 It's a lot of, you know, the whole thing with putting the power of life and death in someone's thumbs. Welcome back to Live Lessons in Film. Today we're going to be making sense of life through the gladiator. The general who became the slave. The slave who became the gladiator. That's a synopsis. If you haven't seen the movie, that's a synopsis. Maybe I'm going to look at the movie through the cardinal sins. Okay. Last, there is some last, particularly perhaps by Marcus Aurelius's daughter for Maximus who had a fling with him before. They got married. Yeah, before they both got married to other people and had kids and such. And Commodus to her sister, the son and daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Yeah, to his sister. Which, you know, happens, I suppose. It's uncomfortable. But it's kind of something that humans, it helps when you to have that familiarity and comfort and similar reference points to have that attraction with people, right? And Commodus, he's the son of the emperor then becomes the emperor. It's not too many other women I think that kind of are in a similar position to him that he knows of. Yeah. So she's his sister, she gets it, she's in a similar position. And then on top of the fact that he has issues, him just feeling like it's okay to have romantic feelings for the sister because otherwise it would make him sad. Yeah. Regardless of the fact that they have similarities. And I think that leads into the other one, Envy. Envy I think is the main driver that Commodus is Envy for Maximus. Maximus getting all the love and attention from his father and the love and attention from his sister. So he kind of wants both. First he tries to get the attention and the love still desperately from his father. And then after he, spoiler alert, at this point, come on, murders Marcus Aurelius. I think there is Envy there, but I think primarily what it is is resentment and anger. Because towards Marcus Aurelius, towards your dad loving someone else more than you. Because really Marcus Aurelius has this father-son relationship with Maximus. It's really obvious to everyone. And also has, as he approaches death, he's asking Maximus to basically to take charge of his dreams to turn Rome into a Republic of the People governed by Senators and not Commodus. And so that is obviously the ultimate nail in the coffin. And I think that Commodus actually is aware of this. He's kind of, of course he is aware of this because before he kills Marcus Aurelius, the dad actually tells him that, that that's what's going to happen. And so then he kills him. And so that was a nail in the coffin for years of feeling unseen by his dad and years of feeling unloved by his dad. And that's the thing that he longs for the most. And he never gets that validation. He gets, he arrives at the battle just before, the last battle before the dad dies and he arrives there late. And he's just, it's just another thing where the dad kind of like shows that he's disappointed in, oh man, you know what? This is, why is this my son? And it's very obvious this is in front of the soldiers and everything. And there's years of that. And so I think that he has that resentment and anger for not having that love from his dad, which the dad seems to be unaware of. He was so shocked because Commodus says this before he kills him, do you remember? And he's crying and he's telling. He's like, basically I would have done anything just for you to love me. Yeah. And he's talking about the values. He's like, you know, you have certain values, but I have these other values. And some people, and he's like, and I think rightfully so. Values are different. Like everybody has different ideas of how to live life and everybody has different capacities. And just because my values and your values are different doesn't make mine better than yours or yours better than mine. I think every single value system has its place. Not worthy of crazyism. Exactly. But my values and make your list. Exactly. And it's just one of those things again, we where a parent is dissatisfied with his own kids and then seeks a makeshift child outside of the family. Someone he either can mold into what he wants or someone who already who he deems to align with hope with his own personal views. I don't know if a lot of families can experience this where a parent doesn't really show love to you a lot, but you see them showing a lot more love to people outside of the family. Apparently because they don't feel like the family members have that kind of connection with him. But at the end of the day, that will always breed resentment in you. You'll always feel that feeling of resentment towards your dad because he's your dad at the end of the day. And the hope is that your dad would accept you as you are and validate you. Even though you are different from him, a parent shouldn't make a kid feel invalidated or feel like just because I'm different from my dad. Because at the end of the day, even though that their blood and it's your dad, you're allowed to be different. You're a different human being. And Marcus Aurelius does not do a good enough job of making his children feel like they matter as they are, as different as they are. It's not necessarily just comatose being spoiled or wanting more than you should need because his daughter also doesn't have a good relationship with father either. Exactly. Because he says to her, let's pretend that I'm a good dad. She's like, yeah, let's pretend we have a great, loving, father-daughter relationship. Maybe she isn't as desperate for it or just shows it in different ways. I think she's not as desperate because she's a woman. And so in that time, the expectation is that the son is the one who's going to take over. And if there is no son, the queen or the empress is going to take over until her son is of age. So with women in that case, there isn't that much pressure. Yeah, that's true. But there's more pressure on you if you're a man. And if your dad doesn't see you as good enough, that is emasculating in a lot of ways. Him growing up knew that most likely he was next in line for the throne. So there's an expectation from a young age that he'd have to live up to his father, which has already created this massive legacy for himself. Exactly, which is a lot already on top. And then if he's kind of an absent father, for maybe good reasons are bad, busy fighting wars and being the emperor and a philosopher and all that. And then maybe, you know, I think some of it was fictionalized, but I can also see that as much as a wise person, Marcus Relius was, doesn't always mean you're a good parent. Exactly. He does acknowledge that when he says, you know, let's pretend I'm a good dad. Because it's really interesting when you have a parent who looks at his kids and is like very unhappy or disappointed in how his kids turned out. And yet you're an absent father. He's off fighting wars and trying to build room and create this insane empire. And his kids are at home. They don't really interact with him. And even Lucila, is that her name? Yeah. Or Lucila. Lucila. Lucila. Or Lucila. Lucila. Lucila. Oh yeah, the dad was like, I wonder what you would be like if you were, if you had been my son. Right. Instead of my daughter. And she's like, I would have been whatever you molded me into, you know, and being an absent father, you are molding your kids in a certain way. Like in that way that a neglectful parent molds their kids, right? And then also having these certain expectations, like your kids are supposed to become, be you, by osmosis. Because really you aren't there. You're not actually channeling them in any kind of direction because you're out there fighting wars or working and doing whatever. Which is very confusing. It's confusing for any family with an absent parent, but even worse when you're the most powerful family in the world. And so the parents, the kids of course have this huge expectation to live up to their parents. But when they're not there, then they're like, okay, it's confusing. There's so much expectation to be like, say they're father, but he's never there. So how do I learn how to be like that? Exactly. Very confusing. Exactly. And that is hard. And so that's why I feel like commonness, resentment and anger is justified. Obviously killing is never good. Killing your dad will always be horrible and also mess you up. It messes him up. He's distraught by it. Character motivations are over understandable in that movie. Well, for me, it's one of the most satisfying endings because revenge stories have that satisfaction that everyone has of wanting to live out at certain times that vigilante justice. But of course, that's a fantasy. It's not really realistic of everyone did that all the time. The world would be even more of a mess. But, you know, it's satisfying sometimes to kind of feel like I could take control of these things when forces have their way with my life and I have no control over what happens to be able to actually say, No, I'm actually going to take control of the have some control over it. But yeah, as some revenge movies like show, it's not a lasting feeling because at the end then you're like, oh, that's it. It's gone now. You know, so does revenge actually solve anything? But in this case, it was just enough to also free a lot of people freeze himself, Maximus, freeze, you know, his Rome, common as his sister, who was afraid for her life every day. Yeah. Because and if you're free Rome, freeze the people, freeze the army, everybody, everyone's free. Now we are free is the name of the song at the end of the movie. So yeah, read also shows up. That causes the corruption in the Senate senators may become complacent business of death and gladiatorial fights, you know, even war. He talks about he's like, I don't know what 25 years or so we had four years of peace. Yeah, what for, you know, just keep expanding, expanding, you got to keep expanding. Because you see that still now with countries, obviously, because times have changed, you they have to do it in a more tacit way that will blind people to the actual reality. That is going to war anymore. And so you have to find a way to justify it that will make that to make people feel like, oh, okay, then it's okay. One of the things that I found to be really interesting. Commodus or the senators or both the senators and and and Commodus talk about how you have to give people what they want. You know, like if you want people to love you, they're just certain things that you you're going to give them that aren't actually good for them in the long term. But they are the things that will blind them to the reality of what's happening in their lives. For example, the gladiator games, he does that because people want to see death, people want to see like they want it entertainment. Because they enjoy knowing that they come from Rome and Rome is conquering all of these girls. But they, Commodus has this grand idea to bring it close to them for them to actually see war just within reach. And he does this, even though he is using their grain reserves, I think, knowing that after three years, all of these people that are enjoying this thing right now are going to be starving out of their minds. And then obviously these people are then also blind to the fact that Rome is struggling financially, politically, socially, because they're enjoying this, you know, this, this huge show. And so when you think about it in modern day times, there's a lot of ways that governments kind of or countries do that where they distract people from what's really going on and with something like either it's something really fun. Or something really bad. Or something really bad to take away from the other thing that they didn't want people to keep focusing on. I think you can think about it even with things like mainstream entertainment. You know, a lot of people, if you really look at it, you can, if you really sit down and talk about it, like philosophically, you can look at mainstream entertainment as a distraction because you're not watching as much news. And even the news itself has become such a show. Like if you watch news now versus news, like old and days news, like when your parents were watching news, it's such a different thing. It's like literal entertainment now when you're watching the news or just a boxing match. Yeah. So depending on which network you're watching, are you watching BBC? Are you watching CNN? Are you watching Al Jazeera? Are you watching Russia TV? So depending on which network you're on, the same story will be told from different angles with a certain kind of bias. There's so much distraction and you never really know what's true and what is not. And a lot of the times that is manufactured. And so that's what Commodus does because his main view is for the people to love him. He doesn't actually have to do anything. He's not actually helping the people out. I'm not doing the hard work because I think the reality is that if you for an entire country to actually prosper, there are lots of sacrifices that each individual person would have to make. And sometimes it means like, you know, for example, taxing, right? That's an example of a sacrifice. You make money and then the government takes the money that you earned to distribute it to whatever social services that are needed. That is an example, right? Of the sacrifices. But there are only, there's a limit as to what government can do because people don't want to do that. People aren't willing to go the extra mile at the end of the day. They aren't willing to let go of certain comforts. I can't remember. I think he even talks about just dissolving the Senate. So he figures, well, I'll get the people really on my side. And if I pull something like that, a lot of them, some of them might be like, oh wait, was he doing that? Getting rid of the Senate completely while all the games are going on? But a lot of people would be like, eh, whatever. Yeah, we care. Exactly. You won't even notice it. And I mean, there's a reason why bread and games, the phrase is still around for modern equivalences. Equivalencies, you know, back then it would be bread and games. They would just toss bread into the crowd and there were games, pretty harsh games, but games, I suppose. And games, they were gladiator fights, but there were also other things. There were chariot races, which could be seen as a game. There were other kinds of things. They would fill up the arena with boats and they would have mock boat battles and such. So there were games. So that's where you get the modern day bread and games. So it's a pretty similar situation from back then. Things have gotten slightly more civil. Yeah. And also at the end of the day, I think civility, like anything that's relative, right? Because if you really look at it, I remember in one of the movies, I think it was Snowpiercer, right? We talked about, would you give up your smartphone if you knew that it would save someone in the Democratic Republic of Congo, right? And now they would do more OTAN to make your iPhone. Yeah. Would you do that, right? Because like, is my using my having an iPhone and being able to do all of these things that I can do in the modern world is that civil? If I am aware of the fact that it has such a detrimental impact on someone else's life, is that civility? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? That's where Commodus obviously was trying his best, spending all the food reserves and financial reserves to distract people. But to a degree, if people do it themselves, they're willing to be distracted and have these illusions work on them. Because exactly, there are plenty of people I think that know how much their modern comforts are a destruction to people on the other side of the world or the environment or what have you. And find ways to get around it and be like, well, you know, I needed it sucks, but I needed it or something, you know? Yeah. You know, looking into the details of how this entire system works and how little sense it makes. Yeah. Because if you decided that, if you went actually went further, you would actually say, I'm just going to go and deal with the cause and not treat the symptom, right? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's a lot of absolving of people's consciousnesses, for sure. Because for instance, yeah, you don't need to do a charity. Sometimes it might be more effective then, but it has a similar effect, I think, to people's conscience to say giving a little bit of money to a homeless person, right? Yeah. Instead of really changing things around, which I understand as an individual, sometimes there's only so much you can do. It still feels like, ooh, I feel bad that there is such a difference in my situation to this person on the street. So here's a couple bucks, you know, not really doing anything. Yeah. I mean, sure, it's maybe getting the buy a little easier that day. I'm not saying don't give money to homeless people to say, overall, it's not changing the conditions that are creating you being all right and them being on the street. Exactly. Same thing with the charity is like offering food to, you know, those, those are like soup, soup kitchens. Yeah. Like you're offering food to the soup kitchen. How come why don't you reflect on what is it that I can do so that there aren't, there's a need at the end of the day for soup kitchens? Exactly. So again, I'm not saying don't donate to charity or don't, don't give to homeless people or to, yeah, soup kitchens or homeless shelters. But again, it's treating the, the symptom rather than the cause. So you donate to charity a lot of times. You're like, I feel good because, you know, sending some money to a poor village or something or to a war torn situation. But again, these things are still happening. Exactly. And so that's the kind of stuff that leadership as well, like with Commodus, he taps into that when he's doing these games. He taps into that knowing that people can, well, so easily just like rest in this, wow, that they create of just completely utopia. Yeah. Everything is okay, you know, like nothing is wrong with Rome. We have gladiator games. There's bread. We get bread. We get to see people kill each other, you know, and then you're just kind of completely blind to what your country is actually doing and how it's killing people all over the world to expand. And also you're blind to the social dynamics in your own, like immediate environment, right? Because it's, it's, there's so many things that are happening in the background with the government, with the economy that people aren't aware of. And they're blind to this because of these games. Commodus does this on purpose, you know, knowing that people are so willing to fall into that comfort. Yeah, it's a damn difficult thing. It is. But it does take more conscious effort to not, to not allow yourself to fall into that complacency and lack of responsibility and awareness. Yeah. Oh, you're pulling out your toes. My hair is too close. Yeah. But I think that's some really interesting stuff there. Yeah. For sure. If you watched it, please share your thoughts on our thoughts in the comments. Yeah. Till next time. That's a wrap. Bye.