Finding Completeness When We Are Incomplete

Originally published in December 2016. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY.

A REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE COLLATERAL BEAUTY

Film enthusiast Michael DeNobile discusses 2016 film Collateral Beauty and its themes of Love, Time, and Death.


Love. Time. Death. Ultimately, these three are everyone's hauntings as we shuffle through this mortal coil, a coil as fragile as dominoes: taking a painful amount of Time and Love--risking even Death--that by a mere act of the smallest bit of kinetic energy, and they all fall down, breaking and shattering on the ground.

But when they do all fall down, as they always do, how exactly do we find our way back? Michael DeNobile asks audiences, is it even finding our way back to the path or merely finding a way back to some path or another? In any case, in terms of Love, Time and Death, we seem to always settle for denial.

We hide behind our excuses, addictions, lies that become truths, and blame everyone else but ourselves, enslaving our very selves to a master of Self Pity. And not until we realize that only we--you yourself--possess the very key necessary to unshackle ourselves from these mortal coils by the very choices we make, we will constantly wait for Time to take care of our Loves, most likely until Death.

Michael DeNobile comments that maybe its in that time, when we wrestle with our demons or like Jacob the angel of God Himself, maybe that time isn't wasted. Maybe in that self exile in which we set ourselves apart from life is necessary for us to find our way home--when we grieve the loss of our loved ones, whether they have departed at the sunset or sunrise of their lives, when we grieve the loss of our dreams eviscerated from deep within our hearts, when we grieve the loss of our time pursuing good things while not reaching the pinnacle of worldly success.

And in that darkness, in that pain, through those tears, when the world is but a colorless grey, may we hold on to that collateral beauty, and finally exit the cave of Despair--that cave where we believe if we could only change Love, Time and Death--and see how in our incompleteness, in our brokenness, we are perfectly whole within the bosom of the Universe. We are not islands. We are connected within the deep.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm On My Way, Driving 90 Down These Country Lanes

Image
A REFLECTION ON SEASON 6 OF GAME OF THRONES Homecomings are bittersweet. While they bring us to a place of relative safety and security, they remind us of what we have lost and what we can never attain once again. Time is a commodity that, while gaining value over time, cannot be reimbursed once it is passed. Sometimes we can only go home for the weekend because we are not the person we once were. Our family just doesn't get it; we cannot be who we once were or we cannot be who they want us to be. And so, you must leave to set out on the next chapter. Other times, going home isn't a homecoming at all, empty of any sentiment, cold as dragonglass or Valyrian steel. Either way, home becomes a larger concept: home is where you love. In other words, that which you love the most becomes the place where home is. Recently, I was speaking with a Brazilian preacher from Rio de Janeiro who went back to Rio on a trip. He grew up there and had been living in the United States for a fe
Read more

The Banality of Evil: A Reflection on the Film Hannah Arendt (2012) and the Book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

Image
THE BANALITY OF EVIL: A REFLECTION ON THE FILM HANNAH AREDNT (2012) AND THE BOOK EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM (1963) Michael DeNobile reviews the 2012 film  Hannah Arendt  and Arendt's 1963 moral political thesis Eichmann in Jerusalem and their moral implications. I am, of course, as you know, a Jew. And I’ve been attacked for being a self-hating Jew who defends Nazis and scorns her own people. This is not an argument. That is a character assassination. I wrote no defense of Eichmann. But I did try to reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds. Trying to understand is not the same as forgiveness. I see it as my responsibility to understand. It is the responsibility of anyone who dares to put pen to paper on the subject. Since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself. In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality, that of being able to think. And c
Read more