Unleashed, with Jet Li and Morgan Freeman. I watched this last Friday, and while when I watched it I was in a particularly sensitive state, I'd venture to say that several different points in that movie would have had me close to tears regardless of what state I was in. To maybe clarify that a little, one thing that always gets to me are literacy issues. For example, in Jackie Brown I think it was, Samuel Jackson's character moves his lips while he reads, which began to strike a chord in me, but then another character makes fun of him for it, and that went straight to an almost physical reaction within me. To be cut off from or limited in a kind of communication which the majority of the rest of one's social world has complete and unconscious access to....in my empathic reaction it feels like something that would make one feel permanently left out, or even almost make one feel less-than-human, going by the idea having access to communication as a basis for having the quality of 'humanity.'

      Part of the reason I wanted to be an English teacher for so long was to help kids be able to express themselves and communicate, especially during that teenage time in their lives when everything is awkward and confusing and it's so easy to just withdraw from the world. When I see it's hard for someone to even use the language they were born with to be able to get across one's meaning to another without it coming out wrong or saying something that wasn't even intended, which I know it certainly was for me at that point in time and still is in some ways, it really gets to me. In the past my impulse was to help them, which probably meant I was quite pushy about it, in retrospect; I think maybe that was part of my hesitancy to become a teacher, my nacent and now fully growing secondary impulse to nurture and provide a comfortable environment rather than push or try to do it for the person, and that conflict between the former and now primary latter impulse, however late I unfortunately realized it, was destabilizing enough to be part of pushing me away from becoming a teacher.

      To circle around to the movie - to explain the literacy thing, Li's character (Danny) has a book with the alphabet and pictures for each letter - L for love, K for kiss, P for piano and so on. But beyond that, Li's character is also forced into a less-than-human status, not because of his trouble with literacy, mind, that's ancillary, but by restricting his ability to communicate - as Freeman's character points out, Danny doesn't even have access to his own emotions, much less is able to express them to others. How does he find his humanity again, the question becomes in my mind. Through a few different ways, which interweave, and I'm not sure of their importance: through music, a different form of communication that's certainly connected with emotion; through a safe and comfortable environment with access to be able to learn at one's own pace to communicate; and maybe this was most important in my mind, and something I wish I'd learned a while back, an environment where questions aren't constantly asked, but only when they are part of a real need - the answers, and Danny's final acquiring of really knowing himself, come in their own time, nurtured by those prior mentioned things. I found these things profound, and am sure there's more depth I don't know yet that could be drawn out with a closer reading.

      And just to speak to the martial arts, the fight scenes are great. As much as they are mostly formless, I was looking for some hung gar I'd read was in used in the choreography, and it comes up more and more the more Danny begins to gain possession of himself - a fine example of using martial arts within a narrative, in my opinion, in that one can see the physical expression of Danny's internal change as his fighting style becomes more effecient and graceful. That being said, it's also always nice to see movements that are practiced in the dojo in a movie, so that was nice as well.

addendum, later -
      A couple more things; I thought it was interesting that this movie made me realize, in its hardcore violence (and yet with some form at the end), that when one practices forms, they are representative of that level of violence. Also, I thought the maxim repeated in the movie that "Family sticks together" was also important in Danny's awakening, as the family provides the final impetus for it, even after he left it.