Film Lists
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1. Kill Bill: Vol. 1, dir. Quentin Tarantino (2003) Besides the nine killed at the wedding, The Bride barely survives the beating and Bill’s shot in the head. She is in a coma for four years and is repeatedly raped in the hospital while unconscious. She awakes, and goes on a revenge streak against the…
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In his Reflections of A Unpolitical Man, Thomas Mann writes that he wants to restore the dignity of the term Bürger, (almost untranslatable in English, but ‘citizen’ is the closest translation), since “certain literary circles” have utterly degraded it. He writes that bourgeois is the favorite affront of the littérateurs, and quotes Wagner saying that…
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This list deals with two Asian emperors who lost their empire in the course of their lives, the Chinese Emperor Puyi and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, and two totalitarian leaders Hitler and Stalin. The first lost his totalitarian empire before he died, while the second died of natural causes and his legacy was swiftly replaced,…
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In a 1951 letter to his editor, while explaining his Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien writes: “As far as all this has symbolical or allegorical significance, Light is such a primeval symbol in the nature of the Universe, that it can hardly be analysed. The Light of Valinor (derived from light before any fall) is the light…
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For the second part of the list dealing with the films based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, with a focus on the fairy tale Red Riding Hood, I chose a Japanese animated film “Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade” and a surrealist Czechoslovakian film “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”, films which deal with this fairy…
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Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales are now part of our collective imagination (I will not use Jung’s term “collective unconscious” since it is a bit problematic). Isabel dos Santos, the author of the article about Brothers Grimm “Reluctant Romantics”, writes: “Throughout the entire world, fairy tales have for generations played a significant part in children’s upbringing…
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In Breugel’s painting The Hunters in the Snow, can see that the hunters are carrying a rabbit, a rather meager catch, which gives us the impression of the stresses they must endure. Since it is winter, this might be the only food they can provide for their families. Harris also says: “You can see the…
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While interpreting Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melancolia I, professor of art history Bonnie Noble writes: “Dürer’s intellect, introspection, and unrelenting perfectionism may have driven him to a state of melancholia—what is now known as depression. Dürer’s famed Melencolia I engraving of 1514 has been called the artist’s psychological self-portrait, and indeed the image does convey the terrible struggle…
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When Nietzsche’s philosophy is taken into account, the phrase “test of will” cannot be found in the original texts of the philosopher, but it appears in the interpretations. To be more specific, in the interpretation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men, put on the silver screen by the legendary Coen Brothers. Chigurh,…
