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The Last Samurai Reflections
I saw The Last Samurai a couple times this weekend. Fantastic movie... and inspiring too. One scene that really struck me in this movie was when Tom Cruise was play fighting with a child when one of the samurai comes up and motions for him to drop the play sword. Cruise's character doesn't do it. Instead, he fights the Samurai. Gets beaten, but keeps getting up for more. Just before that scene, that same Samurai had told his Lord, Katusomoto, that the American should kill himself for having been beaten in battle.
That one scene did a brilliant job at showing the differences in our cultures. How we refuse to give up... even when we are beaten. We fight on.
But as the film progressed, you really get to know the Samurai virtues incredibly well... how it is better to die in battle. That was all brought the even more to light, when I saw Sadaam Hussein alive on TV yesterday. There was an old man... beaten... in hiding for months. It was really a pretty pathetic image.
I heard somewhere that he was responsible for the deaths of nearly 300,000 people in his country, yet I can't but help and feel sorry for him. It's not to dissimilar, I guess from Frodo and Bilbo's own sorrow for that other pathetic denizen of corrupted evil, Gollum.
I don't know for certain, but if I were in Sadaam's shoes, I don't think I'd like the world to see me hiding in a dirt coffin, but dead with a gun in my hand, fighting to the bitter end. It's by far a better image for his supporters, to be sure. Thus, I'm glad that's not how we found him.
Course as a pacifist, I hate to see anyone killed, but I am hopeful that justice will be served. I'm just a pathetic man of many hypocrisies. Forgive me.
Posted by Marc Gunn on Monday, December 15, 2003 |
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Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers
