After watching a movie, most of us start to see, understand and even look at things differently compared to before and after the movie. The emotions can be intense and strong. One film I saw recently had this effect on me, The Red Turtle, by Studio Ghibli. I watched it over a weekend and the emotional impact of watching it stayed with me for days. It had a good effect on my emotional perspective as well.
The story is an animated children’s story that is sort of a fairy tale, in the traditional Japanese sense. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humans have lost their ability to create the seas and have lost their land to seas, seas that rise up and overwhelm their villages. The characters are seeing these changes but have no connection with the people in the village below them. One boy tries to teach a young girl how to build a raft but the water crashes in and kills her and he gets thrown into the water. He becomes an orphan and travels across the ocean to a new place. There he meets new people and teaches them how to make the raft so that they can escape to a new place. The story teaches something about compassion and empathy.
I won’t give you the entire story because that would ruin it. But I think that most people will see it the way I did – how it changes your perspective on everything. You feel empathy for those left behind in the village, the way the old man (in the village) was trying to teach the girl the way the world works, the way he was trying to protect her, and then she was killed.
A lot of people might see the story as sad or tragic, but I don’t. I had a similar emotional experience to watching Star Wars. I felt sadness, but it was mixed with anger. How was it possible that humans lost their ability to make the sea go away? What were the leaders of humanity thinking, sacrificing their people for their own selfish interests? I started to understand where the anger came from in Star Wars. I understood why Han had the anger he had and why the Empire was formed.
At the end of the movie, I couldn’t help thinking about my own feelings and what I would feel if it were me who got killed in the village. How would I react to my death? Would I go peacefully into the water, without fear or hate? Would I have the courage to try and teach others how to survive, or would I just be afraid that the water would rise up and drown me, and keep the village from rising up as well? What would change?
As a result of watching a good movie, one starts to question such questions that need to be filled. How would things work if that character was themselves, how would it be different if that character was living their own life? We gain them by gaining a new perspective, perhaps by looking narrower or starting to look from a wider window.