With a recent article in the La Times, Star Wars has gone political. George Lucas has attended a Capital Hill meeting for Democrats.
“Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas joined House Democratic leaders at a town hall meeting on Capitol Hill to roll out an “innovation agenda” that aims to prepare the next generation of technological entrepreneurs.
Star wars has always been in our collective unconsciousness since its inception after Lucas read Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. But has this movie entered the political arena?
Students asked Lucas what he meant by the line from “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith”: “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” Lucas answered that when Rome, Nazi Germany, and after the French Revolution, “In all of those countries, a democracy fell through nefarious manipulations behind the scenes, and the people didn’t seem to mind.” Is he pointing the finger at us, the american public with our crossed messages. Support the troops automatically means you are for war, in this mixed up country it is not sure. Also strikes the cord is Anakin’s line to Obi Won, :”If you are not for the Empire, you are against it!”
Further more Anakin is persuaded by the Emperor, vaguely disguised as a rising Senator much like the younger Bush Senior, to bring in a reign of terror and death to bring safety to the Republic. Another one nudge for the French Revolution and our modern Freedom Fry eaters on Capital Hill. For true Patriots like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and Thomas jefferson; today would be called terrorists. For indeed if they lost the war, history would of gone to the victors and they would of been called so.
In olden days we might walk away from a Myth like Star Wars or the Matrix, and know that some how it pertained to our real lives. But for too long now, media such as TV and the movies have been art for art sake. No longer do we hear the words of Pinnochio or Plato’s Cave and find our lives informed on a better way of life. Or do the papers offer a voice to the workers and the people. This has been replaced by the tabloids on cable and the check out line. Maybe we should go back to believing in our myths handed down for thousand of years throughout the world, and give incredulous glances to the tv news and newspapers. For Myths worked for us since we crawled out of the ocean, of our minds!
So what is this latest episode of the famous trilogy trying to tell us. Or how does Lucas emphasize this by going to Capital Hill. Watch the movie again and see what springs to mind!
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THE NOTEBOOK (2004) is the film version of the mega tear-jerker romance novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. Nick Cassevetes (son of John C.) directed his mom and a good cast including good old James Garner for this a truly romantic movie shot in incredibly beautiful locations in South Carolina.
Two kids (the handsome Ryan Gosling as NOAH and the radioactively attractive Rachel McAdams as ALLIE) from wrong ends of the social spectrum fall in love despite the vociferous objection of the girl’s super rich family.
The girl leaves town for Sarah Lawrence College while the boy continues to work at a lumberyard. Then there is WW2. The boy goes to fight in Europe. His letters (365 letters in 365 days) are conveniently hidden from ALLIE by her manipulative mother. So she decides to marry the handsome boy of the cotton king of south, a boy she meets as a wounded soldier when she was volunteering as a nurse to help the ailing vets in hospital.
After coming back home, NOAH refuses to quit dreaming about ALLIE and builds the home he promised long time ago to ALLIE as their future home.
Just before the wedding, ALLIE sees the house and a bearded and older NOAH posing in front of it in her local paper — and she just flat passes out in front of a dozen ooohing and aaaahing southern dames while trying out her spectacular wedding gown!
Then she visits NOAH and after a few more twists (will she? won’t she?), she decides to forgo the millions of the cotton king and live her life with the working class NOAH as his wife.
Now, this story is told by a much older NOAH in a nursing home to his wife ALLIE, the same kids just grown very old, in an attempt to beat ALLIE’s dementia by reading her the NOTEBOOK she kept for all those years — the very story of their love that is told in long flashbacks.
At the end, despite some lapses, she manages to regain her memory and the movie ends with a Mother of All Tear Jerkers final scene. If you don’t cry during this movie, just forget it. You never will.
What a relief in this day and age of terrorism and scandals and hurricanes and global warming to watch a story of pure childish love, holding over decades despite all ods, sticking around for ages and for a lifetime. It would be unbearable to watch this kind of a movie everyday.
I still need my CHINATOWN, BLOOD SIMPLE by Coen Brothers, for example, or CRASH by Paul Haggis. But I’m also very glad that unabashedly romantic writers like Nicholas Sparks do exist. We are all fortunate that he is not selling pharmaceuticals for a living anymore. We are richer for it.
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