Monday, July 30, 2007

Pure and Wit

Two movies captured me late at night last Saturday: Pure, and Wit.

Pure is about an innocent ten year old boy taking on all sorts of responsibilities, desperately trying to help his mother overcome heroin addiction. It ends on a good note, but the movie does not shy away from showing the raw, really raw and rough way there. The moral - no matter how hard you want to help, sometimes people need to find the strength to help themselves. Another moral - do not do drugs.

Wit is a meditation about dying. Emma Thompson is the movie. She plays an ultra tough and strict university professor diagnosed with advanced cancer, going through experimental treatment, dying at the end. The movie is kind of witty about the whole situation, and, just like Pure, it does not sugar coat the ordeal Thompson's character goes through, and how difficult the process of dying is. One of major regrets of Thompson's character is that she was too uncompromising, too inflexible, not humane enough.

I recommend both movies. This is not the sugary Hollywood stuff though; you may experience some impact.

Both movies made me wonder why it is that we tend to wait until we are in a very difficult situation, or at advanced age, approaching our own demise, before we start appreciating the need to be more gentle, helpful to others, being altruistic. Frankly, I don't know what to say here but to wonder whether there seems to be the time for everything - first you push to be successful, powerful, influential, wealthy, then you turn around and become helpful. Sounds so banal.

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