Knowledge and Wisdom Through Films

2010

In the late 1990s, I started renting and watching videos of the films listed on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies made through 1996.  I did this for such reasons as wanting to have seen what others consider to be the best of films, wanting to spend quality time relaxing (with good films), and wanting to better recognize good films.

I concluded fairly soon that these good films, which I was watching, had, for me, two essential qualities: entertaining and an important message to tell me, a message that I eventually concluded was one of knowledge and wisdom.

And also fairly soon, I started thinking about what else these films had in common.  Eventually, I concluded that the films, which I was watching, enjoying, and gaining a message from, did have characteristics that separated them from other films, but at the same time associated them with other films.  I concluded that the films that I was watching could be put into categories – categories that associated the films within the category and distinguished the films from those films that were in the other categories.

All those films, in any one category, were similar in that they were bringing me a message of knowledge and wisdom about a particular major theme or topic, that I could identify with, and that united the films within that category.

The nine categories (the major theme or topic) are:

Men-women relationships

Individuals with unique qualities

Family relationships

Macro themes

Impulse behavior-psychological traits

Religious studies and values

The human condition subjects

Sociology

Right versus wrong

For me, this was a useful discovery – that I could now, when these films were considered (e.g., discussed, analyzed, and experienced) collectively, within a category, deepened my knowledge and wisdom about the major theme and topic that characterizes the films.  This, I believe, leads to a valuable approach to this important body of art (all of these films), an approach that could be beneficial to the use of these films in providing knowledge and wisdom.

This analysis describes the characteristics that each category has, in terms that make the films connected within a category. The website also identifies the films that are placed in the categories. 

1.  Men-Women Relationships

These films are about how men and women interact.  They treat some aspect of men and women dealing with their relationships to one another.    A major component of this relationship is the sexual, and a lot of these films deal with sexual interactions between men and women.  A primary need of most, probably all, people’s lives is how to deal with the opposite sex, how to work out one’s relationship and relevance with the other gender.  These films explore such needs. (click here to read about these films)

 2.  Individuals With Unique Qualities

This category is the equivalent, if you will, of the biography, the autobiography, in the written word.  These films are focusing on characteristics of the person’s personality that makes the person successful.  The films bring to me the study of an individual, his (there are no females on the list, only because I have seen no biographical films of women) personality, which is unfolding before my eyes as I experience the film. 

Most of the films are about real people, people who actually lived, but not always.  However, those films that are not about an actual person are insightful, biographically, likely represent reality, and the films are, in effect, a biographical treatment.  View these films and you encounter traits of individuals that make those individuals and made them successful. (click here to read about these films)

3.  Family Relationships

There have been some very, very good and successful films that examine the dynamics, relationships, tensions, problems, dysfunctions, successes, and other attributes within the family.  (click here to read about these films)

4. Macro Themes

Films in this category transcend individual relationships, personal interactions.  These are films that deal with what I am calling macro themes – such themes as: relationships between countries; cultural differences, interactions, and attributes; organizational characteristics and management; and national trends, moods, and characterizations.  What one walks away with after viewing these films is some insight and understanding of “macro” topics – such topics as just identified. (click here to read about these films)

 5.  Impulse Behavior - Psychological Traits

These films are about individuals with very unusual and specific, unique human traits.  We see in these films those traits that propel and control the character before us to move, behave in a certain direction in their lives.  We see unfolding before us a story of individuals who have some impulsion; a rare trait usually falling in the outer ranges of the bell-shaped curve, beyond the normal behavior distribution portion for most us. The effects of these traits are examined in these films.  The films also examine the drives, reasons, causes that explain the characters.  For me the central theme, focus, message of these films is how some identifiable behavior, impulse-based, is played out in the story that is unfolding before us.  Here, in these films, we see a variety of effects caused by these unique impulses – some good, some bad. 

Films in this category are different from the biographical examinations in the “Individuals With Unique Qualities” category. This Impulse Behavior category tends to deal more with impulse, rather than determination, which the “Individuals With Unique Qualities” category deals with. (click here to read about these films)

6.  Religious Studies and Values

These films deal with values, values that predominate in religious institutions and communities.  Films in this category often deal with reactions to these values.  For me, these films deals with subjects and stories that work well in the context of contemplating God, in discussions of what God is relative to one’s self.  The films travel the territory in which God operates.  These films might deal with traditional religious subjects such as redemption, salvation, death, birth, faith, and hope.  The films might be developing the proper religious responses to the external about us, the internal within.  The films might be dealing with forces of good and evil in very specific, very religious ways.  We often see people in these films struggling with a situation, or situations, and through the film experience, we gain some insight into struggling, an important topic in religion. (click here to read about these films)

7.  The Human Condition Subjects

These films, for me, show something of the “human condition”.   They tend to show various choices and conditions that must be reacted to by ordinary folks, like most of us, as our ordinary lives are being lived out.  The films tend to show something about making choices, about making a life for one’s self.  The films tend to show influences and factors, present in one’s life, and are conditions effecting us, as our lives are lived out.  The films tend to cover periods of time over which we see how life is done in the characters and stories that we see before us, how they live their lives, in many different ways.

These are not extreme behavior traits being examined in these films.  The films tend to be more about normal, ordinary folks. Topics, subjects of interest are potentially infinite in number.  We are seeing choices, conditions that meaningfully impact a person’s life, a person’s condition of life, how that person has arrived, is arriving at the places in his or her life. (click here to read about these films)

8.  Sociology

These films deal with sociological factors - relations with and between communities, communal influences on people and on the story being told.  These films deal with personal interactions to a community, influences of the community on the film’s characters, community behavior, how segments of society fit in, try to stand out, do stand out.  The communities can be large, they can be small.  The communities can be ethnic, generational, functional, economic, and dysfunctional.  I walk a way from these films inspired, enlightened, informed, moved, saddened about some aspect of what characterizes a community and communal life. (click here to read about these films)

9.  Right Versus Wrong

These films deal, in a mythical approach, about right versus wrong, good versus bad.  They are stories with a central theme, the meaning of which, basically and in very general terms, is showing us good versus evil.  There is no other predominant competing theme in these films that argue that they might be in one of the other categories.  These films are the morality plays of old, these films are the mythical stories handled down over many centuries, within many cultures, which also, too, had as there themes - right versus wrong, good versus evil.

The audience associates with the right against the wrong, good against bad.  The good in these films can be less than saintly, but usually it becomes clear what the good is, and that the good has an overall desirable, audience-identifiable intent, and, compared to other forces in the story, there is no doubt where the good lies and the bad sits.  In these films, in someway, the right, the good is going up against the bad, the evil, and the wrong, and wins.

Just what the definition of right versus wrong, good versus evil is, in general is not lucid – it’s intangibly related to and within all of us.  A sense of where this center point of good versus evil lives within most of us, but not all, such that most of us will come to a general consensus as to what the good, the right is in these films, versus what the bad, the evil is.  These films reflect, through the makers of the films, what most of us believe represent the center of gravity for right versus wrong, good versus evil.  Where this consensus comes from that ties us, most of us together, is deep within and interwoven through our culture and environment.  We do not need to do extensive research (and, in fact, such research is probably not doable) in this area to determine where this good versus evil, right versus wrong center is - we find it here in these films, and because of this, these films, it seems to me, have an enormous impact on our culture.  

Many films (in fact, most films made fall into the category of right versus wrong) have this aspect of pitting good versus evil, but these films, identified here, are singled out. These films need elevation, because they, unlike the many other films that have no other message then, at best, one of good versus evil, have a special quality - a quality perhaps similar to the same attributes that allowed the mythical stories, referred to above, to last over centuries.  These elevated films, in this category, have very special effects, such that we walk away critically satisfied with the result.  Most films about good versus evil, right versus wrong, do not do this, do not do as the films identified here do. (click here to read about these films)

Epilogue (click here)