Three seemingly meaningless movies

We grew up watching movies: me, my siblings and my deceased father. We would sit down in front of the television watching some action movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme in it while my mother would thread my hair, this is something I remember vividly. My mother would always do my hair in front of my father to ensure I wouldn't cry, but this is another story for another day. As we grew up we decided to uphold this little family tradition, which has become harder and harder since we all work and have but minimal time to spend with one another. As teenagers we really liked watching horror movies, this was a bad move on our part in retrospect but at the time we didn't know better. We were fascinated with Wes Craven and Stephen King movies, we would watch them over and over and re-enact the dialogues. While living in Angola we had also developed a liking for Bollywood movies but upon migrating to Belgium we couldn't find them anywhere at first.

While living in Bruges when we first migrated to Belgium, we used to rent VHS videos and watch them on our VCR at home in the evening. We did that for years. Fast forward to our move to East Flanders, to Ghent to be more specific where there's a Kinepolis movie theater and here I was going to the cinema on a monthly basis. I really enjoy the whole experience. By then I was no longer into horror movies as they had provided me with many sleepless nights but I sought deep meaningful movies with a message. However, it wasn't always apparent what particular message a movie actually conveyed. The three movies I'm about to discuss can be categorized as such. Upon first watching them I was just left dumbfounded, unsure of what to think of it. Now that I am older and in retrospect I am much better able to understand them. Hindsight is 20/20 as the saying goes. The movies I am talking about are 'Antwone Fisher', 'Hide and Seek' and 'Larry Crowne'. I will delve deeper into each one underneath.

Antwone Fisher

This is a movie I watched a very long time ago, it stars two of my favorite actors: Derek Luke and Joy Bryant and was directed by none other than Denzel Washington. I will not outline the whole plot here because it is easily found upon doing a simple google search but I will discuss my initial reaction upon watching the movie and my sentiments years later after gaining insight about it. When I first watched it, I really did not grasp the story at all. Like...at all. I couldn't understand what Antwone Fisher was dealing with, I had no idea how much of an impact our past and particular upbringing could have on us. Keep in mind the movie came out in 2002, I must have been about 17 years old at that time. Now that I've reread the plot I am better able to comprehend what baggage Antwone Fisher was dealing with and the titan fight he had to put up to put his past behind him. It's certainly a lesson for me.


Hide and Seek

I don't quite remember who I watched this movie with, given its ability to send chills down your spine, I certainly hope I didn't watch it by myself. It stars Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning and was released in 2005. Yet again, upon watching it I was just like: Oh ok, simple thriller plot, nothing new here. But I want to really talk about the ending (spoiler alert!): if I remember correctly at the end we discover that the daughter's (Dakota Fanning) imaginary friend Charlie is actually none other than her own father (Robert De Niro). Upon finding this out himself, the father was astounded. I'm reminded of this movie because my pastor once said something that stuck with me: you alone are the only one who can jeopardize your future, no source outside of you can do that. Basically: we need to fight the enemy within...every single day.


Larry Crowne

Starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, this is a movie that was released in 2011. I went to see it by myself and was really curious what the movie was about. Again, after watching it I was just like: this movie has absolutely no message in it. At the time I was working part time and attending college part time. I had no idea how this movie could possibly impact my life. In it, Tom Hanks' character is made redundant after his supervisors conclude that he has become unfit for the job because he doesn't have a college degree. After this Tom Hanks' character decided to enroll in college to obtain a degree. Even with all these similarities with my life I was just...dumbfounded and unable to see the correlation. Until...until my supervisors at my job kept pressuring me to aspire to a higher position and I was unwilling to. During one of the evaluations, my supervisor told me that she did not see how I could further develop in my current position, that I had reached my peak in that position and that they wanted to steer me in another direction. Life can throw some curveballs our way, just when you think things are all dandy.