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Last evening I watched this movie called One Night in Miami… Actress Regina King directed the film, and honestly I am so proud of her for directing this movie because she is an amazing actress and this movie is just so incredible. It is based on a play by Kemp Powers, and I haven’t read the play yet but now I want to after seeing the movie. It’s kind of like with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; after seeing the film adaptation of the play by August Wilson, I really wanted to read the play and luckily I found a copy of it at the library. It definitely helped me appreciate the work of August Wilson more.

The film is about four influential figures in Black history (Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Cassius Clay, who changed his named to Muhammad Ali) when they were at the height of their careers and reflecting on what role they play in the Civil Rights movement. The film takes place on February 25, 1964, in a hotel room in Miami. Honestly, the acting was incredible. And the movie shows how complex the issue of racism was during the Civil Rights because there were issues even within the Black community such as colorism. Jim Brown is sitting with Malcolm X while Sam and Cassius are going out to the liquor store, and Malcolm is criticizing Sam, Jim and Cassius for selling their talent to white people when they could be uniting with the Black community against racism. Jim makes a point that even within the Black community, there is discrimination against darker-skinned Black people, and that unlike Malcolm he has a harder time because he is darker skinned than Malcolm is.

Malcolm accuses Sam of selling his work to white executives who don’t really care about his work and just want to make a profit off of him. But Sam doesn’t take Malcolm’s insults for long, and goes into a story about how he started the British invasion. His record company had a Black musician named Bobby Womack record a song and the white British rock group, The Rolling Stones, said they wanted to record it, so Sam lets them record it and it hits number one on the music charts. However, even though it seems that The Rolling Stones are getting all of the royalties, they can’t because Bobby Womack recorded the song first, so Sam and Bobby Womack get royalties and money in their pockets each time the song is played. This proves to Malcolm that contrary to what Malcolm told him, he respects and values his worth as a Black musician in a predominantly white industry. Malcolm tries to further argue that Sam is selling out to white people because he plays a song on the record player that reminds him of Sam, a song by white singer Bob Dylan called “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Sam actually takes inspiration from that song, and he goes on the Johnny Carson Show later on and sings a song he was working on called “A Change is Gonna Come.” Malcolm accuses him of pandering to white audiences with songs like “I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)” and “You Send Me.” (I listened to these songs after watching the movie and they are incredible.) But what he doesn’t know is that Sam is working on a song that is in align with the Civil Rights movement.

Earlier in the film Jim Brown meets with Mr. Carlton, a white family friend of his, on the porch of his house. At first Mr. Carlton and Mrs. Carlton are excited to see Jim because he has worked so hard in his career as a football player, and Mr. Carlton lets him know to reach out to him if he needs help. But then Mrs. Carlton asks Mr. Carlton to later help him move some furniture, and Mr. Carlton goes in to help, and Jim offers to help him move the furniture. But Mr. Carlton laughs and says they don’t allow Black people in their house (he doesn’t use ‘Black people’, he uses the n-word to describe Jim.) This moment reminded me not just that this was the 1960s in the deep South where Jim Crow was alive and well, but that even successful Black people were still treated as second-class citizens no matter how much success they got in their careers. It kind of reminded me of this book I read called Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, and in one part of the book she says that in 2013 an employee at a Manhattan deli falsely accused Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker of shoplifting and was frisked. It was a disturbing story but also not uncommon for many Black people, even successful people like Forest Whitaker. It showed me that we still have a long way to go in overcoming centuries of prejudice in this country and practices such as stop and frisk that disrespect the humanity of marginalized communities. It showed me that even though Forest Whitaker is this super successful actor and has gotten a lot of acclaim for his movies, he still has had to deal with racism as a Black person in this country. Likewise, even as a successful football player, Jim Brown wasn’t allowed in a white person’s house to do a simple thing like help a family friend lift their furniture.

Malcolm’s relationship with Sam, Jim and Cassius is interesting and the movie shows how Malcolm’s opinions of them impact their friendship. Cassius expresses interest in joining the Nation of Islam with Malcolm X, but then Malcolm later says he is leaving the Nation of Islam to start his own organization because his relationship with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and The Nation of Islam has tensions. In addition, Malcolm’s friendship with the three men is under public scrutiny by the government because of The Nation of Islam’s activities. Malcolm has to have two members of The Nation of Islam guarding the door to the men’s hotel room because Malcolm is at risk of being assassinated. Malcolm works on his autobiography before his assassination. I thought it was so interesting seeing how all of these men produced the work they did in the play, because growing up I only saw the end result, like I heard “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke growing up, but it was interesting how the movie illustrates the back story behind the song, which is this dialogue between him and these three other men about their role in a time of racial discrimination and unrest.

Jim retires from his football career to pursue acting full-time. At first, his friends seem skeptical because Jim doesn’t seem like the guy who would star in a Western movie, but Jim is serious about the acting work he is doing and dedicates himself to it. He says he loves football and it is still his passion but he is exploring other passions. It reminds me of when I watched this movie called Last Holiday, and in the film Georgia’s sister tells her she is going to make her debut as a country singer, and Georgia tells her there is no such thing as a Black country singer. But after working on a project on Black musical traditions and the significance of the banjo in Black culture, I realized there are a lot of Black country musicians such as Darius Rucker and Mickey Guyton, and many others whose music I have yet to explore. One of the most poignant scenes of the film was when Malcolm tells Sam it seems he doesn’t care about his music career but he went to five of his shows, and one was in Boston. At the show in Boston, another Motown singer, Jackie Wilson, performs and the crowd goes wild. Jackie finishes and wishes Sam good luck, but tells him to not fuck up. Sam’s microphone ends up going out, and it’s implied that Jackie did something to the microphone to make it not work when Sam performed. Sam is figuring out what to do, because the audience starts booing and throwing things at him, and the band immediately leaves the stage because they can’t take the humiliation anymore. Sam then has a eureka moment and leans down to tell some of the female concertgoers he is going to sing an acapella version of “Chain Gang,” so he stomps his foot to the rhythm of the song, and the girls go along with it, and pretty soon the concertgoers act as an acapella chorus for Sam while he sings the song. It brings everyone together and people stop booing him. The audience is predominantly Black, too, so there is that element of solidarity where the audience gets to sing this song they enjoy. It is a call and response type of rhythm that involves audience participation, so the audience isn’t just passively listening to the music but actively playing a part in the performance. It was a huge contrast to the scene early in the movie where Sam is playing for a white audience at a ballroom, and when he is playing his mic stand falls over and he has to pick it up, and everyone in the audience is talking or falling asleep or walking out while he performs. This shows that compared to the Black audience he performed with in Boston, the white audience didn’t value his worth as a musician.

Overall, this movie was really good and I highly recommend it.

One Night in Miami… 2020. Directed by Regina King. 1 hr 54 m. Rated R

A coworker at my job recommended this movie to me one time and like so many times I put off watching it because I got busy and was doing other stuff. But this time I decided to finally watch it and it was definitely a really good movie. It definitely was eye-opening just the way the plot turned out. And it teaches a good message about propaganda and stereotypes in children, that children are conditioned, taught and trained to be prejudiced and un-learning ingrained bias and prejudice isn’t an overnight thing, but rather a process involving empathy and vulnerability. Jojo’s mother, Rosie, is hiding a young Jewish girl named Elsa (played by Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic, and at first when Jojo finds Elsa is hiding in their attic, he freaks out and she has to silence him with a threat and his knife because if he screams on her, she will be found out and taken away. At first he calls her nasty names and says a lot of hurtful things about Jewish people because that is what he grew up believing. Elsa isn’t fooled and tries to tell Jojo the truth about his life, that he is not a Nazi and that what he has been taught about Jewish people is propaganda and stereotypes. Jojo keeps a book where he draws offensive caricatures of Jewish people and when he asks Elsa to tell him about what Jews are really like, she tries to say positive things about being Jewish but then he tells her to say negative things about Jewish people because again, he was taught growing up in the Hitler Youth to hate and discriminate against Jewish people. However, as he gets to know her he sees his own humanity and also her humanity as well, and starts to see more clearly how painful and scary living through this war was.

It was interesting because at the end when the Second World War is over, Germany is now fighting Russia, and Yorki, Jojo’s friend, shows they still haven’t overcome their prejudice about other groups, so instead of trashing the Jews he trashes the Russians and thinks of them as the enemy. However, even though Yorki becomes a young soldier and is proud to fight, Jojo starts to see around him the destruction of war and the cruelty of the people who he once followed as his mentor, like Captain Klenzendorf, the Hitler Youth leader (played by Sam Rockwell). Honestly this movie reminded me of the time I was studying about the Holocaust in middle school, and I saw this book in the library called Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. I haven’t read it yet, but it got me wondering about young men who grew up being trained as future Nazis and following Hitler. It made me think of an episode from the British show The Crown, because Prince Philip flashes back to his childhood going to boarding school in Scotland, and how he endured tormenting, harsh living conditions and the death of his sister in a plane crash. His sister married a member of the Nazi party and Philip had a lot of resentment about that, but when she died he really suffered so much pain and grief. There is a scene when he is in her funeral procession, and throughout the city Nazi flags are draped from windows and Philip is looking around at this feeling disillusioned and pained, especially because the headmaster of his school is Jewish. His father blames him for his sister’s death and basically calls Philip worthless, and because Philip is already struggling with bullying and neglect at his boarding school, he is forced to grow up very quickly.

In Jojo Rabbit, Hitler puts a lot of pressure on Jojo, even though he is only ten years old and still doesn’t know much about the world. But the movie shows how quickly young people are taught to hate others just because they are different. When I was in my African-American Studies course on Afro-American history, we watched the movie 42, and there is a scene where Jackie Robinson is playing the game, and a white man and his son are sitting in the bleachers and the white man starts screaming the N-word at Jackie. The camera focuses on how the son reacts and he at first is figuring out whether to go along with his dad or not, but unsurprisingly he imitates his dad and starts calling Jackie the N-word, too. I remarked in class how shocking it was, but the professor threw up his hands and was like, “Well, of course, these kids weren’t born racist. They were taught to be racist.” As a sensitive person I didn’t know how to react, but as I thought about it more and saw Jojo Rabbit, I realized what the professor was trying to tell me. It’s not until Jojo actually sees Elsa’s humanity and gets to know her that he overcomes the bias he grew up with. It reminds me of Buddhism because it’s hard to see someone’s Buddha nature, or this respectworthy nature we all have regardless of our identity, because we have fundamental ignorance, or this inability to see people’s Buddha nature. But when we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, we see people’s inherent dignity just as they are. This is not easy to do because many of us, myself included, grew up with preconceived ideas about others and who they are and how they are supposed to act, think and feel according to what we have been taught growing up. But it’s not until I educated myself, watched movies, listened to people’s stories and chanted to respect the inherent dignity of each person’s life, including my own, that I was able to see the inherent dignity of my life and the lives of people around me. Even if I don’t always get along with the other person or agree with them on everything, I chant to see their Buddha nature and through gradually transforming my life condition I transform my relationship with the other person. It’s still a process and I can’t totally say I am perfectly woke and free of bias, but I’m working on getting better.

I also really love the scene where toward the end Jojo is walking through the deserted fields after the war and he sees a beautiful blue butterfly flying around. He marvels at this beauty, and I thought it showed how Jojo transformed throughout the course of the movie. At the beginning Jojo during his training is forced to kill an innocent rabbit by wringing its neck. Jojo thinks the rabbit is sweet and doesn’t want to kill it, and the captains and other boys tease him about it. Jojo panics, then drops the rabbit on the ground, trying to free it, but then the captain, frustrated, kills the rabbit himself and flings its dead body across the forest. Jojo is taught during his training that he cannot be sensitive and that it is in his nature to hurt people and living things. But the few women in his life, Rosie and Elsa, encourage him to embrace his sensitive nature and be vulnerable. Rosie is sad because Jojo just wanted to live his life, but now that he has internalized a lot of this Nazi propaganda, he thinks he needs to develop a thick skin and hide his vulnerability to be a true man, even though he is only ten and still figuring life out. Elsa tells Jojo about her fiance, Nathan, and Jojo plays a mean prank on her at first by making up a letter by Nathan telling Elsa that he found someone else and wants nothing to do with her, but because deep down Jojo is sensitive, he realizes that his joke really hurt Elsa, so he writes another letter pretending to be Nathan and tells her that he was just joking and wants to still be with her. Elsa tells Jojo that he will fall in love one day, and Jojo thinks it’s silly but over time as he gets to know Elsa he really does fall in love with her. There is a really sweet moment when he is going to declare his love for Elsa and we see his stomach and that there are little cartoon butterflies flying around in his stomach because he is so nervous and so in love.

There is one powerful scene where Jojo once again realizes how traumatic this war has been and how it brought out so much cruelty within people. Earlier he sees five people hung from gallows at a public square. He tries to turn away from it, but Rosie forces him to reflect and just understand what happened. She wants him to face the painful reality of this time during the Nazi regime and the war, because it has brought out the cruelty in people. Unfortunately, it’s not until Rosie herself is hanged that Jojo realizes the inhumanity of the Nazi regime, and starts to feel deep pain for his mom and for all the people who lost their lives fighting against an inhumane regime.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie Dunkirk, which came out in 2017 from Warner Bros. I heard about it and had seen Christopher Nolan’s films Inception and Interstellar, but I hadn’t seen Dunkirk yet. It was actually a really good movie. It stars Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Barry Keoghan, and other actors. I had seen Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. I knew Harry Styles from his music, but I hadn’t seen him act before. He was really good in this movie. I also really love that Tom Hardy was in this film because I saw him in Inception and he was really good in it.

The film reminded me of this film by Sam Mendes called 1917. Even though Dunkirk took place during World War II and 1917 takes place during World War I, both of these films capture the horrors of war. 1917 I’m pretty sure gave me nightmares I think just because the way they shot the movie was so unique; it looked as if it was all just one shot, so I only saw what was going on from the perspective of the two soldiers (William Schofield and Tom Blake) who have to go on a mission to deliver an important message. In the film, there was one scene that stuck with me where William and Tom are walking alone through a field of flowers on their way to deliver the message on the other side, and they talk about earning medals of honor for their service. They talk about how the medal means nothing to them because of the disillusionment and trauma they have witnessed on the battlefield. It reminded me of this piece I played in high school called Cello Concerto in E Minor by English composer Edward Elgar. Elgar wrote this concerto in the aftermath of World War I and was disillusioned by the war’s destruction on society, and in this concerto he conveys a lot of this hopelessness and disillusionment. In particular, the first movement of the piece conveys these feelings, opening with a bold mournful peal of anger from the cello because so many men lost their lives in the war and everyone dealt with trauma and anxiety about the future. Every time I practice the first movement of the concerto or listen to recordings of it I get chills.

That scene in 1917 stuck with me because going off to war to protect the country was noble but it also brought with it a lot of shell shock and horrors that stayed with many people, and it was literally a life-or-death battle for many people. In Downton Abbey some of the staff fight in World War I and they hire someone new on the staff who deals with shell shock after fighting in the war. Because this was before extensive mental health counseling and few people had adequate language to talk about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they couldn’t really know how to support or encourage the staff member and he was soon let go. After the soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk, there is a huge celebration and when Alex and Tommy are on the train heading back to England they read the paper and find a huge headline celebrating the soldiers being evacuated from Dunkirk. As they rid the train people hand them food and other nice things and they cannot believe their eyes. However, as heroic as the ending was I am sure that they couldn’t erase a lot of the suffering they endured while trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk from their memories. I am glad I saw the film Dunkirk because I watched the movie Darkest Hour and while it talks about Dunkirk, the focus is on Winston Churchill’s time in office and how he handled the evacuation from Dunkirk so I didn’t actually see what the war was like for those soldiers trapped at Dunkirk. There was a key scene towards the end of the film when Alex and the other soldiers are being evacuated from Dunkirk, and an older blind man expresses his appreciation to them for their service, and Alex says that all they did was survive, but the man responds by telling him that even just surviving is enough. This was powerful because it showed that because war was a serious battle between life and death, even just the fact that they made it out alive was enough. They didn’t have to do anything flashy or extravagant to seem like heroes; them making it out alive when so many other men were killed in battle was courageous in and of itself.

Seeing this film from the perspective of Buddhism helped, because the Buddhism I practice is based on the Mahayana teaching called the Lotus Sutra, which teaches respect for the dignity of each person’s life. Each person’s life has such precious immeasurable potential, and so I think watching Dunkirk from a Buddhist lens helped because I was thinking about what the blind man told Alex and thought about my own grapplings with life and death, and how Buddhism helped me appreciate my life through developing a more profound understanding of life and death. I haven’t fought in a war so I cannot imagine what the soldiers who were evacuated from Dunkirk went through, but there have been times when I was in a dark place in life and wondered whether my life had meaning, but after practicing Buddhism I have developed more appreciation for my life even when the day may not seem glamorous. Absolute happiness means that life itself is a joy. When I practice Buddhism I feel this what we call life condition deep from within me, and even when I am doing daily stuff like going to the grocery store, clocking in at work, or eating dinner, I can take time to appreciate each day of my life. I think dealing with depression was an experience in learning how to appreciate my life because in Buddhism we talk about the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, which means that even though people have different conditions of life they operate in and react to different situations based on these life states, at the core of their lives is this life state of Buddhahood, which is the unlimited potential of each person’s life. Hell is the lowest life condition, and when I am in a life condition of Hell it feels that life itself is suffering. When I operate from that life condition and don’t transform it through my Buddhist practice I resort to complaining, blaming my environment and feeling powerless. In a life condition of Hell I resort to apathy, anger, resentment and hopelessness. War is a larger-scale manifestation of the world of Hell because it involves the taking of people’s lives and a lot of destruction. On a smaller scale when I am in the depths of my depression I experience the life condition of Hell but when I practice Buddhism, even though I may be in a life condition of suffering I can elevate that life condition so that even when I am suffering, I can still appreciate life itself and the little things in life I often take for granted. It is still a process to appreciate my life, but Buddhism has allowed me to transform my life condition each day. That was kind of a tangent that wasn’t totally related to Dunkirk but it was a thought that popped up while I watched the movie.