With the recent passing of Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, this film takes on a historical quality.
The movie and story line quite accurately follow Mandela’s autobiography of the same name, highlighting the background of the rise and brutality of apartheid resulting in conflict and suffering. Actual film footage is woven into the script making the movie interesting and real.
Idris Elba, in his role as Mandela, does an excellent job of portraying the emotional turmoil within this man and the poignancy of the journey.
After 27 years of incarceration, Nelson Mandela emerged as a political leader with courage and moral integrity, able to unite both black and white in the country he loved.
One sad note is that Mandela had to separate from his wife, Winnie, who was unable to leave revenge behind.
This is not a film to miss!
Dot Walsh is a lifelong peace activist and member of the Engaging Peace Board of Directors.
Professor Malley-Morrison’s seminar on the Psychology of War and Peace showed me how altering one’s perspective can instantly change one’s entire outlook on a situation.
Alan O’Hare showed us how just moving from inside the classroom to outside the building can change an entire experience. Once we left the classroom, all formality ceased and every student was eager to share views. When we returned to the classroom, the conversation reverted to a formal discussion.
In the film Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Eva Kor showed us how her perspective on the Holocaust and the Nazis changed from anger to forgiveness, giving her a greater sense of health and freedom—but not freeing her to listen to the perspectives of Palestinians regarding Israeli occupation.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned about perspective is how mechanisms of moral disengagement function in ways that allow people to view immoral and inhumane acts as morally acceptable.
I grew up with a Muslim father and an Irish-Catholic mother in Scarsdale, New York–-a predominantly Jewish town. I gained perspective from all three Abrahamic traditions. My connection with each often resulted in internal conflict but was ultimately beneficial, teaching me that we are all much more similar than different.
To achieve peace, it is important that we emphasize our human similarities and resist the messages attempting to persuade us that someone is an enemy because of a different religion, nationality, or ethnicity.
Jenna Hassan is an undergraduate student in the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University, majoring in Psychology and learning Arabic. She took Psychology of War and Peace in the summer of 2013.
The object of my affection is the French film The Intouchables. It has just received the nomination to be my all-time favorite.
The Intouchables is not ostensibly about war and/or peace, but it pulsates with all the human strengths and frailties that can lead to war or peace. At the most simplistic and surface level, we could say that the film is about a rich quadriplegic and a black street-wise personal caretaker, but such a description totally fails to convey the gifts one can find in the film.
It is about race and class, difference and similarity, trust and mistrust, gains and losses, going forward and going back. It is about empathy and most transcendently, it is about love.
The power of the connection I felt with The Intouchables probably is linked in part to the story of one of the main characters, Philippe, who became a quadriplegic in an accident at age 42. Although his accident was far more serious than the one that left me paraplegic at age 25, he wouldn’t want to hear this. He wants no pity, which he associates with hopelessness; he wants life—and a new life is what he gained from his caretaker, Abdel Sallou. I can identify completely with these feelings.
The pervading theme in my favorite films is redemption, and The Intouchables is about redemption.
The power of that theme for me probably stems from my own personal failures through the years—and I remember some from when I was a pre-teen—failures in empathy, tolerance, kindness, and the like.
I imagine that in part it is my own need for redemption that led me into the fields of nonviolence, peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Whether you are looking for redemption or not, I recommend that you see The Intouchables. It is superb.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
P.S. Help redeem America by visiting this site and viewing a preview of the dramatic and challenging documentary being made by a frequent contributor to this site–Ross Caputi, Iraq war anti-war veteran:
“1: an American capitalist of the latter part of the 19th century who became wealthy through exploitation (as of natural resources, governmental influence, or low wage scales)
2: a business owner or executive who acquires wealth through ethically questionable tactics”
The barons are definitely back, and more powerful than ever. Only we call them Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the Top 1% now.
As history so often shows us, when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That has been particularly true for people of color and immigrants following the recent great shift in money from the poorer to the richer.
A recent book from Laura Gottesdiener, A dream foreclosed: Black America and the fight for a place to call home, provides many of the horrendous details:
The current unemployment rate for blacks is 13.7%
The median net wealth of black families in 2010 was $4,900, compared to $97,000 for white families—a number that is itself inflated by multimillionaire and billionaire whites
Since 2007, corporate corruption and loan-sharking have led to at least 4.8 million completed foreclosures, disproportionately to black and Latino families.
Gottesdiener also provides some heartening examples of Occupy movement and other community organizers’ work to stop the plunder of poor.
The labor movement learned long ago that individual and community efforts can bring about important change—although preserving those changes demands constant vigilance.
Most members of American labor have to work this Labor Day “holiday,” but we would all do well to remember the value of activism.
