Movies

The movies listed below, I use as investigative tools. Movies are the modern-day equivalent of myths told around the fire. Myths can be use simply as sources of entertainment. Myths can be used to understand or motivate your life. What is happening to the main character in the myth is a reflection of what is or could happen in your life. Not the dramatic specifics (not many of us are studying to be an assassin, for instance) but the general principles. Some questions are after the story line.

The 13th Warrior (1999)

Arab courtier Ahmad Ibn Fadlan is sent to the barbaric north as an emissary, because he fell in love with the wrong woman. In AD 922, this usually meant goodbye forever. Shortly after their party runs into exploring Vikings and befriends them, a young boy reaches the camp to call the warriors home: The Wendol, creatures of the Mist, have started attacking their homeland, killing and eating everyone in their way. The Viking’s oracle forces a thirteenth warrior to accompany the Vikings, but it must not be a man from the north. Ibn is selected, much to his dismay. At first he does not feel comfortable with these barbaric men of the north, but he learns that, even amongst the barbarians of the north, there is honor, courage, and beauty.

1. Who are your barbarians?

2. What do they do or believe that is so barbaric?

3. How do your values bloom in their culture?

4. What do they have that the pre-exposure-to-barbarians you could not have?

4. What can you learn from them?

5. What would you want to bring from their culture to your life?

300 (2006)

King Leonidas and a force of 300 men fight the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

"Arcadian, I've fought countless times, yet I've never met an adversary who could offer me what we Spartans call 'A Beautiful Death.' I can only hope, with all the world's warriors gathered against us, there might be one down there who's up to the task."

About Schmidt (2002) 

Warren Schmidt is forced to deal with an ambiguous future as he enters retirement. Soon after, his wife passes away and he must come to terms with his daughter's marriage to a man he does not care for and the failure that his life has become.

1. What does your career-wheel look like?

2. What do “they” tell you is important to achieve in your life?

3. Who is benefitting from your being alive?

4. What is happening now that, in 20 years, you will find incredulous that you     had bought into the story line that thoroughly.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) 

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca empire, a Spanish expedition leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon river in search of gold and wealth. Soon, they come across great difficulties and Don Aguirres, a ruthless man who cares only about riches, becomes their leader. But will his quest lead them to "the golden city", or to certain destruction?

1. What are you driven by?

2. What discomforts are you willing to endure to get to what you want?

3. Where does you monomania show up?

4. How do you get off your monomaniacal train?

Apocalypse Now (1979) 

It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him. Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost...

1. What is your war?

2. What are you fighting for?

3. Who are you fighting?

4. Why are you fighting conventionally?

5. What would fighting unconventionally look like?

6. What is your “pile of children’s arms”?

7. What is the beauty of your “pile of children’s arms”?

Avatar (2009) 

When his brother is killed in a robbery, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge's intentions of driving off the native humanoid "Na'vi" in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na'vi people with the use of an "avatar" identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand - and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.

1. What injury is preventing you from fully participating?

2. What would you betray to have your injury healed?

3. What would your sky-riding look like?

4. If you are now an avatar, what do you really look like?

5. What are the facts that this avatar is ignorant of?

Backtrack (also “Catchfire”) (Director’s Cut) (1990) 

An artist (Foster) witnesses a Mafia hit and calls the police. At the police station she realizes that the Mafia has a man in the force, so she runs. Trailed by the police, who need her testimony, and a hitman (Hopper) hired by the Mafia, she goes to New Mexico, where eventually she meets the hitman, who has become infatuated after studying her art and life to prepare for the hit.

1. What would the new you look like?

2. What would the new you do?

3. What from your old life, could you not give up?

4. Who is stalking you? They are. Really.

5. What don’t you want them to see?

6. What would they ask you to put on?

7. What would they ask you to be?

8. Who longs to have no choice in exposing themself?

Brazil (1985) 

Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle, Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and both Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.

1. What are the needless convolutions in your life?

2. How to straighten them?

3. What are they asking/demanding of you?

4. What are the things that make no sense to you but everyone else accepts?

Brick (2005) 

The lonely teenager Brendan finds his former girlfriend Emily dead in the entrance of a tunnel of sewage and recalls her phone call two days ago, when she said to him that she was in trouble. Brendan, who still loved Emily, met bad elements of his high-school trying to contact her, and when he succeeded, she told him that she was OK. He hides her body in the tunnel and decides to investigate the meaning and connection of four words, including "brick" and "pin", that Emily told him to find who killed her. Using the support of his nerd friend Brain, he successively meets the small-time drug dealers Kara, Dode, Brad Bramish, Laura and Tugger, to reach the powerful, teenage drug dealer, The Pin. Slowly, Brendan unravels the motives why Emily was killed and plots a revenge.

1. Which Shakespearean play is your life?

2. Who or what would you go to war for?

3. How would you wage war?

Circle of Iron (1978) 

A young martial artist, Cord the Seeker, competes for and loses the right to go on a quest for the Book of All Knowlege held by a wizard named Zetan, but he goes along the path to seek Zetan anyway. Along the way, he meets strange tests and challenges by enemies and allies - often having difficulty determining which is which.

1. What answer(s) so you want so badly to fight for? To kill for? To die for?

2. What do your chattering monkeys distract you with?

3. What flowers have you crushed?

4. What beauty have you enslaved yourself to?

5. What answer(s) does someone else have?

Contact (1997)

Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway is using radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial life. Ellie and her colleagues hear something originating from the vicinity of the star Vega, that turns out to be an alien code. The code is for the construction of a machine that, supposedly, will allow for contact with the aliens.

1. What do you believe/know, despite strong disapproval?

2. How does your faith guide you?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

1. How are you trapped?

2. What was taken away?

3. What is your left eye?

4. How do you let them know that you’re still in there?

5. From in there, what do you want them to know?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 

A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

1. What do you wish to forget?

2. How did it make you who you are?

3. What would change about you if you forgot?

4. How does that which you want to forget positively affect you?

eXistenZ (1999)

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

1. What do the rules you’re searching make understandable?

2. What games are you playing that you believe are real?

3. Does addressing them by name really help?

4. What does your character have to say, no matter what you think or feel?

5. What would you like to do, if it was your character’s fault?

Fearless (2006)

Martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia became the most famous fighter in all of China at the turn of the 20th Century. Huo faced personal tragedy but ultimately fought his way out of darkness and into history, defining the true spirit of martial arts. His self-discovery, and the choices he made, inspired his nation. The son of a great fighter who did not wish for his child to follow in his footsteps, the bullied Huo Yuanjia resolves to teach himself how to fight - and win. Years of training enable him to ace match after match in his home region of Tianjin. But as his fame as a martial arts master grows, so does his pride. After an ill-advised fight leads to another master's death, members of Huo's family are slain in revenge. Grieving and ashamed, Huo wanders the country in shock. Near death, he is rescued by women from an idyllic village, and is offered simple kindness and generosity that help him heal and regain his equilibrium over a period of several years...

1. What are you pride-full of?

2. What has this pride blinded you to?

3. What wound does the pride cover?

4. What would it take for your wound to heal?

5. What is it that you push to accomplish?

Fight Club (1999) 

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.

1. Describe your Tyler Durden.

2. How much of your life is the result of his actions?

3. What is he trying to accomplish?

3. What smaller, less-destabilizing aspects can you adopt?

The Graduate (1967) 

Ben has recently graduated college, with his parents now expecting great things from him. At his "Homecoming" party, Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner, has Ben drive her home, which leads to an affair between the two. The affair eventually ends, but comes back to haunt him when he finds himself falling for Elaine, Mrs. Robinson's daughter.

1. What is your plastics? 

2. What do they want you to buy into?

3. What is the success you’ve bought into?

4. Who are you going to rescue?

5. What does rescuing do?

Groundhog Day (1993) 

A weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing EVERY day. 

1. How will you do it different this time?

2. If there were no long-term consequences, what dark would you do?

3. If there were no long-term consequences, what light would you do?

4. Define, “long-term consequences.” 

5. Where are your recurring patterns, pretending that this is exactly the same as     it was before?

6. What would be the last dark thing, the thing that you would hit bottom with,     before starting your climb to the light?

7. How far down are you now?

Harvey (1950)

Elwood P. Dowd makes friends with a pooka (sorta like a rabbit but over six feet tall) named Harvey that only he sees. After his sister tries to commit him to a mental institution, a comedy of errors ensues. Elwood and Harvey become the catalysts for many, many things.

1. Are you trying to be smart or trying to be pleasant?

2. When compared to a pooka, how special are your companions?

3. What does the painting of your life show?

4. What is the evidence of who you prefer?

Heathers (1989) 

Veronica mingles with Heather I, II and III to be as popular as them, even though she hates them. She hates them enough to wish they were dead, but she would never want to be their cause of death though. When she starts dating Jason Dean, however, she finds herself involved in the murdering of most of her enemies, covered up as suicides.

1. Who do you want, even while hating it?

2. What of yourself are you willing to sell to buy it?

3. How will it torture you?

3. What does your Jason look like?

4. What would Jason have you do?

5. Where wouldn’t you let Jason lead you?

Hero (2002)

In ancient China, before the reign of the first emperor, warring factions throughout the Six Kingdoms plot to assassinate the most powerful ruler, Qin. When a minor official defeats Qin's three principal enemies, he is summoned to the palace to tell Qin the story of his surprising victory.

1. Your life is a plan for one specific end. What is it?

2. Who do you have to enlist to make it work?

3. What will they have to do?

4. What is it that you are so damn good at?

5. What higher good would cause you to walk away from your personal plan?

The House of Flying Daggers (2004) 

During the reign of the Tang dynasty in China, a secret organization called "The House of the Flying Daggers" rises and opposes the government. A police officer called Leo sends officer Jin to investigate a young dancer named Mei, claiming that she has ties to the "Flying Daggers". Leo arrests Mei, only to have Jin breaking her free in a plot to gain her trust and lead the police to the new leader of the secret organization. But things are far more complicated than they seem...

1. What would it have to be, to offer up your life as ransom?

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) 

Long ago up North on the Island of Berk, the young Viking, Hiccup, wants to join his town's fight against the dragons that continually raid their town. However, his macho father and village leader, Stoik the Vast, will not allow his small, clumsy, but inventive son to do so. Regardless, Hiccup ventures out into battle and downs a mysterious Night Fury dragon with his invention, but can't bring himself to kill it. Instead, Hiccup and the dragon, whom he dubs Toothless, begin a friendship that would open up both their worlds as the observant boy learns that his people have misjudged the species. But even as the two each take flight in their own way, they find that they must fight the destructive ignorance plaguing their world.

1. What are your dragons?

2. How are they a force of destruction?

3. What would happen if you didn’t interpret them as opponents?

4. How could you get to know more about them?

5. What would training them look like?

6. What would be the benefit from having trained your dragons? 

Inception (2010) 

Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible-inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming.

1. What is the real that you are ignoring?

2. Where is your top?

3. How long are you going to stay asleep?

Ink (2009)

As the light fades and the city goes to sleep, two forces emerge. They are invisible except for the power they exert over us in our sleep, battling for our souls through dreams. One force delivers hope and strength through good dreams; the other infuses the subconscious with desperation through nightmares. John (Chris Kelly) and Emma (Quinn Hunchar), Father and Daughter are wrenched into this fantastical dream world battle, forced to fight for John's soul and to save Emma from an eternal nightmare. Separate in their journey, they encounter unusual characters that exist only in their subconscious. Or do they? Ink is a high-concept visual thriller that weaves seamlessly between the conscious and the subconscious.

1. What events in your life could use a little, “1, 2, 3, 4”?

2. What are you dreaming into real?

3. Who’s soul are you willing to sell?

4. For what?

Kill Bill (Vols. I and II) (2003, 2004) 

The lead character, called 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, lead by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, and on the day of their wedding was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill (with the assistance of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad). Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby.

1. What were you trained to do?

2. How to escape the consequences of your training? 

3. Who will you have to kill to be free?

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

The carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, tormented by the temptations of demons, the guilt of making crosses for the Romans, pity for men and the world, and the constant call of God, sets out to find what God wills for him. As his mission nears fulfillment, he must face the greatest temptation: the normal life of a good man. 

1. What are you tempted by?

2. If you opened your mouth and let God talk, what would be said?

3. What is your mission?

4. What is tempting your from that path?

5. What does your mission cost you, in normal, human terms?

6. What must happen, no matter what you feel about it, for your mission to succeed?

Lilo and Stitch (2002)

A Hawaiian girl adopts an unusual pet who is actually an notorious extra-terrestrial fugitive from the law.

1. How are you a monster?

2. What was missing such that you became a monster?

3. What would have to be offered for you to consider becoming ohana?

4. What does ohana mean to you?

The Matrix (1999) 

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a malevolent hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines which live off of their body heat and imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents, super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion.

1. What guidance promptings are you ignoring?

2. What is the splinter in your mind’s eye?

3. What is the kung fu that you claim to know?

4. How would you show someone that you know your kung fu?

5. Where is your dojo?

6. How far are you willing to fall the first time?

7. What is it going to take for you to believe in your one-ness?

8. What is your woman-in-the-red-dress?

9. What do you have to believe to take your next step in your one-ness?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) 

John and Jane Smith are a normal married couple, living a normal life in a normal suburb, working normal jobs... well, if you can call secretly being assassins, "normal". But neither Jane nor John knows about each other’s secret, until they are surprised to find each other as targets! But on their quest to kill each other, they learn a lot more about each other than they ever did in five (or six) years of marriage.

1. What is the normalcy of your relationship?

2. What is the secret that you are not sharing with your partner?

3. Why do you believe that you shouldn’t tell them?

4. Who are those who would wish your secret life terminated? Why?

Mysterious Skin (2004) 

A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

1. What are the signs that you may not remember something potent?

Solaris (1972) 

The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret. After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base, the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also encounters his wife who has been dead for seven years, he begins to appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.

1. What would show up for you?

2. What would you do with it?

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) 

In the midst of the Korean wilderness, a Buddhist master patiently raises a young boy to grow up in wisdom and compassion, through experience and endless exercises. Once the pupil discovers his sexual lust, he seems lost to contemplative life and follows his first love, but soon fails to adapt to the modern world, gets in jail for a crime of passion and returns to the master in search of spiritual redemption and reconciliation with karma, at a high price of physical catharsis.

1. What is it that you have to learn, out there, before you come back?

2. What is the price for being out there?

3. What is the price for being in here?

4. Where is the stillness?

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet, teams up with other rebels, and tries to save Princess Leia from the evil clutches of Darth Vader.

1. What does your Hero’s Journey look like?

2. What would you rather rely on than the force?

3. What distractions do you have to turn away from in order to feel the force?

4. Who or what is your Darth Vader? Is it really your mother/father dressed up in some costume? Probably.

5. Who do you have to belong with in order rise to your truth?

6. How does the Dark Side sing to you?

7. How does the Light Side sing to you?

Thelma and Louise (1991)

Louise is working in a fast food restaurant as a waitress and has some problems with her friend Jimmy, who, as a musician, is always on the road. Thelma is married to Darryl , who likes his wife to stay quiet in the kitchen so that he can watch football on TV. One day they decide to break out of their normal life and jump in the car and hit the road. Their journey, however, turns into a flight when Louise kills a man who threatens to rape Thelma. They decide to go to Mexico, but soon they are being hunted by the police.

1. How bad does it have to get for you to pick up and leave?

2. What is the cultural vise that is slowly squeezing the life out of you?

3. What is the name of the fear that has you living your life this way?

4. What does freedom mean to you?

5. What will you have to give up to be free?

The Truman Show (1998) 

In this movie, Truman is a man whose life is a fake one... The place he lives is in fact a big studio with hidden cameras everywhere, and all his friends and people around him, are actors who play their roles in the most popular TV-series in the world: The Truman Show. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited. Until one day... he finds out everything.

1. How does it feel, knowing that they are watching everything? Everything.

2. How does it feel, knowing that they are all actors, being paid? For     everything.

3. What real thing do you miss?

4. Where are the edges of your world?

V for Vendetta (2006) 

The futuristic tale unfolds in a Great Britain that's a fascist state. A freedom fighter known as V uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressive society. He rescues a young woman from the secret police, and she becomes his unlikely ally.

1. What is your “being taken out behind the shed and shot”? 

2. What is worth “dying” for?

3. What have they taken away from you?

4. How did they/you rationalize having it taken away?

5. How are you going to take it back?

Wanted (2008) 

A young man finds out his long lost father is an assassin. When his father is murdered, the son is recruited into his father's old organization and trained by a man named Sloan to follow in his dad's footsteps.

1. What are the symptoms in your life that you try to make go away (medicate)?

2. What is the symbolism of the chair?

3. What is a chair that you allow yourself to be tied into and be pounded?

4. What are the close-up tools of your life that you are afraid to use?

5. What is your healing bath?

6. What to concentrate on, blocking out all irrelevant stimuli?

7. What do you believe can’t be curved?