Buddhism and Film
by Danny Fisher
[This post has been expanded as of 6.3.2007.]
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that its author has a keen interest in films and film studies. I’ve always been interested in movies, ever since I was a little boy. I’m very affected by them. I learn from them. In rare cases, my Buddhist practice is deepened because of them. You might even say that I came to Buddhism through films. Works like Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, and Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day compelled me into repeated viewings. They caused me to ask questions that stayed with me. They offered insights that haunted me. They provided images that inspired me.
These days, I see fewer films than when I was growing up, but am still interested in them. I suppose it would even be fair to say that one of my “research interests” is the presence of Buddhist themes in popular world cinema. By this, I don’t necessarily mean that I am only interested in movies about Buddhism or Buddhists, such as Yong-Kyun Bae’s Dharmaga Tongjoguro Kan Kkadalgun, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche’s Phörpa, Doris Dörrie’s Erleuchtung Garantiert, Kim Ki-Duk’s Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom, or Marc Rosenbush’s upcoming Zen Noir. I am interested in these films, but not these films alone.
I am also quite interested in movies that are not explictely concerned with Buddhism or Buddhists, and yet seem to me to convey something of Buddhist wisdom. This could, of course, be completely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers. Indeed, as John Lyden has written:
- The study of film from a religious studies vantage point has produced a broad consensus. Films include religious symbolism, consciously or unconsciously, and films may project a world-view which functions much like a religion in our culture [emphasis added].
I can certainly think of a number of films that include symbolism relevant to Buddhists, as well as ones that present an ostensibly Buddhist world-view. Indeed, I think Buddhist ideas have been exceedingly well articulated in popular world cinema, consciously or unconsciously.
Let’s consider the example of the noble truth of dukkha. In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the sutta in which we find the Buddha “setting into motion the wheel of Dhamma,” dukkha is described in the following way:
- The Noble Truth of Suffering (dukkha), monks, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering, not to receive what one desires is suffering — in brief the five aggregates subject to grasping are suffering.
To understand why birth, agin, sickness, and death are dukkha, I think we do well to understand the meaning word: dukkha literally means “bad axle-hole,” like on wagon wheel. This in mind, we could say that birth, age, sickness, and death create instability for living beings, just as a “bad axle-hole” prevents the wagon ride from being a smooth one. Birth, age, sickness, and death are dukkha because they are realities that portend, as my friend Judith Simmer-Brown says, “a bumpy ride.”
Similarly, “the three associations”–association with the upleasant, disassociation from the pleasant, and not getting what we want–point to other realities that suggest an off-kilter journey through life. In our association with the unpleasant, we often feel cornered by undesirable, uncontrollable circumstances. In our disassociation from the pleasant, we may feel like we can’t have what we want and we’re stuck with what we don’t want. In not getting what we want, we might feel like happiness is completely out of our reach. (In one brilliant teaching, the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, suggested a fourth association: getting what we do want. He asked his students to consider how often getting what they wanted didn’t fulfill their their fantasies quite the way they had fantasized.)
The roots of all of this, “in short,” are “the five aggregates subject to grasping,” the five skandhas. Form, feeling, perception, mental formation, and consciousness, the five constituent parts of our momentary experience, perpetuate dukkha when we mistakenly cling to them as a solid “self.”
With such an understanding of dukkha, it seems to me that various aspects of this noble truth are captured in a huge range of motion pictures–Erich von Stroheim’s Greed, Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, Ingmar Bergman’s Smultronstället, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Kurosawa’s Ran, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, Ethan and Joel Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There, Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt all come to mind.
It also seems to me that certain types of movies are fertile ground for variations on particular themes. I think an excellent case could be made for the Buddhist notion of karma as a perennially popular theme in the American crime genre—from Mervyn LeRoy’s early classic Little Caesar to wunderkind Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Karma can be defined as (1) cetana—intention, motivation, “volition” (according to Rewatta Dhamma), or “directionality” (according to Herbert V. Guenther)—and (2) cetana-krta—the act that follows from the intention. As Santikaro Bhikkhu so expertly puts it, the “message” of karma in the Buddhist tradition is as follows:
- …our actions have consequences (vipāka); we choose our actions due to motivation (cetana); the character of the motivation determines the character of the results or consequences; we are responsible for our actions and their consequences; [and] our choices subjectively determine our world.
We should be careful not to misunderstand karma as fatalistic. Karma is fatalistic only in the sense that “bad karma” will continue until we bring a more mindful awareness into our lives, cutting through the passion, aggression, and ignorance that perpetuates the cycle of suffering and bad karma. As the Buddha says in the Upajjhatthana Sutta:
- [When those] who conduct themselves in a bad way [in body, speech, and mind]…reflect on [the] fact [that they are the owers of their actions, heir to their actions, born of their actions, related through their actions, and have their actions as their arbitrator], that bad conduct in body, speech, and mind will either be entirely abandoned or grow weaker…
Because American crime films generally feature characters with intentions that result in actions with negative consequences for themselves and the other characters, most of them tend to get me thinking about karma. My most favorite example, though, is Michael Curtiz’s masterfully acted, impressively stylized melodrama Angels with Dirty Faces.
[SPOILERS AHEAD!] Angels with Dirty Faces tells the story of Rocky Sullivan (played by James Cagney) and Jerry Connelly (Pat O’Brien), teenage friends who grow up into very different adult roles after running afoul of the law in their youth. Rocky is institutionalized and becomes a career criminal, while Jerry makes good and becomes a Catholic priest who ministers to wayward boys. The friendship is tested when Rocky takes some of Jerry’s flock under his wing. Alarmed to see the boys sinking deeper into juvenile deliquency because of Rocky’s example, Jerry launches a citywide crack-down on crime. Upon discovering that two of his fellow hoods (Humphrey Bogart and George Bancroft) plan to murder the troublesome Jerry, Rocky kills them and a bloody police chase ensues. When the smoke clears, Rocky is sentenced to death. Jerry realizes that Rocky’s inevitably defiant demise will cement his effect on the boys, and he implores him to feign a coward’s death for their sakes. Rocky refuses at first, but just as he is brought to the electric chair, he starts to sob and beg for his life. Disenchanted with their former hero, the boys follow Jerry back to the church.
Obviously, Angels with Dirty Faces‘ story and the workings of its moral universe are rife with implications for those of us inclined to put our faith in the law of karma. What’s most interesting to me, though, is the ending. In his walk to the gallows, Rocky has time to reflect on his karma, and his intention and actions change. It is a perfect cinematic metaphor for the Buddha’s teaching in the Ambalatthika-rāhulovāda Sutta:
- Whenever you want to perform [an act of body, speech, or mind], you should reflect on it: ‘This [act] I want to perform — would it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Is it an unskillful [act], with painful consequences, painful results?’ If, on reflection, you know that it would lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both; it would be an unskillful [act] with painful consequences, painful results, then any [act] of that sort is absolutely unfit for you to do. But if on reflection you know that it would not cause affliction… it would be a skillful [action] with happy consequences, happy results, then any [act] of that sort is fit for you to do.
I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Curtiz and the other filmmakers behind Angels with Dirty Faces weren’t thinking about Buddhism when they put their movie together. Nonetheless, there’s a lot there to consider from a Buddhist perspective. As I search for Buddhist themes in popular world cinema, though, it is certainly much more exciting for me when the filmmakers obviously know a thing or two about Buddhism, if for no other reason than because I feel more inclined to go a little deeper with my analysis (read: “geek out”).
Three good examples of this sort of thing are the films in Andy and Larry Wachowski’s Matrix trilogy. Part science fiction, part film noir, part martial arts ballet, part super-hero comic, part art house, and part grind house, with humor and romance to spare, the series also winkingly acknowledges Kant, the Bible, feminism, Alice in Wonderland, Philip K. Dick, the Upanishads, Baudrillard, Greek mythology, Descartes, William Gibson, and, yes, Buddhism (among many other things) in its carefully textured philosophical ambitions.
When I first saw the first film in the series, 1999′s The Matrix, I had the same reaction as James L. Ford, who finds the parallels between the science fiction of the film and the insights of the Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhism especially striking. Going a good bit further with Ford’s thesis, I find that the movie functions very well as a cinematic parable for the Yogācāra’s trisvabhāva, or “three-nature theory” of how reality is perceived.
In his important article “The Trisvabhāva Doctrine in India & China: A Study of Three Exegetical Models,” Alan Sponberg argues that the three-nature theory of reality has been most popularly understood in Western scholarship as it was generally presented in the Yogācāra tradition of East Asia: as a progressive model for delineating our cognitive experience. This understanding of trisvabhāva teaches that we have first a “superficial” understanding of reality “at which, in our delusion, we cling to our ‘self’ and to ‘things’ as truly existing.” This is the parikalpita, or “imaginary” nature of conceptualization. Once we realize the inherently “imaginary” quality of the parikalpita, we are at the second level of understanding, the paratantra. In the paratantra, we see that “these ‘things-in-themselves’ are actually reifications of phenomenal experience.” Upon going deeper and seeing the “[mistake of] ‘self’ and ‘things’”–having realized śūnyatā (emptiness) completely– we are at the ultimate level of our understanding of reality, the parinispanna. The parinispanna is the perfected or absolute nature, in which that which is ultimately “real” is completely apparent. [1]
But, as Sponberg points out, the classical Indian tradition of the Yogācāra understands trisvabhāva somewhat differently. It understand it not as a progressive model, but as an “axial” model. In this model, the paratantra is quite literally “pivotal.” “The primary of aspect of existence [in this model] is the Dependent characteristic or nature [paratantra],” Sponberg writes.
- …It is the manifold of all causally conditioned and conceptually mediated experience…[In the paratantra, either] one reifies that dependent phenomenal experience, clinging to it as corresponding or referring to a realm of predeterminate facts or objects [parikalpita]…[or] one realizes that, because they are causally conditioned, the events of this phenomenal experience are inextricably interrelated and thus cannot refer to any realm of predeteminate or essential facts; thereby coming to see the Dependent phenomenality of existence in its Consummate characteristic or nature [parinispanna]. [2]
In other words, as the early Indian Yogācārins understood it, it is in and through the paratantra, the other-dependent nature, that the absolute nature (the parinispanna) becomes apparent, or the imaginary nature (the parikalpita) is misunderstood as “reality.”
The Matrix offers a similar take on perception. In the film, we meet a depressed software engineer named Neo (Keanu Reeves) who discovers that his “reality” is nothing more than an elaborate, computer-programmed hoax piped directly into his brain and everyone else’s by seemingly malevolent machines of artificial intelligence.
With an understanding of the trisvabhāva as axial, we can see how the Matrix itself is quite similar to the paratantra. The experience of those plugged in, who believe that the illusory Matrix is “real,” could be viewed as the parikalpita, while the parinispanna is symbolized in the wisdom that comes with taking “the red pill”—the knowledge that the Matrix is not “real.” In the film’s universe, a person’s understanding or misunderstanding of reality clearly pivots on how they understand Matrix.
Neo ultimately develops a deep understanding of and relationship to the Matrix, which allows him a Superman-like agency in and over the system. This particular plot twist makes a comparison of the Matrix to the paratantra all the more provocative: Neo’s understanding still pivots on the Matrix, but it has swung from the parikalpita to the parinispanna. The move from “reification” to “realization” is beautifully rendered on film by the Wachowski Brothers: when Neo finally awakens to the truth, he no longer sees his enemies as tangible figures, but as lines of green code.
In this film, and right on through The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, what the classical Indian Yogācārins might refer to as the paratantra is key to one’s rightly or wrongly perceiving what is “real.”
Of course, considering the presence of Buddhist themes in a film gets a little tricky when the filmmakers seem to have a separate, specific agenda.
One of my favorite films to consider from a Buddhist point of view is Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! An epic, surreal, allegorical pseudo-musical that chronicles the misadventures of ambitious young coffee salesman Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), I find that the whole thing very well empitomizes the concept of tathāgata-garbha (“Buddha-nature”). As I watch the protagonist stuggle to find the thing that will make him happy, only to find happiness more and elusive, I am reminded of the words of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche:
- Because we don’t recognize our essential nature [our Buddha-nature]–we don’t realize that although appearances arise unceasingly, nothing is really there–we invest with solidity and reality the seeming truth of self, other, and actions between self and others. This intellectual obscuration gives rise to attachment and aversion, followed by actions and reactions that create karma, solidify into habit, and perpetuate the cycles of suffering. [2]
This is a lesson that Mick seems to have learned by the film’s euphoric end.
Anderson is on the record saying of O Lucky Man! that “people must make their own judgments of the experience, and their own interpretations,” and yet a few things seem clear when interpreting it. [3] Here’s what McDowell said in during the U.S. premiere of an uncut version of the film in 2002:
- Obviously this is a very political film. Lindsy was a social commentator and a very political person. I once said to him, “Look, Lins, you’re not conservative, you’re not labor, you’re certainly not liberal. What are you?” He said, “I’m an anarchist! I want to pull it all down!” I don’t know if he was joking or not. [But in] the film, he really takes a swipe at everything. He goes for the lot.
The assessment that it is “a very political film…[that] goes for the lot” is certainly in keeping with the artistic milieu from which Anderson emerged as a filmmaker. Film historian Duncan Petrie writes:
- The dawning of the 1960s coincided with a period of invigoration in the British cinema after what many regarded as the inherent complacency of the previous decade. The British “New Wave”, with its focus on contemporary working-class experience, grew out of “Free Cinema”, a movement of oppositional film-makers and critics like Lindsy Anderson, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson, committed to shaking up the moribund British film culture. These filmmakers had produced influential documentaries in the late 1950s, such as Momma Don’t Allow (Richardson, 1956), Every Day except Christmas (Anderson, 1957), and We Are the Lambeth Boys (Reisz, 1959), on subjects such as the emerging youth culture and more traditional aspects of working class life. [4]
With all of this in mind, and despite some bits of dialogue in which Buddhism is explictly discussed, I’m left wondering to what extent a Buddhist interpretation of O Lucky Man! is appropriate.
That seems like enough for right now. I would love to hear from any readers, though. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
WORKS CITED:
- Alan Sponberg, “The Trisvabhāva Doctrine in India and China: A Study of Three Exegetical Models” in Ryukoku Daisaku Bukkyo Bunka Kenkyujokiyo XXI (1983): 101.
- Ibid., 99-100.
- Reginald A. Ray, In the Presence of Masters: Wisdom from 30 Tibetan Buddhist Teachers (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005), 119.
- Lindsay Anderson and David Sherwin with songs by Alan Price, O Lucky Man! (New York: Grove Press, 1973), 8.
- Duncan Petrie, “British Cinema: The Search for Identity” in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 604 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Sunset Boulevard, Ran, Magnificent Ambersons… throw in The Third Man, and you’ve probably hit on all my favorites. I will need to re-read before I can comment coherently. There is just so much to work with. Is this what keeps you up at night?
Ye gods, I was wondering who was watching all those movies I consider 2nd rate
. (Crimes and Misdemeanors was OK, but Interiors…)
Seriously, almost all of the films you mention here, I’ve never seen, or – like Brooks’ Defending Your Life- I’ve found to be not very compelling in an artistic sense. Of course, to each his own, there’s no accounting for taste and all that, but as an example, you cite, “O Lucky Man.”
It is interesting that this film came out about the time two Stanley Kubrick films came out, one before (“Clockwork Orange” starring McDowell) and one afterwards starring Ryan O’Neill (“Barry Lyndon.”)
Both films’ – perhaps less obviously but more successfully artistically- can be seen as Buddhist films approaching the subject of dukkha as well. In the former, behavioralist techniques to “cure” violence only come to failure. In the latter, an 18th century schemer’s social manipulations come to naught, ultimately.
OK, Angels with Dirty Faces was good, and Ran was exquisite. Looking back at Angels and considering it in the context of other films of its time and thereafter, it astounds me that Leo Gorcey could have rubbed elbows with Bogart…
Other notable films: Treasure of Sierra Madre; The People vs. Larry Flynt. The latter is a great, great film.
Anything by the Marx brothers…
Oh, whatever…good post.
Dukkha Earl: I LOVE The Third Man. It’s on my short list of favorites.
Mumon: I’m a fan of Interoirs and I think it’s a great film, but I have to say–I think Crimes and Misdemeanors is less cloyingly Bergmanesque. To each his own… ; )
Yeah, there isn’t much cinematic virtuosity in Brooks’ film (or Groundhog Day for that matter), but I think there’s a lot of substance in its ideas. And it’s hilarious.
Good call on the Kubrick films. I think Paths of Glory and 2001 might also be interesting to consider from a Buddhist perspective.
How did I forget to mention The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?
Duck Soup or A Night at the Opera?
Paths of Glory…there’s a line in that film that I often repeat as grim office politics humor: Executions are good for morale…
Both Duck Soup & Night at the Opera are amazing films…the former, though I’m more familiar with.
2001? I prefer the original of The Shining. Not from a Buddhist perspective, though (well maybe): The Shining was the film that clued me in to why “horror” films don’t scare me: they’re really cartoons. Kubrick let’s the cat out of the bag here when Jack Nicholson goes on his rampage as his son is watching a Road Runner cartoon.
Hmmm. I’ve had a chance to read through this again. I don’t completely agree with Mumon on his assessment that these are all second rate movies; he admits to not having seen many of them, and I’m wondering if that includes the likes of Ambersons, Ran and so on (my faves, of course!). Truly it is a mixed bag, but you make your point with the examples you give.
Like Mumon, I’m inclined to dismiss O Lucky Man, as I never cared for it; if you were looking for a new wave title, why not reach for the French, something along the lines of The 400 Blows?
Speaking of the French, and completely apropos of nothing, I’m wondering if you’ve feasted your eyes on the restored version of Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Failing that, pick up a copy of The Red Shoes; from a design standpoint, there are some fantastic color choices made in these, and they are visually gorgeous, even if you can’t get into the rest of it.
Of course, all of this reading and thinking on movies has made me check into my Netflix account to see what I’ve rated most highly so that I can update my profile… such distractions. Back to work for me, though you’ve provided me many happy memories.
Ikiru is my favorite movie, all time. This post of yours, Danno, is so wonderful on sooo many levels.
I believe that Ikiru is Kurosawa’s response to Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Instead of having the protagonist at the brink of death [Jimmy Stewart at the bridge], it was so REAL, so AUTHENTIC, so strangly refreshing to have Mr. Wanatabe ABSOLUTELY, CERTAINLY dying at the beginning of Ikiru.
It is a magical movie. I cannot watch it without crying and laughing at the same time.
BTW, there is a book review in the Sept Atlantic re the second volume of Simon Callow’s encyclopedic work on the life of Welles. This second volume, 450+ pages, deals with just the five years in Orson’s life after Kane, so Ambersons is a major part. The Atlantic review suggests that TMA would have been generally regarded as the greatest film of all time, above Kane, had not the studio mangled it. At it is, much of its grandeur has been lost. Still it is a spectacular movie.
Oh, and re Groundhog Day. I profoundly love THAT movie.
Danny, thanks for the post. I’m in the middle of prepping for the beginning of the semester, and my time is slip sliding away. In any case, what I want to say is less related to which movie is good or not. I like the movies mentioned (at least those that I’ve seen). But… when we start with the filter of Dukkha, or any other for that matter, won’t we just find it in whatever we look at? If we ask the question differently it is easier to play with it:
Which movies would we identify as *not* allowing us to find good examples, or even sequences where we can point out the workings of dukkha, or where we can interpret the cinematographer as highlighting this aspect of human life?
If dukkha is part of the human condition, or a mark of existence, we could not *not* find it in all products of human culture. Thus, perhaps the question is not where do we find it. Maybe the critical questions are:
how is dukkha articulated? through what elements and/or relationships? what kind of elements are put in orbit around each other so as to highlight existential suffering and the “bumpy ride?” What is particularly revealing in its subtlety yet depth? How do particular films play with the tenuous understanding that while suffering is existential, everything *is not* suffering? (I would say Zorba the Greek does this). How is dukkha given texture as process, and how do specific films, or cinematographic approaches/techniques facilitate our confronting particular attachments and how our suffering is conditioned by those? A great film to see this process of suffering, hope, delusion, and struggle with attachment, not to mention karma as consequences of actions is: Affliction (1997) with Nick Nolte. Highlights the disintegration of a character. Another great movie, although you probably will find it in Netflix rather than in the store, is Oleana (David Mamet). In the same vein, and Mamet’s also is Glengary Glen Ross.
Finally, a series of movies or cinematographic techniques requires our attention in terms of *masking* suffering. Pulp Fiction, American Psycho, Jackie Brown, etc. trade on aestheticizing violence and on connecting violent sequences with sharp incongruity that make audiences laugh. A student of mine called it films of “comedic murder.” The comedic aspects do much more than serve a cathartic function.
Great subject, neat post. Let me see if I can get back to it a bit later!
Thanks,
N
Another “rather Buddhisty thing” my antennae are up for when watching a movie is the treatment of subsidiary characters.
Usually in movies, minor characters are used as foils or fools to show the always-right-thinking of the hero or main characters. I am always delighted when a minor character leaps out of the sterotypical box and ‘informs’ the movie or is treated as someone who can contribute to the story.
A few examples: Fabien in “Pulp Fiction” seems to be Bruce Willis’s rather not-bright and not-too-pretty girlfriend. When Willis is brought home by cab by the lovely and interesting Maria Dos Lobos, you begin to think that Willis will be dumping Fabien. But, no. Fabien is in the hotel room and when Willis retures, Fabien expresses her worry that she will be in Willis’s way. And then, Willis expresses his profound love for Fabien. It is a lovely moment.
The butler, Norris, in “The Big Sleep” is not quite the robot he would be in any other movie. Here’s a moment of dialogue from imdb from the moment he blossoms into a real person:
Philip Marlowe [Humphrey Bogart: You made a mistake. Mrs. Rutledge didn’t want to see me.
Norris: I’m sorry, sir. I make many mistakes.
In “To Have and Have Not” the Walter Brennen character keeps asking people if they had ever been bit by a dead bee. Everybody keeps pushing him away — he’s a drunk hobo. But the Lauren Becall character listens to him, engaging him in conversation — an indication of her goodness and worthiness to be Bogart’s girlfriend.
Danny,
What about I Heart Huckabees, one of the most overtly Buddhist movies I’ve ever seen? I enjoyed it and it had me thinking for a few days, but then these ideas were not so new to me. I wonder about the experience of the Joe and Joan Sixpack off the street.
Are you in India or Indiana?
Tom: Thanks for the tip about the Callow books. I’ll have to check those out. Isn’t it interesting that Ambersons is still brilliant in spite of its considerable destruction? I guess the power of genius will not be denied.
Nacho: Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response. I appreciate it.
But… when we start with the filter of Dukkha, or any other for that matter, won’t we just find it in whatever we look at?
I suppose we could find glimpses of dukkha in a lot of films. Although I think it’s an open question whether or not most films approach it in a way that is consistent with Buddhist wisdom on the subject. For example, I think that in a lot of romantic comedies, we get good glimpses of the experience of dukkha–lovelorn or broken-hearted characters express well the suffering of not getting what one wants. The problem is that if the main characters in these films don’t already harbor the notion that they must avoid pain and pursue pleasure, the filmmakers usually hammer that home. So while these kinds of films might have moments that capture the experience of dukkha as well as any other, they might approach it in decidedly un-Buddhist ways.
I could have been clearer on this point, so thanks for bringing up the question of whether we couldn’t just find dukkha anywhere we look in the movies.
how is dukkha articulated? through what elements and/or relationships? what kind of elements are put in orbit around each other so as to highlight existential suffering and the “bumpy ride?” What is particularly revealing in its subtlety yet depth? How do particular films play with the tenuous understanding that while suffering is existential, everything *is not* suffering?…How is dukkha given texture as process, and how do specific films, or cinematographic approaches/techniques facilitate our confronting particular attachments and how our suffering is conditioned by those?
This is another thing I could have been clearer on.
I guess what I am thinking of/looking for are films that are fairly robust in thier presentation of dukkha. I need more than just instances of it to be especially excited about the film. I want to see a pretty full articulation of the idea.
I think that any one of the films I listed does this, but let’s consider one example: Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I think this film is especially marvelous to consider from a Buddhist point of view, because we can pinpoint so many of the nuances of dukkha that the Buddha explicated. (I also think it’s a remarkably underrated and misunderstood film, but I suppose that’s beside the point. ; ) )
Consider some moments from the film. There is a lot of warning about the existential can of worms that comes with the activation of David the Mecha Child (Haley Joel Osmet). We could see this as the suffering of birth. Similarly, we see some of the suffering of death in David’s frightened, desperate reaction to human mortality:
David: Mommy, will you die?
Monica (Frances O’Connor): Well, one day, David, yes, I will.
David: I’ll be alone.
Monica: Don’t worry yourself so.
David: How long will you live?
Monica: For ages. For 50 years.
David: I love you, Mommy. I hope you never die. Never.
David’s programming and the quest to find his mother seems to me to be all about the suffering of the three/four associations.
And as for the suffering wrought of the skandhas, look no further than the “Flesh Fair” sequence, when Lord Johnson-Johson (Brendan Gleeson) presents David, telling the crowd that he is not real. When David starts to cry, saying, “Don’t burn me,” though, the crowd turns on Lord Johnson-Johnson. They mistake all of the parts of David’s programming for a “real boy”–just as we suffer from mistaking the five skandhas for a solid “self.”
Am I making sense?
Thanks again for your response, Nacho.
Eric: Great to hear from you here. Thanks for mentioning I Heart Huckabees. I love the film and had wanted to bring it into the piece, but couldn’t find a place for it without creating a new conversation with an already too long post.
I think Huckabees gives us lots and lots to consider from a Buddhist point of view. Tricycle once did a great interview with director David O. Russell about the film. It turns out that, among other things, he is a former student of Robert Thurman, a fan of Clark Strand, and an avid reader of Trungpa Rinpoche’s work.
[...] The Next Film to Be Claimed by Us Buddhists? July 13, 2010 Posted by Danny Fisher in Buddhism and film. Tags: Buddhism and film, Christopher Nolan, Inception trackback Anticipation is reaching a fever pitch for Christopher Nolan’s new film Inception, which opens Friday and is his first since The Dark Knight. Set “within the architecture of the mind,” little is known at this point about the plot. Clips like the one below (with references to strong emotions and projections of mind) have me wondering how much this movie will resonate with those of interested in the intersection of Buddhism and film… [...]
[...] to one of my most favorite films in Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man!, which I wrote about in my first “Buddhism and Film” post.) In addition, I couldn’t get enough of his rapier wit (see below), professorial ambience [...]