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Movies with Meaning – The Meaning of Time – continued

by | Feb 7, 2018 | Energy, Open Leadership

Weekly series. Please send in your movies via email, twitter etc. Our format:

  • Three movies with meaning (and movies you love and recommend!)
  • One sentence on the core meaning you take from it
  • Send a link to a YouTube clip from the movie that speaks to that meaning

Last week I wrote about time.

We never seem to have enough of it. As Leaders, we often spend time rushing around, without time for presence, time to pause, time for silence, for solitude. (These are all recurring subjects on this site, a search on any on those terms will turn up multiple posts).

As this feels like an inexhaustible topic, today we have three more movies with premises that have us consider time. They make us think about:

  1. Are we all connected across time?
  2. What is the value to us of protecting something over time?
  3. Can we experience our whole lifetime in an instant?

Cloud Atlas (2012)

“Our lives are not our own. we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

The novel involved six nested stories from six different times in history. I love the book, and (if anything) love the movie more. Deemed unfilmable due to the structure of the book, nonetheless, the amazing Wachowski’s (the creators of The Matrix) created a wondrous film, entertaining and highly thought-provoking, both of which on show at the highest level as they pull together all the inter-connected threads as the movie comes towards the end.

Oh, and I ADORE the musical theme.

Local Hero (1983)

Absolutely one of my top films of all time, a timeless masterpiece.

I’m shoe-horning it into this list about time, as it is a timeless masterpiece, as is the scenery it is shot in, priceless indeed. For more, watch the movie, I implore you!

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

This recommendation from my friend Kobi Dorenbush, who concisely captures a time-related meaning as “a lifetime in an instant”

In the Bible, Jacob had a vision of a ladder connecting heaven and earth. In the movie, the protagonist struggles to understand the difference between fantasy and reality.