The Good Shepherd

[koan]

I'd been wanting to see this film for awhile and I'm glad I waited until I had a good segment of time to watch it properly. What a great film.

The main character, Edward Wilson, is pretty much the ideal American man. He's known for his silence. He handles national secrets and covert operations at every waking moment and never speaks an unplanned word. He is morally consistent. He is a member of Skull and Bones, Yale educated and among the select "brotherhood" which makes him of the proper background for any position of importance within the US government. As a result of being perfect, his life is nothing like the life he would have wanted for himself, living with the woman he actually loved, teaching poetry in a small college town. Instead he is at the beck and call of the American elite and lives a life of complete service. This is what most people think is "success".

I know a lot of people that look at black suit and tie, the size of the home and the attractiveness of the spouse to decide whether someone is "successful" and assume that "success" equals happiness. To me, the film is telling people that the Western ideal of perfection is sick. I'm unsure what the writer had in mind as a conclusion but it created a lot of empathy for a group of people I would normally just look at with distaste. They've been scammed.

[Nomad]

I concur. Although Im not sure we can make that judgement for others.

I concur for me.