"Death is for the living and not the dead so much."
These words were spoken in the 1978 documentary Gates of Heaven, which observes and listens to the people involved with pet cemeteries and the relocation of burials one year in California. It's an amusing statement; there is a ring of the obvious yet in contemplating it further there is almost an overwhelming profundity that resonates with every reiteration of the phrase. While we are living, we as human beings will always be dealing with death, whether it'd be within ourselves, around the people we love or we're close to, or through instances like what happened in Aurora less than a week ago. It's an invisible force that perpetuates the way we as humans think about living and how our lives are structured. Cultures and religion base much of their construction around it, around its elusiveness. Just like the concept of life, death seems to always happen, but the explanation for its existence (if that can even be said) is void of any certainty and, more importantly, comfort.
This post has be ignited by my thoughts of deaths that I has affected me one way or another in the last six months all in different ways. The Aurora shooting, which has unfortunately only rekindled a debate that remains callous and fruitless. The death of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, which I wrote about in an earlier post of its tragic devastation. Even now, after the new information has been released which does prove his guilt, I am still haunted by such a draining of life. The death of Ray Bradbury, who I didn't know personally, but his impact of my ways of thinking and imagining have been limitless. Lastly, my father informed me that he had to put his cat, Zoe, down because it contracted FIV a year earlier and the injection it was given gave her another infection; Zoe was doing fine up until recently, making for a frustrating and abrupt turn of events for my father, who was close to her. Now I am not going to say I am an expert of death, whatever that means.
I am not, fortunately, experienced with it, though it has come into my life
multiple times in different ways. Yet, death as a perceptible thing comes upon
anyone who is close to anyone else. These four instances have constructed a
view of, I think, how we should approach death in our lives. At least it has for me and the only way I am to express it to you all is through the medium of film, a realm that I am familiar with not just for technique but significance. It is all about observing the emotions of the characters and what death means in the context of the film's narrative.
"Why must the fireflies die so quickly?" asks Setsuko to her older bother Seita in the Japanese animated film, Graves of the Fireflies. It is a question that Seita cannot answer; it will only confuse him, especially having to bear the loss of their mother and the ongoing tragedy of World War II. Film has been my only channel to really observe and think about death. Well, there are certain video games that have used death as both a momentous event in a narrative and a thematic significance, but not (yet) to the extent as I see it in films. I remember, when I was young, that I had nightmares of dying or nightmares of my parents dying. I don't know how common that was among others my age, but it's an anxiety that seemed almost impossible to get rid of. I feel as I grew older, though, that sort of nightmare drifted away and it seemed like I had forgotten the matter altogether. Yet, looking back on it now, I'm glad I didn't maintain that sort of ignorance. Upon seeing many films that talk about death in a humanistic manner, I found myself wanting to understand it more, to come to terms with it. Watching an eccentric documentary like Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven I looked upon many different people who have experienced death. Their pets were companions and the loss of such a friendly and obedient creature only brings about loneliness. The middle of the film features an extended interview of an old lady sitting at her door discussing many things in one of the most fascinating illustrations of human emotion I have ever seen in a film. Her loneliness due to her loss of a cat was channeled into anger for her son who seemed to have abandon her and then her demeanor settles back down into regret for her loss, underscoring her loneliness (she also makes a number of amusing, albeit heart-wrenching, contradictions of her lifestyle which only adds to her loss).
It doesn't matter if a pet has died or a human being, if you are close enough to it a death will affect you insurmountably. I can only imagine what the victims' families of the Aurora shooting must feel like. Maybe it is like the old lady in the film, there may be a forceful insertion of emotions to cover for the feelings directly dealing with their loss; a mechanism to keep on keeping on. Memories, though, become both a burden and a joy. There is a fragmentation of the departed's existence within the mind. Their presence of the dead is there to react to, but there will be no interplay between the grieving living and the dead. who knows. This is my attempt at understanding, but it doesn't scratch the surface in the case of the shooting which was done so randomly any logic put forth would be rendered insufficient. You can only look at this at the emotional level that needs to either be observed or experienced, which is why Gates of Heaven works so well; it allows the interviewees to tell their story unobstructed and what formulates is a kaleidoscopic vision of life and death, loss and companionship, where there seems to be a lurking absolute truth that we never grasp.
It is also why Japanese cinema is so crucial. Rooted from their culture, the way they view death is astonishing and there are many films that express this. Akira Kurosawa, the legendary and prolific director, is not only an inspiration for me along the same lines as Ray Bradbury, but he is also a mentor. As quite possibly the most humanistic filmmaker I have ever seen, I have learned much of the feelings and emotions surrounding death as one could learn through film. In his film Red Beard, we follow a young man, Yasumoto, who wants to become the Shogun's doctor though he must work at a village clinic first to gain experience. This is a place barren of any sufficient funding, death seems like a recurring theme. Yasumoto, though, has not experienced death directly. He is frightened as he has to watch one of the patients die. "The pain and loneliness of death frightens me," says another doctor to Yasumoto. Yasumoto, in recalling his moment with the dying man, seem to try and point out what the man must have been feeling in an excellent series of shots (shown below). I wonder what was going through Joe Paterno's mind, as I watched him in all the TV reports with headlines all over the place. He seemed to let go all connections of life after he had been devastated by forces unstoppable. I felt like Yasumoto at that point. I didn't feel like watching the demise of a man who had lived a long life, no matter his guilt. To Yasumoto, it is a soul-sanctifying experience, to peer into the eyes of a dying man; the idea of death is so near, it's inescapable. Red Beard (played by the outstanding Toshiro Mifune) remarks on its solemnity, yet Yasumoto doesn't understand such a description, at first. In the erratic chaos that Paterno died amongst, there is this sort of solemnity to it all, how his passing from our world enables him to rest. Although I have never been so close to death or seen someone so close to death, Kurosawa teaches me of its emotional power and its lasting effect, since death lays within memory, an immovable object. Kurosawa, with this film, does not want us to ignore it or shun it or abhor it in any sort of way but to understand it, to come to terms with its rather inexplicable nature. If we do not our lives will be govern by a fear that suffocates our passions and our access to personal growth. we must confront the notions and ideas we cannot fully explain because whether or not they are elusively unreachable, they still exist in our reality.
"Why must the fireflies die so quickly?" asks Setsuko to her older bother Seita in the Japanese animated film, Graves of the Fireflies. It is a question that Seita cannot answer; it will only confuse him, especially having to bear the loss of their mother and the ongoing tragedy of World War II. Film has been my only channel to really observe and think about death. Well, there are certain video games that have used death as both a momentous event in a narrative and a thematic significance, but not (yet) to the extent as I see it in films. I remember, when I was young, that I had nightmares of dying or nightmares of my parents dying. I don't know how common that was among others my age, but it's an anxiety that seemed almost impossible to get rid of. I feel as I grew older, though, that sort of nightmare drifted away and it seemed like I had forgotten the matter altogether. Yet, looking back on it now, I'm glad I didn't maintain that sort of ignorance. Upon seeing many films that talk about death in a humanistic manner, I found myself wanting to understand it more, to come to terms with it. Watching an eccentric documentary like Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven I looked upon many different people who have experienced death. Their pets were companions and the loss of such a friendly and obedient creature only brings about loneliness. The middle of the film features an extended interview of an old lady sitting at her door discussing many things in one of the most fascinating illustrations of human emotion I have ever seen in a film. Her loneliness due to her loss of a cat was channeled into anger for her son who seemed to have abandon her and then her demeanor settles back down into regret for her loss, underscoring her loneliness (she also makes a number of amusing, albeit heart-wrenching, contradictions of her lifestyle which only adds to her loss).
It doesn't matter if a pet has died or a human being, if you are close enough to it a death will affect you insurmountably. I can only imagine what the victims' families of the Aurora shooting must feel like. Maybe it is like the old lady in the film, there may be a forceful insertion of emotions to cover for the feelings directly dealing with their loss; a mechanism to keep on keeping on. Memories, though, become both a burden and a joy. There is a fragmentation of the departed's existence within the mind. Their presence of the dead is there to react to, but there will be no interplay between the grieving living and the dead. who knows. This is my attempt at understanding, but it doesn't scratch the surface in the case of the shooting which was done so randomly any logic put forth would be rendered insufficient. You can only look at this at the emotional level that needs to either be observed or experienced, which is why Gates of Heaven works so well; it allows the interviewees to tell their story unobstructed and what formulates is a kaleidoscopic vision of life and death, loss and companionship, where there seems to be a lurking absolute truth that we never grasp.
It is also why Japanese cinema is so crucial. Rooted from their culture, the way they view death is astonishing and there are many films that express this. Akira Kurosawa, the legendary and prolific director, is not only an inspiration for me along the same lines as Ray Bradbury, but he is also a mentor. As quite possibly the most humanistic filmmaker I have ever seen, I have learned much of the feelings and emotions surrounding death as one could learn through film. In his film Red Beard, we follow a young man, Yasumoto, who wants to become the Shogun's doctor though he must work at a village clinic first to gain experience. This is a place barren of any sufficient funding, death seems like a recurring theme. Yasumoto, though, has not experienced death directly. He is frightened as he has to watch one of the patients die. "The pain and loneliness of death frightens me," says another doctor to Yasumoto. Yasumoto, in recalling his moment with the dying man, seem to try and point out what the man must have been feeling in an excellent series of shots (shown below). I wonder what was going through Joe Paterno's mind, as I watched him in all the TV reports with headlines all over the place. He seemed to let go all connections of life after he had been devastated by forces unstoppable. I felt like Yasumoto at that point. I didn't feel like watching the demise of a man who had lived a long life, no matter his guilt. To Yasumoto, it is a soul-sanctifying experience, to peer into the eyes of a dying man; the idea of death is so near, it's inescapable. Red Beard (played by the outstanding Toshiro Mifune) remarks on its solemnity, yet Yasumoto doesn't understand such a description, at first. In the erratic chaos that Paterno died amongst, there is this sort of solemnity to it all, how his passing from our world enables him to rest. Although I have never been so close to death or seen someone so close to death, Kurosawa teaches me of its emotional power and its lasting effect, since death lays within memory, an immovable object. Kurosawa, with this film, does not want us to ignore it or shun it or abhor it in any sort of way but to understand it, to come to terms with its rather inexplicable nature. If we do not our lives will be govern by a fear that suffocates our passions and our access to personal growth. we must confront the notions and ideas we cannot fully explain because whether or not they are elusively unreachable, they still exist in our reality.
I am reminded of a minimal scene in the film Departures (I did an analysis on it here) where the main character must prepare a body of a man who had just hung himself. A notion like that would horrify most, like me. Yet, the main character has accepted death and its many forms since he has to deal with it, like Yasumoto, everyday (but don't we all, to an extent?). I'm not trying to say an understanding of death will make us less emotional about it. Rather, the exact opposite. I'll explain further.
Hearing of the Aurora shooting is heartbreaking, death has come upon many lives unnecessarily and abruptly. How can we truly understand death and confront it if death can behave in such a way, where a man out the arbitrariness of it all, wipes out twelve people in a movie theatre? When I learned that Jessica Redfield escape the Toronto mall shooting only to be killed in Aurora, a sickening pain struck me instantly. I started swearing out loud and senselessly trying to understand why this had to happen. How fragile is life! That is what has been racing through my mind for a while now. It didn't seem fair how fragile it was, honestly. I stopped there because I knew I couldn't find any answer worthy of comfort. I look back at films that speak of this, one in particular, made by Kurosawa, that also thinks about this fragility. Ikiru (my short blog about it here), my favorite Kurosawa film, is boundless in its expression, in which a man who lived life rigidly found out he had six months to live due to cancer. He then goes about acting, initiating, and living. The poignant element of the story is that he dies half way through the film and thus the second half of the film is a group of men at his wake discussing what his life was who he really was. Through this film I can at least quell my blind anger and frustration. The dynamics of a grand narrative highlight the exuberant notion that through the constant certainty of dying there should be a constant certainty of living. It's a compelling yet truistic statement easily overlooked.
Hearing of the Aurora shooting is heartbreaking, death has come upon many lives unnecessarily and abruptly. How can we truly understand death and confront it if death can behave in such a way, where a man out the arbitrariness of it all, wipes out twelve people in a movie theatre? When I learned that Jessica Redfield escape the Toronto mall shooting only to be killed in Aurora, a sickening pain struck me instantly. I started swearing out loud and senselessly trying to understand why this had to happen. How fragile is life! That is what has been racing through my mind for a while now. It didn't seem fair how fragile it was, honestly. I stopped there because I knew I couldn't find any answer worthy of comfort. I look back at films that speak of this, one in particular, made by Kurosawa, that also thinks about this fragility. Ikiru (my short blog about it here), my favorite Kurosawa film, is boundless in its expression, in which a man who lived life rigidly found out he had six months to live due to cancer. He then goes about acting, initiating, and living. The poignant element of the story is that he dies half way through the film and thus the second half of the film is a group of men at his wake discussing what his life was who he really was. Through this film I can at least quell my blind anger and frustration. The dynamics of a grand narrative highlight the exuberant notion that through the constant certainty of dying there should be a constant certainty of living. It's a compelling yet truistic statement easily overlooked.
Ikiru also raises issues of perception after death. From here on out, there is no way for the individual to defend his or her identity; it is subject to the perspectives of others. Joe Paterno and Ray Bradbury, being celebrities, have been discussed. We judge them by their past actions in a reflective notion of how they resonate inside us in the present moment, hence the damaging scrutiny for Paterno. Bradbury's actions are his work and thus we look into them as a way to retain any sort of essence that he held. In this day in age, a death is the ignition for debate and criticism. Anymore on this topic is for another post.
I feel we must look upon this symbiotic relationship between life and death with more respect, this fragile relationship. It is crucial because it affects the way you live, they way you recall your past, the way you dream. You need to hold the firefly gently or you will crush it, even though you know it will die soon, anyways. There is something marvelous in facing death through living, and that's what we must do. I did not know any of the victim's of Aurora and I do not know their families. Yet, I feel the least I can do is to not live in fear and to simply live. I'm not talking about a 'you only live once' mentality which still treats life and death as separate entities (you live then you die) but a mentality that is aware of death continuously since it is always around us. The moment the main character in Ikiru started living was the moment he stopped fearing death and instead enjoyed living, but not to the point he ignored death, but accepted it as a certainty. At the end of the film he is satisfied with his work and the act of doing, that's all that needed to be done.
My dad said it was a tough decision to put his cat down, seeing that he's been with her for a long time. Parting ways will always be painful; the pain remains latent within memory until the memory is recalled, bringing back such pain. In our moments of severe disorientation, I feel it is right that we stabilize ourselves and live so that the dearly departed do not die in vain. It is sometimes easy to forget that by living we are and will always be subjected to the concept of death, hence death is really just for the living. You know what else, though? Living is for the living, too.
PS: This post is not intended to discuss policies regarding Joe Paterno or the Aurora shootings. Those are issues too complicated to insert here. My first thoughts about these events were of the humans invovled so I wanted to make a post strictly about our understanding of death.
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