'The Soul' Film Review
- Mar Lee
- Feb 9, 2025
- 4 min read
*Translated by Content AI
From the perspective of a photography enthusiast/occupational therapy student
contents
Old fish and little fish
I recently watched the movie "The Soul" for the second time, and I found the story of "Old Fish and Little Fish" in the movie very thought-provoking.
One day the little fish asked the old fish: "Where is the ocean? I want to find it!"
Old fish: "Ocean? You are in the ocean!"
Little fish: "No! This is not the ocean! This is water!"
Old fish: "We have always been in it and have never left."
It turns out that the meaning has always been there, it just depends on whether you feel it with your heart.
As a photography enthusiast, I actually didn’t like recording daily life that much before. I didn’t even know why I should shoot daily life, since that I thought there was nothing special, neither remarkable sights nor extraordinary people. But in recent years, I have realized that lots of 'beauty' comes from
daily life .
I have begun to realize that:
I don’t have to travel to take landscape photos. I don’t have to attend important events to take portrait photos.
For example, when you go out to buy breakfast, as long as you carry a camera with you, or just a mobile phone, as long as you pay more attention to the people and things around you, you will definitely find places worth pressing the shutter. This is also one of the reasons why I started to fall in love with street photography.
Spark
Take eating as an example. After you finish eating and someone asks you if the food is delicious, if you “forget to enjoy the food” while eating, you will only be able to answer perfunctorily, “It’s OK”.
This is not to call for mindful eating. After all, everyone has different pursuits in "eating". Some people pursue fast food, some pursue eating until they are full, and some pursue a feast for the taste buds.
I just want to share the idea that "when we enjoy delicious food, if we don't taste it carefully and feel it well, we may lose the experience of appreciating the deliciousness."
Many people like to watch TV while eating when they are alone. There is nothing wrong with this, but the possibility of the above situation happening will be greatly increased. If you do nothing but eat, you may feel lonely and bored. In this case, you might as well change from "watching TV" while eating to "listening to music" while eating!
💡By reducing the number of senses, the attention allocated to each sense can be increased.
What does it mean? Simply put, assuming you have 100% attention, the main senses used when eating while watching a show include "sight, hearing, smell and taste". If you distribute your attention evenly, it means that you use 33% of your attention on each sense. If you eat while listening to music, there is less visual stimulation. At this time, the main senses are only "sight, smell and taste", and the allocated attention increases to 50%.
Of course, this is just an explanation to make it easier for you to understand. The actual situation will still be affected by various factors!
In short, if you are eating while reading this article, why not stop and exercise your taste buds! Maybe this meal will be one of the sparks of your life!
Photography begins with observation. Take a moment to observe your surroundings. You may find something surprising.
Self-identity vs. role confusion
In Erikson 's "Stages of Social Psychological Development", adolescents in adolescence are in the contradiction of "self-identity and role confusion" , and this is indeed the case with me.
Looking back at that period, I was unsure about the meaning of studying. Due to external pressure, I had to maintain a certain level of academic performance. As a result, I ended up studying just to gain a certain sense of achievement and superiority. At that time, I always felt that something was missing in my life, and I kept looking for it but couldn't find it .
Gradually, due to my lack of self-identity, I destroyed my adolescence, which should have been full of youthful spirit.
At that time, I read a sentence that left a deep impression on me:
Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.
This sentence made me stop obsessing about finding the meaning of life. After watching "Spiritual Turn", I think a more appropriate statement should be:
Life is not about finding, life is about FEELING .
"Soul Break" vs. occupational therapy
After entering university, I chose to study occupational therapy. When it comes to occupational therapy, many people have doubts about it: "What is 'occupational therapy'?" The descriptions I have heard since I studied occupational therapy include:
💡 "Ability is a purposeful and meaningful activity."
💡 "Function is anything you need to do or want to do" etc.
Functionality does not refer to what is being done at the moment, but also includes what was done in the past. From the perspective of functional science and the Model of Human Functionality (MOHO):
The activities we do every day, and even throughout our lives, have a cumulative impact on our health, and this impact also determines how we choose, perform, and arrange functional activities in the future.
This is one of the reasons why occupational therapists need to find out the case's "occupational history".
In fact, occupational therapists are a bit like the "mentor in the reincarnation preparatory class" in the movie. Their purpose is to help the client (soul) find the little things (sparks) that are most important to them . In short, watching "Knockabout" from the perspective of occupational therapy, I got:
Those seemingly insignificant and commonplace little things in life, when accumulated, are the source of the meaning of life!
In other words, “even the smallest things can have meaning”, just like what 22 said in the movie:
maybe SKY-WATCHING can be my SPARK!
As mentioned above, photography begins with observation, and what is needed after observation is "practice" ; it requires a lot of shooting, a lot of accumulation, and always believing:
Those seemingly meaningless "practice photos (waste photos)" will become part of future works.
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