Gladiator and Braveheart, Movies with Meaning

Gladiator and Braveheart are two of the best movies of all time.  If you haven't seen them, stop everything, subscribe to Netflix and watch them now.  Spoilers ahead.

My Halloween costume the last three years.

Striking similarities exist between the Gladiator and Braveheart.  The hero's journey begins with a great injustice that provides both a noble purpose and an intensely hateable villain.  Next follows a series of intensely graphic and gratifying successes on the battlefield.  And just when justice seems at hand.... circumstances force our hero to sacrifice themselves for their cause.

Face paint is a fundamental human right! 

So much of these films appeal at the surface level.  Historical parallels (Rome and medieval Scotland).  Cool settings.  Awesome battle scenes.  Manly men.  Beautiful women.  Evil villains.

On a deeper level, these films tug at a string very deep inside my heart.  For 2-3 hours minutes I live vicariously through these men and find a purpose in life much bigger than myself.  I find a noble cause so great, it is worth dying for.  Their lives have a very tangible meaning.

I want that.  I think we all do.  Somewhere in the scary edges of my conscience lurks a fear of Oblivion.  Of not mattering.   Of living a life without consequence or meaning.  So I do things to fight back.  I blog.  I strive to make a difference in the lives of my students.  I work to be the best teacher I can possibly be.  I try to savor the little enjoyable moments that happen every day that I increasingly believe are the fundamental matter of a happy life.

But still, part of me yearns to be a part of something grand and good and noble.  Give me a ring to throw in Mount Doom to save Middle Earth.  Or magical powers like Neo to fight the Matrix.  Give me Russel Crowe's skill with a sword to oppose an evilly insecure emperor.  Or Mel Gibson's ability to yell gibberish and rouse Scots to battle.

I don't have that.  I'm just a fairly average guy.  A middle school teacher who drives an old Ford Escape and lives in a nice little neighborhood.  My life is very average.  I do realize that this is very much a first world commentary, I don't want for food shelter, or anything.  And I have a standard of living higher than 99.9% of all humans who ever lived.  But is the point of living just to live?

I don't know the answer.  I don't know why I have that small little voice in me crying out for meaning and purpose.  But I think we all do.  Earlier this week I sat down with a student who has been acting up lately, and I asked him to write down a list of all his fears and insecurities.  This is not an easy, or common task for a middle school boy, but this child did.  First on his list?

"I don't want to be forgotten."

Would You Rather: Titanic Edition

I just returned from the Titanic Dinner, an epic recreation of the first class meal served on the night the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and went down.  That 13 course dinner in-and-of-itself deserves a blog post, but I don't believe my palette is so well defined as to do it justice.  If I may sum up: I ate a lot, and had a great time.

Part of the fun is museum that accompanies the dinner.  The story of the Titanic resonates, even without Jack and Rose.  That ship epitomized an age of wealth and optimism.  It embodied the idea that man could control and shape their own destiny, that the old rules didn't apply.  Hence: the unsinkable ship.

Ultimately though, its a story of man's limitations and mortality, and a warning against hubris. (Spoilers ahead)   Of course, the Titanic did sink.  And while a million fascinating stories survive from that fateful night, the tale of Bruce Ismay fascinates me.

A man of impeccable mustache

Bruce was the managing director of the White Star Line.  He inherited his daddy's company, and by all accounts did quite well.  The Titanic was his dream child, a ship of unparallelled size and luxury that would dwarf the Lusitania and Mauretania of the rival Cunard Line to shame.  Indeed, many witnesses recount him urging the Titanic's captain to increase his speed, in hopes of notching a record trans-Atlantic crossing time.

When the Titanic hit that iceberg, Bruce encountered a difficult dilemma.  You're a rich gentleman in the prime of your life.  There aren't enough lifeboats for everybody.  What do you do?

Use your status and power to secure yourself a seat, knowing you'll forever be called a coward?

Or perish, sacrificing your life that women and children might live, and burnish your legacy for all eternity?

Some, like billionare Benjamin Guggenheim handled death with surprising grace.  Guggenheim put on his formal dinner attire to meet death like a gentleman, saying "No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward."

Same goes for Isidor Straus, of Macy's Department store fame.  When offered a seat on a lifeboat next to his wife, he firmly refused.  His wife then refused her seat saying "as we lived, so we will die, together."

John Jacob Astor, the richest man on board, asked for a seat and was refused.

And Bruce?  Bruce of the too-few-lifeboats and the full-speed-ahead-damn-the-icebergs?  Bruce got in.a lifeboat, the highest ranking White Star official to survive.  Some say he helped load women for an hour before taking a seat.  Some say he dressed like a woman to secure himself a seat.  The truth is likely in between.  What is for certain is this: Bruce Ismay became a villain in the American and British press.

They labelled him a coward.  They called him a brute.  His suffered cartoons and poetry, editorials and articles, all mocking his manhood.  And ridiculed and ashamed, he lived 25 years longer than all the other men I mentioned, dying finally in 1937.

So if I could ask any of those dead men anything, I'd ask, would you want to trade places with one another?  Would Ben Guggenheim trade places with Bruce Ismay?  Would Bruce trade places with Ben?

If we all must die, should one not cling to desperately to life and choose to die well?  If life is short and finite, does how people remember us after we're gone matter?  Would you pay for 25 years more of life with shame and ridicule worldwide?