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Tom Hanks reappears in isolation from coronavirus 0:32
Editor's Note: This essay is part of a column called The Wisdom Project by David Allan, editorial director for CNN Features. The series is about applying to life the wisdom and philosophy found everywhere, from ancient texts to pop culture. You can follow David at @davidgallan.
(CNN) - Are you still thinking about movies that talk about our lock-in / lock-out / homebound / quarantine lives right now?
Movies can help us make sense of this moment. When life seems stranger than fiction itself, we have films that show us metaphors and representations that speak of our new reality. And given the state of suspended productions from movie studios right now, it could be a year before we see our first covid-19 movie or television series.
I keep thinking about “Groundhog Day” and how the monotony of these days causes despair before inspiring self-improvement. Or the desperate ingenuity of "The Martian", which stopped fending for itself.
And obviously, there are the pandemic scary movies like "Contagion", "Outbreak", "Night of the Living Dead", "28 Weeks Later", "Night of the Comet" and "World War Z". Perhaps Stephen King adaptations like "The Shining," "Misery," or "The Stand" (a TV miniseries) speak to his experience.
But are those movies helping us?
The movies we need now, I would say, are Tom Hanks movies. Hanks is now the "famous canary in the coal mine for coronavirus," as he described himself while presenting the recent episode "Saturday Night Live at Home." Hanks was the first known big celebrity to contract and then recover from covid-19, making the diagnosis a little less scary.
The two-time winner ("Forrest Gump" and "Philadelphia") and six-time Oscar nominee, Hanks has a long and varied work that contains wisdom and messages of struggle, facing danger and hope. He also embodies a common man quality that makes him more identifiable and sympathetic than many other stars in his profile who prefer more classic hero roles.
That said, the most inspiring and helpful Hanks movie nominees during a pandemic are ...
Cast Away
Cast Away is a story of courage and hope. We will leave this island. But we will also become different people after this experience, stronger but perhaps sadder. Certain people and places we take for granted may have greater meaning for us once we rejoin them or, more devastatingly, if we lose them. The reverse can also be profound, since we learn without what we can live.
We need to take advantage of this coronavirus experience one day at a time, the movie reminds us, and never give up hope. "I know what I have to do now," says Hanks' character Chuck Noland, after returning after four years alone on an island. "I have to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide might bring? ”
'Forrest Gump'
"Gump" is a fairy tale of chance, of not knowing how the story will unfold and our place in it. Life is full of varied and unexpected events, "like a box of chocolates." We are all Gump at this moment, living a unique story, without realizing its result.
Forrest Gump's virtues are also useful now. The main character "may not be an intelligent man," but he is a man of principle, decent and honest. Not the type you would think would hog toilet paper. Help others as you can. Gump cares for sick or injured loved ones and honors their deaths. And for a character with an IQ of 75, he's pretty philosophical about life and its ups and downs.
Gump is also simple. Appreciate small pleasures. It doesn't worry him much. He accepts his circumstances. He is optimistic. Gump's disposition is that things will turn out well, or at least they should.
It also reminds us of running. Sometimes, to clear our minds or keep fit, it's just the best.
'Apollo 13'
Do you feel trapped in a small space, floating around the dark side of the moon, worried about losing basic services like electricity and communication? Are tensions high sometimes between you and your peers?
That can describe where you are with confinement as much as it describes the plight of three astronauts who, 50 years ago this week, ventured on a failed mission to the moon.
The mission commander for that mission was Jim Lovell, played by Hanks.
Surviving this difficult experience can also be one of the most memorable parts of your life. And you can be a hero, one of the people who helps keep your family or business together or sanity when it gets tough.
And remember that there are professionals working on the problem, either to find a vaccine or to give us the right health advice. Like NASA and the Apollo 13 crew, the experts and ourselves will take us back to the Earth we long for.
In the meantime, resolve issues as they arise.
Yes, "Houston, we have a problem," Lovell said. But if we trust each other and use our heads, we will get through this.
Philadelphia
A deadly virus. More frightening questions than reassuring answers. Ignorance is our enemy. Love is more powerful than fear. These phrases seem to fit both the state of the world and this movie in which Hanks' character Andrew Beckett is fired at the peak of the AIDS crisis after showing signs of the disease.
He defends himself, of course. He will not let discrimination and fear be his downfall. And he uses his brilliant legal mind to negotiate insanity. Beckett has a line he uses to stabilize panic in a scene: "Every problem has a solution," a good motto to adopt these days.
But, what made this movie so powerful when it was released in 1993 was its humanity. Represent the AIDS epidemic through Hanks, our dying hero, in a personal, empathetic, and profound way. It is more than a film about loss or justice, as it brings home the theme of connection and community in the midst of a global crisis.
'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'
One of the legacies of television presenter Fred Rogers was his mission to help children deal with their internal emotions and external relationships.
In the film, Hanks plays Rogers as a calm and beatific character who comes to the aid of an adult man, a writer with a complicated and troublesome relationship with his dying father.
No matter what your circumstances are in the midst of this pandemic, you are undoubtedly negotiating internal emotions (yours or those of your family and friends) and external relationships, in difficult circumstances.
"A Beautiful Day" shows how to do this: listening and connecting, through empathy, mindfulness, and even gratitude. Like the Hanks rendering, we can slow down, dig deeper, and connect in deeper ways than we are used to. We can even find ways to appreciate this unusual opportunity to grow and connect right now.
There are other lessons that Rogers and the film offer at this challenging time.
The philosophy behind the PBS children's program "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" was its creator's spiritual call to "love your neighbor," a reference to one of the best-known quotes in the New Testament. The notion of loving and caring for others as you would for yourself is a basic tenet of the Christian faith, known as the Golden Rule.
Now is the time to take care of each other, ask how we are, be supportive, and even, in the most literal sense, be a good neighbor.
The film also contains a lesson on how to face death, the saddest of all the repercussions of this pandemic. In a moment of unspoken discomfort around the writer's father's deathbed, Mr. Rogers speaks.
"You know, death is something that many of us feel uncomfortable about," Hanks says in the film, paraphrasing the lines that Rogers himself said. "But to die is to be human. And anything human is mentionable. Anything mentionable is manageable. ”
More from Hanks Canon
And the winner is ... "Cast Away" OR "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." or any other film that talks about his current experience to face the difficulties and losses of the pandemic.
We are all in this coronavirus crisis together, but we are experiencing it in different ways. And luckily there is a Tom Hanks movie for all of them. Other nominees include:
• “Toy Story”: Find the strength to connect with friends and family
• "Big": play with your personal strengths and lean on friends to manage the day to day
• “The Money Pit”: Find some humor in your financial concerns
• “Catch Me If You Can”: Persevering to avoid the coronavirus, do you identify yourself?
• "The Polar Express": because Christmas encourages most people
• "Joe Versus the Volcano": how a brush with death can invigorate life
• “You've Got Mail”: Get connected and maybe you will find love, even if you stay physically distant
• "Captain Phillips": persevere and never lose hope, even when you fear for your life
• "Sully": keep calm, act quickly ..
• “Bridge of Spies”: paraphrasing a repeat quote: don't worry, it won't help
• "Sleepless in Seattle": prioritizes sleep
• “Saving Private Ryan”: Stay focused even when you're most scared
• “The Terminal”: No, you cannot travel anywhere, but you can make the most of where you are
Tom Hanks