More on Movies and the Moral Imagination
ALAN writes:
Here are some additional thoughts on a topic addressed here a few weeks ago:
Motion pictures convey a certain sense of life. In most classic and ordinary old movies (both American and British), it is what Ayn Rand called a “benevolent sense of life,” a firm but often unarticulated conviction that values are worth pursuing and defending, that men are not helpless lumps of clay, and that it is both possible and desirable to create happy, decent, and productive lives by means of hard work, responsibility, and restraint. The three movies I named in my original essay include elements of sorrow, tragedy, unhappiness, and wasted years. But they also reflect a benevolent sense of life. (more…)

