numbering in the many thousands every year, coming from every country you've ever heard of, with China and India far surpassing the United States. With so many potential gems to uphold, I consider it a sacred duty and joy to point out the ways of Soul in film, especially when so many would see from their pain only war and war-related themes.
I read the news. I feel for the stories behind the stories, and I cry and pray and hope with all the sincerity and honesty I can muster. There is a comfort to be found in long-term perspectives, the soul oriented insights for larger possible meanings, and some that have come to me I will share in a moment. What informs my views? In addition to holding a day job in a struggling economy in yet another frightened city, I organize Mystical Art and Talent Shows with my local community, I share and grow in spiritual support groups, and I contemplate the Mystical Movies that I like to review online and talk about with my wife and friends. I do and feel a lot, because I believe it's important to experience a range of human emotions everyday, from sorrow and compassion to joy and inspiration.
Statistics reveal that live theatre is suffering during these times of recession and war, while home video rentals are soaring. People are staying in to save money and feel safe with their families, which is understandable. More videos than ever are available for rent and by mail (see our many links page). We know that some of the films we recommend are extremely scarce. By US copyright law it is permissible to domestically exchange as public domain those films that have never been released in the US, so we'll soon be offering an affordable public domain mail-order list to help ease some of the rarest movie frustrations.
Higher/longer perspectives are liberating only if practiced with daily presence and compassion. Big answers can be callous otherwise. With this in mind, and offering my sincere wishes that fewer people die and suffer every day, I'd like to share my view on what this war is really about. It's a view that has come to me in pieces from many sources, it seems to make a lot of guiding sense. And if it holds truth as I believe it to, then it will remain interesting long after the conflict of this day is done.
The way of universal growth is expansion to the point of separation, then return to the point of reconnection, followed by overall expansion again. The perfection of this process is called evolution, but what evolves can be more efficiently pleasant or unpleasant, the choice is always there.
I believe there really is a split between Eastern and Western cultures. It is not just a dichotomous way of looking at things. For lack of a unifying comprehension, the heart and mind of humanity have been pulled in two different directions: the individually empowered technology-driven West, and the tradition minded group-oriented East. Each side has only a part of the whole, and the Whole wills to be reunited. Notice that the East has become increasingly individual serving and consumer oriented in recent years, and this is not just a triumph for the West. The West has also had to become more group oriented and party driven than it had hoped, for better (the European Union) or worse (the US shouting, most undemocratically, "if you're not with us then you're against us").
But just to remind us of how wide still is the East/West chasm, we have only to look at how each side of the US/Iraq war is choosing to fear and demonize the other. The US (and the West it represents) is remembering WWII, which is just 50 years ago. The US is most concerned with who will hold modern empowering technologies, including yes oil, but also the bomb that it feels guilty and scared for having used (thank God the US developed fission before the Nazis - consider the divine justice that Einstein was Jewish - but did we have to throw the bomb so readily at those most distant people in the Far East?) By its very cultural basis, the US conceives threats in terms of empowered individuals, so it's quick to label Hussein a Hitler, and predict that he is just one more evil man who can be replaced. But Iraq and the (Middle) East, rich and proud in traditions, is remembering not WWII but rather the crusades, going back 1000 years like it was yesterday! Arabs aren't so worried about evil individuals, even when they have one in their own backyard. They're worried about an entire culture assaulting and supplanting another, just as happened when Christians really did plot to exterminate the Muslims for centuries, and just as seems to be happening with the arrogance and dominance of Western cultural exports. Islam isn't really pro-terrorist, and the consumer-driven modernity of the US isn't really a threat to Muslims. The two world views and world concerns aren't really fighting each other at all, they're just fighting their own fears. And, in the saddest of ways, the battle is bringing the two sides closer.
Intimacy is the intermingling of identities. It is most feared in both East and West, because intimacy confronts the questions of who are you, who am I, and how much can we affect each other (vulnerability). Intimacy is also on the way to reintegration of the Whole, so it cannot be avoided. As humans we can only choose what kind of intimacy we prefer, as our choice toward the kind of evolution we are pursuing. Intimacy can be negative or positive, by being born of either pain or love. Positive intimacy involves joyful healthy cultural and economic exchanges. Negative intimacy involves war. Either way, the two sides will get to know each other, up close and personal. The two sides will be changed forever by their interactions, so a new Whole, a global view, can emerge.
It is only natural that the Middle East should be the focus of the world's attention now, because it is the bridge between the East and West. Whether it was the original cradle of civilization is unclear, but it is the cradle of the new Earth civilization that the Whole demands. The Middle East is where the three major religions that are not truly Eastern must reintegrate to then face the East. Toward that reintegration, a positive intimacy of East/West inter-mingling was one of the responses that was seen after 9/11, when some people made a push to appreciate and respect Islam apart from the terrorists. I believe this is still the only real way to oppose the war. If the United States (as the de facto chief of Western culture) focuses on becoming a champion of safety and prosperity for all Muslims (not just Americanized consumer Muslims, but Muslims who may prefer theocracies), then militant Islam will hold no appeal for the vast peace-yearning majority. If Bush went to mosque and found the parts of the Quran that lifted his own soul, that would be more shocking and awing than any number of laser-guided bombs, which are largely examples of the negative evolution of efficiency (oh yes, it is vital to our principles that we not target civilians, but we're still talking bigger and better killing machines here). Short of a literal symbolism involving heads of state, every American has a duty to not just read some Quran, but also to work on bridging their own areas of personal reintegration peacefully. Find the soul in everything, see the symbols of its passage. And cinema, that best-to-date recorded reality experience, that crowning multi-sensory achievement of the human arts, so remarkably sharable and universal while still remaining so personal, is a great place to start. Film appreciation is a way to safely practice our abilities to recognize and celebrate the soul. Here we are helping the Whole reintegrate more positively for everyone.
For evidence of the ultimate unconscious drive to East/West reintegration, notice how Western fears keep getting drawn to the East beyond Iraq. There are reminders that the eventual meeting and mixing of cultural poles is what is still coming and most feared. China was rising in dominance and creating tensions when Bush came to power. Terrorist-harboring Afghanistan, with its subjugated Buddhists and women, drew the west's attention after 9/11 (Afghanistan had the karma to show itself because it was the original gateway to the East along the spice routes). After the invasion of Afghanistan (which isn't really over and won), Bush wanted to head safely westward again with Iraq war planning. But the East's North Korea, most alarming to the West for its militant group mind, drew attention eastward again with its significant nuclear threats, and will continue to do so. Once the Iraq war was underway, those who were expecting to see a biological attack from Islamic terrorists instead had their greatest fears again drawn to the East, by the invasion of a new culture from China, literally a virus culture called SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome). SARS brings attention to difficulty in breathing, and the breath is an Eastern meditative focus. The fact that SARS is a spontaneous manifestation of nature which cannot be blamed on a dictator will frustrate and frighten all the war-planners, who had hoped to contain their terror of mixing cultures within battlefields that they could imagine winning.
So the crisis that we're seeing today is the reluctant intimacy of Earth cultures on their way to the reintegration of all humanity. The planet is poised for big new leaps in evolution; everyone has been saying this for centuries, and now it's time to walk the talk. The intimacy required for reintegration becomes negative (i.e. hurtful) in the case of war, but when nothing better is allowed, then negative intimacy can still generate the respect and involvement and knowing that the Whole demands. It's well-documented in psychology for example, that prisoners will develop strong emotional bonds with the cruelest of abductors, not just in spite of but actually because of the closeness of the torture. Notice that the US had hoped to wage increasingly non-intimate wars with video-game style bombs launched from a distance, but the real battle still most feared and expectable is intimate urban combat. The US may yet get to know the so-called enemy, street by street, house by house, room by room. Even if we are not on the front lines, highly evolved war is abducting and torturing everyone together now, by transmitting urgent images direct into our homes, by worrying daily life everywhere with weapons of mass destruction that any terrorist can tote, and by pushing interdependent economies to the brinks of collapse (sadly, things will probably get worse before they get better).
Anyone who wants to fuel the way of positive intimacy, to see the joyful and loving reintegration of the Whole, need only learn about and celebrate human value in every culture here on Earth. Bridge the gaps between East and West, both the geographic places and the ways of living that they represent. Be open minded and open hearted, trust yourself for what is right inside. Ultimately and underneath it all, we will find the common caring values, to be sure. Love is still the answer, it's just that love has taken on so many forms in this our complex modern global world.
If we want to beat the war with love, we must recognize and celebrate all that comes from the human soul, and enjoy ourselves while we're at it too. Some may call it irresponsible or escapist, but we're going have to have some fun along the way, because we can't fuel joy with insincerity, and intimacy means being changed by what we choose to embrace. Have fun exploring and relating to other spiritual traditions, and make the leaps of enlightened understanding that unify the dreams as well as the artifacts of all the Earth's people, with their various means of striving for common soul-full values.
Somewhere in the multi-cultural vision of harmony between inspired individuals, toward the future of the soul-aware reintegrated Whole, we offer The Mystical Movie Guide. Movies are emotional, international, symbolic, and very very personal; if you can recognize and celebrate the human spirit in a movie new and different to you, then you will be contributing to the reintegration of humanity by peaceful means. You will be answering war with the power of love, even just from the safety and privacy of your own living room. Then you can go out and do what you must do in public, but you'll feel more connected and sure than if you had simply watched a movie for escape. Context, like intention, can make all the difference.
You can make all the difference. You always have and always will. This is not only God's world, it is also your own.
peace and best wishes
Carl J. Schroeder