Spiritual Enlightenment and Grizzly Bears
November 20th, 2008 | Posted by admin | Category: Movies | Tags: Grizzly Bears, Movies, Spiritual Enlightenment, Timothy Treadwell | No Comments
Imagine a guy living all alone in the wilderness of Alaska.
Now, imagine that this guy spends most of his time hanging out with wild grizzly bears.
Now, add to that fantasy that he has a camera, which he talks to, poses for and films his interactions with the bears with.
If I told you this guy really existed, you might conclude that he is one of two things:
1) Crazy
2) Enlightened
Timothy Treadwell was a nice mixture of both.
The documentary Grizzly Man is made from the footage of Timothy’s own camera, together with interviews with the people that knew him. It explores the Alaskan nature and the lives of the enormous grizzly bears, but even more it explores the nature and life of a very peculiar man. Timothy had trouble with alcohol, trouble with his career and trouble with humanity in general. What saved him was the immense love he had for animals, and this was what drove him to sober up and move out into the wild.
When we see him interacting with the animals, whether it’s a fox or a grizzly bear, we can’t help but be touched by the love, acceptance and sheer wonder this man radiates. It’s his very openness to life that inspires, his excitement of being.
The documentary is done in a very personal way, and is a very honest portrait of a man who was far from perfect, yet able to live with a love that most can only envy him.
You can find it here
Timothy Treadwell died in 2003, aged 46. Eaten by a bear, of course.
The Lives of Others
October 29th, 2008 | Posted by admin | Category: Movies | Tags: Movies, Spiritual Enlightenment, The Lives of Others | No Comments
How many movies have you seen where you had to pause after thirty minutes just to cry? If the answer is anything but zero, how many of those movies made you cry not because something was sad, but just because it was so outrageously beautiful? This is such a movie.
“The Lives of Others” takes place in Germany under Soviet occupation. We meet a surveillance specialist of the Stasi police, and the couple he is ordered to keep watch over. As the man in the couple, a poet named Georg, decides to take action against the suppressing system they are under, the tension rises, and all characters involved must make difficult choices about which part they will play.
Although a surveillance thriller on the surface, “The Lives of Others” captures not only the difficulties of being human, but also just how wonderful these little battles of ours really are. It shows the choices we make between Love and fear so clearly, and with a poetry of Shakespearian magnitude. The movie won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2007, and is the closest thing I have to a favorite movie of all time. I’m kind of enthusiastic about this, can you tell? Anyway, you can see the trailer here, and the film itself can be found here.
To quote another reviewer, this is “137 minutes of the best entertainment imaginable”, and highly relevant not only to those seeking Spiritual Enlightenment, but to all feeling human beings. I genuinly hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
Spiritual Enlightenment and George Clooneys Butt
September 23rd, 2008 | Posted by admin | Category: Movies | Tags: Solaris, Spiritual Enlightenment | No Comments
Ever heard of the movie Solaris (2002)?
It’s a remake of a russian movie from 1972 (directed by the genius Andrei Tarkovsky), and had a short burst of media coverage. Why? Because you can see George Clooneys butt in it. Well.
If you’re willing to look beyond that, you will find the most excellent metaphor for God ever fastened to a film reel, a soundtrack that is worth three times the price of the movie by itself and characters that are deep, original and masterfully acted.
The movie is about a widower (George Clooney) sent to investigate a space station that has lost contact with earth. The space station is circling a newfound planet, named Solaris, and it quickly becomes apparent that the planet has a rather peculiar effect on the crew. The story is told with a cinematography that is fluid, quiet and beautiful, which requires a certain patience from the viewer. If you have that, I suggest you
I promise you the ending is one of the most beautiful moments related to Spiritual Enlightenment in movie history.