Saturday, May 28, 2005
I watched _Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith_, and came away from the movie with a severe migraine. I just couldn't get into the film at all despite having seen all the other films at least twice. Outgrown it I guess. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the movie feels even remotely real. Basically, it's like watching a serious cartoon and that essential incongruity remained with me throughout the movie.
David Brin has been trashing this film every which he can and perhaps that was one of the reasons for not being able to get into the movie. I was going through the reviews on imdb and came across this gem from Mick La Salle,
"Understandably afraid of what might happen to his beautiful wife, Anakin goes to Yoda for advice and comfort, but Yoda is useless. He instructs Anakin that he shouldn't care one way or the other, but then Yoda can afford to be philosophical -- he's made of rubber. What does he need with a wife, anyway?"
And therein lies the problem. That nincompoop ninja Yoda has gotten confused between detachment and non-attachment. It is not that Anakin should not care one way or the other, of course he should. At the same time, he should watch himself caring. He should watch his own pain as a witness. I was doing this after the film with my migraine. I would get into a meditative state where I could watch the pain, sorta like being in the eye of a hurricane. This state doesn't last too long since the pain intensifies and I start oscillating; severe pain -> calm awareness of severe pain -> back to severe pain etc. When the awareness of pain is present,
this is non-attachment, when it is absent, you plunge into the pain and writhe about in agony since you've lost perspective. You regain perspective again and calmness returns only to lose it again. And on it goes.
Basically, Lucas takes some aspects of Buddhist non-attachment and then reflects it through a distorted Campbell-esque mythological prism and ends up with the crap that is _Revenge of the Sith_.
David Brin has been trashing this film every which he can and perhaps that was one of the reasons for not being able to get into the movie. I was going through the reviews on imdb and came across this gem from Mick La Salle,
"Understandably afraid of what might happen to his beautiful wife, Anakin goes to Yoda for advice and comfort, but Yoda is useless. He instructs Anakin that he shouldn't care one way or the other, but then Yoda can afford to be philosophical -- he's made of rubber. What does he need with a wife, anyway?"
And therein lies the problem. That nincompoop ninja Yoda has gotten confused between detachment and non-attachment. It is not that Anakin should not care one way or the other, of course he should. At the same time, he should watch himself caring. He should watch his own pain as a witness. I was doing this after the film with my migraine. I would get into a meditative state where I could watch the pain, sorta like being in the eye of a hurricane. This state doesn't last too long since the pain intensifies and I start oscillating; severe pain -> calm awareness of severe pain -> back to severe pain etc. When the awareness of pain is present,
this is non-attachment, when it is absent, you plunge into the pain and writhe about in agony since you've lost perspective. You regain perspective again and calmness returns only to lose it again. And on it goes.
Basically, Lucas takes some aspects of Buddhist non-attachment and then reflects it through a distorted Campbell-esque mythological prism and ends up with the crap that is _Revenge of the Sith_.
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