There is always one movie that gives people a taste for something new in movies. Most of the time, that movie has a spiritual or philosophical theme that makes you think about things in a new way and makes you want to see more. It speaks to people’s natural desire to find out what’s going on and figure out mysteries. We stay on the edge of our seats and keep our minds busy by trying to figure out life’s puzzles while watching these spiritual movies.
Spiritual films are like lights in the dark. They help us learn new things about ourselves, our world, our society, and our place in it. This point of view is better in terms of understanding and philosophy. It makes us question the big stories we’ve been told and the limits of our own views.
Here are what we think are the ten most enlightening movies ever made.
Arrival (2016)
Arrival is a movie about the strange idea of life on other planets. It’s about a linguistics professor named Louise Banks (Amy Adams) who is called by the military to lead an investigation into 12 spaceships that hit different parts of the world. People still argue about whether or not aliens exist, but this movie shows that different species could meet. The interaction was made to look like a dangerous and mysterious mission. Professor Louise was brave enough to take off her suit and walk up to the Heptapods to show trust and make it easier for them to talk to her. She worked hard, and now she can figure out what they were saying when they talked in a very coded way.
Some parts of the movie, like time, are shown from an alien’s point of view. Heptapods don’t see time in a straight line, and they show Louise what her future will be like. Even though she sees bad things coming, she decides to keep making the same choices. This is another way of saying that bad things will happen, and if you want to avoid them, you’ll have to avoid the good things, too. This movie is mostly about communication, peace, and being a part of a group, but it also has a political side. Louise teaches the world’s tense politics a lesson through her conversations with the aliens. The lesson is that if two different species can find common ground and communicate in peace, it would be much easier for countries on the same planet to do the same.
Spiritually enlightening movies have a secret: they take people on a journey into a new world full of mysteries and wonders. They ask the right questions and help people see the world in new ways.
Eat, Pray, Love (2010)
In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts plays the famous author Elizabeth Gilbert. After her divorce, she travels the world in search of spiritual growth, worldly pleasures, and knowledge. The film was first written as a memoir about the writer’s journey to find himself and grow. It shows how important it is to look inside yourself to find out more about yourself and your life. In Bali, she learns how to find a balance between the worldly and the spiritual. In fact, an old medicine man, who is like a guru, teaches her the wisdom and knowledge he has gained over the years. They end up falling in love, which is a beautiful surprise.
Their happy marriage shows that leaving a bad relationship and focusing on your own growth will not only bring you balance, but can also help you find the best partner. Eat, Pray, Love is a beautiful, quiet, and captivating movie that will feed your spirit and your mind.
Her (2013)
Her is a 2013 science fiction movie that stood out for its original ideas and creative, thought-provoking style. It’s about a talented writer named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with an AI virtual assistant named Samantha (Scarlett Johansson). The idea of a human and a robot getting close has been explored before, but never as deeply as in this movie. People have always dreamed that a robot could be as smart as a human and be able to feel emotions and have relationships. If the computer can talk back, answer questions, and even have a full conversation, maybe it can also meet our emotional needs. The whole movie is based on that idea.
Theodore is an example of a writer who is lonely and shy and has trouble connecting with the people around him. He is also close to ending his marriage, but he keeps putting it off. The writer and his AI assistant start talking about his marriage, love, and what life is all about. Theodore’s feelings for Samantha start to grow, and even though their relationship isn’t typical, he eventually agrees to be with her. A risk that was worth taking at first, until he found out that she was talking to thousands of people like him at the same time. She finally leaves him, but she won’t say where she’s going next.
The movie does a good job of making people feel sorry for this unusual relationship, but the real message is that relying on the virtual world to escape painful emotions and problems with building relationships will only slow down personal growth and make things worse. The movie is also a call to face the facts and choose the truth, even if it hurts.
I Origins (2014)
I Origins is a movie that looks into some of life’s biggest mysteries, starting with the amazing mystery of the eye. This movie, which was directed by Mike Cahill, shows how science and faith are always dancing with each other. Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a molecular biologist who is interested in facts, and his lab partner, Karen, want to make an eye out of living things (Brit Marling). Ian is interested in the eye and really wants to do this big project, but when he meets the beautiful Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a Halloween party, he almost loses interest. Even for a short time, their meeting makes him question his strict scientific and factual view of life.
Sofi is religious and thinks there is another, invisible reality. She tells him, “Playing God is dangerous.” After Sofi’s shocking death, they can no longer be together. Seven years later, he marries his lab assistant, and the two of them keep trying to prove that the gift of sight is not a divine gift but rather the result of evolution. Even though Sofi tries to open the scientist’s “inner eye,” he is set in his ways. When you add in the fact that he can’t see the spiritual, his obsession with eyes and sight becomes ironic.
At last, he meets an Indian girl whose eyes are the same as Sofi’s before she died. He starts to pay attention to the little girl and notices how much she looks like his ex-wife. This event breaks Ian out of his stubbornness and makes him think that there might be something beyond science. Now, it’s possible to look into faith, God, miracles, and messages from the dead.
Inception (2010)
Inception explores the idea that our minds are in charge of most of what we experience. Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a professional thief who uses a machine and a group of trained “brain hackers” to get into the minds of people he wants to steal from. This is Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece. If you think this sounds too good to be true, you’d be right. Jumping into your subconscious repeatedly and staying there for a long time can be dangerous.
The main character’s wife, who travels with him through his dreams, eventually can’t tell the difference between reality and a dream. She would think she is dreaming even when she is awake. In fact, she decides to jump off the balcony of a hotel room to wake up, not knowing that the fall will kill her. Her husband tries to talk her out of it, but she is so sure that she jumps anyway. Cobb’s grief and guilt over the death of his wife never go away. Every time he goes deep into his mind, he sees her in his dreams. She tries to convince him to stay in that realm with her.
Cobb’s sense of reality, on the other hand, is stronger, and he is able to leave the dreamworld and go back to his kids. This movie makes you think about how trauma can affect your subconscious and how that affects the real world. The limits are always on the inside, in parts of the mind that are hard to get to.
Lucy (2014)
Lucy caused a lot of controversy because of the message it tried to send. Scarlett Johansson plays the girlfriend of a drug mule who works for a Korean drug lord and gets tricked into doing her boyfriend’s job instead. She has to have surgery, and a bag of drugs is sewn into her stomach. This drug, which she was supposed to take out of the country, is broken down inside her body and taken in. As a result of taking the drug, she starts to gain new physical and mental abilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis, the ability to travel through time in her mind, and not feeling pain.
She gets in touch with Professor Samuel Norman, whose main area of research is brain power. She tells him that she can use a huge amount of her brain power, which has never been done before and is almost impossible. Even though the professor wants to help Lucy, she ends up helping him with his research.
The movie is a metaphor for how the mind can do anything. People are too busy with materialism, money, and fame to use their minds to their fullest potential because they are so focused on those things. It’s a movie that will make you appreciate the brain, which is an amazing and brilliant muscle. This is one of the movies that will show you that the real treasure is inside of you.
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Mr. Nobody, a science fiction drama that came out in 2009, was another movie that made people think. The movie is directed by Jaco Van Dormael and stars Jared Leto. It’s about 118-year-old Nemo Nobody, who is the last living person on earth. The story of the movie doesn’t go in a straight line. Instead, it jumps from one person’s life to a completely different one. Nemo is always the main character, but the events and people in his life change based on what he does.
The movie shows all the different ways Nemo could have or already has lived his life. It’s a movie about how one small choice can change a person’s life in a big way. Some people refer to it as the “multiverse hypothesis.” It is basically the idea that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, which are also called “alternate universes,” “quantum universes,” and “interpenetrating dimensions.” Even though physicists can’t agree on how true this idea is, it is still a scientific question. But it has been shown in many comic books and a few movies that are made up. In this situation, the idea of parallel universes puts a lot of weight on the decisions people make, since they are the only thing that can change reality.
The Age of Adaline (2015)
In The Age of Adaline, Blake Lively plays a young, beautiful, and smart woman who is born at the turn of the 20th century. On a stormy night, she is in a car crash that gives her the ability to live forever. In this movie, the word “gift” is questioned a lot because the main character isn’t sure how she feels about not getting old.
Because of her amazing ability to travel through time, she sees her dog die and her daughter grow from a child to an adult to an old person. The idea that everyone she cares about will die before she does scares her and makes her want to be alone. She moves from city to city because she doesn’t want to be found out, and she won’t even talk about getting into a relationship. Her fear of losing people keeps her stuck in a circle of being alone.
But when Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman) comes into her life, everything changes for the better. They start to like each other, and she agrees to meet his family. His father, on the other hand, turns out to be her ex-lover, which is a pretty strange joke that life sometimes plays. This throws her off for a while, of course.
This movie’s spiritual message is that not everything that seems like a gift really is one. People seek immortality without thinking, but it’s easy for it to become a curse, especially if it makes it hard to find love.
The Secret Garden (2020)
The British fantasy drama movie The Secret Garden came out in 2020. It was based on a book by Frances Hodgson Burnett from 1911. It tells the story of Mary Lennox, who is raised by her uncle after her parents die. Even though a strict housemaid told Marry not to look around, her curiosity leads her into a secret garden. The next day, she brings her cousin Colin with her, who uses a wheelchair. As they look around the garden together, Collin starts to feel the place’s magic. He tries to get up from his seat and start walking again. In the meantime, their house burns down, and everyone thinks that the uncle is looking for his missing son in a panic. Mary finally goes into the burning house to tell her uncle that his son is safe in the secret garden.
The movie shows how sad the uncle is about losing his wife and how much he worries about his son. One way to look at his son’s disability is as a result of his father’s ineffective way of protecting him. Every problem gets solved magically in the secret garden. There, hurts are healed and limits are taken away. The boy can walk again, and the father has come back to himself and regained his senses. All it took was the spark of a little girl’s spirit and her desire to learn more. She refused to live in fear and sadness. The movie shows us that it is up to us to heal our wounds and move on from things that hurt us in the past. Having courage and moving on go together. It is a movie that you should definitely see.
The Truman Show (1998)
In The Truman Show, Truman Burbank, who lives a quiet, normal life as an insurance salesman, finds out that he is part of a huge reality TV show. Hidden cameras, directors, and paid actors all work together to give reality TV stars a fake version of their real lives. Even though Truman doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s getting more and more antsy by the day. He starts looking for the truth after a series of strange things start to happen. He sees his dead father, but the director changes the story and comes up with a clever way to explain what happened. A few days later, Truman meets Lauren. During their secret meeting, Lauren tells Truman that they are living in a big TV set and that a TV show director is in charge. But she is soon taken away and said to be crazy. Truman keeps looking for the truth until he is on a boat leaving the island. The director makes a fake big storm to stop him from getting to the border, but Truman is more determined than anyone else.
In a way, this movie tells us that we shouldn’t just accept reality as it is. It talks about how people want to be able to choose and how they want to know the truth. Freedom and truth are shown as a pair that depends on each other. They are shown as a whole package that a person should actively seek to prove their humanity. One’s life will always be controlled by stronger forces until they are fought with knowledge and awareness of one’s right to be free.
