The Significance of the New Art on My Wall

In 2019, I became a homeowner when I bought my run-down old house in Kalavan village. That was when I started living in one place full-time instead of hopping around from country to country, as had been normal for me for more than ten years prior. With that lifestyle change, my paradigm of owning “stuff” also had to change.

The whole time I was traveling, almost everything I owned fit in one or two suitcases and could be carried wherever I went. Suddenly, I had two floors of space I didn’t need for just a single person. I had the power to fill it with more stuff than I would likely ever use. Whole new categories of possessions became viable for me, like art that serves no functional purpose except to look good in my home.

But why should art exist simply to please the senses? Art can be meaningful. Art can be a sensory reminder of something personally important and worth frequently being reminded of. We surround ourselves with triggers of how we want to think and feel. That is the purpose of art: to recreate a specific aspect of reality in a controlled environment.

Spoilers ahead for the Star Wars movies and their entire six-movie narrative. Don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movies. Seriously. It’s not worth ruining the experience.

This portrait shows our two protagonists at the end of Revenge of the Sith, immediately following their climactic duel. Obiwan has just made a terrible choice to maim his friend by cutting off his limbs to end the fight and save his own life. Now he holds his dying brother in his arms, feeling nothing but remorse for what he has had to do. In spite of everything, he still loves his fallen student. He regrets so much that it has come to this. And now that Anakin has been rendered no longer a threat, he only wants to comfort his corrupted and dying friend.

Except this scene didn’t happen. This still isn’t to be found anywhere in the movie. Obiwan never embraced Anakin like this after defeating him. What actually happened was that Anakin attempted to crawl up from the bank of the lava river, hopelessly, as Obiwan looked down on him in pained disappointment. Anakin yelled out in rage that he hates his mentor, as flames from the lava bank engulfed him and completed his physical deconstruction. Obiwan then left his friend-turned-enemy for dead, and we all know how the rest of the story went as a direct consequence of this devastating interaction.

This image represents what we can easily imagine being Obiwan’s final regret regarding his fallen apprentice. Should he have taken this opportunity to try to save Anakin? Should he have shown pity on him and comforted him as he slid into death from his injuries? Might it have prevented the rest of his transformation into something evil and all the death and galactic subjugation that followed? Perhaps in the years that followed, Obiwan dreamed of holding Anakin on Mustafar, weak and dying, and letting him know one last time that he was still there for him, that he would never leave or give up on him no matter what he had done or how far he had fallen.

There is a cut line from Obiwan’s monologue that was omitted from the final release of the film. It takes place right between Anakin’s dismemberment and burning. Anakin was supposed to call out, “Help me, master,” at the realization of what had happened to him. Obiwan would have responded, “I can’t you help, Anakin. I loved you, but I couldn’t help you.” Only then, upon his master’s final rejection, would Anakin have screamed out in fury, “I hate you!” just before being overcome by immolation. It would have been the direct opposite of what’s represented here, and Obiwan surely would have hated himself even more if that had indeed been his final interaction with a pleading Anakin.

This art, this specific image, is meaningful because it represents what Obiwan wishes he would have done after beating Anakin. He should have shown compassion for his friend, no matter what he had done. He should have given him a good death if he couldn't save him. And he should have let him know he still loved him. It was his duty to be the bigger man in the moment, to deliver his final lesson, and he failed. Above all else, a good man requires perspective to remain good even when everyone around him fails to.