...the Clint Eastwood movie. I saw it yesterday and now think it’s the best political movie of the year. It’s brilliantly crafted and all that. But what distinguishes it most of all is its very, very nuanced portrayal of the genuinely aristocratic sense of honor, an amazingly cosmopolitan combination of utter realism, humane generosity to other particular, lesser human beings, and unflinching devotion to duty family, and country. (Aristocratic here, of course, has nothing to do with hereditary aristocracy.) The movie’s genuine aristocrats are two urbane (spent time in sophisticated America etc., know that the war against America is misguided and inevitably futile) Japanese officers, who separate themselves in all sorts of reasonable ways from the fanatical militarism that surrounds them, while being even more ready to die than the suicidal Japanese soldiers who also have a prominent place in the story. If you want to see honorable personal integrity that transcends all the ambivalence of manliness--a real point of view that makes authentic human liberty credible, watch this movie.