Movies about Letting Go

If you read How to be Happy in Life: Mindfulness, then you’ll know that the number one way of becoming happy is to submit. These movies about letting go will help you do just that.

Whether you deem it to be submitting to god, submitting to nature or submitting to life itself, happiness is found when we let go of our hopes, fears, expectations and all other delusions and simply see life as it is, living in the moment. Developing mindfulness is arguably the most important thing anyone could do for their mental health, and it’s something the movies can greatly help us with. Here’s Arolemodel.com’s look at the absolute best movies about letting go and developing mindfulness.

There’s natural beauty around you right now. Do you see it?

Movies About Letting Go

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A group of British retirees are in for a shock when they retire to India after seeing adverts for the newly restored Marigold Hotel. At first blinded by their disappointment, the group learn to let go of the past and of their expectation of the future. They learn to trust in life and accept things as they are, and in doing so, they have a life defining, memorable experience.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is one of the best movies about letting go, inspiring viewers to let go of expectations.

Peaceful Warrior: Dan Millman has everything: a shot at a place on the Olympics team, good looks, women lining up for him and given the admiration of all students. He thinks he’s got his life all planned out. Then a traffic accents shatters his legs and he’s left with nothing. . . nothing, that is, but the present moment. Through the philosophical teachings of Socrates, Dan must learn to live in the present moment, to let go, to trust life, to be now. This is one of the best movies about letting go.

The Last Samurai: Captain Nathan Algren is a heartless veteran of the American civil war who sees beauty in nothing and will work for anybody who’ll pay him, but after being captured by samurai, he learns the powerful philosophy of the samurai, learns to see beauty and finds his soul. This is one of the most beautiful movies about letting go.

The Last Samurai is one of the best movies about letting go of hate and greed and embracing the beauty of the world around us, to submit ourselves to the divine. 

Star Wars

The complete opposite of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and yet in many ways about the exact same thing. Every Star Wars movie heavily features the theme of letting go and trusting life. In The Phantom Menace, Anakin must learn to trust his instincts in the pod-race. In Attack of the Clones, Obi Wan constantly reprimands Anakin for not being in the present moment. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin becomes Darth Vader precisely because he cannot let go of his fear about Padme. Luke must then learn to feel the force by being mindful in A New Hope, after which his inability to let go of his fear for Han and Leia leads to him recklessly confronting Vader and nearly being lost. Finally, Luke to accept everything exactly as it is. “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” he claims, finally having reached enlightenment. Star Wars is ons of the most popular movies about letting go ever to have been released.

You must unlearn what you have learned, says Yoda, teaching Luke in one of the best movies about letting go: Star Wars. 

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?

A radically alternative, utterly compelling and wondrously original movie, What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? follows Amanda, a divorced photographer whose life begins to unravel, revealing the cellular, molecular, even quantum worlds. Under the guidance of a Greek Chorus of scientists and mystics, Amanda discovers that life is more mysterious than she could ever have imagined.  What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? will leave you scratching your head, and will shake lose that nasty arrogance that makes us believe we actually have a clue about life. And that’s a good thing, because it will open your eyes to mysteries you never even knew existed.

BBC Natural History Collection: Completely different to all the other movies we are looking at here, The BBC Natural History Collection creates mindfulness not through a story, but through the absolutely jaw-dropping visuals. This is the absolute best of the grandest resource of beauty: nature. It’s exquisitely presented, packed full of knowledge and facts and simply irresistibly stunning. You won’t even have to try to be mindful watching this; it will grab at your attention and not let go.

The Matrix Trilogy: The entire world is just a computer program run by machines, but Neo has the opportunity to wake up to reality. Reality isn’t as comfortable as The Matrix, but the truth is worth more than comforts. The Matrix Trilogy teaches us to let go of our delusional view of life, to see things for what they are, to be mindful, to be open, to be alive to the here and now.

I hope you enjoy these amazing movies about letting go!