Two movies stick out in my mind because of their strikingly similar endings. The first is Life Is Beautiful (1997) in which Roberto Benigni was awarded an Oscar for Best Actor. Wikipedia describes it as a film about a "Jewish Italian book shop owner, who employs his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp." The second movie was Not Without My Daughter (1991) with Sally Field and Alfred Molina, once again according to Wikipedia, the film " (depicts) the escape of American citizen Betty Mahmoody and her daughter from her abusive husband in Iran."
I'll give a 'spoiler alert' here if you haven't seen these films and would rather not know how they end. The striking similarity in these endings was that in Life Is Beautiful, the father and his son were finally freed from the concentration camp by American soldiers. Not knowing who was about to enter the compound but hearing the noise of machinery, they breathlessly wait only to see an American Sherman tank turn the corner flying the Stars And Stripes that were purposely highlighted by the director. Not Without My Daughter ended in the same way. The mother and daughter had just been smuggled out of Iran by jeep into Turkey. The camera pans Betty Mahmoody's field of vision as she scans the city that she is left in.....and there it is....the Stars And Stripes flying outside the American embassy....mother and daughter are safe as the film ends!
Folks, this is what America has been both to its own citizens and to others around the world, and this America is what our own people are tearing apart with fake tears, false compassion, political lust and willful ignorance. Lord have mercy on us!
I'll give a 'spoiler alert' here if you haven't seen these films and would rather not know how they end. The striking similarity in these endings was that in Life Is Beautiful, the father and his son were finally freed from the concentration camp by American soldiers. Not knowing who was about to enter the compound but hearing the noise of machinery, they breathlessly wait only to see an American Sherman tank turn the corner flying the Stars And Stripes that were purposely highlighted by the director. Not Without My Daughter ended in the same way. The mother and daughter had just been smuggled out of Iran by jeep into Turkey. The camera pans Betty Mahmoody's field of vision as she scans the city that she is left in.....and there it is....the Stars And Stripes flying outside the American embassy....mother and daughter are safe as the film ends!
Folks, this is what America has been both to its own citizens and to others around the world, and this America is what our own people are tearing apart with fake tears, false compassion, political lust and willful ignorance. Lord have mercy on us!
