Underrated Movies Changed My Life Too - Vic Thiessen

Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Jeff Bridges and Amanda Plummer in The Fisher King

I was seven years old when I saw my first film, The Sword in the Stone, and I’ve been a film buff ever since. As evidenced by my reaction to that film, I am not a film buff only because I enjoy watching great films, but also because films have had, and continue to have, a tremendous impact on my life. 

Indeed, a number of my most-loved films are films that critics (initially at least) found to be mediocre but which changed my life. The most significant example of this is my all-time favorite film, The Sound of Music. 

Upon its release, most critics found The Sound of Music too sweet and shallow to take seriously. At the time, I was a nine-year-old boy living in constant fear of monsters (too many sci-fi B-movies on TV), lying awake for hours each night. After watching The Sound of Music, I started singing My Favorite Things to myself every time I was afraid. My insomnia disappeared. Even more importantly, the words of Climb Every Mountain both haunted and guided my life for many years as I sought to find my dream. Not Maria’s romantic and family dream, and not the “American Dream”, but a dream to help create a better world, guided by the lyrics: “A dream that will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live.” The Sound of Music is (for me) all about standing up to the worst darkness humanity can produce and facing it not with bombs and bullets but with music and laughter and joy and beauty and wonder and love and compassion and trust in the light of God.

I continue to be drawn to films that are not afraid to emphasize wonder, kindness and compassion in a life-affirming and light way, without the need for action or violence (e.g. last year’s Leave No Trace and Eighth Grade). And yet when I consider the underrated films I love (in part because of how they impacted my life), I discover that many are quite dark. Some of them coincidently (or not) also tell the same story, a story I evidently find compelling and inspiring.

These latter films include Dark City, Joe Versus the Volcano and two Terry Gilliam films (Brazil, The Zero Theorem). All four of these films tell the story of a man, living under uniquely alienating conditions, who is trying to make sense of his life. These men know something is off/wrong, not just with their personal lives (three of them have meaningless dehumanizing jobs), but with the world around them. They all dream of a better place (three of them about a coastal beach) and they are all searching for love/romance. 

In pursuit of their dreams for a better meaningful world, the four men make efforts to unmask what theologian Walter Wink called the Domination System the complex of individuals, institutions, and decisions which is oppressing the people in the worlds they inhabit. Some of these efforts end tragically and yet, in one way or another, all four men will find the romance they seek as well as a form of peace with their dreams and for their souls.

Linking these four films is their efforts at humanization: the search for what it means to be human and what it means to live a humane and meaningful life. The worlds the four men inhabit are not “real” but they depict the spirit of the dehumanizing environment that far too many people on this planet really inhabit. At the time when I first saw each of these films in the cinema, I was one of those people, experiencing a soul-draining daily grind while losing sight of the big picture. Thus each film, at just the right time, reminded me of my need to challenge the Domination System around me, focus on beauty and continue to work toward my dream.

Another underrated Gilliam film, The Fisher King, had the same impact. This time grounded in the real world, The Fisher King is also about men searching/dreaming for meaning in an uncaring world devoid of human connection. This dream is marvelously portrayed in the scene showing hundreds of commuters in Grand Central Station suddenly waltzing together. The Fisher King shows how dreamers and romantics, through acts of kindness, mercy and compassion, can change the nature of a cold reality.

But when I think of underrated films about unmasking powers and performing acts of kindness, one film stands out as one of the great cinematic achievements of the 21st Century. Despite the unnecessary redemptive violence (much of which is absent from David Mitchell’s source novel), I love Cloud Atlas (directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer) for the brilliant way it weaves together six stories and time periods to show how the world has struggled for centuries against the corporate and political powers of the Domination System, and how we, individually and collectively, can change the future and make the world a better place. Facing slavery, colonization, oppression and consumerism, people/souls connect to each other over time to fulfill their dream for a better world by standing against the Domination System and by their acts of kindness and thoughtful decision-making. 

Watching Cloud Atlas, I am reminded that we are all part of the same one story described above, that we all share the need for love and the dream to make the world a better place. Each of our unique stories informs other stories, past and present, and together we can create a new story, not on some distant planet (Cloud Atlas) but on our planet if we dream together and work together fast enough. The world can be cold and alienating, but it can also be the place of great beauty, joy, music and connection exemplified in The Sound of Music.

The films mentioned above are not flawless. Some even make me cringe at times. But they resonated deeply with me and they share a vision of refusing to be cogs in a dehumanizing, mind-numbing consumerist machine. They teach me to open my eyes to that which is soul-draining around us while focusing on the soul-nourishing beauty that is also around every corner, holding fast to the dream of a world where all life may flourish. 

Vic Thiessen is a freelance writer living on the east coast of Canada. He has reviewed over a thousand films, contributed regularly to a number of magazines and websites and hosted a weekly film night for the past twenty years.