“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” These words have been running through my mind the last weeks, thinking through ideas about metanarrative and narrative, about what we believe to be the Great Story of All of Life, and our own smaller stories. I have been reading Friedrich...
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Emerging from a late screening of Alejandro Iñárritu’s recent film, The Revenant, I was struck by the indomitable power of the spirit of man. The Revenant tells the story of Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, an early-1800s fur-trader, blazing the uncharted Western Territory of the United States. In 1823, Glass was mauled by a...
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Sometimes there are tender tears. On my flight across America a few days ago, I watched the film, “Coming Home,” born of the genius of Zhang Yimou, the celebrated director whose work over the last generation has changed the nature of Chinese cinema. One more time he has told a tale about being human amidst...
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“Never say that a soldier does not know the cost of war.” As the story comes to its sober conclusion, this is the response of the British army officer to the cabinet secretary who is bitterly critical of the decision-making at the heart of the film, “Eye in the Sky.” Protesting loudly, she is sure...
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“What’s the good of a street that doesn’t lead to a church?” As the 1980s became the 1990s, and the world was watching the Soviet Union implode, its first indication that something was changing was what they themselves called “glasnost.” Russian for “openness,” it was the Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social...
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