Comments on Three Movies

For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio to the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour Sharp pittances of years, Bitter contested farthings And coffers heaped with tears.

Emily Dickinson Compensation

The subject of this short essay is to analyze and contrast three of the movies that have been shown at the Cine Foro. These are: Incendies(directed by Dennis Villeneuve), Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring(directed by Kim Ki-Duk), and Another Earth(directed by Mike Cahill). A common theme in these three pictures is murder. In Incendies, the protagonist kills a leader of a religious fanatical group, in the Korean movie the priest apprentice kills his wife out of jealousy, and in the American movie the protagonist kills two people in a car accident.. In all the movies, the murder incidents totally change the lives of the murderers. In the first movie, Incendies, Nawal goes to jail where she is regularly raped by her son. In Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter then Spring. Detectives find him and take him back to jail and is not able to be free until many years have elapsed. In Another Planet the culprit goes to jail for four years. It is not the end of the suffering for any of the three people. For Nawal in Incendies her suffering was the knowledge of the shameful that had been committed in jail and of which her two children would be living reminders(although she would never have the courage to tell them the truth until she had died). For the monk , the suffering consisted in living alone in the lake and compensating for his mistakes by raising a young child in the same way he was raised by his mentor.

In Another Earth, Rhoda Williams tries to atone for her egregious action by helping the lone survivor of the traffic accident. She is constantly plagued by guilt, and finds a way finally to get out of her dilemma, which is by, in a deus ex machina way, entering a parallel world. But the truth is, she is looking for forgiveness, and the way to forgiveness is atonement. That is why she neglects herself, looks for a job which is socially degrading, and shuns the company of his family and friend. We might also note an interesting difference on the approach to suffering between the Korean and American movies. Just before the young monk is taken to prison, his teacher makes him write in Chinese characters the Heart Sutra(1). The heart sutra consists of many teachings, one of which is the Buddhist teaching the Four Noble Truths, which basically teach that the way out of suffering is detachment from the world, since, the root of suffering is attachment. The master monk also gives the child monk a lesson on the consequences of murder at the beginning of the movie. He said that, if he had killed the fish, the turtle or the snake, he would have to carry the stone that he, the master, had attached to him, forever in his heart(I cannot avoid the similarity to the scene in The Mission, directed by Roland Joffe, and in which Rodrigo Mendoza carries a heavy bundle of weapons over part of the Iguazu falls in order to expiate for the murder of his brother who he had killed in a duel. There is as well an uncanny similarity with Luke 23:34 in which Christ tells his Father: Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing )(2) .The monks warning thus stated that, once you commit murder, the repercussions of the murder never disappear. Thus, in both movies, the gravity of the act is shown as abominable act. The difference is in the approach. In the American movie is painful atonement(re: when Rhoda takes off her clothes in the snow , a form of flagellation(she lies Christ-like in the snow, with her hands bleeding)(3). In the Korean movie is the opportunity to reach wisdom which comes about as a consequence of understanding the nature of suffering and the nature of life, with its cycles. It is also interesting to note the similarities in the way the indian janitor in Another Earth , tries to commit suicide and the way the master monk commits suicide. Both try to destroy the sensorial apparatus. The master monk seals his ears, eyes, nose and mouth with paper in the same suicide ritual his apprentice performed and meditates as he is suffocated and burned to death. The janitor pours lye in his ears. Again, we are confronted with a difference in the approach to suffering between East and West. The western mind sees atonement as a way out of suffering. The eastern mind knows that the only way out of suffering is annihilation, since the senses will always be present to elicit the sense of guilt(we can understand the sense of guilt with the master monk, but we are not given enough information in the American movie to know what heinous act might have moved the janitor to act the way he did). Besides, the concept of suffering for the eastern mind in this example, is a deeper and more personal one. The suffering cannot be expiated or atoned for externally, since the heart has knowledge of the atrocity that has been committed(and the knowledge is independent of the magnitude of the crime as shown by the killing of the three animals in the Korean movie). A Christian or Muslim might believe he can erase the act by means of mental or physical flagellation, such as a Shiite would do with physical flagellation to atone for the murder of Prophet Ali, Mendoza would do with physical exertion for the murder of his brother, or Jimmy Swaggart would do with his emotional outburst of repentance for having dealt in prostitution. A Buddhist knows better. He understands the

fact that suffering comes from inside, when the mind realizes that the action has come as a result of the incorrect desires and impulses of the heart . How could any amount of physical or mental pain erase that? It would be like trying to cure a cancer with aspirin

Another topic which is touched upon in the three movies is love. At the end of Incendies, one of the characters mentions that the way to end the violence and hate(these two are, of course, the incendies the fires) in Palestine is love, and that love would eventually break the chain of hate that had led to so much war and murder. In Another Earth, Rhoda says that she sometimes thinks that she helping John out of love, or perhaps she is just trying to help herself (atoning for the murders). At the end, we never know if love really set the characters free. Nawal had to wait until her death to speak the truth, since when she was alive she was not able to muster the courage to tell her children who was actually their father. Rhoda could never be sure if what she was doing was being done out of love. Only the monk saw the irreversibility of action, the determinism of nature, and the interrelatedness of the universe. So, at the end, he went to the top of the mountain, with the statue of Kwan Yin(the Chinese homologue of Avalokitesvara, Indian Buddhism God of Compassion to look with detachment and wisdom on the lake, and thus, on his life. Perhaps, for the monks, it was really not a question of love, but of wisdom, and an understanding that keeps at the very top of their priorities the sanctity of life. Yes, we compensate, and pay a dear price..

1. The Heart Sutra(from Wikipedia) Various commentators divide this text into different numbers of sections. Briefly, the sutra describes the experi ence of liberation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitevara, as a result of insight gained while engaged in deep meditation to awaken the faculty of praja (wisdom). The insight refers to the fundamental emptiness of all phenomena, the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rpa), feeling (vedan), volitions (samskr), perceptions (saj), and consciousness (vijna).

The specific sequence of concepts listed in lines 12-20 ("...in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, ... no attainment and no non-attainment") is the same sequence used in the Sarvastivadin Samyukta Agama; this sequence differs in the texts of other sects. On this basis, Red Pine has argued that the Heart Stra is specifically a response to Sarvastivada teahings that dharmas are real. Lines 12-13 enumerate the five skandhas. Lines 14-15 list the twelve ayatanas or abodes. Line 16 makes a reference to the eighteen dhatus or elements of consciousness, using a conventional shorthand of naming only the first (eye) and last (conceptual consciousness) of the elements. Lines 17-18 assert the emptiness of the Twelve Nidnas, the traditional twelve links of dependent origination. Line 19 refers to the Four Noble Truths.

2.There is a similarity in the Christian and Buddhist perception of the human being. For both, natural state of the person is ignorance. Just as Christ mentions at the end of his wordly life that people do not understand what they are doing, the Buddhist believe that we live in avidya nonknowledge; that is, ignorance.

3.Self Flagellation.
A practice which exists in several of the major religions. In Catholicism Modern processions of hooded Flagellants are still a feature of various Mediterranean Catholic countries, mainly in Spain, Italy and some former colonies, usually every year during Lent. For example in the commune of Guardia Sanframondi in Campania, Italy, such parades are organized once every seven years. Some Christians in Philippines practice flagellation as a form of devout worship, sometimes in addition to selfcrucifixion(during the end of Lent season).(Wikipedia). In tne Shiite sect of Islamism (commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali), it is practiced during tbe Ahura festival. Also, in Taoism, there is the practice of whipping women (while spanking men) in a Taoist temple on the Chinese New Year.(Wikipedia)