From time to time, I will post commentary on movies, both new and old, that have deep implications for metaphysics and mysticism. I will pick movies that relate to the themes covered in my writings on this blog.
- Darren Aronofsky is one of the leading current filmmakers and directors of movies dealing with mystical and metaphysical themes. He started in the late 1990s with “Pi,” an exploration of the Cabala, number theory, and the computer capacity to deal with very large and sophisticated computations. Max, a math genius, is investigating the stock market to find numerical patterns in the values of stocks. He writes a book on it that brings him to the attention of a group of cabalists. The cabalists enlist Max to help them find the true name of God coded in the Torah. He does find it, but is driven mad by the intensity of the feeling elicited by his contact with the true name. This was followed by “Requiem for A Dream” exploring the “American Dream” and consumerism as the background to drug addition and human degradation. Here, drugs represent a temporary relief from alienation and a search for the “high” formerly given by God. All the drug takers are destroyed by this attempt to find an easy way out of the human dilemma. This was followed by “Noah.” “Noah” is a retelling of the flood story from the subjective choices and feelings of Noah and his family. Here, an existentialist theme is explored with Noah given the choice by God as to the survival of the human race post flood. Aronofsky’s most recent film is the 2017 “Mother.” This movie explores the tendency of humans to destroy their messiahs. In a Kafkaesque setting in a rural cabin, a poet and his young wife are living a life devoted to his efforts to write. He does not overcome his writer’s block until strange visitors start arriving and staying as guests. He write a wonderful book that sells out on the first day of publication. Then, hordes of well wishers and fans descend on the house destroying everything in an attempt to devour the creative energies of the poet. All of these films point to the quest for salvation through full contact God. In all cases the quest falls short.
- The recent (2019) film “The Two Popes,” staring Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, directed by Fernando Meirelles, was the finest movie I have seen in many, many years. The true story, about the retirement of a conservative Pope, and his replacement by a liberal one, was deeply soul moving. It shows the dialectical unification of opposites in a higher and truly healing concentration of spiritual consciousness. This is a look at the functioning of Absolute Mind.
