"Lost Horizon" (1937)

It is folly to believe that it is an external government or belief system that is the cause of all our troubles--that if we just had the right system of governance, that everyone will be happy and crime will be nearly non-existent. It's an idea expressed by Plato ("Republic") and was the thought of some of the early founders of this country--that if you just get the right external system, all your problems will be solved. The problem isn't with the system. We live in a fallen and sinful world because humans are fallen and sinful. It is not the external system at fault, it is the internal sinfulness of humans. The perfect system only exists after this life in heaven. So, Shangri-La (the place in this film), is pure myth--not possible. THAT being said, this was a film I very much enjoyed. It is a restored film--so that was interesting in itself. There were occasional places where still photos had to be used, because the film no longer exists. The whole process of restoring this would be fascinating to follow much closer. One of the implied questions posed by the story is: If a person was confronted with a perfect society, what would they do with it? How would they react? One character knew more of what to do with dead things than live people. More directly: Could diplomatic relations be carried out and done with no weapons of any kind? If so, what would that look like? Is that possible? I watched just a snitch of the special features--long enough to see a couple of examples of before and after film restoration bits, and to see one of the only existing actual film footage made off of negatives. (The film is otherwise almost entirely made off of other prints.) It showed me I was definitely missing out what the experience could've been like. The music when they were traveling originally to Shangri-La reminded me of the music we played at ABC from Kazakhstan--the style chording, the instrumentation. Since it's set in Tibet, that's not too far off. But that style music seemed to be just in that place in the film. It showed me how far the use of models have come in seeing this early example.  Guess I had something to say about this one.