Tag: inspiration

Anatomy of a Scene – The Climb

My love for The Dark Knight trilogy by Christopher Nolan is based on how realism blends with the superhero themes that make it a compelling series of movies. Not only is the acting, cinematography, and directions of these films brilliant but you enjoy the deeper themes and meaning behind the storylines. Some of these scenes including the one I am highlighting from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ have not only great symbolism but larger lessons for our own lives on how we react to adversity and the challenges that life throws at us. Even when you are not Batman, a superhero with genius level intellect and almost superhuman physical strength, we can relate to Batman because he is fallible, and he has his weaknesses like we all do.

The brilliance of this particular scene from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is it shows Batman or Bruce Wayne at one of his lowest lows. He is an older man, not as physically imposing or as intimidating as he used to be, and he has lost almost everyone who meant to something to him. This scene comes in the 2nd half of the film and is located in a pit which has a double meaning to it. From the depths of this pit, we wonder if Batman will be able to rise and become who he is meant to be in order to face his adversaries head on.

‘The Climb’ scene from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is the best scene in the The Dark Knight trilogy in my opinion. Between Hans Zimmer’s music to the dialogue to the feeling of suspense to the ultimate payoff, it is an incredibly powerful scene that will stick with you even years later when you have forgotten other parts of the movie. I would like to breakdown the scene’s setting and what is happening along with giving some background as to what is significant about the events of the scene.

The beginning of the scene begins with the Bruce training physically in order to be strong enough to leave the pit where he is a prisoner like other similarly forsaken men. He is confident in his abilities even after having fractured a few of his back vertebrae after getting ‘broken’ by Bane, a masked villain who seems to be immune from Batman’s stealth and fighting tactics. After being sent to ‘the worst hell on Earth’ according to Bane, Batman slowly recovers from his injuries with help from the prison doctor and the blind seer who give him the history of the prison. It is Bane’s prison and he has sent many men there to die as no one has ever escaped except for Bane, which is only a rumor at this point. Bruce tells the prison doctor that he is not ‘meant to die in here’ even though to the doctor, it makes little difference where Bruce dies since no one has ever made the leap to freedom to survive and leave.

Even with Bruce’s back healing and seeing the urgency of Gotham City being under lockdown by being threatened with a nuclear weapon and his armed henchmen, Bruce has to spend a few months doing pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups and any other activity in order to physically be ready to escape. “Survival is the spirit” says the blind seer who used to care for Bane when he was in the prison. Bruce is ready physically according to him and he says his soul is ready, but he fails a few different times and re-injures himself while trying to make this leap to freedom.

It is more than just your body being ready to jump but it is also about the spirit, which revolves around mental toughness. The blind seer reminds Bruce that he cannot make the leap if he does not fear death. Bruce is not afraid of death in general but is afraid of dying in a pit prison for which there is no escape while his home city burns and suffers. Bruce is angry at Bane and wants vengeance but before he is able to leave, he must conquer the ultimate fear of death by facing it head on.

The blind seer tells him again that he has to “Make the climb…” Bruce asks incredulously, “How?” having tried multiple times with a rope attached to him to prevent him from falling to death from the top area of the pit. The blind seer reminds him that he must jump “without the rope” which acts as a safety harness, “Then fear will find you again…” In order to conquer the fear of death and dying in the pit, Bruce must leap to freedom with nothing holding him back, not a rope nor his fears such as of bats.

Bruce only brings with him ‘supplies’ for his journey back to Gotham remaining ever hopeful he will survive this leap to freedom with no rope to hold him back or keep him from suffering the deadly consequences. Bane’s prisoners start chanting from their cells ‘Deshi Bashara’ over and over again and louder as Bruce gets ready to climb out of the pit. Bruce asks the Doctor, “what does it mean?” and the Doctor replies, “Rise.” Bruce’s father, before his death, asked his son, “Why do we fall?” and after all this time as Batman and the trials and tribulations he has experienced as a caped crusader, he finally knows the only answer in his life is to “Rise.”

Looking on and as the blind seer hears the ‘Deshi Bashara’ chants get louder and louder, Bruce begins his climb out of the pit without the rope. As Bruce gets towards the final jump out from the top ledge of the pit to climb out, the music starts to crescendo and the bats that he has feared all of his life since his parents’ death fly out of the top edge of the pit and surround him as he gets ready to jump.

Realizing he no longer has the constant fear of them, he realizes he is Batman risen again and can make the full jump with confidence that he will make it. Seeing daylight above him and having faith in his ability to rise up to save his city, Bruce holds on to the other ledge successfully making about a 3-meter jump to avoid death and live to fight another day. Having seen daylight and the sun fully for the first time in months, Bruce is aghast that he made it but his determination to save Gotham steadies himself for the long journey ahead.

Because Bruce Wayne is Batman, he remembers to save Bane’s prisoners, most likely innocent men captured in the fight asked the supervillain and throws them down the long ropes so that they too can climb out to freedom with his help. It’s the small details like that which make Nolan’s Batman trilogy the best of all Batman films. Bruce’s Batman persona does not forget the men who helped him heal his back, train himself physically, and offer the wisdom to face death head on in order to face Bane again and save the city. This very pit that Bruce rises from is directly inspired by the comic books themselves as it is similar to the ‘Lazarus Pit’ where men can be regenerated and made immortal again by the pit’s healing powers.

There is also references made to Ra’s Al-Ghul who appears to Bruce in a vision speaking about the ‘many forms of immortality’ that exist and how he may still be around through Bane’s control of the League of Shadows or otherwise. “There is a prison in a more ancient part of the world, a pit where men are thrown to suffer and die, but sometimes a man rises from the darkness. Sometimes, the pit sends something back.”

Bruce was able to get back because he rose from the darkness of his own despair from being broken in terms of mind and body but was able to risk it all in order to save his city. He faced his fears head on and was able to have enough confidence in his abilities to leap to freedom and be ‘sent back’ to Gotham to avenge those suffered under Bane’s tyranny. Bruce is a hero as well because he is selfless and thinks about others before himself such as those men in the pit he freed and giving them real hope rather than just a glimmer of sunlight by handing them down the rope so they could be free too from Bane’s cruelties.

This brilliant scene can have a deeper meaning for us all because during our lives, we will all be down in the metaphorical pit being unable to escape our own fears, doubts, and phobias. However, we must always face our fears and rise out of the pit of despair to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. Whether its feeding your family, learning a new skill to be employed, or winning a championship in an intensive physically or mentally challenging activity, we must face our fear head on and realize it is better to have thrust ourselves into these challenges head on than staying down in the pit of our own worries.

During our lives, we must cut the proverbial rope of convenience, comfort, and easy living to truly develop ourselves and our abilities. Life is not without risk including sickness and death, but we must continue to fight on and continue to escape the self-made pits that lie within each and every one of us. Motivating yourself to fight against these problems and letting go of your fears will make you a stronger person. Whenever life gets you down, remember to fight on and use this movie scene as a motivation for you to continue on. You will be down in the pit as Bruce was during this film, but it does not mean that you are doomed to stay there. With taking on your fears, living life how you want it to be lived, and overcoming challenges and obstacles, you too will make the leap to freedom in mind, body, and soul.

An Ode to Curiosity

What separates the dreamers from the strivers? There are a number of characteristics and personal qualities that distinguish someone who dreams of doing big things and one who actually strives to accomplish these big things. Among these characteristics include commitment, consistency, hard work, patience, perseverance and they are all important for different reasons but the most important characteristics that stands out to me is having curiosity and being willing to learn new things because of that curiosity. If you don’t have any curiosity or willingness to learn how things work and why, you can dream about making an impact all you want but if you aren’t willing to spend time learning about what you’re interested in and what you can improve upon whether physically or mentally, then your goals will likely not be accomplished.

This ability to strive for hard-to-reach goals amid an appetite for education, learning, and overall growth is exemplified by a number of great men and women throughout history. Even when they were unsure that they would not live to see their ideas or their plans come to fruition, their insatiable curiosity was used to move the goal posts forward often to the benefit of humanity as a whole.

I was reminded by this characteristic this past weekend as I went to a really well-done and educational exhibit on 500 Years of Leonardo Da Vinci regarding both his finished and his unfinished works. Books full of notes, dozens of paintings, and sketches, graphs, and illustrations to note what he had in mind for the furthering of humankind. I would say most of what he set out to do during his life was not accomplished during it but what he did was open up the ideas and the possibilities to the rest of the world so that some other engineer or inventor could go all the way to make his vision a reality.

Da Vinci was a genius, but he was also curious about how to bring about new ideas in the world. He did not care if they could never come to fruition or if they failed. Similar to other great inventors, he knew that sometimes you have to try things out one hundred or even one thousand times to get things truly right. You can’t be shy or timid if you have something you think can truly change the world and make it a better place. In some cases, Da Vinci’s ideas where decades or even centuries ahead of time and if more people were curious to the same extent, there is no telling that the 1500s could have been more like the 1900s much quicker.

To understand how to make a man fly in the air or how to bring him back down safely, to figure out how to make cities more livable, and how to engineer machines to bring energy and water to people more easily, these are all monumental tasks that stem from Da Vinci’s trait of having an insatiable curiosity. He was mainly self-educated and self-taught who loved learning about the wonders of the world from engineering to painting to the science of the human body. It is difficult to even comprehend how things would be different today had he been born in the modern era instead of during the renaissance era.

He was almost superhuman in his drive and in his motivation but what all of us can have in common with Da Vinci is to awaken the innate curiosity or curiosities inside of us. Few of us today, if any, will have the curiosity matched by the genius and intellect of a Da Vinci but all of us are curious about something and we want to do our best to master it. For some of us, it’s our curiosity to play a piece of music perfectly without stopping.

For others, it’s about solving an almost impossibly hard equation that could have real-world consequences. Whether it is art, science(s), programming, mathematics, politics, etc., you have to find out what you are curious about and how you can use your curiosity to further advancements and developments in any of these fields. You may only have curiosity about a particular field, but it is your prerogative then to be the best you can in that field in order to get that sense of fulfillment.

Leonardo Da Vinci was a special person and a once-in-a-lifetime talent whose likes we may have seen the last of but what he represents is our drive as human beings to reach new heights and to challenge past notions of what is and what isn’t possible. During his relatively short life, he was able to accomplish so much in different areas of human endeavor and still has had an impact on the world today more than 500 years after his death. He is an example of what is possible if you set your mind and your body to quenching your curiosity and leaving your mark on the world in some small way.

Even if you are not recognized during your life, it is important to keep notes, drawings, illustrations, and records of your hard work so that someone may be able to pick up the torch after you and carry it forward. Sharing your thought process and your ideas with the world long after your time on Earth comes to an end is the closest a person can get to a sense of immortality.

Da Vinci may not have made man fly during his lifetime or made them capable of constructing his idea of the perfect city, but he was able to leave detailed blueprints for other engineers and inventors to carry forward with their own innate sense of curiosities. Having an insatiable curiosity and a powerful imagination can drive you even when you have tried your 100th or 1000th idea. If you are curious, passionate, and willing to fail more than you will likely succeed, you will be sure of having some impact on the world and a chance to be remembered by others long after you have gone.

‘Forrest Gump’ – Film Review and Analysis

chocolates
“Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

One film that captures both your imagination and your heartstrings is the classic American film, Forrest Gump. Released in theaters over two decades ago in 1994, it has become one of the most beloved films of all time and enjoyed high amounts of praise from both critics and moviegoers alike. The film was notable for the fact that it won many different awards and accolades such as the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, among many other distinctions. I would argue that this film along with Big helped to launch Tom Hanks as one of Hollywood’s rising stars and set him on a monumental acting career, which included many future box office hits. Five years ago, the U.S. Library of Congress recognized Forrest Gump as being a film that is historically, culturally, and aesthetically significant and selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Forrest Gump is about an everyman who has a slight disability of not being as smart as everyone else with an IQ of 75. However, despite him learning this fact as a child and being bullied about it, he manages to not let this handicap ruin his life but instead learns to preserve and make the most of things. The story of Forrest Gump takes place over the tumultuous and transformative decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when America went through a number of political, social, and economic changes. One of the true delights of this film is seeing how many of these changes Forrest witnesses and is actually apart of.

During the film, we see him shaking his hips with Elvis Presley at his mom’s guesthouse in Alabama, serving in the U.S. Army after being drafted in the Vietnam War, starting a fight during the midst of a Black Panther group meeting, and meeting Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Despite his lack of formal intelligence, Forrest does not let that stop him from being an ‘All-American’ college football player, a veteran of the Vietnam War, a shrimp boat, a wealthy man due to his investments in a little company called Apple Inc, and lastly and most important, a loving son, friend, father, and husband. In addition to serving in Vietnam and witnessing Elvis Presley in person, Forrest also helps a black woman become the first African-American to integrate into an all-white school, helps to break the seal on the Watergate scandal when he sees people breaking into DNC headquarters, and becomes an international ping-pong star while helping to improve relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. He’s an every man who takes life as it comes regardless of the good or bad and finds himself involved in extraordinary events that shape American history.

As Forrest gets wrapped up in these events over the course of the film, he takes an almost child-like innocence to them even in the cases of war, violence and prejudice. He’s aware of these things and knows right from wrong but tries to live a simple and uncomplicated life despite all he’s been through. He wants to be a good son to his mother; he desires to be with the love of his life, Jenny, to have good friendships with his fellow soldier Bubba and Lieutenant Dan, and to be a responsible father to his son at the end of the movie. He may lack intelligence in terms of critical thinking and solving problems; he has the ability to display maturity, show emotional intelligence and is able to show kindness and love towards others despite his differences with them.

While he may not know his father, and his wife Jenny disrespected and left him in the cold over the years when she was dealing with her own demons, he has the ability to look past these grievances and live a good and fulfilling life. Forrest endures other traumas and heartbreak in the Vietnam War when he sees his fellow soldiers and friends killed or disabled like his good friend Bubba and his lieutenant, Dan Taylor. While he could have given up on life or become bitter and disenchanted, Forrest instead finds new purposes in playing ping-pong around the world, starting a very profitable shrimp boat company with his old Lieutenant Dan, and runs around the United States for three years straight to help get past those losses and betrayals that has haunted him. Forrest is an example of a man who never gives up and keeps moving forward despite his past. He simply does not let his past define him. Like all of us, he’s been giving good and bad fortune but he makes the best of things regardless of the circumstances.

During the long run scene of Forrest’s, people become inspired by his example and ask him for advice and guidance. He doesn’t have much to say to them but they happen to find comfort in the fact that he’s doing this just for its’ own sake. Forrest simply can’t help them all figure life as they have to each follow their own path and find inspiration wherever they can. Once one path ends, another one opens up to be explored afterwards. As Forrest states when reporters ask him why he’s running, “I just felt like running.” Sometimes, you don’t need a reason to be doing something if you feel like it.

While many other people are inspired and are given hope from Forrest’s example, Forrest is inspired by other people such as his mother played by the wonderful Sally Field, along with his fellow soldier Bubba and his Lieutenant Dan. His mother teaches him about love, respect, and finding your own path in life. She gives Forrest a quote on her death-bed that he takes to heart and has become one of the most famous movie quotes of all-time. “Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Forrest asks his mom what his destiny may be. She tells him that he can’t answer that for him and ask he needs to figure that out for himself. She does let him know that it was her destiny to be his momma and that she’s very proud of the man that he has become.

Forrest’s relationship throughout the film with Jenny is complicated and unfortunate as the ways their lives converge and diverge leads to pain and heartbreak but also compassion and understanding. Jenny is Forrest’s first and only love. They grow up together and spend time getting to know each other. Forrest is a breath of fresh air for Jenny who has to deal with an abusive father at home. Even through college, they remain close but still friends.

Jenny’s path through life takes her to some lonely places and she deals with abusive boyfriends, drug abuse, and hostile friends like the Black Panther party. Even with her flaws, Forrest still loves her as always and asks her to marry him. She eventually agrees to be his bride making him the happiest man in the world. Tragically, their marriage is cut short by the fact that Jenny has HIV/AIDS and has become really sick. However, the love that Jenny shares for Forrest allows them to have a son together before she passes away. While a devastating loss for Forrest like it was to lose his mother and Bubba, his best friend, Forrest’s destiny is renewed in the love he has for his son, Forrest Jr. as he takes care of him after Jenny’s death.

Forrest Gump is a special movie that has resonated with millions of people around the world. Many folks have been inspired by the message of this movie and have gone to improve their lives in enumerable ways. The story of Forrest Gump is a story of hope, love, perseverance, respect, and tolerance. Anybody who watches Forrest Gump will get something out of the movie because of its’ overall message. Like the feather that floats by Forrest at the beginning and ending of the film, you make the most of what we’re dealt with in life and it’s you alone who can shape your destiny through the choices you make, the people you befriend, and the impact you create. We may all be floating on the breeze like a feather unsure of where we’re going but we can steer the direction of that feather to new places and new conclusions.

Forrest Gump is a special character in a special movie that rekindles for viewers what they love about the big screen by showing our capacity as human beings to love, cry, laugh, and share good times and bad with those friends and family as Forrest does. Anybody who watches Forrest Gump can relate to Forrest and what he goes through. That is what makes this movie such an endearing, popular film and why it will last for many more years as one of the most iconic pieces of work in American cinema.