On September 18th, 2006, my wife and I saw Little Miss Sunshine. It really absorbed me. I wrote my wife an email from work the next day once I’d had a good night to let my thoughts “percolate”, as you might say. That email has since gotten forwarded around a bit. I’ve been told by several people that they’d been inspired enough to save it. That made me think, “Hey, easy blog post, I’ll just copy and paste that old email!” It may seem odd or untimely to post a review of a 2 year old movie, but ultimately, it is not really about the movie anyway. As you will see it is about us; about my life and your life. It is about something that I believe that we all came here to experience as part of the full palate of life’s blessings. And that is suffering, and our struggle to understand its meaning in our lives. Well, the topic is close to my heart and I hope it touches you as well. As Friedrich Nietzsche might say, this post is dedicated to “the few”…
09-19-2006
Hey Sweetie,
I keep thinking about that movie last night.
I am curious about the writer or director of that movie. I felt that he did a good job of splitting the various sides of ones personality into several pieces and then bringing those pieces to life in a compelling way through the characters of the movie. We watch the drama of “the innocent child”, the “depressed rebellious teen”, the rejected suicidal academician, the driven, success seeking “Winner”, the regretful old man who wishes he could do it all over again, and the woman who has to hold them all together as a family… The characters are all so wildly different from each other, and yet I could identify with them all. It is as if the writer took each stage of his own life and created a character to represent it.
I really think that the whole movie was intended as a Nietzsche-esque morality tale. Of course, through Dwayne’s character Nietzsche is mentioned and his book “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was displayed. The “Moral of the story” given near the end of the movie is similar to one of Nietzsche’s teachings, which is “to embrace suffering“. I believe it is Frank who argues that (more…)