An hour of hell

I AM exaggerating, of course. But not much really. I am actually referring to a movie I saw, albeit in snatches, while in a fast craft inter-island trip recently.

The title of the movie was "In Hell." What an appropriate title! It starred a certain fellow by the name of Jean Claude Van Damne. With his looks and his physique, I would not be surprised if he gets a large following among the masses -- another reason to worry.

I later learned that the movie was not yet shown in public. So what I saw was a pirated copy. What a mess! This certainly reflects on how we blatantly ignore laws on copyright, etc. Calling the Video Regulatory Board. Please do something.

The spontaneous reaction I had was to ask, why do they make movies like that?

It was about prison life in Russia. I suppose there is some value to that. But should films like this just be shown before the general public? Should it not rather be a restricted item, offered to those who for some valid reasons may want to see it?

Again we have a case here of people maliciously blending valid reasons and legitimate interests with things that definitely are inhuman and immoral. There are many valid parts, but the integration of these parts is questionable.

And why do they click? They click because they actually pander upon the weaknesses of people. The phenomenon is akin to self-gratification that hardens consciences. God has no place here. He is banished, exiled to we don't know where.

Really it was the complete opposite of the Sound of Music, the perfect antidote to films like My Fair Lady. Where I expected to be entertained, I was instead terrorized. Again, I wonder why they make movies like that.

Is there nothing exciting and riveting anymore in a film about God, about one's spiritual and moral struggles? Is there no thrill and suspense in the dramatization of one's discovery of God, or of one's efforts to convert himself and others?

Or any clean human love story, or any act of heroism? I am sure these offer far more exciting and enriching experiences and entertainment.

Do we always need to be bombarded with violence to be entertained? Have we become so shallow and desensitized that we are not anymore curious about spiritual things, that we just remain in the level of guts and the senses? Are we just interested in money, in commercialism?

I was praying the rosary at first at the start of the trip, but after finishing it, it's hard to ignore a movie that is right in front of you and you have no other place to sit to escape it because the boat was full.

So there I was struggling to keep myself cool and calm as I saw a lot of bashing of head, body, groin and ass. If not those, then there was slitting of throats, burning of individuals, cracking of bones, and every other imaginable act of violence. Blood, of course, was made to splatter as if it was just water. Yes, it was hell.

Of course, violence would not be complete without foul language and really rotten scenes of the brown type. And there were plenty of these. They we were spat on you.

There was hatred and revenge dramatized in all its gory details. There was perversion, corruption, deception and many other forms of human depravity, man reduced to a brute. All these depicted not only in some moral sense, but in their graphically physical delineation.

Again, why do they make movies like that?

I reckon, by the random glimpses I had of movies in boats, buses, cafes, etc., that this kind of movies is proliferating. Worse, they appear to be lapped up by many people.

Observing them, I sometimes worry a lot as I see them kind of passive, blasé, as if the atrocities depicted in the movies are very ordinary things that happen often in many places.

They certainly tell us something. Has the world gone so inhuman that they enjoy these things, much like the Romans of the olden times enjoyed those gladiatorial fights involving deaths and human sacrifices?

Have we become callous, skeptical, completely alienated from the real world of humanity where charity and goodness and refinement reign?

Are we in some decadence and decay?