It's the Journey, Not the Destination
A moment of clarity is defined as an epiphany, which is a vision that you get when you finally figure out a very important purpose in your life. Life is full of epiphanies, and so are movies, which portray human experiences. One of theses movies is The Last Samurai. The Last Samurai is the story of Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise's character) who is an American Civil War veteran who's hired as an adviser to the Japanese military. Algren and the American army have orders to go to war with the Japanese, the war goes terribly wrong and Algren was very injured. When Captain Algren was taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese, he had an epiphany. General Katsumoto (loosely based on Saigo Takamori, who led the last great samurai rebellion in 1877.) let him live and didn’t kill him when he had the chance to. The Japanese took him in and showed him the way of the samurai and Japanese lifestyle. Algren was a new reborn man. He finally knew that his whole purpose in life was to help the ancient way of the samurai live on by defeating the corrupted American army. Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai is my favorite film because it deals with honor, loyalty, and it has an excellent message.
One factor that makes The Last Samurai so appealing is that it demonstrates many aspects of honor. For instance, in the beginning of the movie Algren becomes a prisoner of war and instead of returning back to the corruption of the American army, he stays with the Japanese, the people who embraced him. Algren becomes an accepted part of the community and recognizes something truly gratifying about their culture, something simple and honorable: That the life he was so intent on destroying is the life that he once led. After being released by the Samurai, Algren returns to Tokyo, knowing full well that Katsumoto will not go quietly. There, he contemplates the future, a future in which there are only two choices: Staying true to his mission or staying true to...