The Legend of Bagger Vance

"Inside each and every one of us is one, true, authentic swing. Something that ours and ours alone. Something that can't be taught to you or learned, something that's got to be remembered."

The statement resonates with the abstract concept of the self and individuality. We are born different and we conform to a standard that disallows uniqueness and greatness. The authentic swing is comparative to the authentic self - who we are.


The Legend of Bagger Vance contains philosophy referenced to the Tao Te Ching it seems. The concept present in the clip is that of doing by not doing. We forget ourselves the more we gather information from everything around us as these create a noise telling us what to do when we simply need to remember what to do. Are we born with a genuine self or is this made? Bagger Vance argues that "each of us is born with it." While in the movie, he is referring to the fictional character Ranalph Junah's swing; however, the swing might be more representative of action and the body - something we were born with.

Are we learning too much or too little from the world around us?

I believe we are learning too much. Reflecting on Fight Club and The Legend of Bagger Vance, both films seem to argue that much of what we learn is irrelevant to our survival and disrupting our genuine self.
The mind collects information as it grows. The amount of information, it seems, has been increasing for some time. With television, radio, and print, we have grown up filled with trivia and noise. We carry visual and aural memories that constantly are competing to be remembered and sometimes we remember the wrong thing at the wrong time. Everything we look at is, in a sense, contains a lesson we are trying to learn that we have already learned. We are just trying to remember these lessons. Films are sometimes reminders of what is important, when it is clear what the film wants you to think is important. When it is ambiguous, the film is just another film. It does not resonate and does not make the viewer remember.

Why are critics generally more negative than the general audience? SOURCE: Metacritic

Bad Movie?
Critics considered the movie was bad. However, the topic of a movie's quality needs to be addressed. What makes a movie bad? The ratings are a measurement of how people received the movie. However, imagine a child who sees a movie, their first movie. Will the child think the movie is bad? I do not think so. The child has no prior conception of what makes a good movie or a bad movie. The child may comment on certain parts or ask questions about the movie, but they will not say a movie was bad.

Think about this, is a movie bad if it contains a message intended to be good? Perhaps the image quality or aesthetics were terrible, but the movie was not bad. This is, of course, considering morals.