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Falling Down is one of my favorites and I'm always stunned to see how other people react to it, because it's always either "he was the good guy" or "he was the bad guy". Which totally misses the entire fricking point of it.

It's like when I watched The Song of Bernadette with atheists and at the end they were in turbosmug mode chortling about how this was such a great takedown of Christianity because she dies in the end.

!catholics Somebody who knows wtf I'm talking about get in here and upmarsey me.

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eww gross are you a filthy fricking false idol worshipper

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It's not like that, it's a movie for everybody. In 1940 a Jewish refugee was sheltered in Lourdes for a while and the only way he could think of to repay them was to tell the story of their local heroine. That book is what the movie is based on. It works no matter what (if anything) you believe.

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Full movie is on YouTube. It's a classic. I don't usually get into liturgical calendar change griping (@Paragon) but the fact that they moved St. Bernadette's feast off Feb. 18 (the day the Blessed Virgin Mary promised she would experience happiness not on earth, but in Heaven) is a travesty. The BVM :marseyimmaculate: even appeared to her 18 times and that date was a perfect one week off the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. It worked on so many levels. Anyway, great film, great saint, great Marian Apparition with a handful of miraculous healings cross-verified by atheist :marseydoctor:. I am a bit skeptical of some private revelations but I believe this one 100%. !Catholics should at minimum read about her a little because she's one of the great modern Saints. Lot of Pinays named Bernadette, btw.

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One of my favorite movies ever. I guess what I like about it is it's not speaking to people who believe or people who don't, it's speaking to people about the process of deciding to believe. That this is a real decision, it really matters, but it's for you to make. And it's not so obvious that every good person will immediately know the answer and just check the right box.

Also the part about nobody ever recognizing your chronic pain because you're so angelic you never complain, which is actually me irl. :marseyangel:

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I don't care much about the liturgical calendar change, it was just stupid and there was no good reason for it. I reserve my seething rage for when weekday feasts and especially obligations are transferred to Sunday.

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You're the only one who I thought might agree with me about the change. :marseysadwave2: Freeing up certain dates for future canonizations or to allow local Saints to enter the picture made some sense, at minimum, but like plenty of V2 things the implementation has been pretty mixed. Looking at the USCCB Calendar I've only been to a few parishes that put any emphasis on Ss. Elizabeth Ann Seton or Kateri Tekakwitha, for example.

I reserve my seething rage for when weekday feasts and especially obligations are transferred to Sunday.

I'm with you there.

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My TLM parishes and my family have always celebrated feast days according to the older calendar, so the change simply doesn't affect me much at all, except for when I'm attending a Novus Ordo Mass because a feast is during the week and the readings are entirely unrelated, which is disappointing but not something to get worked up over. Generally I'm of the opinion that as many saints should share a feast as necessary and let local devotion sort out which one to celebrate. It's not like there are only 366 saints anyway.

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it's always either "he was the good guy" or "he was the bad guy". Which totally misses the entire fricking point of it.

Michael Douglas's character was a man highly prone to violence. He had a restraining order and his ex-wife mentioned that although he never hit her she always felt he was about to snap at any moment

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Michael Douglas's character was a man highly prone to violence.

True. There's nothing inherently good or evil about that. This violent guy is rampaging across town chimping out and finally letting everything loose. Sometimes he's completely in the right (with the Nazi obviously, with the hard-working Americans, the old guy on the golf course). Sometimes he's clearly nuts and in the wrong and isn't noticing that his idea of doing what's right is hurting innocent people. I mean frick, the scene in the Korean convenience store, I've been on both sides of that.

his ex-wife mentioned that although he never hit her she always felt he was about to snap at any moment

:marseyfacepalm:

And what happens in the end? Think about that ending scene, how it corresponds with that.

(As an aside if you take things really literally, if a woman says "he didn't hit me but I felt like he might" this is :marseyredflag2: :marseyredflag2: :marseyredflag2: that she's trying to manipulate you into getting into her trouble.)

Over the course of the movie he learns that he's not the good guy, he's not the bad guy, he's just a guy who doesn't have any place in this world anymore.

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he didn't hit me but I felt like he might

My interpretation is that he was the sort of guy who gave tantrums shouting, hitting walls with his fists and throwing things around over petty arguments, there's no need for exposition. But a characteristic of a good film is how viewers can develop so many different interpretations of the motives and characters.

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Yes, that's the basic premise of the movie. They didn't spend 2 hours just to tell you that he's angry so that means he's bad.

I dunno, maybe some of it is cultural. I'm from the west coast, I remember that time, I've dealt with all these groups of people. It's a very intricately layered movie. I think in this case there really are some subtle nuances that went over your head. But tbqh it goes over the heard of basically everybody here under 35 too. :marseydoomer:

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It's actually amazing how often people on this place do the same thing as redditors and don't actually understand subtext of things lol. You're 100% right, the guy was a ticking time bomb and anything would've set him off but the question is how much of it is society's doing. The guy was shaped by the world around him and is more just an unfortunate soul. It doesn't absolve him of his actions but shows how even normal people can be pushed too far.

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the question is how much of it is society's doing

:marseyagree:

Which is very much not a question with a simple yes or no answer. Hence the need to make a movie to spend 2 hours grappling with it.

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I may not have a place but I can fit into someone else's real easy, most people here are fatsos

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Yeah he was very much the villain in that movie but as the protagonist he became a sympathetic villain. He's a completely detestable, selfish character, it's just some of his goals intersect with general resentment against the system.

It's a good film

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Falling Down is really good. He isn't the good or bad guy, but an angry man out of place with nothing to lose.

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:marseyhesright:

And that's what he learns through his journey. That in all these fights it didn't matter that much if he was right or wrong, he just didn't fit in anymore. That's how I took it at least.

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My man was fricking just a fricking !goyslopenjoyers and was fricking denied :marseyno: his slop breakfast :marseyheinzbeans:

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society intentionally ignores some stuff. if you act all smug and start "whistleblowing", you'll get a bullet not a medal

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What do you like about it?

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I think I've explained that about both movies elsewhere in the thread, but I'll assume you mean The Song of Bernadette. I like it because it doesn't tell you to believe or not believe and it doesn't hide any of the evidence for and against her. It's not judgmental of people who are willing to believe and it's not judgmental of people who want to see evidence.

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