And lead yourself through the waste and welter and accept the reality that while you may never reach the land of milk and pomegranates and grapes and honey you can cultivate within yourself a land of milk and pomegranates and grapes and honey.Political allegory, yes, but so much more than that, it's a spiritual allegory about restoring faith in yourself and cultivating yourself and letting go of dreams of material wealth. The lesson of, within be fed and within be rich and within be full of faith in yourself and be your own guide, and without be rich no more.Remember the son reading from Genesis, from the sweat of your brow, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, the verselets occur when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, the verselets contain G-d's punishment against them.. The families in the film left their Garden of Eden and were trekking through the biblical desert to a region that promised to offer a better life, led by a self-admitted vengeful and angry and jealous G-d-figure whose route tested them and starved them physically/mentally/spiritually and pushed them beyond their limit, yet they learned nothing from the experience, the families demanding water from rocks (biblical parallel....), mankind repeating the same mistakes ad infinitum, history repeating itself, people failing to learn to guide themselves and have faith in themselves and faith in whatever situation they're in and faith in their ability to survive wherever they are, wasteland or fruitland. Inversely it might also mean people not having enough faith in the Figurehead, people constantly doubting their Guide and casting away the Guide's warnings and lessons and demanding ever more proof from the Guide that the path is the correct path, with the Native American Indian a False Prophet symbol who leads them down the wrong path (but is it a "wrong path" if the path leads them to the realization that they can guide themselves and rely on themselves, is it a wrong path if the the wrong path opens their eyes to the folly of placing all their faith and placing their lives in the hands of a stranger, is it a wrong path if the path saves them?)But I perceived the film as more of a lament about how every generation makes the same exact mistakes as the previous generation, how lessons are passed down but quickly forgotten, how people lack faith in themselves and want others to think for them and lead them, how people expect everything in life to be easy, how people expect their lives to improve if their material situation improves, how people expect to see immediate changes/improvements if they follow the guide's path, how people are never satisfied no matter what, etc. The Bush-to-Obama political allegory is there, but it's a belated allegory considering things haven't changed much since the changing of the political power.
reply
share