Ask HN: Films that made you see the world differently?

Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Forman’s Amadeus, again Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, Antonioni’s Blowup, De Sica’s Miracle in Milan are some of the first films that come to mind and wish more people came to enjoy them

The Road (2009) is like a horror movie for fathers, really destroyed me watching it but made my more aware of how tough it is to be a father & husband.

Before The Rain about love and war in Macedonia. Amazing and impactful film.

Time of the Gypsies by Emir Kusturica - just go in cold to this, one of my favorite movies. Featuring musical score from the incomparable Gorman Bregovic.

Enemy by Villeneuve (or literally anything from this director; also check out the compelling Incendies, and Sicario of course; Prisoners is also amazing)

Literally pick any movie from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. The Salesman is probably my favorite from him. Very impactful and each of his movies shows a compelling and unique slice of life.

> One of the chefs needed 10 years of experience before they would let him do the egg sushi.

That only ever struck me as extremely pretentious, to be perfectly honest.

The chef in question needing 10 years of experience before they would let him do the egg sushi strikes me as essentially the same harmful mentality the Japanese have toward productivity, thinking that clocking in as many hours as possible equals productivity (regardless of what you got done in said hours).

Snowpiercer

Most people see this movie as a very on-the-nose example of class struggle. But I see it as a commentary on how we humans build and interact with the very system that we collectively create to sustain ourselves as a species. The system always has its apologists, supporters and opposition, but deep down all but the most extreme zealots understand that the system has to change with time or fail, and the longer it takes for change to occur, the worse the inevitable failure will be. It ties in nicely with what Nassim Taleb says about fragility of rigid systems.

In the movie the system is represented by the train and its architect. All people on the train are grateful for what the train has provided them: safety from certain death outside. The poor at the back of the train are constantly threatened and preached to by the train loyalists how important it is for everything to stay as it is, that the train is eternal and will be there forever as long as they obey and believe. But as it becomes apparent that the loyalists are lying and things don't seem all that rosy with the train, the poor start to push forward, for information, and ultimately, change. As they go forward in the train they discover that the wealthy passengers have fallen into either hypernormalisation or a drug fueled apathy. They either believe so much in the train that they can't see how it could ever fail, or they know that it will inevitably fail but have given up hope to do anythin about it - perhaps facilitated by their own relative comfort (why jeopardize such comfort for an uncertain, risky change?).

After watching the movie, it struck me how we're perpetually living in an unsustainable system, but we avoid the abyss by constantly changing from one unsustainable system to another.