The Last Samurai
Nov. 6th, 2005 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleAnother movie not titled for the main character. Maybe.
Much more story than visual. It makes me long for something. Simplicity? Clarity? After last night, perhaps just calm. Everything around me is so tumultuous, and I feel so stressed. In movies, even complicated things are made simple. Well, Western movies, at least.
It's interesting to see the Western version of Eastern philosophy after watching Eastern stories told in a Western process. I'll be the first one to admit that if you sat me down in the middle of a Chinese opera, I wouldn't have a clue what was going on even if it were translated. Nor, I am told, would I understand the audience. I have a book of Japanese stories that often make no sense, and have no form I recognise-- and I studied folklore in college. There's so much in this world I don't understand. I expect that I just have to accept I'll never understand the concept of dying with honour, and that I just have to go with it for the purpose of a story. That I can even encourage it within the confines of that story, even though I'd never, never take my own life. It's only recently I've learned, when hearing someone has died, to say "But they had a good life," rather than "How horrible that they're dead!"
Call no man happy until he is dead, Solon said. I ache sometimes at my inability to bring happiness to others. Sometimes, I simply ache that I can't understand what they need in the first place. More than once, I've said or thought, "But how can you be happy like that?" Again, perhaps I'll have to accept that, like hari kiri, other people's levels of contentment are something I can't understand. Or, in most cases, even affect.
Much more story than visual. It makes me long for something. Simplicity? Clarity? After last night, perhaps just calm. Everything around me is so tumultuous, and I feel so stressed. In movies, even complicated things are made simple. Well, Western movies, at least.
It's interesting to see the Western version of Eastern philosophy after watching Eastern stories told in a Western process. I'll be the first one to admit that if you sat me down in the middle of a Chinese opera, I wouldn't have a clue what was going on even if it were translated. Nor, I am told, would I understand the audience. I have a book of Japanese stories that often make no sense, and have no form I recognise-- and I studied folklore in college. There's so much in this world I don't understand. I expect that I just have to accept I'll never understand the concept of dying with honour, and that I just have to go with it for the purpose of a story. That I can even encourage it within the confines of that story, even though I'd never, never take my own life. It's only recently I've learned, when hearing someone has died, to say "But they had a good life," rather than "How horrible that they're dead!"
Call no man happy until he is dead, Solon said. I ache sometimes at my inability to bring happiness to others. Sometimes, I simply ache that I can't understand what they need in the first place. More than once, I've said or thought, "But how can you be happy like that?" Again, perhaps I'll have to accept that, like hari kiri, other people's levels of contentment are something I can't understand. Or, in most cases, even affect.