Wow, what a fantastic movie!

I saw this once, a long time ago, and recall enjoying it at that time.  But not nearly as much as this time around.  It is funny how a certain movie, or song, or book, or place, can be so different at different points in your life…

A little background on this…. A few months ago I was in London, and I could not get a flight out the night I was ready to leave, so I ended up staying at an airport hotel at Gatwick.  That night after dinner, I was hanging out in the lobby with my laptop and a beer, and a couple of guys ended up sitting next to me.  One was a mechanic that worked on industrial scale washing machines, and he left after just a few minutes.  The other ended up being a Catholic priest in “street clothes” as he was on holiday (so I did not find out he was a priest until 30 minutes into our conversation).

We ended up talking for a couple of hours, about a lot of things, including a fair amount of theology, and the conversation still sticks with me.  In fact, I still want to gather my thoughts into a post on one thing in particular — how it may be possible to legislate from two different angles — reason and faith, and come up with a set of laws that is agreeable to both.  I have always NOT wanted a legislature that stems from any one particular faith (including my own!), but we discussed some things that make me question my own personal views on that.

Update: To expand on that… I still don’t want to legislate from a given faith given our country’s separation of church and state.  But I am less inclined to feel that there should be large differences in the set of laws that are created when one stems from morals developed through reason alone and another stems from morals developed through a given faith.  And yes I know how divergent different faiths can be, but the point is that it should become obvious when a given law does not conform to reasonably sound morals, no matter the source of those morals (reason or faith).

And the conversation we had that night a couple months ago still sticks with me…

Anyway, the reason all of that has to do with this movie is that we talked about our favorite movies, and this was his…  So I wanted to re-watch it just for that.

Just one quote (for now, at least):

So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you… I don’t see an intelligent, confident man… I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my f’ing life apart..   [emphasis mine…  🙂  ]