HUMOUR
Frank T. Bird Ruined My Weekend
Losing Sleep Over That Damn Top Spiritual Movie Claim
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I’ve been awake since 4:30 this morning, obsessing over that damn story by Frank T Bird where he claims that Planes, Trains and Automobiles is The Greatest Spiritual Movie of All Time.
Now, I know some of you reading this probably think 04:30 is a bit on the late side — all you irritatingly perfect go-getters who rise at four o’clock every morning, go for a run down to the beach, then an icy swim, Wim Hof style, before heading back to your yoga studio to warm up with some high-powered asanas followed by an hour’s meditation before breakfast.
That’s not me, OK.
So right now, I’m a little pissed off. I’ve got a tough weekend ahead of me and being kept awake from such an ungodly hour, struggling to understand Frank’s movie choice, has left me a little grumpy.
I mean, I can obviously understand why he picked Planes, Trains and Automobiles over some obvious spiritual fluff like Fearless, for example. Jeff Bridges’ spontaneous ‘enlightenment’ following his brush with death so close to the start of that movie is just too celestial from the outset.
Bridges’ almost Messianic role after that initial awakening and subsequent choice to ‘return to Samsara’ because of love clearly have strong spiritual overtones, but lack the grit of humdrum day-to-day annoyances which lead many ordinary people onto a ‘spiritual path’ in the first place.
And Frank makes it crystal clear in his Medium story that, in his opinion, “The spiritual path is very much about a student learning from a teacher.” Although Bridges’ character assumes the role of teacher or guide in Fearless, he himself had no real ‘journey’ to his transformative experience and there was definitely no sign of a guru.
I can also see why Frank didn’t pick something like The Game as his greatest spiritual movie of all time. Although you could say that Sean Penn loosely represents the guru for Michael Douglas in that movie, there is a feeling of something too engineered and psychological to the plot.
Sure, there are many elements it shares with Planes, Trains and Automobiles, including the ‘series of torturous events’ which Michael Douglas is led through, kicking and screaming.
As Frank says,
“when you get close to a genuine guru, it is like jumping into the crocodile’s pit”
The Game certainly fits the bill in this sense, as well as the stuck-in-a-rut tedium of Douglas’s life as a high-powered executive and his final awakening with the requisite opening up to love, compassion and wisdom.
Yes, The Game is definitely a close contender, but I wouldn’t split hairs over such a close-run race and I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over it!
But where the Hell was Fight Club!?
This was the question going round and round my head like a Zen Koan as I lay in bed in those wee small hours trying not to wake my wife with my sighs of frustration and occasional grunts of consternation.
WHY NOT FIGHT CLUB?
I mean, surely it has everything a spiritual movie needs?
There’s Edward Norton, exactly like Steve Martin ‘sitting through horrendous boring meetings because he has to and has no channel to break free of it’, as Frank put it.
There’s Norton’s addiction to useless ‘stuff’, his attachment to which is forcibly broken despite his own clinging.
There’s his desperate attempts to hypnotise himself into some sort of fluffy, hippy-dippy belief that the world is other than it is.
There’s his pseudo-enlightenment, when he sees himself as ‘the calm little centre of the world’ but all it does is feed his ego:
“When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone’s hostile little FACE”
There are too many spiritual quotes to mention, peppered throughout the entire movie, all designed to shake us out of our sleepwalk through life:
“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
or:
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
and, of course:
“You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We’re all part of the same compost heap. We’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”
Then, throughout it all, there’s the obvious guru-student relationship between Norton and Brad Pitt, culminating in Norton’s ultimate, mind-blowing and transformational revelation about the nature of that relationship and the final destruction of the old world as he knew it.
It’s not only an infinitely better-made film than the old Steve Martin and John Candy one, but, I was convinced, it’s also an infinitely more spiritual movie, too.
Then it hit me.
Compassion. That’s what’s missing from Fight Club.
Throughout Planes, Trains and Automobiles, John Candy’s character comes across as insensitive, bumbling, idiotic, clumsy… but throughout it all we get the impression there’s not a bad bone in his body. He radiates an open warmth and softness of heart which makes people love him despite everything.
By the end of the movie, that warmth, that openness, that softness of heart, that unconditional love is what he has somehow imparted to Steve Martin and that is the whole point of the movie.
Perhaps, in the end, that is the whole point of the spiritual path.
Within Buddhism there is a distinction between two types of enlightened beings — the Arhat and the Bodhisattva.
The Arhat has seen the nature of reality and thus attained the keys to liberation, becoming free to enjoy the fruits of Nirvana for all eternity.
The Bodhisattva, on the other hand, has also seen the nature of reality but rather than enjoying the fruits of Nirvana for eternity, has chosen to return to Samsara, the world of suffering, again and again for the benefit of all sentient beings and to help others get free.
The Arhat, represented in Fight Club by Edward Norton, is traditionally depicted as ugly. It could be said that Norton realises his true nature and wins his freedom, but at what price? People get hurt along the way. People get killed. Fucking MEATLOAF gets killed! Imagine that — Meatloaf dead! That’s almost unforgivable!
By the same token, John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles could be said to represent the big-hearted Bodhisattva, spreading unconditional love and helping others get free from their own suffering.
Perhaps, grudgingly, I have to admit that maybe Frank T Bird was right in his choice after all.
