Category Archives: Action/Adventure

When I was in ninth grade, I went to a Jewish day high school on the outskirts of Harlem. One evening, my friend Max and I went to a jazz concert featuring the celebrated xylophonist Terry Gibbs. Returning to the dorm late at night, we were accosted by a group of unsavory teenagers, one of whom was on roller skates. They wanted our money. One, in particular, threatened me with a brass ring that he provocatively thrust in my face. I was petrified, but my friend Max was not. Apparently he had been in similar situations before, and he suddenly grabbed hold of the fellow on roller skates and threw him to the ground. Then Max shouted, “run,” and we ran close to a four-minute mile back to our dorm. Max knew how to confront fear; I did not.

Aliens is all about confronting fear. Ripley, the only survivor of a space mission that discovered a hostile alien species, is serendipitously found after drifting in space in a hypersleep for 57 years. Because of her experience with the aliens, she is recruited to be an advisor on an expedition to find out why the colony that settled on the space station where the aliens were discovered has ceased transmitting to earth. At first, she refuses the request, but her continuous nightmares motivate her to join the mission with the goal of destroying the aliens. In this way, she hopes to find inner peace.

Her cohorts on the mission are a group of tough but arrogant Marines. They are so full of themselves and their weaponry that they do not pay much attention to Ripley’s warnings. Soon, however, they come in direct contact with the hostile aliens and a life and death battle with them rages. After a number of Marines, including the commanding officer, are killed or wounded, Ripley has to take charge of the spaceship and the mission. The situation continues to deteriorate as the Marines are confronted by an enemy vastly superior to them in strength and number. Furthermore, in the midst of all the fireworks, their transport back to the mother ship is damaged, leaving them with a limited supply of weapons and ammunition.

The situation is desperate and calls for innovative thinking. Some team members want to give up, but Ripley insists upon trying to survive in spite of the superior strength of the hostiles. She is fearful but she does not allow fear to paralyze her.

Judaism acknowledges the reality of fear in our lives. When the Jews were about to enter the holy land, they decided to send spies to check out the feasibility of conquering the land. Ten of the twelve spies saw not the good of the land, but rather the imposing giants who lived there. In comparison, they saw themselves as grasshoppers, ill-equipped to vanquish them. Attempting to battle them would only bring loss of life and disaster to the people as a whole.

However, two spies saw the same things but came to opposite conclusions. They also feared the giants living there, but they were imbued with a deep faith.

Judaism’s approach to life-threatening situations is not to ignore the reality of a danger, but rather to do one’s best to overcome the threat and to trust that God will be with you to carry you to victory. Facing the challenge, seeing it as an opportunity for growth, can transform fear into courage. Thus, the impending disaster can be changed into a divinely-ordained victory.

Aliens reminds us that in the midst of crisis are the harbingers of redemption and safety. Ripley, when confronted with almost certain death, overcomes her fear and finds a way to assert life over death to insure the survival of subsequent generations.

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When I was an undergraduate student taking an introductory Philosophy course, I had an “aha” moment when I read Plato’s myth of the cave which describes a man living in a cave, thinking it is the real world until light streams in from above, at which time he realizes that what he has been experiencing is not the real world but an illusion. The real world is, in truth, somewhere else. It is this kind of subliminal narrative that forms the emotional and intellectual core of The Matrix, a thought-provoking, action-packed thriller about a human rebellion against a world controlled by machines.

Thomas Anderson, a computer programming guru, is also known as “Neo,” a computer hacker with an unsavory clientele for which he provides all sorts of illegal substances. One evening he is contacted by Trinity, another computer whiz, who apprises him of Morpheus, a mysterious man who can tell Neo the meaning of “the Matrix,” an entity that Neo frequently encounters online. Neo is interested in meeting him, but three robot-like men are determined not to have the meeting take place.

In spite of obstacles, and there are many, Neo and Morpheus meet, after which Neo’s life is forever changed. Offered a red pill by Morpheus, Neo takes it, and the pill enables him to see the world in a totally unconventional way. He embarks on a psychic journey, which convinces him to join Morpheus in his quest to overthrow the mechanical forces of conformity and rigidity that are presently controlling the world.

Morpheus tells Neo that in the 21st century, there was a war between human beings and the intelligent machines they created. Eventually the machines won and trapped the humans in an artificial world, the Matrix, in which humans exist in a simulated environment. This keeps them compliant slaves to materiality, without the freedom to question and to think on their own. Morpheus seeks to rebel against this universe of conformity by hacking into the Matrix and recruiting enslaved humans to rebel against the machines.

The rebels’ profound understanding of the artificial reality of the Matrix allows them the bend the laws of the physical world, giving them superhuman powers that are choreographed with visceral energy on the screen. We learn that Neo is recruited specifically because Morpheus sees him as “the One” to save the world from the corrupt machines, and he is trained to do battle with their human-like representations. The movie’s dense plot almost requires a second viewing in order to comprehend the complexity of the conflict between the men and the machines.

The essential question that the film poses is what is the nature of reality. Plato’s cave metaphor suggests we are living in a world of illusion and we have to exit the cave if we are to live a full and honest life. The matrix represents this world of illusion, and the rebels want to live a real, not artificial, life.

Jewish tradition encourages us to dream, to have illusions, but we must have our feet firmly planted in the real world. The patriarch Jacob dreamt of a ladder reaching to the heavens, but the ladder was rooted in the earth. Moreover, our Sages encourage us to contemplate other planes of existence, such as the heavenly World-to Come, which gives us spiritual pleasure. Nonetheless, they remind us that it is in this world, the nitty-gritty everyday world, the world that the rebels want to revive, that we express our humanity through the crucible of real life experiences. It is here that we truly accomplish our life’s mission and fulfill our personal destinies.

Free choice makes us human and reflects the divinity within us. The Matrix suggests that for humans to fulfill their potential as human beings, they must be able to freely choose life over death, light over darkness.

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In 1957 I was enrolled as a boarding student in a Jewish high school on the edge of Harlem in New York City. The father of a fellow student, visiting from out-of-town, invited me to join him and his son for dinner at a downtown restaurant. The dorm counselor was nowhere to be found, so I could not ask anyone for permission to leave campus. I decided to join them anyway and began to think of an excuse to give the dorm counselor in case he rebuked me. The Incredible Shrinking Man had just opened and the perfect excuse came to mind. I will tell him that I went to the local movie theater to see this film about a man who shrunk in size. It seemed like an easy plot to summarize and so I would not be penalized for traveling outside of the local neighborhood. And that is what transpired. The excuse, weak as it was, worked.

Little did I realize when I actually saw the movie several months later that it was much more than a film about a man who shrinks in size; rather it was a profound meditation on the ultimate meaning of life. Watching this black and white science fiction movie 57 years after it first appeared, I genuinely admired not only its special effects, which were progressive for its time, but also its thoughtful commentary about man’s place in the universe. Let me elaborate.

Scott Carey, on vacation with his wife Louise on his brother’s boat, sees a strange fog, which is really a radioactive mist, glide over the boat leaving a wet sheen on his body. Six months later, Scott senses that his clothes are becoming loose on him and that he is losing weight. The sudden weight loss prompts him to visit his physician, who assures him that nothing is wrong. However, a subsequent examination does confirm that Scott is, in fact, losing vital chemical elements and is actually shrinking in size. In an unsettling scene, husband and wife discuss the implications of this malady for their marriage. At the end of the conversation, Scott’s wedding ring falls off because of his shrinking finger size.

As time passes, Scott continues to shrink to the size of a child. Since Scott is no longer able to work, they have mounting bills. As a result, Scott sells his story to the press, who treat Scott as freakish pop phenomenon. Louise tries her best to be optimistic and encourages Scott not to lose hope. However, after many tests, the doctors conclude that there is no remedy and Scott runs out of the house in despair.

In his wanderings, he meets a dwarf, Clarice Bruce, who tells him that being small does not mean life is over and devoid of happiness. The message is uplifting for Scott, who embraces her perspective on life until one day he sees that he is shrinking again and is even shorter than Clarice.

We next see Scott, only a few inches tall, living in a doll’s house. When his wife Louise leaves to go shopping, she inadvertently leaves the door open allowing a cat to enter the house. This creates a life or death situation for Scott, who runs for his life to avoid the clutches of the cat. He accidently falls into the basement after the cat scratches him. Louise, finding a piece of Scott’s clothing with blood, presumes that Scott is now dead.

Scott slowly regains consciousness, and begins to search for food in a hostile environment where a common spider becomes his arch-adversary. The life and death fight between them is intense, and Scott emerges from it wiser and more accepting of his place in the cosmos as he gazes at the stars above. His final words are both haunting and uplifting: “To God, there is no zero. I still exist.”

Scott’s malady can be viewed as a metaphor for any life-altering illness. News of such an event is often frightening and potentially depressing. Therefore, it is noteworthy that Scott, now a speck in the infinite universe, draws comfort from the knowledge that in God’s eyes he still counts. In Jewish tradition, man is composed of body and spirit. While the body is subject to the vicissitudes of nature, the spirit is not. The Incredible Shrinking Man is a clarion call reminding men of their infinite value, even when faced with imminent mortality.

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