paper chase

the internet has been slow for my entire neighborhood, so our cable provider decided to give everyone premium service for a month. my roommies and i normally only have the basic plan, so we're probably going to be using the TV more than we usually do this next month. tonight, i was flipping through channels after watching Groundhog Day and Death Becomes Her (both having to do with death and eternal life, oddly enough), and i stopped at the beginning of a movie in letterbox format. i didn't know what it was, but the words "Harvard Law School" flashed on the screen, and so i thought it might be interesting.

i watched for a good half hour, and was excited when i found out there weren't going to be any commercial breaks. it seemed like it was going to be a pretty good movie, so i decided to figure out the name of it by googling some of the characters' names. it turns out i was watching The Paper Chase (1973).

altho' i'm not planning on going to law school, it made me think about my plans on going to grad school. i felt that the movie was saying that you could get all the knowledge, be the best thinker, get the best grades, but still be nothing. just having knowledge and just thinking about problems will not satisfy the "irrational" (as one of the characters labels it) dimension of humans. knowledge and thinking are not like human relationships: the former are one-way streets while the latter are two-way streets. the movie seems to praise a life that sees the usefulness of knowledge and thinking, but prioritizes human relationships above them both. overall, i liked the movie, since it made me consider my expectations for graduate school and my priorities in life. i recommend it, especially since it tackles human interaction in many different contexts (among friends, companions, colleagues, a professor and their students, and lovers).

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