Movie "the Air I Breathe" Review

The movie "The Air I Breathe" written and directed by Jieho Lee and Bob DeRosa, was influenced by an ancient Chinese proverb that says that life is broken down into four emotional cornerstones consisting of happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. In this movie there is a story attached to four different people (not until the end do you realize the characters in the stories are interlinked), and each story illustrates one of these cornerstones.

One of the major principles of social psychology that this movie addresses is self-concept and self-perception. In the happiness story in this film begins with the actor talking about how when he was growing up he knew what happiness was and how to get there based off of everything that he was told by people such as do well in school and play by the rules. By this definition of happiness he should be a happy but it was made obvious that although he may have been perceived as happy to other people he was not. This is interesting because he had been using the social comparison theory his whole life in order to create his self-concept in the beginning but when he found himself in an extremely dangerous situation he changed the way he defined his self-concept. He began to act on impulse instead of trying to maintain a certain presentation, when he made this change instead of defining how he feels about himself by viewing other people; he defined his self-concept through his impulsive behaviors, which is what finally led him to what he wanted to be, happy. Each character's story in this film was about their journey to find out who they were, creating and changing their self-concept and self-perception.

Another major principle that this movie addresses during the journeys of these characters is their attitudes, behaviors, and changes. The major quote in the film that helped define its principles is " sometimes the things we can't change end up changing us." Changes in attitude and behaviors and the effect they have on people were illustrated in the pleasure story