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Film & TV

Film & TV
Roo's avatar

Great question! For the deep answer, I'm gonna go with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Aside from being a mind-bending film in terms of it's story and chronology, it drives it's central thesis home so strongly that you can't help but absorb it. There are good and bad sides to everything and the two cannot be separated. Unless you embrace it all, you're doomed to live half a life or suffer terrible mental anguish.

On a more jovial note, I found This is Spinal Tap totally mind-blowing. The idea that you could mock some of the excesses and quirks of something you love without having to renounce all of it was really illuminating for me as a teenager. I loved classic rock and I would go to bat against anyone bashing Zeppelin or The Who. But there are parts of that culture which are weird (to say the least). Spinal Tap kind of made it okay to love the art but not always the artist - or to be a fan of a band without having to be a fan of everything they ever did. Despite it being a fairly old and well parodied film by the time I first saw it, it seemed really fresh and relevant to me.

And I'm going to put The Worst Person in the World on my 'to watch' list too!

Alex Sinclair's avatar

I came here to say Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind too! The first time I watched it, I enjoyed it but by no means loved it. Then at university I took a Philosophy of Film module which meant that I watched it another five times in quick succession between reading different papers on it. After every viewing I discovered something new that I liked about it that made me think. I actually largely chose that module because I thought it would be easy, and it turned out - thanks to Eternal Sunshine - to be one of the few modules that really made me change my mind.

Horror and Cats's avatar

12 Years a Slave.

I’d been to history class, read the books, seen the news, but something about film has always gotten things into my head much faster and clearer. The unflinching and unceremonious horror and cruelty shook me; made me furious.

It’s bleak, but I feel it opened my eyes a little more practically to the absurdity and ignorance of people assigning value to human life based on the melanin in that human’s skin. It also made me determined to be better, whatever that looked like and however the opportunity presented itself.

Sorry to be a mega bummer under your sweet thread idea lol

Makster's avatar

Fight Club - but I was a teenager and thankfully grew out of it

Wings's avatar

I would still recommend reading Fight Club (and its a brilliant movie). Its a fascinating and entertaining book and a lot of its message has been very misunderstood and interpretted to be the very thing it was satirising

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar

Shawshank Redemption - Before I was adopted, I was a tear-away, troublemaker, I watched that film and it scared the hell out of me, that I could end up in Prison.

Horror and Cats's avatar

My dad worked in corrections and would always tell me “if you go to prison, I will not visit you.”

Scared straight before I even DID anything lol.

Boomer's avatar

Thank You For Smoking. You don't have to be right so long as people believe the other person is wrong. To be clear, that's not the lesson I learned 😅

It changed how I participate in conversations, particularly when they're getting heated, as that approach can only be damaging.

Sturmer's avatar

Yuppie Mephistopheles =)

antibird's avatar

Lord of the Rings. So many life lessons to pick from, but:

  1. You can be at your happiest living a simple life and finding pride and happiness in the smallest things.

  2. Even the lowliest person can make a difference.

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