Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Regarding Us







One of my all time favorite films is Regarding Henry.  It stars Harrison Ford and Annette Benning and was produced by Sydney Pollack.  It’s the story of a high-powered, high-priced lawyer, at a high-prestige firm in New York.  He is shot and suffers traumatic brain injury.  With the help of a dedicated, wise therapist,  he comes back to a functioning state.  However, he now experiences the world from a place of innocence and innate decency.  With his new personality, he slowly bonds with his wife. His young daughter understands him completely.  In one of the most poignant scenes, she says: “Here Dad, this is how you tie your shoes.  Now you try.”

Eventually, Henry’s old ways reveal themselves to him and he rejects them.  His powerful colleagues patronize him at first, and then despise him.  I think the billionaires feel the same way about us.  We’re just so nervy to exhibit bedrock values and want to shift the power just a little bit.

Is Regarding Henry telling us that it's going to take a rewiring of our brains to turn us in a different direction?

4 comments:

  1. did you have to watch the film again or did you just remember it?

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    1. I remembered it. But I'm going to see if I can find it and watch it again.

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  2. Another question is whether those billionaires (I'm assuming not all of them) were contemptuous of the "little people" on the way up or became that way because of the corrosive effect of money and power.

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  3. IwanI to believe that people start out as a blank slate ready to absorb life around them. What leads them to one or the other path,so many have tried to answer, without much success in my opinion.

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