#8 Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life

Tuesday – 10:00 a.m.                                                        Winter Term 2009 (14 weeks)
Coordinator:  Ronald Miech                                            Co-coordinator:  Shirley Monson

Course Description
This S/DG is based on the book, Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life, a selection or reviews by Alan A. Stone.  Professor Stone is a man of several talents:  a Freudian psychiatrist, a professor of psychiatry and professor of literature at Harvard, and a film reviewer for the Boston Review.  All three talents are employed in his reviews which discuss the choices people make, and choices that go beyond the limits of their character and circumstances, in response to life’s challenges.
Core Book:  Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life

This book contains fifteen reviews dating from 1993 onwards. Some of the films are:  Un Coeur en Hiver, a French film on not being able to love; Antonia’s Line, a Dutch film that “reimagines life after patriarchy”; The King of Masks, a Chinese film, a story of an aging street entertainer’s effort to groom a successor.

Topics
A complete list of the films is:
1.         Un Coeuver en Hiver
2.         Schindler’s List
3.         Antonia’s Line
4.         Pulp Fiction
5.         Ma Vie en Rose
6.         Lolita
7.         The King of Masks
8.         American Beauty
9.         Thirteen Days
10.       Thirteen Conversations
11.       The Battle of Algiers
12.       The Station Agent
13.       The Passion of Christ
14.       Henry V
15.       Water 

All but one of these films, the 1997 version of Lolita, is available on Netflix. However, in his review Stone makes frequent references to the 1962 Kubrick-James Mason version, which is on Netflix.

Stone’s reviews, dating from 1993 to 2007, are available as a book. They can also be found at:
http://bostonreview.net/onfilm.html

Pre-Meeting:  Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 10:00 a.m.