Movie #8 On Body and Soul

[Lori]

Beautiful review, MC. I'm glad you enjoyed the movie and happy you are in the PH theater, pen in hand. Your descriptions of the characters are so very apt. It is a study in humanity with all the misconceptions, interactions, and variances involved. Your illustration of the sparse lives the main characters led after hours reminded me how much breadth the director gave silence, space, and expression. Maria's very functional dysfunction whispered of certain characteristics we all hold to an extent but successfully find a balance with interpretation and response that she was unable to accomplish. Yet, something knocked on her psyche - a yearning to understand and a longing to belong in this sphere of romantic love. This was done brilliantly in the film.

Isn't it because we feel that something more than the physical is being degraded? A dignity has been offended - a dignity that we feel in common? Something has been made lesser somehow - and even if we are the perpetrators - or maybe because we are - we are not immune.

I think this is spot on. I don't object to hunting and herd management, but could not do so myself. I don't even like the up-close hands-on food chain in action that is fishing, but I like to eat fish! This got me thinking of how people draw lines at completely arbitrary places, depending on their beliefs, principles, religious bent, and personal experience or education. As 'perpetrators' of so much in the world, we do sanitize our processes in our minds to make it more acceptable, be it meat consumption or even our own 'population management', etc. While we might agree with certain outcomes, it is much easier to watch from a distance. Were we to follow the process from start to finish (as Dee cited even in the inevitable cold and clinical disbursement and disposal of our bodies in death), we as people would draw lines, hold our noses, and avert our eyes. ...or perhaps adamantly object once exposed to the stark reality.

Could this story have been told in another setting? Would it have lost its efficacy? I think part of why we could watch Maria slit her wrist (actually, I couldn't - but that is because this subject is close to my heart and I am beat over the head with it in nearly every movie), but cannot watch animals suffer without outcry is the base assumption of innocence or inherent lack thereof. Bless the beasts and the children. Yet, Maria was somewhat of an innocent in so many ways. Perhaps we saw the parallel.

I found myself somewhat disappointed that the shared dream ended. I suppose this is a happy ending in that Maria and Endre's sideways meeting no longer needed to take place as it was now manifesting in real life. Still, I would have liked it to be a shared experience that continued.

[Moonchime]

Glad to have joined you Dee - and thanks so much for your warm response.

Then we are out in a freezer until it's decided what kind of funeral we'll have. Then the body needs to be prepared for the procedure. No matter how much respect people will show to the body in dealing with all this, it's going to be a well oiled clinical procedure, well practised, performed routinely.
And there is something very sad about that, because these bodies, animals or humans, were filled once with a consciousness, with life.

Absolutely Dee.
I think you are right in saying that we are uncomfortable because the whole process reminds of our own mortality.
I think we all feel that we are more than the sum of our parts and watching something being reduced to precisely that is most unpleasant at best.

Your mention of preparing bodies becoming routine is as you say what happens when anyone does something day in, day out - no matter what it is. My daughter was given the task of preparing the body after death before it went to the mortuary when she was an HCA and I felt a bit shocked - I don't know why - it was clearly a non-specialist task but I felt it was such a privilege.
The body is washed and jewellery and clothes taken off - as we came into the world so we go out. I think some families would love to do that task themselves - making it a labour of love - a final gesture.
I think it's all down to respect. It's one thing to kill something, but how it's done, how often it's done and why it's done are all hugely important. I think as developed nations we have costed animal life too cheaply.
As I think has already being said - some societies honour the animals they kill and show considerable respect in recognition of the sacrifice made. I think distance has allowed us to become less grateful and take things for granted.

[Moonchime]

Thank you so much for your lovely welcome to the thread Lori. Much appreciated.

This got me thinking of how people draw lines at completely arbitrary places, depending on their beliefs, principles, religious bent, and personal experience or education. As 'perpetrators' of so much in the world, we do sanitize our processes in our minds to make it more acceptable, be it meat consumption or even our own 'population management', etc. While we might agree with certain outcomes, it is much easier to watch from a distance.

This is so true Lori - distance makes so many things bearable in all sorts of spheres. It got me thinking about how different killing in war has been over the centuries and how much easier it is to kill lots of people now without ever having to see the whites of their eyes.
Like you I eat fish, but a walk through a fish market where many of catch seem barely dead can be very hard indeed.
At least hunting usually means that the animal has had a chance to live freely and exercise normal behaviour - although I would always hope that the hunter was extremely skilled and able to kill cleanly and quickly. I also think that if an animal is to be killed that it should live a "free range" existence - it may not be sustainable for the "masses" but "the masses" at least many of them, do not need to eat as much meat as they do, or as often as they do and there are strong arguments that some meat production causes more problems than it solves.

Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.”
I think he's right as I suspect we all do in this debate but behavioural change usually comes some time after attitude change and heaven knows self change is hard work!!!
I still have a long way to go.

Could this story have been told in another setting? Would it have lost its efficacy? I think part of why we could watch Maria slit her wrist (actually, I couldn't - but that is because this subject is close to my heart and I am beat over the head with it in nearly every movie), but cannot watch animals suffer without outcry is the base assumption of innocence or inherent lack thereof. Bless the beasts and the children. Yet, Maria was somewhat of an innocent in so many ways. Perhaps we saw the parallel.

Yes I totally agree on that very cogent point - there is the feeling of attacking innocence, as well as the use of power over something that is unable to fight back; an imbalance of force; an advantage taken of superior ability.
Maria certainly did seem an innocent but she made the choice for herself, although it is questionable how capable she was of making a wholesome analysis of the situation . I was very unsure whether or not the phone call had come too late!

I found myself somewhat disappointed that the shared dream ended. I suppose this is a happy ending in that Maria and Endre's sideways meeting no longer needed to take place as it was now manifesting in real life. Still, I would have liked it to be a shared experience that continued.

I too would have liked to see some more scenes with the deer and yet for the completeness of the soul I think it probably had to end. Perhaps the deer were more endearing!
No pun intended!

[DawnFae]

It is a delight reading your comments and reviews Ladies !

@Lori, I too was a bit disappointed when the dreams "ended" but I thought it was telling us that their dreams together have become reality, which was something to celebrate at the breakfast table.

@Dee, yes sadly the dismembering of the cattle lifeless bodies just intensifies the painful feeling of a greater loss, that of the departed consciousness. If consciousness is immortal though, then all these death and loss themes could be a preparation for the greater journey. Still a violent death is something traumatizing.

The two outsiders found back to their inner selves and could forge a connection in love and respect with one another. The immensity of the empty space is and will always be overwhelming to us humans: from a physical perspective, we are but little specks of dust. From the spiritual one, we can be as vast and as immortal as the consciousness that gave us life...

[Dee]

I have thought a lot about these dreams and what they were, about their purpose. Why they happened, why they stopped.

And of course, the dreams (and how identical they were) was a bit of a fantastical element to the film, but we could look at them as the simultaneous subconscious projections of their desire for companionship. Something like the archetypal manifestations coming from the "collective unconscious", of their longing for not even necessarily romantic love (and certainly not sex), but intimate companionship. Sharing their lives with someone. Existing together in the same space. The deer in their dream did exactly what they both longed for without them consciously realising it. So when they were finally intimately connected in their real lives, this longing was no longer there in them, it didn't need to manifest itself through dreams. So they didn't lose anything, the loss of the dreams meant they've found what they were craving in real life. So we should be happy for them that they no longer have the dreams. But wouldn't it be cool though? To share dreams for real, and regularly?

Funny things happen though. The other night CsutiO had a dream about being with me, back at the university where we met over 30 years ago. And I had a dream about her, the same night, being together back at the university. It wasn't the same dream, just the setting and the timing, but the essence of it was the same, and still pretty cool, I thought.

[Dee]

I think we all feel that we are more than the sum of our parts and watching something being reduced to precisely that is most unpleasant at best.

It's the hardest thing we must learn in life, isn't it? Letting go. It seems like we forever have to do it though. Sometimes it's little things: throwing stuff out with sentimental value. Leaving after a wonderful holiday, moving house. Then come the bigger things. Anger. Resentments. Hurt. Frustration over things we can't do anymore, for whatever reason. Relationships ending. Children growing up, moving away from home. Loved ones dying. We must forever let go, and keep our hearts light, otherwise our lives become nothing but misery, dwelling on our losses.

So to think that our bodies will become disposable matter one day, the little temple we have lived in for all these years, from where we have peeped out at the world around us, the medium that helped us experience life physically... it's a tough thought. To be reminded that we have to give that up one day, it's hard. To imagine our bodies without "us" being in there, it is difficult. But as we get more and more practised at letting go, perhaps we learn to accept it and it will bother us less and less what happens to our bodies when they do expire. In a way, what happens to our bodies, and the funeral, they matter mostly to the people whose consciousness continue living in their own bodies. I feel I've made my peace with this, and I don't particularly care, not for myself. I'd like it to be something comforting and nice for my loved ones, who would care. And I feel perfectly comforted that, somehow, fragments of my consciousness, my soul, or my essence, whatever we would want to call it, will live on in other people. That's what really matters to me. The body is just a vehicle for traveling. Our consciousness has come and will blend into a universally shared consciousness, just like our bodies have come from the same matter and will blend into the world again, one way or another.

Preferably in the shape of a birch tree?

[Dee]

That must have been such a huge and humbling experience for your daughter, MC, having to prepare that person's body for the mortuary. A stranger's body. I'm sure she's done a lot of growing up in those moments... an invaluable experience.

[Moonchime]

She has done it numerous times as death on her shift required - but I don't think she did it so much that it became too routine - maybe that would have happened eventually. Obviously on some wards it's more probable than others and if you are on a night shift I believe it is more common.
You are right of course that the funeral is really for the those that are left behind - their final goodbye. Nothing makes any difference anymore to the deceased, but letting go for those remaining is never going to be easy; no matter how much of a blessed life someone has led there has to be a time of transition for the living; you do not adjust to being without a part of your life overnight; no matter how beneficial it might be that death comes knocking.

Our consciousness has come and will blend into a universally shared consciousness, just like our bodies have come from the same matter and will blend into the world again, one way or another.

Preferably in the shape of a birch tree?

Yay - definitely the birch tree.

Sometimes I think it's a comfort that we may blend into the world again - and other times I don't - because I don't really have a deep understanding of it and we are always apprehensive of the unknown and things we don't understand. But having said that I do get the Birch Tree - oh yes.