Film can teach us life lessons
I’ve discovered something over my first couple weeks here: coming up with titles is hard.
Articles need headlines, pictures need captions, columns need names.
The problem is that you have to come up with something that completely summarizes your entire work in probably six words or less. Which was why, when I learned I’d be writing this column, I found myself debating for days on end on what I should name it. I wanted it to be something that accurately reflected what I thought these columns should be about. And since I suffered for so long about what and why I would name this thing, I thought I’d share that suffering with all of you! How nice of me!
So, and stick with me here, there’s this scene from an old, little known space opera film back in the eighties. In this scene our main character is having a conversation with the ghost of his old mentor. Previously, in an earlier movie, the mentor character had kind of misled our hero, telling him that his father was dead. In reality, the hero’s father is very much alive and is in fact the evil antagonist. So, given all that, the main character asks his mentor why he lied to him.
The mentor replies that what he told our hero was true…from a certain point of view.
To which the hero exclaims incredulously, “A certain point of view?”
It’s a response that is, I feel, quite warranted. But the mentor just shakes his head and sits himself down on the nearest rock, which is kind of silly considering he’s a ghost, but whatever. And it’s as the ghost is sitting down that he says something interesting.
“You are going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
It’s kind of a throwaway line of dialogue, a transition as the mentor turns the conversation into an exposition on the fallen father’s dark past. They don’t touch upon it again in the scene, nor do we really see the hero even acknowledge or accept this explanation.
And that’s it. The mentor goes on to reveal that the hero and a woman he’s kissed twice are actually siblings and the movie moves right along to the next instance of space daring-do.
This whole ridiculous explanation is necessary because the filmmaker clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead when making the first movie, where the mentor had told the hero that his father was dead, only to change the father’s status later in the second film. It’s a scene that exists solely because the writer changed his mind midway through his fictional work and then had to try to explain away any discrepancies that came with said change.
By all rights, this scene probably shouldn’t exist. Really, in a perfect world, it likely wouldn’t.
Which is why I find this quote so intriguing to ponder. Because while it probably doesn’t adequately address the situation in the film, it does have something interesting to say, both about the circumstances surrounding its very existence and also a general statement about how perspective can influence understanding.
I had initially written several paragraphs examining this very thing, going into this metaphor about how our individual experiences are like pieces to a puzzle and that different people are going to have different pieces to that same puzzle. How if we only look at our own pieces and completely disregard everyone else’s, we will probably not have an accurate picture of the whole puzzle. Yadda yadda yadda, very interesting stuff.
It was as I was reading this lengthy explanation that I realized that what I was trying to say didn’t need all of that. Partially because Neal said my column can’t take up five pages of the newspaper, but also because the point I was trying to make is really quite simple.
This world isn’t perfect. Return of the Jedi isn’t a perfect movie. George Lucas isn’t a perfect filmmaker. I’m not a perfect person. That’s just how things are.
But if we can acknowledge these things, both about ourselves and about others, then perhaps we can help each come closer to those goals that we all aspire to reach. Empathy begets empathy. In order to be understood, oftentimes you must first understand. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves of these things.
And that’s something that movies and books and this silly little column in your local newspaper are trying to convey. They are there to give you a new perspective on the world in the hopes that we can better understand one another. We just need to make ourselves open to it.
Or, at least, that’s how I see it… …from a certain point of view.
A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW
NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER
