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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (120199)	1/1/2001 3:32:42 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I think you underestimate the performances given in Gladiator, but I will not make too much of it. I am afraid I am going to have to be a fink. I thought American Beauty was an excellent film, and Eyes Wide Shut stunning. American Beauty is much like Pleasantville (although much better). If taken politically, it is trash. If taken existentially, it is profound. Any dedicated republican who can abide the absolutism expressed in Henry V should be able to disregard the crude surface of the films, and get to their heart. The center of the film is the kid with the camcorder, and his video of the dancing bag. Every so often, even for those disinclined to belief, it is as if God nudges them, and shows them a startling order laying on the periphery of the mundane world. They suddenly know, at least for a moment, there is more, right there under their noses, if they would only look. The man's lust for the young girl, taken as mere sex drive, is banal and unseemly. Taken as a thirst for beauty, for purity, for joy, it is transfigured. There is something terribly wrong with himself and his family. There is something right with not surrendering all hope of there being more. There is something wrong with attempting to control everything, and with being entirely preoccupied with an attempt to "win" at life. There is something right in being able to surrender, to admit that one is lost, and to seek some sort of grace to find one's way........ The Patriot is about the need to restore the moral order of the universe, to not only resist tyranny, but make whole what was sundered through retribution. It shows how difficult it is to commit to the savagery of war, but also how hard it is, in certain circumstances, to hold oneself aloof......