{"id":471,"date":"2009-10-07T06:14:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T14:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=471"},"modified":"2009-10-07T06:14:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T14:14:09","slug":"seven-pounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/07\/seven-pounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Pounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched Will Smith’s Seven Pounds<\/a>\"\". It’s a pretty interesting movie. “Interesting” is such a weak word, I know — but I can’t pick a better one. I certainly can’t say the movie’s a feel-good joyride. How about “thought-provoking?”<\/p>\n

Smith’s character is “Ben Thomas,” a man struggling under a burden of guilt, and, apparently, trying to make things better by helping various strangers.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I can’t say much. Let’s say, first, that I sympathize with the Ben Thomas character. I have to say that, because I disagree with what he plans to do to assuage his guilt. I approve of all of his secondary decisions, but the primary one I can’t support.<\/p>\n

That’s what makes Seven Pounds<\/em> so thought-provoking. It gives you a scenario and makes you think about ends and means, and whether one can justify the other. (What, for Ben, is the end<\/em>? Is it helping strangers? Or is it the other thing, and helping strangers merely a rationale?)
\nUltimately, the flaw with this movie is its presentation of despair as a valid option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched Will Smith’s Seven Pounds. It’s a pretty interesting movie. “Interesting” is such a weak word, I know — but I can’t pick a better one. I certainly can’t say the movie’s a feel-good joyride. How about “thought-provoking?” Smith’s character is “Ben Thomas,” a man struggling under a burden of guilt, and, apparently, trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRqpr-7B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}