In history class we learned that V-day was actually another way in which the Americans of old approached the concept of victory against the Japanese in the historic World War II back in 1942. The V has always stood for a symbol of strength whether it be for the American peace sign in the sixties, or for the pillar of civilization for the Greeks with the number five. Whatever the case, V has always stood for something significant. And this morning at precisely 12:53 a.m. on Friday March, 17th it means something now to me too, and that's because I just came from watching the movie "V for Vendetta" and it has completely changed my life forever and the way that I see things. I will never look at my life the same way ever again. That movie has shown me things that I knew existed but I didn't want to feel. There are things and times that people consider suppressing themselves underneath someone else because they want to become something else, they want to shed their skin and adopt the ideologies of something else. Well, I'm through with that. I'm not going to live anyone else's life anymore. I'm not going to live for my parents, and I'm not going to live for my friends. It's not about the career I choose, and it's not about what I'm going to do way down the road and whom I'm going to take with me. All there is is ME.
I'm sure anyone who watches that movie can pick out tons of different scenes in which they were impacted in different ways because it makes so many statements all at once, and for that I praise the Wachowski brothers from the bottom of my heart. I'm glad that some movie directors can understand the concept of the multi-faceted face behind the Hollywood industry and realize that it's not all about the sex, or the violence, but rather about the ideals behind it. As V said in the movie, "What lies behind this mask is not flesh, but an ideal, and an ideal is bulletproof." To me personally, the most powerful scene in that movie was the scene where Natalie Portman was trapped in prison and lying on the stone floor being tortured to death. She wasn't sure she was going to make it out alive, and she wasn't sure what she was doing by not giving them the information that they wanted. But she found a letter crumpled in a hole in the floor, and it was a note, an autobiography of another prisoner, a woman who had written her last dying wishes on a piece of toilet paper with the last thing she had. It was her story.
It told the story about how she was a lesbian and how she had fell in love with this girl in middle school, and that when they grew up, her friend grew out of the homosexual phase, and moved on, but she did not. It talked about how she met a girl in high school, and decided to come out to her parents and how they threw her out and threw her baby picture in the trash. Then she talked about how years later, she went into the movie business and met another actress with whom she got together. And together they lived happily until the war in America spread to London and then everything changed about attitudes with everyone, and how they started gathering everyone up and killing them off like a Nazi concentration camp. They killed two gay men in the movie and beat them to death, and then she said they took her girlfriend in a grocery store. And she sat there and waited for them to take her in her living room and she died there in the prison.
The thing that got me most was the fact that what she said was that each of us is made up everything. Everything we do defines us and who we are. And so even if they do everything to us, they cannot take the one inch of dignity that we have left in the last part of our minds. And so she said that she held on to that one inch, even as they killed her slowly over three years. And when she died, she had no regrets because she had lived three years with roses and sunshine. And that to me told me that I cannot regret who I am or what I do. There is only one choice. And that's to live. No matter how I do it, I just have to do it. And so, I end this blog with her last statement, as a testment to her.
"Even if I saw you, laughed with you, talked to you, held your hand, or even kissed you, believe me when I tell you that I love you. I love each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart."
Powerful. Simply magnificent. Five stars in my book.
14 DAYS LEFT.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment