Watched Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) this weekend for the first time since childhood. It is such

[TooBigaTent]

a great film - and pretty damn relevant to our current "situation."

The things I picked up on with a now-adult perspective included:

1) the benevolent king (Louis XVI) who really cared for his subjects and resisted the maneuvers of the church and the chief justice to frame and condemn Esmeralda. If we only had leaders who were this concerned with the welfare of their "subjects."

2) the struggle between the church (Archdeacon) and the law (Frollo) with the king arbitrating between these two opposing forces. The complicated good/evil characteristic of these two institutions needed to be reined in by the monarch - today we are at their mercy because of the concentration of power.

3) the final confrontation with "the people" in which the king makes the right decision. Surprisingly, he does not order his troops to attack the protesters as is the case today.

4) last but not least - the French people rise up for justice and actively confront the powers that be, at considerable risk to themselves. We pampered Americans could learn a lot from those "surrender monkeys."

Sure, it is a movie based on a novel. But just maybe, we can learn from this fictionalized past how to deal with our present disfunctional/criminal rulers.