To be sure, the theme of
entrapment is not a new one in art, music, literature, philosophy
or cinema. In the film Exterminating Angel by the remarkable
Spanish director Luis Buñuel (1900-83), we are confronted with an all-too-familiar setting:
a common social gathering among friends and acquaintances. Everything
seems "normal" enough until one by one the guests realize
that they cannot leave. Certainly nobody is forcing them to stay.
So then, what is it that's holding them back? There seems to be an
invisible barrier that, for some mysterious reason, cannot be broken
through. The consequences of this are horrible. The guests begin to
starve, commit suicide, generally whither away. All seems hopeless,
until somebody finds the COURAGE to simply cross this invisible barrier
and exit the house. Quickly, all the surviving guests follow. What
was just moments before an impossible situation born out of indolence
and cowardice, now has become a victory for the human spirit. This
victory, however, is only temporary, because, soon after, the same
phenomenon begins to happen to a congregation gathered at a church
service. The mass is over, but they cannot leave. The film comes to
an apocalyptic close as a herd of sheep rush into a church and the
bells of doom ring loudly. For what hope is there for humanity (who
live in the age of the greatest cowardice!), if we cannot rediscover
the spiritual virtue of true courage?
And Luis
Buñuel,
despite a highly twisted value system, was incredibly intuitive on
this one point: without true courage and its resultant uplifting effects,
the vast majority of humanity would simply stay in the "room"
of their own creation, never again to find a way out. Perhaps Buñuel's
stand has more than a little in common with the following excerpt
from The Courage to Be by the German-born philosopher
Paul Tillich (1886-1965):