Esther

I have some mixed feelings about the story of Esther.  One part of me enjoyed the fact it was one of the better told stories in the old testament, as in it wasn’t dry and more powerful than a sleeping pill.  On the other hand though I didn’t like how hypocritical it came off as being.

The first thing I find to be just utterly stupid is the whole idea of the king finding a new queen and wanting her to be a virgin yet the king gets to test out each of these women in the bedroom first.  The whole idea of women being objects doesn’t sit well with me, I don’t like when any person is treated as less than a human being. 

The other thing is Esther hiding her heritage so the king wouldn’t look unfavorably upon her but then when her people are in trouble she’s all too willing to announce it and come to their rescue.  The one redeeming quality there is that this is quite brave because the king could have just as easily decided to put her to death for being a Jew instead of helping her.

The last thing that troubles me with this story is why could the king not have just sent out another decree saying that they are no longer to attack the Jews on that day?  Why did he send out messengers to tell the Jews to now fight back and essentially slaughter them all?  It just seemed like unnecessary bloodshed and killing, there was really no point or purpose for it.

I was a big fan of the video we watched on Wednesday, I thought it was fantastically well made.  I enjoyed the beginning with the dogs running.  It definitely set the tone for the movie, the post apocalyptic feel, the destruction, even the danger a pack of wild dogs present.  It definitely grabs your interest right off the bat.

The color scheme the movie adopted was phenomenal, I really felt as though it captured and displayed emotions very well.  It definitely helped draw your eye to important parts or people talking.  I also liked how it changed to fairly normal colors when he switched to his interviews to kind of show that we are now back in the present day real world.  It made the movie easier to follow as well, which was nice.

The story in and of itself was a very good one as well.  I really enjoy hearing about the psychological effects of war and not just the Hollywood movie hero deal because real war, from everything I have been told and read, is more like this movie or Jarhead or Home of the Brave.  The true, or at least based on true events, stories are the best ones.  They show that soldiers are still just humans.

My one big complaint of the movie is this, I cannot stand subtitles!  I really feel that you can never get the full movie if there are subtitles because you have to focus on reading those the whole time and you cannot pay as much attention to the scenes and images of the movie and I think those are more important than any words.