philosophy in film

Grand Canyon…

Simon - You ever been to the Grand Canyon? Its pretty, but thats not the thing of it. You can sit on the edge of that big ol’ thing and those rocks… the cliffs and rocks are so old… it took so long for that thing to get like that… and it ain’t done either! It happens right there while your watching it. Its happening right now as we are sitting here in this ugly town. When you sit on the edge of that thing, you realize what a joke we people really are… what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much… thinking that our time here means didly to those rocks. Just a split second we have been here, the whole lot of us. That’s a piece of time so small to even get a name. Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries… Yeah, its real humorous, that Grand Canyon. Its laughing at me right now. You know what I felt like? I felt like a gnat that lands on the ass of a cow chewing his cud on the side of the road that you drive by doing 70 mph.

Legend of the Guardians

Noctus: [back at the Tree of the Guardians] We’re so proud of you.
Soren: Dad. They’re real.
Noctus: You made them real." -

Boron: When you’ve flown as far as you can, you’re halfway there!
Gylfie: [confused] What did he say?
Digger: [ecstatic] We’re halfway there! "

A River Runs through It

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”

Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect”

I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”

Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

[b]Yukio: Suicide again? [looking up at the noose] Going to hang yourself this time?

“This is Bliss” — Kenji’s suicide note.[/b]

Instead, he goes on to meet the beautiful and mysterious Noi and that becomes bliss instead.

And [all the more blissfully] the end of the film is up to you to decide.

I don’t have time to reply right now, but I think you might be interested in an article I just found addressing this topic and phrase of Nietzsche’s.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201

RELIGULOUS
Directed by Larry Charles

[b]Bill Maher: These questions about what happens when you die, they so freak people out that they will just make up any story and cling to it. You know, things that they know can’t be true, people who are otherwise so rational about everything else, and then they believe that on Sunday they’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old God. I can’t-- that’s a dissonance in my head. I can’t-- I have to find out.

Yeah, you could be right. I don’t think it’s very likely, but, yes, you could be right, because my big thing is I don’t know. That’s what I preach. I preach the gospel of I don’t know! I mean that’s what I’m here promoting-- doubt. - That’s my product. - Right. The other guys are selling certainty, not me. I’m on the corner with doubt.

I think being without faith is something that’s a luxury for people who were fortunate enough to have a fortunate life. You know, you go to prison and you hear a guy say, ‘‘You know what, buddy? I got nothing but Jesus in here.’’ I completely understand that. I think not having faith is a luxury sometimes. If you’re in a foxhole, you probably have a lot of faith, right? - Mm-hmm. - So I get that.

…behind me and above me is the original Twin Cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. Apparently, it was a pretty wicked place. How wicked? Well let’s just say that what happened in Gomorrah, stayed in Gomorrah. That is until God got wind of it, so he sent two angels to investigate. Now the angels went to the house of the one godly man in town-- Lot. And the townspeople tried to rape them. Now Lot, not wanting his town to get the reputation as the kind of place that would rape angels, offered up to the mob his own daughters to rape. And he was the good guy in town. Which brings me to this question: If I ever had to swear an oath, why would I want to put my hand on the King James Bible? I think I could find more morality in the Rick James Bible.

It’s a monotheistic religion, but there’s three of them.
Christ at the theme park: Just like water can be ice, steam and water.
Maher: I see.
Christ: It’s different forms, different shapes for the different purposes.
Maher: The analogy that Jesus at the amusement park said yesterday was brilliant, about the Trinity is like water. It can be steam. It can be ice. It can be liquid. Wow, that is-- boy, that stopped me in my tracks for a second, you know? That’s just a brilliant analogy. When you think about it for two minutes, it’s still complete bullshit. There this space God and he’s himself and he sent himself on a suicide mission. He’s a God, but he has a kid. He’s a single parent. It’s just silly, but when you put it in the water analogy, I can see that, you know, those ladies there, when they heard that the first time, they were like, done. Sold. Oh, you had me at ice cube.

Maher: [According to scientology] Xenu brought us here 75 million years ago, stacked us around volcanoes and blew them up with an H-bomb. We are older than the universe. You have to rid yourself of the implants from the extraterrestrial dictators! - Get an E-Meter. Yes, get an E-Meter! - An E-meter? Audit yourself. How do you people expect to get to the next level? I’m not making the rules.

Aw… You know, Scientologists… And right, you’re like, ‘‘Oh, yeah, that’s some crazy shit. Okay. Jesus with the virgin birth and the dove and the snake who talked in the garden, that’s cool. But the Scientologists, they’re the crazy ones.’’ That’s not true. That-- that-- I don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about. But it has something to do with making sure that we’re born with a defect, so that the souls of ours are infected with aliens… the cure? Scientology.

Maher [talking to 2 ex-Mormons]: To be a Mormon is to believe some really crazy stuff, crazy even by the standards of the big religions. When you’re the new kid on the block–

–We’d like you to ‘‘Meet the Mormons.’’ In the founding scripture, you open up the Doctrine of Covenants, you read the autobiography of Joseph Smith. He quotes Jesus Christ as telling him that every other creed on earth is, quote, ‘‘an abomination.’’ An abomination. I mean, that’s not a very ecumenical statement. You’re talking about things that, I think, at some level you sense just do not make sense. I’m glad you said that because I read some of the tenets of Mormonism, like ‘‘God lives on a planet near the star of Kalob.’’ - Kolob. - Kolob. God the Father who’s a physical man with a body of flesh and bone is probably about 6’ tall, lives on a place called Kolob, had sexual relations with Mary-- remember he’s a man. ‘‘Jesus Christ was conceived by God the father having actual sex with Mary.’’ Mary said, ‘‘If this is what God wants, I’ll be glad to do His will.’’ ‘‘Dark skin is a curse from God, but if you’re sufficiently righteous, a dark-skinned person can become light-skinned.’’ According to the Book of Mormon, after his resurrection, Jesus came to the Americas to preach to the Indians. ‘‘That American Indians are actually a lost tribe of Israel.’’ They’re lost Jews. And also the idea that Christianity is American, I think, is an amazing entitlement to a people who are always trying to meld God and country. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri according to Mormonism. The new Jerusalem will be there.

I’ve also heard that the Mormon Church baptizes dead people. You can be baptized for about 50 people, 100 people that’ve died. And so you just get dunked about 50 to 100 times. That’s baptism for the dead. Caffeine is evil. That magic underwear can protect you. And that you need a secret password to get into heaven. Everyone must stand at the final judgment before Joseph Smith, Jesus and Elohim. This isn’t an easy religion.

It seems peaceful, but this is the very spot where a lot of Christians believe life on earth will end. The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world actually could come to an end. A lot of people in this country believe in end times. There will be this great reckoning, the Rapture…But if you believe that the world is gonna come to an end, and perhaps any day now, does it not drain one’s motivation to improve life on earth while we’re here? The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it. I don’t know that much about politics…Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, ‘‘I’m willing, Lord. I’ll do whatever You want me to do.’’ Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions, - limitations and agendas…The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong…So you think Jesus will end this earth at some point, maybe in your lifetime? One always hopes. This is a sign, and that is a sign. If a nuclear bomb went off, and it seemed like that was exactly what it had said, balls of fire or something, you wouldn’t look on that as necessarily a bad thing. I know I’ll be with God. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. It says in the last days there’ll be wars, rumors of wars. The Bible prophesies from the Book of Revelation-- they’re going to be fulfilled! Can this be accomplished without violence? - No. - Islam ruling the world, global jihad. - Who will win out? - We’ll win. That’s for God to decide on Judgment Day. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a Mafia wife, with the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of a religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was: That we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That’s it. Grow up or die. We are in a conflict between good and evil. See you in heaven. Who knows?[/b]

Well, that’s certainly one way in which to look at it. Just not religiously.

Is this a profoundly meaningful or profoundly silly ritual:

VITAL
Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

[b]Our four-month dissection program is now over. Make sure you return the bodies to their original form. Check that bones and organs have been replaced and the kidneys are on the correct side.

Put the sash next to the hands. The tabi and sandals go by the feet. The triangular cloth and the headdress go by the head.

Drape the kimono over the body. Place the cane next to the right hand. Drape the shroud over the face. Lay the flowers inside.

Now place the lid on the coffin.

We will now close our eyes and pay our last respects.

The coffins will be taken now.[/b]

Later the coffins and all that is in them will be burned to ashes.

It’s not for nothing that Woody Allen keeps going over and over the same connundrums that infuse folks “in love”.
The more things change here the more they stay [more or less] the same.

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Narrator: The two best friends had been close since college and shared the same tastes and opinions on most matters, yet when it came to the subject of love, it would be hard to find two more dissimilar viewpoints. Vicky had no tolerance for pain and no lust for combat. She was grounded and realistic. Her requirements in a man were seriousness and stability. She had become engaged to Doug because he was decent and successful and understood the beauty of commitment.

Cristina, on the other hand, expected something very different out of love. She had reluctantly accepted suffering as an inevitable component of deep passion, and was resigned to putting her feelings at risk. If you asked her what it was she was gambling her emotions on to win, she would not have been able to say. She knew what she didn’t want, however, and that was exactly what Vicky valued above all else.

Cristina: I’ll go to your room, but you’ll have to seduce me

Cristina: [Looking at a sculpture of Jesus] Are you very religious?
Juan: No, no, no, no, I’m not. The trick is to enjoy life, accepting it has no meaning whatsoever.
Cristina: No meaning? You don’t think that authentic love gives life meaning?
Juan: Yes, but love is so transient. Isn’t it? I was in love with a most incredible woman… and then in the end…
Vicky: Yes?
Juan: She put a knife into me.
Cristina: My God, that’s terrible!
Vicky: Well, maybe you did something to deserve it

Vicky: No. Look, I’m not free. I’m committed. You know what my theory is? And when I drink, I get brutally frank. I think that you’re still hurting from the failure of your marriage to Maria Elena, and you’re trying to lose yourself in empty sex.
Juan: Empty sex? Do you have such a low opinion of yourself?
Cristina: She’s just saying that it has to have meaning for her, that’s all.
Juan: I mean, the city is romantic, the night is warm and balmy, we are alive—isn’t that meaning enough?

Juan: You are all set to enter a completely different life, a life you always wanted with a man you love.
Vicky: Yes, goddamn it, I know! And then I met you and we had this ridiculously irrational weekend together and now I… now I don’t know where I am.

Narrator: Cristina began to sense the possibility of the kind of relationship she had always sought, but in the past had eluded her. She was the lover of an exciting man, an artist, whose work she believed in. She was already thinking of herself as a kind of expatriate, not smothered by what she believed to be America’s puritanical and materialistic culture, which she had little patience for. She saw herself more a European soul, in tune with the thinkers and artists she felt expressed her tragic, romantic, freethinking view of life.

Juan: …love requires such a perfect balance. It’s like the human body. It may turn that you have all the vitamins and minerals, but if there is a minor, single, tiny ingredient missing, like… like… like… like… like salt, for example, one dies.
Cristina: Salt?

Cristina: At first it did bother me, but then I started to think about all these standard, accepted clichés of love… what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s appropriate according to the “appropriate police,” and you know, you see how screwed up most relationships…
Doug: So what you’re saying is you’re sharing a man. You’re like a Mormon wife.
Cristina: I-I know it sounds strange, but actually, we all contribute to the relationship, and we’re all really nourished by it.
Doug: If everyone did that, society couldn’t function. -
Cristina: Come on!
Vicky: Come on, Doug. Let’s not get into one of those turgid categorical imperative arguments. Whatever works.
Doug: Whatever works?!
Cristina: Maria Elena believes that there are many truths in life, not just one.

Juan: It’s funny. Maria Elena and I… We are meant for each other and not meant for each other. It’s… it’s a contradiction. I mean, in order to understand it you need a poet like my father… because I don’t.[/b]

Horror films are often as much about the unknown as the supernatural

PULSE
Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

[b]Harue: I always wondered what it’s like to die. From when I was really little I was always alone. [I thought] that after death you live happily with everyone over there…Then in high school it dawned on me you might be all alone after death, too.
Friend: There’s no way to know. How could you?
Harue: The idea was so terrifying. I couldn’t even bear it. That nothing changes with death, just right now…forever.

Ryosuke: Nobody knows what happens when you die…But I do know that I am definitely alive and so are you, Harue. That’s for sure. right? So I don’t want to think about the fact that we’ll die someday. Just maybe in 10 years, or at least while we’re still alive they’ll invent a drug that prevents death. Then, we could live forever and ever. Of course you might think I am crazy to say that, but I’d rather bet on that.
Harue: You want to live forever?
Ryosuke: Yes.
Harue: That sounds like fun?
Ryosuke: Yes, that’s what I think.[/b]

THE SON’S ROOM
Directed by Nanni Moretti

Giovanni: What if I’d stay that day?
Paola: Is that a question?
Giovanni: If I hadn’t rushed over to that patient’s place like an idiot…If I’d stayed…
Paola: He’d have gone anyway
Giovanni: If I’d taken him running. We’d have had an ice cream, we’d have seen a movie…
Paola: Giovanni, please! You can’t turn back time.
Giovanni: That’s exactly what I want to do: turn back time!

Patient: What the fuck is this?! First you lure me in, I tell you everything and then it’s good-bye?! Fuck you! Fuck you! I feel like shit, goddamn it, and it gets worse and worse! Bastard, asshole! You’ve screwed me! You’ll pay for this!..I’m not well, asshole! I’m not well!!
Giovanni: I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.

The South Korean Seven

H
Directed by Jong-hyuk Lee

[b]Detective Kim: Are there any files on Shin Hyun?
Doctor: A doctor doesn’t reveal information on patients.
Detective Kim: Dr. Chu, information is needed to protect future victums. How about cooperating with us?
Doctor: No. My patient is more important to me than a victum I don’t know.

Detective Kang: Why are stupid people so complicated?

Captain Lee: How about Shin Hyun’s next murder?
Detective Kim: He wanted to show life’s nobility so he murdered an abortion doctor and excavated her uterus.
Captain Lee: Cruelly killing for the sake of life’s nobility.

Detective Kim: That expression of yours…that’s the look of joy that children get when they thoughtlessly twist a chick’s neck.
Shin Hyun: You should know that all looks hide hidden meanings. People who try hard to hide themselves, people who treat life as a possession and go about trying to hide their crime…
Detective Kim: Are you referring to yourself?
Shin Hyun: Obviously you are not understanding dimensions.
Detective Kim: Dimension?! You’re nothing more than a murderer waiting for death. You see things superficially.
Shin Hyun: Listen to the cry of the abyss. If you fail to take heed, you won’t be able to see beyond the six corpses…

Detective Park: I heard there’s a way to break the hypnosis. Put down the gun. Look at my eyes. Hey, Kang! It’s not your fault! You had no choice![/b]

Kang puts down the gun. Then the final scene: detective Kim shoots him dead.

The battle of the exes: love and human remains.

CLOSER:

Directed by Mike Nichols

[b]Dan: I fell in love with her, Alice.
Alice: Oh, as if you had no choice? There’s a moment, there’s always a moment, “I can do this, I can give into this, or I can resist it”, and I don’t know when your moment was, but I bet you there was one.

Larry: You forget you’re dealing with a clinical observer of the human carnival.
Anna: Am I, now?
Larry: Oh, yes.
Anna: You seem more like the cat that got the cream, you can stop licking yourself

Alice: How can one man be so endlessly disappointing?
Dan: That’s my charm.

Alice: What’s your work?
Dan: I’m sort of a…journalist.
Alice: What sort?
Dan: I write obituaries

ALICE: I don’t love you anymore.
DAN: Since when?
ALICE: Now. Just now. I don’t want to lie. Can’t tell the truth, so it’s over.
DAN: It doesn’t matter. I love you. None of it matters.
ALICE: Too late. I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.

Larry: [on a photography exhibit] What do you think?
Alice: It’s a lie. It’s a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and… all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it’s beautiful 'cause that’s what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone… But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so… the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie.
Larry: I’m the big fat liar’s boyfriend.
Alice: Bastard!

Larry: So Anna tells me your bloke wrote a book. Any good?
Alice: Of course.
Larry: It’s about you isn’t it?
Alice: Some of me.
Larry: Oh? What did he leave out?
Alice: The truth.

Larry: There’s a girl out there who calls herself Venus, what’s her real name?
Alice: Pluto

Larry: You don’t know the first thing about love, because you don’t understand compromise.

Dan: Deception is brutal, I’m not pretending otherwise.
Alice: How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone?
[Dan is silent]
Alice: Not good enough!

Dan: You’ve ruined my life.
Anna: You’ll get over it.

Dan: What’s so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it’s the currency of the world.

Anna: Love bores you.
Dan: No, it disappoints me
Anna: Why are you wasting her time?
Dan: You’re judgmental
Anna: you’re devious
Dan: I’m not wasting her time. She’s completely lovable. And completely unleavable.
Anna: And you don’t want someone else getting their dirty hands on her.
[Dan shrugs]
Anna: Men are crap.
Dan: But all the same…
Anna: Their still crap.

ALICE: I amuse you but I bore you.
DAN: No. No.
ALICE: You did love me?
DAN: I’ll always love you. I hate hurting you.
ALICE: Why are you?
DAN: Because I’m selfish. And I think I’ll be happier with her.
ALICE: You won’t. You’ll miss me. No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough?

Anna: I’m not a thief, Alice.

ANNA: Extraordinary thing, the internet. Possibility of genuine global communication, the first great democratic medium.
LARRY: Absolutely. It’s the future.
ANNA: Two guys wanking in cyberspace.

ANNA: Why are you dressed?
LARRY: Because I think you might be about to leave me, and I didn’t want to be wearing a dressing gown.

LARRY: Cupid? He’s our joke!

LARRY: If I asked you to strip right now, would you?
ALICE: Of course. You want me to?
LARRY: No. Alice, tell me something true.
ALICE: Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, but it’s better if you do.
LARRY: You’re cold. You’re all cold at heart…[/b]

This is an enthralling and disturbing documentary. But it entirely leaves out one of the major ingredients of this particular fog: the military industrial complex that is rooted in what is basically America’s war economy.

It’s a classic example of why Phil Ochs wrote, “Love me, love me, I’m a liberal.”

THE FOG OF WAR
A film by Errol Morris

McNamara: Okay. Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he’s speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He’s killed people unnecessarily — his own troops or other troops — through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But, he hasn’t destroyed nations.

The Cuban missle crisis:

[b]McNamara: In the first message, Khrushchev said this: “We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence.”

I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.

The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is this: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations. Is it right and proper that today there are 7500 strategic offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2500 are on 15 minute alert, to be launched by the decision of one human being?[/b]

World War II

[b]McNamara: I was on the island of Guam in [General Curtis Lamay’s] command in March of 1945. In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.

EM: Were you aware this was going to happen?

McNamara: Well, I was part of a mechanism that in a sense recommended it. I analyzed bombing operations, and how to make them more efficient. i.e. Not more efficient in the sense of killing more, but more efficient in weakening the adversary.

I wrote one report analyzing the efficiency of the B—29 operations. The B—29 could get above the fighter aircraft and above the air defense, so the loss rate would be much less. The problem was the accuracy was also much less.

50 square miles of Tokyo were burned. Tokyo was a wooden city, and when we dropped these firebombs, it just burned it.

EM: The choice of incendiary bombs, where did that come from?

McNamara: I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay’s answer would be clearly “Yes.”

“McNamara, do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000, burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in that one night, we should have burned to death a lesser number or none? And then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you’re proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise?”

Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay’s command.

Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.

LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?[/b]

Vietnam:

[b]McNamara: Kennedy announced we were going to pull out all of our military advisors by the end of '65 and we were going to take 1000 out by the end of '63 and we did. But, there was a coup in South Vietnam. Diem was overthrown and he and his brother were killed.

I was present with the President when together we received information of that coup. I’ve never seen him more upset. He totally blanched. President Kenndy and I had tremendous problems with Diem, but my God, he was the authority, he was the head of state. And he was overthrown by a military coup. And Kennedy knew and I knew, that to some degree, the U.S. government was responsible for that.

Johnson: Hello, Bob?
McNamara: Yes, Mr. President.
Johnson: I hate to modify your speech any because it’s been a good one, but I just wonder if we should find two minutes in there for Vietnam?
McNamara: Yeah, the problem is what to say about it.
Johnson: I’ll tell you what I would say about it. I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom. We could pull out of there, the dominoes would fall, and that part of the world would go to the Communists. We could send our marines in there, and we could get tied down in a Third World War or another Korean action. Nobody really understands what it is out there. They’re asking questions and saying why don’t we do more. Well, I think this: you can have more war or you can have more appeasement.

McNamara: Ultimately, President Johnson authorized bombing in response to what he thought had been the second attack ? it hadn’t occurred but that’s irrelevant to the point I’m making here. He authorized the attack on the assumption it had occurred, and his belief that it was a conscious decision on the part of the North Vietnamese political and military leaders to escalate the conflict and an indication they would not stop short of winning.

We were wrong, but we had in our minds a mindset that led to that action. And it carried such heavy costs. We see incorrectly or we see only half of the story at times.

EM: We see what we want to believe.

McNamara: You’re absolutely right. Belief and seeing, they’re both often wrong.

McNamara: We [then] introduced what was called “Rolling Thunder,” which over the years became a very, very heavy bombing program. Two to three times as many bombs as were dropped on Western Europe during all of World War II.

McNamara: Let me go back one moment. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize. And there was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as: a civil war.

McNamara: The former Foreign Minister of Vietnam, a wonderful man named Thach said, “You’re totally wrong. We were fighting for our independence. You were fighting to enslave us.”

We almost came to blows. That was noon on the first day.

“Do you mean to say it was not a tragedy for you, when you lost 3 million 4 hundred thousand Vietnamese killed, which on our population base is the equivalent of 27 million Americans? What did you accomplish? You didn’t get any more than we were willing to give you at the beginning of the war. You could have had the whole damn thing: independence, unification.”

“Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you’d had, you’d know we weren’t pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn’t you know that? Don’t you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us.”

McNamara: There’s a wonderful phrase: “the fog of war.”

What “the fog of war” means is: war is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Wilson said: “We won the war to end all wars.” I’m not so na?ve or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war. We’re not going to change human nature anytime soon. It isn’t that we aren’t rational. We are rational. But reason has limits.

There’s a quote from T.S. Eliot that I just love:

We shall not cease from exploring
And at the end of our exploration
We will return to where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Now that’s in a sense where I’m beginning to be.[/b]

SWEPT AWAY [1974]
Directed by Lina Wertmüller

[b]Raffaella: I guess Gennarino wants to punish us because we represent capitalism.
Captain: If it weren’t for you we’d be in a factory sweating for slave wages.
Raffaella: But while we wait for the revolution, just for once, Gennarino can cook the spaghetti right!

Raffaella: You’re a miserable dirty rotten coward. Do what you like but you’ll be sorry. There must be a law against it. You’ll go to jail for refusing to help a person in need. You eat but let others starve to death.
Gennarino: If there was a law against it, all the rich would be in jail, imagine that! But since there is no law only the poor are locked up.
Raffaella: Communist prick!

Raffaella: I knew it! Proletarians go crazy as soon as they get a taste of power! They blackmail you, starve you, take advantage. Worse than Hitler, they are! If that Sicilian savage thinks I’ll come begging on my hands and knees, he’d better think again. I’d rather die of hunger, I swear to God.[/b]

A short time later:

[b]Raffaella: Sell me that fish! I’ll pay you whatever you want!!
[Gennarino just sits there stuffing his face]
I knew you were a rotten louse but you won’t let me die of hunger will you?
[pause]
Okay, let’s be reasonable. You’re the one with the upper hand for the moment. How much do you want for the fish? Two hundred, three hundred dolars?! So how much do you want?!
Gennarino: [throwing pieces of fish into the fire]: I’ve decided to do as you lot do.
Raffaella: What lot?
Gennarino: Yes lady! You burn apples and oranges to keep prices high! Isn’t that so?
Raffaella [flustered] Murderer!

Rafaella [watching Gennarino kill a rabbit] No! Later after Gennarino skins and cooks it: I feel like that rabbit. You killed it.
[Long pause] You’re really cruel.

Then they [sort of] fall in love.

Of course, like many Communists back then, Gennarino is a sexist pig.

Roger Ebert

It’s here that the movie begins to venture into philosophical and sexual mischief-making, because although Lina Wertmuller is a leftist, she is not, apparently, a feminist. She seems to be trying to tell us two things through the episodes on the island: (1) that once the corrupt facade of capitalism is stripped away, it’s the worker, with the sweat of his back, who deserves to reap the benefit of his own labor, and (2) that woman is an essentially masochistic and submissive creature who likes nothing better than being swept off her feet by a strong and lustful male. This is a notion the feminists have spent the last 10 years trying to erase from our collective fantasies, and it must be unsettling, to say the least, to find the foremost woman director making a whole movie out of it. And Wertmuller doesn’t kid around.

The guy is truly a fucking brute. I can only try to imagine the reaction of, say, Simone deBeauvoir!

But there is also a lot to say in this film about the relationship between morality and power.

Finally, it shows how a circumstantial landslide can reconfigure “I” into a point of view you would not have been able even to imagine once before.

Timothy Treadwell is one of those strange people it is truly impossible to pin down. He is all over the map. In the end, we take out of him what we first put into him: “I”.

GRIZZLY MAN
A film by Werner Herzog

[b]Herzog: All these majestic creatures were filmed by Timothy Treadwell who lived among wild grizzlies for summers. He went to remote areas of the Alaskan peninsula believing that he was needed there to protect these animals and educate the public. During his last five years out there, he took along a video camera and shot over hours of footage. What Treadwell intended was to show these bears in their natural habitat. Having myself filmed in the wilderness of jungles, I found that beyond the wildlife film, in his material lay dormant a story of astonishing beauty and depth. I discovered a film of human ecstasies and darkest inner turmoil. As if there was a desire in him to leave the confinements of his humanness and bond with the bears, Treadwell reached out, seeking a primordial encounter. But in doing so, he crossed an invisible borderline.

Pilot: Right up top of the hill here is where we found what was left of Tim’s body… his head and a little bit of backbone. And we found a hand, arm, wristwatch still on the arm. I remember the watch. Shoot, I can remember the watch. And here’s a guy that used to dive in the lake down here naked to scare the airplanes away. And here I’m finding his watch and arm on top of the hill. And here’s about all that’s left of the bear that killed him. A few pieces of rib bone. This bear was shot, and drug off and eaten by other bears here, right in this area. The tough thing out of all this is Tim would have never wanted to see any bears killed. Even if they had killed him, he would’ve… He would’ve been happy if nobody found him.

Helicopter pilot: I’m Sam Egli. I was called out as a helicopter pilot to assist on the cleanup after the Treadwell tragedy of last winter. I was in there the morning the Fish and Game officers were there examining the bear that had done the killing. The bear was all cut open. It was full of people. It was full of clothing. It was… We hauled away four garbage bags of people out of that bear. Treadwell was, I think, meaning well, trying to do things to help the resource of the bears. But to me he was acting like… like he was working with people wearing bear costumes out there instead of wild animals. Those bears are big and ferocious, and they come equipped to kill ya and eat ya. And that’s just what Treadwell was asking for. He got what he was asking for. He got what he deserved, in my opinion. The tragedy of it was taking the girl with him. I think the only reason that Treadwell lasted as long in the game as he did was that the bears probably thought there was something wrong with him. Like he was mentally retarded or something. That bear, I think, that day decided that he had either had enough of Tim Treadwell, or that something clicked in that bear’s head that he thought, “Hey, you know, he might be good to eat.” My opinion, I think Treadwell thought these bears were big, scary looking, harmless creatures that he could go up and pet and sing to, - and they would bond - Look it there! As children of the universe or some odd. I think he had lost sight of what was really going on.

Herzog: Amie Huguenard remains a great unknown of this film. Her family declined to appear on camera, and Amie herself remains hidden in Treadwell’s footage. In nearly hours of his video, she appears exactly two times. Here disembarking from the plane in the year of her death. We never see her face. Here it is obscured by her hands and her hair. Greetings, children of America. The second shot that we have doesn’t show her face either. She remains a mystery, veiled by a mosquito net, obscured, unknown. Only through Treadwell’s diaries do we know that she was frightened of bears. The only other hint we have of her presence is this shot here of Treadwell. It is handheld, and we can only deduct it must have been Amie operating the camera.

Herzog: During the fatal attack, there was no time to remove the lens cap. Jewel Palovak allowed me to listen to the audio. I hear rain, and I hear Amie, “Get away! Get away! Go away!” Can you turn it off? Jewel, you must never listen to this.
Jewel [a close friend of Treadwell’s] I know, Werner. I’m never going to.
Herzog: And you must never look at the photos I’ve seen at the coroner’s office.
Jewel: I will never look at them. - Yeah. They said it was bad. Now you know why no one’s gonna hear it.
HerzogI think you, you should not keep it. You should destroy it. - Yeah. - I think that’s what you should do.
Jewel: Okay.

Treadwell’s father [discussing his son]: I know he got on Love Connection with Chuck Woolery. I think he got on another show. There were promises made that never came true. And he tested with the actors to get the bartender job on Cheers. And allegedly he came in second to Woody Harrelson. How close a second? I don’t know. But that is what really destroyed him. That he did not get that job on Cheers. He spiraled down.

Treadwell: This is a bumblebee who expired as it was working at doing the pollen thing on this Alaskan fireweed. And it just is… Just has really touched me to no end. It was doing its duty, it was flying around. Working busy as a bee, and it died right there. It’s beautiful, it’s sad, it’s tragic. I love that bee.

Treadwell: There’s Wendy’s poop. It just came out of her butt. I can feel it. I can feel the poop. It’s warm. It just came from her butt. This was just inside of her. My girl. I’m touching it. It’s her poop. It’s Wendy’s poop. I know it may seem weird that I touched her poop, but it was inside of her. It’s what… It’s her life! It’s her! And she’s so precious to me.

Treadwell: Everything about them is perfect. Perfection belonged to the bears.
Herzog: But once in a while, Treadwell came face-to-face with the harsh reality of wild nature. This did not fit into his sentimentalized view that everything out there was good, and the universe in balance and in harmony. Male bears sometimes kill cubs to stop the females from lactating, and thus have them ready again for fornication.
Treadwell [finding a fox killed by wolves]: Oh, God! I love you. I love you and I don’t understand. It’s a painful world.
Herzog: Here I differ with Treadwell. He seemed to ignore the fact that in nature there are predators. I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

Treadwell [reacting to a prolonged drought that has brought the bears to cannibalism—no salmon run] This does not make me very, very happy. I want rain. I want, if there’s a God, to kick some ass down here. Let’s have some water! Jesus, boy! Let’s have some water! Christ man or Allah or Hindu floaty thing, let’s have some fucking water for these animals!

Herzog: Now Treadwell crosses a line with the Park Service which we will not cross. He attacks the individuals with whom he worked for years.
Treadwell: I beat your fucking asses! I protected the animals! I did it! Fuck you! Animals rule. Timothy conquered. Fuck you, Park Service! Okay.
Herzog: It is clear to me that the Park Service is not Treadwell’s real enemy. There’s a larger, more implacable adversary out there: The people’s world and civilization.
Treadwell: “Oh, Timothy, I’m getting a bad feeling about you.”
Herzog: He only has mockery and contempt for it. His rage is almost incandescent, artistic. The actor in his film has taken over from the filmmaker. I have seen this madness before on a film set. But Treadwell is not an actor in opposition to a director or a producer. He’s fighting civilization itself. It is the same civilization that cast Thoreau out of Walden and John Muir into the wild.
Treadwell: Animals rule. All right. That’s my happy stuff. Let’s do a couple of nice takes now. Oh, man, did I get angry! Fuck them, right? They do not watch these animals. They don’t care about these animals. All they wanna do is screw people like me around. It’s amazing. “Let the fishermen fucking shoot the animals. Let the fucking poachers come in here and fuck 'em. Let the fucking commercial people fuck them around with their fucking cameras and the tourists. But we’re gonna go screw with Timothy Treadwell because he loves animals and teaches kids for free. Let’s go. Let’s do that. That’s what we’re gonna do.” Well, fuck them. Fuck them. I beat you, motherfuckers. I beat you. Beat ya, so fuck you. I beat ya. I beat ya. I’m the champion. I’m the fucking champion. I beat you. I beat your fucking asses. Fucking losers! Fucking nobodies! Fuck! Fucking fucks!

Herzog: This is Timothy Treadwell’s and Amie Huguenard’s route to the site of their death. There was a certain absurdity in their end. As usual, the expedition was over by the end of September, and both had returned to Kodiak on their way back to California. Treadwell writes in his diary that at the airport he had an altercation with an obese airline agent over the validity of his ticket. "How much I hate the people’s world, " he writes. And disgusted, he decides right then to return to this spot and his bears. Once back in the Grizzly Maze, Amie had mixed feelings. She was afraid of the bears and had a deadline to return for a new job and spoke openly about leaving him for good. According to one of the last entries in Treadwell’s diary, Amie called him hell-bent on destruction. And yet, inexplicably, she remained with him here in the Maze. Normally Treadwell would not be here this late in the year. And upon their return, he discovered that many of his bear friends had gone into hibernation. And scary, unknown and wilder bears from the interior had moved in.

Treadwell [a few days before he dies]: Let me tell you. Honestly, camping in grizzly country is dangerous. People who camp in grizzly country should camp out in the open to let the bears know where the tent is. My camp is unseen. It is the most dangerous camping, the most dangerous living in the history of the world by any human being. I have lived longer with wild brown grizzly bears, without weapons, and that’s the key, without weapons, in modern history than any human on earth, any human. And I have remained safe. But every second of every day that I move through this jungle, or even at the tent, I am right on the precipice of great bodily harm or even death. And I am so thankful for every minute of every day that I found the bears and this place, the Grizzly Maze. But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen. There is no, no, no other place in the world that is more dangerous, more exciting than the Grizzly Maze. Come here and camp here. Come here and try to do what I do. You will die. You will die here. You will frickin’ die here.

Herzog: Very late in the process of editing this film, we were given access to Treadwell’s last videotape. Here he may have filmed his murderer. The killer bear we know was a male whom years earlier the Park Service had anesthetized. They extracted a tooth which established him as being at the time of the attack. Quite old for a bear. They also tagged him via a tattoo on his inner lip. They had given him a number only, Bear 141 . That’s all we know of him. And here. Could this one be Bear 141? What looks playful could be desperation. So late in the season, the bear is diving deep for one of the few remaining salmon carcasses at the bottom of the lake. Treadwell keeps filming the bear with a strange persistence. And all of a sudden, this. Is Amie trying to get out of the shot? Did Treadwell wait till his last tape to put her in his film? And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior. Amie Huguenard was screaming.

Doctor: All of a sudden, the intensity of Amie’s screaming reached a new height and became very, very loud. And she really now was screaming at the top of her lungs. These horrifying screams were punctuated by Timothy saying, “Go away. Leave me. Go away. Run! Get out of here.” In other words, Timothy is trying now to save Amie’s life because Timothy realizes, at this point in time during this attack, Timothy knows he’s gonna die. He knows that. My sense of listening to this tape is that the bear let go, probably let go of the top of his head where I found massive lacerations. That is tears of the scalp away from his head. Suddenly, though, the bear, after letting go, grabbed Timothy somewhere in the high leg area. And Timothy, appropriately in my opinion, as a human being, decided now is the time to save one life anyway. If his life was going away, if his life was fading away, now was the time for Amie to get out.

Herzog: Treadwell is gone. The argument how wrong or how right he was disappears into a distance into a fog. What remains is his footage. And while we watch the animals in their joys of being, in their grace and ferociousness, a thought becomes more and more clear. That it is not so much a look at wild nature as it is an insight into ourselves, our nature. And that, for me, beyond his mission, gives meaning to his life and to his death.[/b]

JINDABYNE
Directed by Ray Lawrence.

[b]Policeman: We don’t step over bodies to enjoy our leisure activities. A pack of bloody looloos. I’m ashamed of you. The whole town is ashamed of you.

Newspaper headline: MEN FISH OVER DEAD BODY

Stewart: I didn’t want to upset you. I thought it could wait until this morning.
Claire: What really happened out there?
Stewart: I told you. Nothing happened. We just got stuck is all. Jesus, I don’t know what the fuss is all about.
Claire: What if it had been Tommy in the water?
Stewart: But it wasn’t Tom! It was a stranger!
Claire: Last night…how could you have touched me like that after finding her?
Stewart: Claire, I am so exhausted…
Claire: She needed your help.
Stewart: She didn’t need my help…there was nothing anybody could do.

Detective [to Claire]: You see this cut around her ankle? Stewart did that when he tethered her to a tree. Too lazy to walk back up to the road. I think maybe they just got off on the whole thing.

Victum’s family on tv news broadcast: They’re animals! I don’t know how any civilized human being could do what they did. And I really wonder how differently they would have acted if she were white.
Stewart [watching it]: Here we go…

Claire: Just tell me…
Stewart: Tell you what?
Claire: How it felt…fishing with her tied up in the water. just tell me how did it make you feel.
Stewart [wearily]: Please leave this alone.
Claire [pleading]: I just want you to tell me.
Stewart [exploding out of his chair]: It felt good! Is that what do you want me to say? It was a beautiful day, the river was beautiful, I felt so fucking alive!! [turns and walks away] Jesus, if that’s a crime I don’t know it.
Claire: I hate the way you did that. I hate the way you end a conversation when you’ve had enough.
Stewart: Well, you know something, I have had enough.
Claire: I hate the way you guzzle your beer, you watch TV, you fuck like a robot!
Steve: I work like a fucking dog! That’s my life! The beer and the fuck are supposed to be a bonus!![/b]

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Written and directed by Woody Allen

Helen: John hates French politics.
John: They’ve certainly been no help to the United States.
Gil: Well, I mean, you can’t exactly blame them for not following us down that rabbit hole in Iraq, with the whole Bush…
Inez: Please, let’s not get into that discussion yet again.
Gil: Honey, honey, we’re not getting into…By the way, it’s fine for your father and I to disagree. That’s what a democracy is. Your father defends the right wing of the Republican Party, and I happen to think you’ve almost got to be, like, a demented lunatic to do that, but it’s like…
Inez: Okay, okay!
Gil: No, but it doesn’t mean we don’t respect each other’s views. Am I right?

The look on John’s face? Priceless.

[b]Gil: Yeah, actually, she’s right. I recently read a two-volume biography on Rodin, and Rose was definitely the wife, Camille the mistress.
Paul: You read that? Where did you read that?
Gil: Yeah, I just read it. I was surprised because I mistakenly thought, like you, that it was the other way around. It’s an easy mistake.
[after Paul is out of earshot]
Inez: When did you read the biography on Rodin?
Gil: Me?
Inez: Yeah.
Gil: Why would I read a biography on Rodin?

Adriana: I keep forget that you are a tourist.
Gil: That is putting it mildly.

Gil: That was Djuna Barnes? No wonder she wanted to lead!

Gil: 500 francs for a Matisse? You know, that seems fair. So, can I get 6 or 7?

Gil: It’s understated but elegant. That’s what you always say.
Helen: Cheap is cheap. That’s what I always say.

Inez: You always take the side of the help. That’s why Daddy says you’re a communist.

John: Say hello to Trotsky![/b]

THE ICE STORM
Durected by Ang Lee

[b]Wendy [Saying grace at Thanksgiving]: Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.
Ben: Jesus! Enough, alright?..Paul, roll? Can I have the gravy?

Janey: Ben, you’re boring me. I have a husband. I don’t have a need for another one.

Philip: Sometimes the shepherd needs the comfort of the sheep.
Elena: I’m going to try hard not to understand the implications of that.

Jim [Stopping by his son’s room, putting down his luggage]: Hey guys, I’m back!
Mikey: You were gone?

Mikey: Because of molecules we are connected to the outside world from our bodies. Like when you smell things, because when you smell a smell it’s not really a smell, it’s a part of the object that has come off of it, molecules. So when you smell something bad, it’s like in a way you’re eating it. This is why you should not really smell things, in the same way that you don’t eat everything in the world around you because as a smell, it gets inside of you. So the next time you go into the bathroom after someone else has been there, remember what kinds of molecules you are in fact eating.

Ben: Well, that’s the whole point of the holidays, Paul. So you and your sister can mope around the house, and your mother and I can wait on your hand and foot, while the two of you occasionally grunt for more food from behind the hair in your faces.[/b]

I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG
Directed by Philippe Claudel

[b]Juliette [to a mute grandfather who reads all day]: In prison, I’d put books by my pillow. Their presence reassured me. A sort of rampart against the world. A world without me.
[pause]
It got along fine without me.

Faure: Do you watch TV?
Juliette: No, it doesn’t interest me.
Faure: I thought all inmates watched it.
Juliette: Don’t believe all you hear.
Faure: I force myself. It’s become a sort of punishment.
Juliette: Punishment?
Faure [more to himself]: Everything they show is so ugly. A pile of trash they serve up every night. Every night, the pile gets a bit bigger.

Gerard [after a dinner party discussion of Rohmer]: Well, Juliette, what do you think? Juliette says nothing. Juliette observes us, judges us. Just who is Juliette? Mysterious Juliette. Etheral Juliette…Let’s find out why Lea hid her ravishing sister from us so long. Where was Juliette? What was Juliette up to? Was she far away? Mad at Lea? In a convent?
Luc: You’re a boor.
Gerard: In a Swiss convent? A bear handler in the circus? A Mossad secret agent? Amnesiac? Tell us, Juliette.
Lea: Shut up, Gerard!
Gerard: Let her speak. For once I have a real literary heroine. I want to hear her. I want the truth. Juliette disappears, reappears. Beautiful Juliette. Juliette! Juliette! Juliette!
Juliette: I was in prison for 15 years, for murder.
[The guests burst out laughing…they think she is joking]

Lea [teaching her class]: That’s only true of Raskolnikov. You can’t extend the notion of redemptive guilt to mankind, and say that every murder contains its own redemption.
Student: But the novelist always seeks to reconstruct the world. Dostoyevsky was no different.
Lea: The novel’s narration is impersonal and incomplete, as he refused to give one world view. He knows it’s mutiple, that intentions are multiple as are truths.
Student: It was written in first person.
Lea: So?
Student: Maybe his initial aim was to present a soul to give an intimate yet universal portrait of the murderer.
Lea [obviously thinking about Juliette, her sister]: Nonesense! Nonesense! What do you know anyway? What do you know about murderers? What did Dostoevsky know? What did Dostoevsky know about murder? Nothing! Nothing at all! Masterpieces are just hypotheses! Simplistic constructions. Nothing compared to real life! Stop treating books as bibles!!

Hospital director: Several colleagues have complained about your coldness, your standoffishness, your silence. It’s awkward, very awkward.
Juliette: So, am I fired?
Hospital director: No, no. I never said that. But, you are on trial…make an effort. That’s it, make an effort. Don’t be so withdrawn. Open up a little. Of course, I understand that it mustn’t be…well…I understand, but…
Juliette: What do you understand?

Lt. Segral: You report to me from now on. I’m replacing Captain Faure.
Juliette: So, he’s gone to the Orinoco?
Segral: If that’s what you call shooting yourself through the mouth…

Lea: We were there. Didn’t we matter?
Juliette: Do you think others matter then? That one cares what they think and do? You were all alive and well! You belong to the kind of world one comes to hate for the mere fact that they are there.
Lea: Why didn’t you tell us? Why? I was there! We could have helped you!
Juliette [in anguish]: Helped me in what way? What could you have done?
[pause]
When he screamed out in pain…when his limbs started writhing and when he was choking, when he was choking to death, what could you have done?! WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE?!
Later…
Juliette [who had been a doctor before going to prison]: From the beginning, I knew. From the first symptoms. I did the tests myself in the lab. And one night, Pierre [her son] took the paper to write a poem. He was so proud when he gave it back. Little fella…
[long pause]
He was so handsome, so happy. And I saw the little corpse he would become. I felt inside me a pain, like a big hand ripping out my stomach and heart, which kept rampaging inside me. So, I took him with me. They said I kidnapped him. It’s true, I kidnapped him. I kidnapped my own son. One night we had a big party at the Greeen House. By then, he could barely move. We sang and we laughed. I read him all his favorite stories. Then I laid him down. I said I loved him and was going to inject him. I stayed right up against him till morning.
[pause]
Nothing mattered anymore. I wanted to go to prison. Either way, I was guilty. I’d given birth to him and condemned him to die. And I had nothing to say. Explain. Explain what? To whom? Explaining is looking for excuses. Death has no excuses. The worst prison is the death of one’s child. You never get out of it.[/b]

THE MAN IN THE MOON
Directed by Robert Mulligan

[b]Dani: I’m afraid nothing’s ever gonna make sense again.
Maureen: Maybe life’s not supposed to make sense, Danielle
Dani: Doesn’t that scare you?
Maureen: Yes, it does.

Dani: I wanna know you.
Court: You do know me.
Dani: I wanna know you more… I wanna know you all I can.
Court: What do you wanna know?
Dani: I wanna know… your hopes.
Court: Well…I hope your boobs will get bigger and your butt will fill out.

Dani: When two people really care about each other, they try to understand things. Even when it’s hard.

Matthew: Where’s Dani?
Maureen: Off roaming around somewhere.
Matthew: She’s supposed to be here helping out. She’s getting too big to be running around wild.
Abigail: Used to be she was too little. Now she’s too big. I guess she passed just right while nobody was looking.

Matthew: You know, Dani, you and Maureen are going to be sisters for a long time.
Dani: Don’t ask me to forgive her.
Matthew: You’ve got a right to grieve Dani, you’ve got a right to be hurt. But if you get so wrapped up in your own pain that you can’t see anyone else’s then you might as well just dig yourself a hole and pull the dirt in on top of you because you’re never going to be much use to yourself…or anyone else.
Dani: You don’t know what she did.
Matthew: I know enough. I know hating your sister is not going to bring Court back. Maureen’s been good to you all your days, remember that. She’s hurting bad right now…hurting as much as you. Maybe more.[/b]