Raging Bull

[roryk]

I just watched the movie 'Raging Bull' with Adam and Kelly-- it is a good, well-directed, moving movie, but it is also an extremely depressing and distressing movie. The central theme of the movie is regret, which is an emotion I have always felt more powerfully than others. The climax of the movie is when the regret finally strikes. The

Comments

[easy_wind]

It is hard enough to go through life maintaining a motivated, happy, positive outlook without voluntarily subjecting yourself to artificial difficulties and obstacles.

Pain and suffering are an integral part of the human experience - they simply cannot be ignored. Art often explores these feelings and emotions.

after the movie I felt unmotivated, depressed and hopeless

Perhaps this is the way you felt immediately after the movie. But the next day (or day after that), did you feel different at all? Did you feel inspired to avoid the fate that the protagonist encountered? Did you feel touched by the manner in which someone who loved the protagonist may have reached out to him before his eventual collapse?

However difficult it may have been to watch the movie, hopefully in some tangible way it enriched your outlook on life.

I hope you don't mind my comment in your livejournal, I've enjoyed several of your posts in the poker community and added you so that your posts appear on my "friends" page. I also live in the Boston area...

Take care,
-Marc

[roryk]

Death is an integral part of the human experience as well, but it would be idiotic to go seek it out-- it will come eventually. Pain and suffering will come in your life without having to go out and voluntarily subject yourself to them as well.

[easy_wind]

we agree that pain and suffering are an inevitability of life.

i have found that creative expressions (film, literature, music...) that address this inevitability have helped me cope with these undesirable situations and events when they've occurred.

even if it is just as simple as the comfort of knowing that someone else has felt this pain before - that it is not just unique to me.

just my 2 cents. my apologies if you feel like i'm polluting your journal.

-marc

[roryk]

Movies can be sad and also you can get something out of them. But there are some movies, like "Raging Bull", where the movie's point is to watch someone go through a bunch of misery and then die or otherwise be defeated. There are plenty of 'sad' movies which, at the end, have some nugget of wisdom or uplifting message or something that make it worth sitting through the misery. I'm talking about avoiding movies where you leave the movie theatre depressed and unhappy, having gained nothing from the experience.

See, the thing is I am generally a very happy person, albiet a very pessimistic, cynical, negative, happy person. But this movie, and there are a class of movies like it, bummed me out and I walked away with nothing from the experience. That is what I call a 'depressing' movie, where the object of the movie is to depress. "Leaving Las Vegas" is another good one. "Salo: 120 days of Sodom". Those sorts of movies. Why bother with them? I might as well turn on Execution TV or go download some beheading clips or something and watch those if I want to feel miserable.

Just because I disagree, doesn't mean you are polluting. My journal is full of self-absorbant crap anyway-- it is really hard to pollute a septic tank.

[boardingschool]

The movie probably caters to a different audience.

Case in point: last year, I watched a depressing movie called "Dancer in the Dark" with a friend of mine. He is significantly more empathic than I am (MBTI=ENFP). While I thought the movie was a chore to watch (as are most things that involve Bjork), he cried and laid pensively and somewhat blissfully on the bed afterward. It clearly satisfied something in him that, given his psychological make up, doesn't work for me.

Many people do not understand the draw to competitive gaming, but you do.

[tolaria]

ditto on the leaving las vegas thing. it was one of those that you're left sitting there afterwards saying to yourself (if not actually shouting at the screen), "What was the fucking point??"