June 23, 2004
Family Values
Well, I was going to spend more time tonight working on the Harry Potter post, but as you can see on the right, a fourth movie has rated as high as a movie can rate on my list.
Brilliantly filmed, poignantly acted, and masterfully compiled and edited into an eye-opening, thought-provoking look at the Drug War on any number of levels . . . Well, let's just say that I am quite convinced that this movie deserves its rating.
It is time (as always these days, it seems) for me to go to bed, but I just wanted to comment briefly on a single aspect of Traffic's message that struck me.
I thought, as I watched the movie, that it had a very defeatist tone concerning the current state of affairs with narcotics (and rightly so). The Drug War, the way it is being fought, is both unwinnable and counter-productive. The movie brings this home time and time again until the involved viewer almost begins to despair . . . And then, in the next to last scene, I realized what the movie was actually trying to say:
Judge Wakefield resigns his position as the man in charge of running the United States' War on Drugs, and returns to his home to support and care for his teenage daughter as she tries to break her own various addictions.
This is not a war that our government can win for us. This is a war that we have to win for ourselves, on the level of the family unit. How many problems in America, right now, are a result of the widespread breakdown of traditional families and households that has been taking place for the past four decades? What would be the impact on the country right now if as many children grew up in the care of loving, responsible guardians who are actually present as did 60 years ago?
Anyway, I'd love to wax a little more eloquent about this movie, but I'm having a hard time concentrating on anything besides my bed (a mere three and a half feet away!). So . . . I will go to bed now.
And, when I get up tomorrow, I will keep watching good movies, thinking idealistic thoughts, and writing whatever I can manage about them late at night (i.e. the usual muddled, sappy sort of stuff I've been turning out lately . . . *sigh*).
Posted by Jared at June 23, 2004 11:08 PM | TrackBack