I’ve been really down this last week. A lot is going on. Work just gets more and more intense — it’s wonderful in its way, but also terrifying. Also, taxes are due on Friday, and things are, let’s just say, complicated because of my marital situation. My natural response to stress is debilitating anxiety followed by depression. So yesterday, I sat down and watched Umberto D. And since that actually has a vaguely happy ending, I watched another of Vittorio De Sica’s classics, Shoeshine. Although in its way, it is an even more positive film, except for the tragic ending.

What is best about great films is that they affect you differently each time that you seem them. And this time I was most taken by the total lack of solidarity in the stories. In both films, there are two people who are alone in the world and care for each other. But they don’t have the power to help each other. Everyone else is just too caught up in their own problems to care about anyone else. This makes sense because both these films were made shortly after World War II. In fact, Shoeshine takes place during the Allied occupation. Umberto D takes place later, but still people are struggling.

All of this is understandable. Wars do this. And one thing that Vittorio De Sica is great about is not vilifying people. Even in The Bicycles Thieves, he provides motivation for the original thief. It is an act of someone trying to get by. And we sympathize and understand the main character’s theft more only because we understand the context of his life more. It is the system itself that alienates us and allows us to see that our needs and desires trump those of other people.

I’ve long maintained that the corporate hatred of unions is really not about keeping wages down and maximizing profits. Indeed, when unions were strong, many companies just matched what union workers were getting to avoid unionization. Similarly, Milton Hershey was very good to his employees, but he fought aggressively against unions. It’s all about control. And the best way for a business to maintain control is by having the employees fighting among themselves. Worker solidarity is extremely dangerous. It could even — Gasp! — lead the workers to think that they could be running the company.

So now we live in a society that lacks solidarity — but only because those in power wish it so. And you see this even in the difference between Shoeshine and Umberto D. Shoeshine was made in 1946 when the issue was that just about everyone was poor. Umberto D was made in 1952, when things are better. And so we get more of a sense of class where the antagonistic landlord sees the old man not with apathy, but with hostility as an impediment to her getting even richer.

It makes me think of what a pernicious idea meritocracy is. It allows society’s winners to see themselves as totally justified in their privilege. And it justifies the destruction of solidarity, because we are not a group but rather just a collection of individuals, each getting what is right and fitting. As such, meritocracy is just a return to aristocracy, but with a different philosophy to justify it.

In general, we don’t see films like Shoeshine and Umberto D. But I think the times are changing, and we will start to see independent filmmakers start to make films that deal with these important issues.

I went over to visit my brother, who turned out to be doing somewhat better than I had expected (but still not good). He had purchased Star Wars: The Force Awakens through his cable provider, and so I ended up watching the first half of it. My brother was in a surprisingly good mood and was generally amused at my MST3King of it. The whole thing really is just a remake of the original film. But I have to admit: it’s better.

What most struck me was that Finn in the part of Han Solo was far better. Even in 1977, the Han Solo character was nothing but a stereotype. He had all the depth of character that an actor of the depth of Harrison Ford is capable of delivering. But the Finn character has actual nuance. His is a character that I can actually believe.

The film starts with basically the Star Wars equivalent of the My Lai Massacre. And despite supposedly being trained from birth to be nothing but a robotic killing machine, he turns against the First Order. I left right after he told Rey (a much less annoying Luke Skywalker) that he was just running away. I know that he will come back, just like Han Solo, because this is not meant to be a film that surprises you.

My brother is incredibly conservative, which is interesting given that he’s been on the government dole most of his life. That’s not a slight on him. I love him. He’s my (half) brother and his biological father badly abused him, and my father was not exactly the understanding kind. But I’ve noticed a lot of people who are dependent upon the government going in exactly the opposite ideological direction than you would think. I assume it is because they are compensating. And when asked, they always say more or less the same thing: they deserve their benefits they are just against other people who “abuse” the system.

But I find it curious that my brother (and let’s face it: the vast majority of people everywhere) find a character like Finn a hero. But he is only a hero because the film defines the First Order as evil itself. If the film had even the tiniest amount of nuance, Finn would be a morally ambiguous character. Consider Bowe Bergdahl: the narrative is that he went AWOL and this is considered a bad thing because it is taken as a given that anything the US does is right. I personally think that running away is the most natural thing in the world.

Still, as much as I liked Finn and Rey, most of the rest of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was crap. The opening scene was clearly shot on a sound stage. It had the look of those Roger Corman television science fiction shows where everything happened in more or less a single room. And then there was all the humor regarding Han Solo being shocked about a modern woman. That sort of thing creates dissonance because it makes explicit the change in the sexual mores of the 1970s and those of today — something that makes no sense in the universe of the film. And if I, having seen only the original film once in 1977, can make out all the references, it’s a pretty ham-handed effort.

For what it is supposed to be, however, it seemed to work just fine. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is, of course, the kind of entertainment that a dying empire creates for itself, so it can pretend that it is still on the side of the rebels. But, of course, we aren’t. We are just an old power doing everything we can to hang onto it. And that means that we will lose that power, just as surely as the First Order will by the end of the third film.