movies of 2010, plus Pleasantville,Taken & Wall-E

6 months, 6 outstanding movies. First of all;

The Road; John Hilcoat; (The Proposition from Nick Cave’s script) With brief almost unrecognisable appearances, from Robert Duvall and Guy Pierce, but wonderful performances from Viggo Mortensen,
And a young actor Kodi Smit-Mcfee. This is the most searing, emotionally moving story, adapted from a very difficult and demanding book by Cormac McCarthy, probably the greatest living American novelist now that John Updike is no longer with us. And I never want to see it again. Once seen, never forgotten; no need to see it, to endure it again.

I saw on the eve of the Haitian earthquake disaster, and it is a testament to the film that I talked about, linking it to that tragedy, in my Sermon the following Sunday.
It is that profound.

Avatar; so many critics seemed to go all pious and sniffy, forgetting that it is just a movie, a piece of entertainment, ok, so it cost more than any previous movie to make,
but that’s because it did new and very expensive technical things, and did them well. It had charm, even beauty, and I liked it’s eco-logical message, linking it to my experience last year with North American tribes in Canada. But it is not a sermon, or a campaign, it is a movie, as it happens it addresses an import and topical subject, and if you want to know more about the present day reality Avatar mirrors, then Google Tar Sands.
Of course it helps that it also stars Sigourney Weaver, one of my favourite film actors.


Another of my favourite film actors in Jeff Bridges, and so Crazy Heart was a treat; his performance was much stronger than the film itself, and I thought it was too soft in its portrayal of alcoholism, but hey, Jeff has deserved an Oscar for years; he didn’t get one for the Big Lebowski,
or Starman, or The Fabulous Baker Boys, so this will do.

Shutter Island; again the critics got out their knives, as if Martin Scorcesy is expected to produce an endless string of masterpieces. We don’t expect the Rolling Stones to produce earth shattering albums anymore, so let’s just enjoy them, and Shutter Island too. It’s a great piece of psychological thriller, a film noir, a tribute to Hitchcock and the 1950’s, and has Leonardo de Caprio playing a truly complex character very well. It’s good old fashioned hokum. Enjoy.

Part of my theology of film is that quality is good, for its own sake. It doesn’t need a moral message, never mind a Christian one. We are story telling animals, and film makers can now tell stories in amazing and wonderful ways, using great skill and commitment. A fairy story is not to be condemned because it isn’t a parable, so let’s just judge things on their own terms, as long as those terms are not morally reprehensible.

Another film that came out at the same time as Shutter Island, was I Am Love, an Italian film but produced and largely shaped by our own Tilda Swinton, who also stared in it. Like Shutter Island this films referenced the 1950’s and 60’s, and this time the great Italian directors Antonioni and Visconti. It is set in Milan, among a rich textile dynasty, the Recci family. It is a film with an Italian marble sheen to it, but sometimes a shining surface can reveal great depths. This film is about love, its power, both liberating and destructive. The Italian cast are great, but it is Tilda’s film, playing the Russian born wife of the firms owner who truly shines.

But my favourite movie so far this year is Where The Wild Things Are. ( Spike Jones, David Eggar script,) made with Maurice Sendek’s active approval and a wonderful voice cast; Lauren Ambrose,
who some may remember as Claire from 6 Feet under, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, and
Paul Dana, Although based on one of the world favourite children’s book this is not a children’s film. It is a film about children, and how difficult adults are to deal with when you are a child. For Max, 8 years old, adults are huge, powerful, unpredictable creatures, sometimes caring and affirming, sometimes rejecting and hurtful, blaming and threatening, uncontrollable and sometimes out of control, when it seems, they are tearing pieces off each other, Adults are disappointed when children don’t live up to their expectations, and blame them when they live down to their expectations.

The Wild Things in this film are grown ups, and it takes all of Max’s energy and ingenuity and courage to even survive with them. Even the Universe is threatening. Max is told by his teacher that the sun if going to die. Ok, so it will happen in billions of years time, but what is a billion to an 8 year old? Once again modern CGI has done a wonderful job creating the faces of the Wild Things as they express a wide range of complex emotions, they are absolutely believable characters, and I’m sure we can recognise many of them as people we know, and maybe recognise something of ourselves too.

So, I’ts another film that has divided the critics, but I loved it and recommend it, as long as you don’t expect it to be simply a film of then original story. Which would take 15 minutes.

My greatest disappointments of the year so far are.
Robin Hood; boring,
The Men Who Stare at Goats, got lost in the desert.
Paranormal Activity, didn’t scare me at all.
Iron Man 2, fun, but no point other than to make more money.
The Wolfman; had no claws, pointless

Pleasantville; let me out of the Garden!

I used this as part of Lent film series, and asked;

If ‘Pleasantville’ is a kind of innocent Eden is it a place you would like to go back to? If so, why, if not, why not? Why do you think the ‘sophisticated’ sister wants to stay there? Has she learnt anything about herself in Pleasantville? In Pleasantville some people resent change. Some are afraid of it. The Mayor says “We are safe for the moment because we are in the Bowling Alley”? Do we sometimes want the church to be our safe retreat? “What’s it like outside Pleasantville” a girl asks. The boy replies that it’s ‘noisier, kind of scary, and a lot more dangerous.’ “Sound wonderful!” She says, with a smile. Can we have life in all its fullness, as Jesus offered us, without it being a lot noisier, scary and dangerous?

Are there ways in which the Church (which includes you and me) sometimes prefers the certainty and peace of a black and white existence to that of full-on colour, untidiness and upsetting passion?

Is there any need for God in Pleasantville? Does anyone seem to be a Christ-figure?

What other questions/issues about this film exercise you?

I admire many things about Buddhism, and its search for inner peace by renouncing all desires. Buddhists are urged not to want what they do not have. But what Buddhism lacks for me is passion. Love is surely passionate, expressed in love for another person or in our practical passion for justice, inclusiveness and the infinite value of every human life. We are not made to be safe, but vulnerable. Change is dangerous, but essential. The Garden of Eden was a fantasy land with no danger, no change, no vulnerability and no passion. At Easter we remember the passion of Jesus, who did not point us back to the Garden, but forward to the Kingdom. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost he tried to ‘justify the ways of God to men’ by telling the story of Satan and his angels rebellion against God and their banishment from heaven, where they plot to win by guile what they cannot win by power. Book II gives an account of how, in another world, humankind is to be created – creatures whose vulnerability presents a suitable target for satanic spite. But ‘their spite still serves/ His glory to augment’. Satan is to blame for the Fall of Adam and Eve, but his capacities, such as they are, are by ‘the will/ and high permission of all-ruling heaven. The two fold justification for God allowing Satan to tempt Adam and Eve lies in the positive value of human freedom, and the glory of the redemption. The Father explicitly foresees Adam’s weakness and fall, and makes it plain that he could have withstood temptation. But if Adam had not been free to fall, neither would he have been free to respond in ‘true allegiance, constant faith or love’. To have served God out of necessity would not have expressed the personal relationship for which humankind was created. God foresees the Fall, but does not foreordain it. Satan and the angels fall was their own work, ‘self-tempted, self-depraved.’ And so for them there is no redemption. But humanity fell by the deception of Satan.

Man therefore shall find grace,\ The other, none; in mercy and justice both,\Though heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel,/But mercy first and last shall brightest shine. (Book III. 131 – 4)

Taken for a ride?

I wonder, have we taken a step backwards? I saw the film 'Taken' and find it's purpose and popularity perturbing. It is in many ways a simple revenge tragedy. A girl is 'taken', kidnapped by Albanian sex-traffickers, and her father hunts down the gang, rescues his daughter and kills the traffikers. Despite killing approximately 25 people he then goes home, to America of course, and all is well.

Except that this is not the standard 'revenger's tragedy.' As Melville Bragg and his guests on radio 4's Start the Week made clear this week, the classic Elizabethan theatrical hero has his revenge, and then dies, satisfied. Revenge might be, as Francis Bacon remarked, a kind of wild justice, but it is not real justice. It still has to be paid for.

The act of revenge may, indeed it seems must, over-trump the original offense, as Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus makes clear, and in Taken it clearly does. The girl is kidnapped, and probably drugged, but she is not raped or otherwise seriously harmed. The gang members who are killed are all guilty, we assume, of traffiking, but not of any capitol offense. Their punishment does not fit the crime, in terms of trumps our hero is playing different game. He pays no penalty for his ex-judicial killings, not even for shooting the innocent wife of a policeman. It was, as he points out, only a flesh wound, but she had done nothing to deserve being shot. The avenging father is, however, unashamedly presented as a hero. All we are asked to do is admire and applaud him, and his actions.

But revenge tragedies moved on, even in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare wrote the bloody Titus Andronicus, but then the more considered Hamlet. That play has all the ingredients of Kydd's 'Revenger's Tragedy'; the ghost of the murdered relative, the command to revenge, the impossibility of using the legal system for justice, the madness feigned or otherwise, the play within a play and the final bloodletting, but Hamlet deeply questions his right to revenge. He has been to Wittenburg to study, to Luther's University, and Christian morality confronts him. As Catherine Belsey points out in her new book 'Shakespeare in Theory and Practice' 'Hamlet simultaneously urges revenge as a moral duty and condemns it as a sin. Neither hero nor audience can find a way out of this aporia; "to act morally' Hamlet must act murderously, but he cannot act murderously and retain moral integrity" (TLS May 22 2009, Peter Holbrook)

There is nothing remotely Christian about the hero of Taken. There are no moral doubts. The Hebrew Bible says that vengeance is the Lord's, not ours, and 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' is to often interpreted as an injunction - you shall take an eye for an eye...' whereas it is really a limitation, you shall only take an eye for an eye. There is no Biblical approval for disproportionate retaliation, which leads to unending and escalating vendetta.

The scandal of the Cross is that it calls us to absorb the evil of violence, not return it. Jesus story of the workmen hired at different times during the day but paid the same wage tells us that God is not just, but loving, not fair but outrageously generous.

One of the world's great spiritual masters, Desmond Tutu. has learnt that love is stronger than hatred, life is stronger than death, light is stronger than darkness - so believing in the God of love we have the victory. Being victorious is not the same as winning. To win means beating others. To be victorious means not being defeated, not giving in. Vengeance means giving in to anger, hatred and the desire for revenge. What ever that it, it is not Christian.

I wonder, is there any connection between the recent glut of revenge movies and 9/11? That certainly caused profound offense, and those responsible for it have not been brought to trial. There has been no catharsis. Do we have a need for 'wild justice'? Does the popularity of this film suggest that we are in danger of failing Hamlet's test, and that by applauding the hero's adoption of his enemies lack of morality we sink to their level? Is that why I hold Zhang Yimou's film 'Hero' in such high regard?

WALL-E and the Axiom

When the film started I thought it must be a trailer for a documentary; because as the camera floats over a cityscape, it looks like photography, it’s so real. But it becomes clear that this is an animation when we slowly realist that half the skyscrapers we are looking at are in fact made of cubes of compressed rubbish, piled high between the buildings. The city is dead; there is no life here, only ruins and rubbish.

And then we see the little robot, WALL-E still busy collecting that rubbish, compacting it and stacking it. He is the only robot still working. WALL-E looks like a mechanical ET, but he is really very human. He has made himself a home, filled it with bric-a-brac, collectables, hung mobiles, and he watches videotapes and listens to music. WALL-E even has a pet; a cockroach, who followed him everywhere.

As WALL E goes about his business images pop up that remind us of another film about pollution and extinction, Blade Runner. In that film we saw huge video adverts urging people to go off world to work on other planets. In WALL E we see the same kind of ads, but now urging people to leave earth and holiday on the space cruiser, the Axiom. And indeed they have. We later learn that Axiom left Earth 700 year previously.

Now that space-cruiser is sending out ships looking for life; and one of them lands on Earth, leaving a reconnaissance robot behind. She is called Eve. WALL-E meets Eve and falls in love with her.

We have seen him watching a video of Hello Dolly, listening to the song I wants to be loved a whole life long, and when EVE arrives he knows who he wants to love him. EVE is grace and beauty in robot form. She is an I-Mac to his Amstrad. They soon start behaving like bashful teenagers; shyly exchanging names, holding hands. However when Wall E gives EVE a plant he has found she has to take it back to the Axiom; Wall E goes with her.

On that ship everything is run by robots controlled by the master computer, And here’s another film reference; this computer is obviously a son of HAL from 2001 a space odyssey. We even get music from that film to jog our memories. And like HAL this computer has secret instructions.

Even though Eve returns, like to dove to the Ark, bearing a leaf, the computer tells the captain we must survive - by doing nothing, and tries to stop him taking the ship back to earth.

So where will we find hope? In the passengers? The human beings on board? Well, we have seen them, looking like helpless pupa tended by ants, pampered and controlled, too fat to walk, spending their lives moving around on hover loungers. For 700 years generations have lived on this cruise liner, and they have adapted, or degenerated, to couch life.

But now they confound our expectations. WALL-E and EVE have brought a sign of hope, and the humans do respond to it, they overthrow the ruling computer and abandon their life of comfort and ease and set about restoring life on earth.

Now this is great fun, and very child friendly, but WALL E could be shown alongside Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth; because both are about saving ourselves from catastrophe. Of course WALL E is a parable. One reading of it is that we are treating the earth as if was our own cruise liner, that we are floating about unaware of reality. Letting things be run by systems we no longer control, destroying our living planet. Sleepwalking into disaster with our eyes wide shut. And in order to survive we must grasp the smallest sign of hope and act on it, we must rebel against the systems that resist change, and against the mind set that says we can survive by doing nothing. To do that we need hope; and we need realism.

To misquote Kipling; if you can keep your head whilst all-round you men are losing theirs, then you really haven’t grasped the seriousness of the situation. Well we must not lose our heads, but we must grasp the seriousness of the situation and then live and act in hope.

And if you think I am reading too much into a simple cartoon; ask yourself this, why is the spaceship called Axiom? An axiom is a universally recognised truth; but it is more than a truth. An axiom is something that moves our thoughts forward; it is a spur to progress and to action. Nothing we see on screen is there by accident.

The people who made this film know what an axiom is; and surely they want us, and our children, to see that, to think about it and to act on it.

Toy story 3 and Inception

ªAfter the Gospel according to Luke 12. verses 13 - 21).
So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God.
Are not rich towards God?
Maybe a better translation is the Jerusalem Bible
So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are a pauper in the sight of God.

So if wealth and possessions will not bring us true peace of mind, true spiritual health, everlasting riches, Shalom, what will? One answer is suggested by the summer blockbuster movie; Toy Story 3. And I think it is a good one. A good movie and a good answer.

Toy Story 3 is made by Pixar, the company that has revolutionised animation in recent years, first with the original Toy Story, then A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Monsters Incorporated The Incredibles, Walle E, and the second and third Toy Story films. Each film has been a box office hit, each one is a wonder of artistic achievement and technological know how, and every one was packed with sound moral values.

The Toy Story films follow the adventures and misadventures of a group of toys, owned by Andy, who was a small boy when the series began. These toys, Woody the sheriff, Buzz Lightyear the Astronaut, Jenny the Cowgirl, Mr and Mrs Potatohead and many more are brought to life on screen with true depth and pathos, sophisticated emotions playing clearly across their faces. Even the faces of Mr and Mrs Potatohead.

All 3 TS story films are about their little community; their friendship, loyalty, and willingness to work for each others interests, and if necessary, sacrifice themselves for each other. All in the greater context of their relationship to Andy. They are defined by being his toys, his creatures, and by their love and loyalty to him.
But by the time of the latest film, TS3, Andy is 17, and off to college. What to do with his toys?
There are three options. To throw them out, to store them in his attic, or to donate them to a local Children’s Day Centre. Well, he makes his choice. And the toys have to make the best of it.

TS3 has, it is reported, moved grown men to tears, as this simple children’s story touches on adult issues of unresolved grief, the losses we all experience as we grow up, and the guilt that accompanies the disloyalty of moving on, even if that simply means giving up a transitive object, such as a teddy bear or toy.
These are called transitive objects because their purpose is to help us move on, to transition.
When I was a child I loved the things a child loves, but now I am… a teenager,
And there is no room in my affections for silly toys. So I move on, and they get left behind.

But what if … what if these toys cared for me, as I once cared for them. And still do? What if their loyalty outlived mine?

This film explores the meaning of love and loyalty, loss, grief and guilt. It is simple enough to engage a four year old; but psychologically realistic enough to engage any adult. It also has jokes that work at all sorts of levels, and cinematic references to amuse the movie lover.

And it is about love. The love we call agape; the self-giving love that is inseparable from loyalty, responsibility, self sacrifice and courage. Time after time these toys place the needs of the others over their own.
They face hard times, dangers, even the prospect of death and destruction, together, but in the end love and friendship conquers all.

Yes, of course it has a happy ending; but it is not a happy-ever-after ending tacked on to make us feel good.
This is an ending that has been earned. It is brought about by virtue. These characters have stored up the things of heaven. Loyalty and self-giving love in action. This is not an overtly Christian film, but it a story about the same things that Christianity is about; or would, be, if we really paid attention to Jesus, and to his stories. Because if films such as TS3 are concerned with love and loyalty, guilt, loss and grief, then they also implicitly address the things that stand in opposition to them.
Love and ..no, not hate, but apathy.
Loyalty and faithlessness,
Guilt and forgiveness,
loss and reconciliation
Grief and healing,

Apathy, faithlessness and guilt are the things that shatter our wholeness and compromise our true health, they disrupt our shalom. Love, loyalty, forgiveness and reconciliation heal us, and help to make us whole, as individuals, in personal relationships, and in community. They are the stuff of our shalom.

So films that hold out the hope of these things being real and effective in our lives, can lead us towards shalom.
These films, no more than coloured shadows thrown on a wall, can be truly Enlightening. They can bring us Godly messages. Remind us of the heavenly things worth storing up, not for some hypothetical future spent elsewhere, else-when, but for here and now, in the Kingdom of heaven on earth, the kingdom Jesus announced, and lived out, and lived in. Jesus, who possessed nothing, was never a pauper in the sight of God.

So let us truly value the friendships we share in now, and have shared in during our lives. Thank God for the undeserved love and affection of others, those who chose us, just as we are, and offered us loyalty, comfort and support, true compassion; agape. And for the opportunities we have had to offer these to others.

Especially those who are unlolved, those we find it hard to even like, and end up rejected, abandoned, lonley. Surelymn therse are the verympeople Jesusmwould befreind.

These are the things that make us rich in the eyes of God, and are the foundation of shalom, of true peace of mind, true spiritual and emotional health, everlasting riches, Shalom

. -+Inception is directed by Christopher Nolan the man who made Dark Knight, the most shocking of the recent Batman movies starring Heath Ledger as the tragic monster The Joker. That movie made so much money they gave Chris Nolan $160 million to make a film of his own.
And he has made a thriller about dream hackers, people who infiltrate and influence other people’s dreams, either to extract information, or in this case, to insert information, to influence the subject to make a decision favourable to their client.
Leonardo de Caprio stars, leading his gang into deeper and deeper psychological and emotional levels, dreams with dreams, within dreams. Dreams within which even the laws of gravity can be repealed.

And yet, beneath the flash, bang and considerable wallop, this film is also about love and loyalty, loss, grief and guilt. The gang leaders dreams are also bound up with his feelings about his dead wife, the love if his life, and the unresolved issues about her death literally haunt his dreams.

To be honest, it is not as emotionally engaging as TS3, But that may be because this film takes us on a dense and paradoxical journey, on which we may be too busy thinking to feel very much; and at first I wondered if Christopher Nolan is simply less committed to the explicit exploration of emotions. And then I remember that his earlier film, Momento, a film he wrote and directed which also about a man who had lost his wife, and his memory, and was trying to discover the truth about her death, and about his relationship with her. That too was a real intellectual, puzzle, a film told backwards, with each new revelation making us rethink everything that we had already seen.

So maybe Chris Nolan needs an intellectual device to explore deeply emotional issues.


Toy Story 3 and Inception are apparently so different, and yet so similar in the themes they explore. And both of them are, in the end, life affirming. That’s what I look for in movies; not happy endings unrealistically engineered to make us leave the cinema feeling good, but genuine affirmation, realistic hope, even if it is just a glimmer. And sometimes we may even find some kind of redemption.
I don’t expect to leave a good movie feeling happy, But enlightened. Movies are, after all, made of light.

And they are an important part of our literature; they help us to enter other people’s worlds, to stand in their shoes, to understand their world and their predicaments a little better, and so to learn a little more empathy, and to understand ourselves and our world and our situations a little better. We can call that Theology.




The moving, coloured shadows on the wall can be truly Enlightening.

Avatar: blessing the prey and praying for the planet

In the film Avatar the Na’avi, natives of the moon Pandora, try to live at one with the spirit of all living things. When hunting a prayer of thanksgiving is offered to the prey, in gratitude for it’s life, a life given up that they may live. The Na’avi see this as the purpose for which the creature was created, and its death as a release into the eternal realm. So a clean kill is important; no unnecessary suffering should be inflicted.

This reminded me of lessons I learnt last summer in Vancouver and Mount Whistler in Canada. This is where the winter Olympics were held, and the world was welcomed to them by the Chiefs of four local tribes, the Squamish and Lilwatul, the Tseil Weattuth and Muscheam people.

They are hundreds of tribes spread across Canada and the United States, and are now called the First Nations, rather than Red Indians, because they were in North America first. Their ancestors crossed over the land bridge that joined Asia to North America 10 thousand years ago. Ever since then these people have been living as close to nature as possible, and doing so sustainably. If they had not, they would have died out. They have survived, in the forests and prairies and mountains in often very challenging conditions, by respecting and understanding the cycles and networks of life. They know the need to be at one with the natural world, of which we are a part. So a hunter told me how he would offer up a prayer of thanksgiving when he had a deer in his sights, and leave a thank-offering of tobacco at the site of the kill. The deer would be shot for food, but every part of its body that could be used would be used, its skin, antlers, bones and guts. This is a sign of respect. A life had been taken, and no part of its body should be wasted.

The coastal people around Vancouver use cedar bark to make baskets and decorative ritual clothing, and waterproof hats (they live on the Pacific coast, in a rainforest). To get the bark they make a horizontal cut in the tree, ease and then pull. They restrict the initial cut to two hands’ breadths, so that no irretrievable damage is done to the tree, even though the pull can bring a strip of bark five, ten or fifteen metres long. They also offer and prayer of thanks to the tree and leave a tobacco offering. If you receive, you give. All living things, even plants, are to be treated with respect.

Many of the First Nations (and there are over 150 in British Columbia alone) are divided into clans identified with either the Bears, Beavers, Wolves, Crows, Eagles, Frogs, or Orca among whom they live. The totem poles identify and honour these creatures. All are bound together in the essential sustaining networks of life, where none are self-sufficient. We need each other. Scientists such as Edward O. Wilson, one of the world’s leading biologists, have been telling us so for years But this is how these people have survived for thousands of years.
.
Sadly, disastrously, this way of life, this bone deep practical spirituality, expressed in their languages, symbols and rituals was denounced by the incoming Christian settlers. The First Nations all spoke of the Great Father, Creator of all, and of the Spirit that brings and sustains life, but the white Churches could not see this spirituality as Christian; and that which was not seen as Christian was presumed to be satanic. The Canadian government and Churches tried to wipe this tradition and spirituality out by compelling families to give up their children to residential schools where they were not allowed to speak in the native tongue or use any of the traditional expressions of their original religion, faith or spirituality. They almost succeeded. And this oppression, carried out for over a century, damaged these ancient communities profoundly. Cut off from their roots, estranged from their families, many succumbed to addiction and mental illness. Even though the last residential school closed over 20 years ago the incidence of alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, homelessness and imprisonment today among First Nations are still well above the national average, or the average for any other ethnic groups.

Over the last twenty years, however, there had been a change.
These deeply rooted spiritual virtues have been recognised and their expression in story telling, art and ritual have been encouraged and valued The start of the Winter Olympics symbolised this recognition, when the opening ceremony was introduced by the four nations of the Vancouver/Whistler territory, and their native art and symbols were displayed and celebrated. Amazingly, despite the abusive treatment these people suffered for generations in the hands of the Christian churches, many of them are still Christian. During my sabbatical last year I stayed at the Vancouver School of Theology, which hosts the Native Ministries Consortium and its annual Summer school when 1st Nation Christians teachers and priests come from all over North America. I was fortunate enough to share in their feasting, teaching and worship. I heard some of their stories, some of their deeply truthful ‘myths’ and legends, and contemporary ‘teaching stories’. I visited the Squamish and Lilwatul Cultural Centre in Whistler Village, along with other museums and galleries, to understand more of their traditional crafts and art forms, and the practical and spiritual understanding that shapes them and has guided these people for thousands of years, helping them survive, despite all that nature and ‘civilisation’ has thrown at them.

We need their wisdom today. That point was made by Jamie Oliver, at the end of his televised culinary tour of America last year. His last visit was to the Navaho, in Arizona. These people lived on their blue corn and sheep for centuries, but the white invaders took their land, and killed their sheep - in living memory they wiped out their flocks. Jamie saw how the Navaho elders were trying to preserve their ancient way of life, and educate their children and grand children in it.

It is so similar to that of their cousins far to the North. It is about reverence for creation, for the land, and for all living creatures. Managing with what you have, being thankful for it, and making the very most of it. It is a sustainable way of living, refined over millennia. Having seen so much of the contemporary American way of life, Jamie concluded by saying that the Americans have so much to learn from the wisdom of the people whose land they stole. And so do we.
While I was in Vancouver I was put in touch with the David Suzuki Foundation, one of the oldest and most respected institutions researching and campaigning on ecological issues. They were hoping to reach out through faith communities in the Vancouver area, and had heard of IDEA’s work. I was invited to talk with their trustees, staff and volunteers about our work, and took along with me Rabbi Robert Daum, Ph.D. the director of Iona Pacific: Inter-Religious Centre for Social Action, Research and Contemplative Practice, newly created at the Vancouver School of Theology. He was the person they really needed to work with. But networks working the way they do, it took a conversation I had with a Canadian ecologist at a wedding near Guildford, and who was a friend of Lindsay Coulter, the Queen of Green and public face of the Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver, for that connection to be made.

The threat of climate challenge is a profound spiritual challenge. And whatever happens to our climate our way of live is out of kilter. It is not sustainable. We bear responsibility toward our planet, to every living creature, and to our children and our children’s children.

We need to seek, value and share whatever wisdom we can find.

On The Road and A Serious Man

On the evening before the news broke of the Haitian earthquake I saw the film The Road, faithfully adapted from Cormac McCarty’s novel. Wholesale disaster has struck. We do not know what it was, but after a catastrophe its effects seem more important than its causes. This is a story set in a devastated landscape, where the trees are bare and dying, there are no animals or crops. The few human survivors are cold and starving. A father and his young son are on the road, heading south. The father knows they will not survive another winter in the north. The journey is fraught with danger. Bands of men scour the country looking for people, to eat. Occasionally the Father and son encounter other lone human beings, but these encounters do not usually go well.

This is a truly terrible book and film. It has no alien monsters, only human beings in extremis. One critic said that the book explores the depths of despair and savagery beside the heights of love, tenderness and self-sacrifice. Alan Warner wrote in The Guardian that the book is emotionally shattering, it affirms belief in the tender pricelessness of the here and now. It does not add to the cruelty of our times, it warns us now how much we have to lose. Beauty and goodness are here aplenty and we should think abbot them While we can.

At one point the boy asks his father are we still the good guys? He is told Yes. We are. We still carry the fire. Inside.

Disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti strip people to their core. Some run away from it to save themselves. Some run towards it to save others. Some think only about themselves, some only about others. Most of us are caught in between. But the boy’s question does not go away. Are we still the good guys? Do we still carry the fire? Inside.

The Road profoundly addresses the questions of what it means to be human – and to be good – in such circumstances. The book won the Pulitzer Prize. The film may not will win many awards, despite the remarkable adaptation, photography and performances, but I am sure that its harrowing images and compassionate message will linger longer in our minds than the memory of many Oscar winners.

I am sure it would help to be Jewish to fully appreciate A Serious Man. What a joy that must be, because even as a goy I thought it was a real return to form by the Coen brothers, after the severe disappointment of Burn After Reading. This is a mature, unflashy, mordant tragi-comedy. It may not have the Shakespearean depth of their No Country for Old Men, but then again, it has not got the same quality of source material.

Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety that "This is the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar,” and here the brothers have the quiet confidence to let the story do most of the work. They are operating on home territory, the inner world of the suburban soulless Minneapolis of their youth in the late 60’s. Grace Slick’s chromium plated voice sings us in. At times Roger Deakins’ photography brings a mouth or on a pair of eyes into sharp focus somewhere in the middle of the depth of field. Other parts of the face are not quite in focus and the effect is strange and subtle, and somehow exemplifies the film’s strangeness.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish physics teacher. He has done nothing wrong; in fact he seems to have done nothing at all, nothing to keep his marriage alive, or to engage with his two children. He is a professor seeking tenure, but he has published nothing. And now all that nothing is coming to bite his bum. Or maybe it’s God. Or a curse. We are told the story of a curse in a Yiddish prologue, but does it have any more relevance than the advice and parables offer to Larry by his rabbis? We do not know, the uncertainty principle Larry tries to explain to his students seems to be operating here, in spades. Is this the judgment of Job? I don’t think so. That would make too much sense. Larry’s misfortunes seem to be too random. He does not even have the consolation of a meaning. This is too tragic to be explained away. Yet it is deeply, dreadfully, funny. I must mention that Fred Melamed is wonderful as Sy Ableman, the ‘friend’ who is taking away Larry’s wife, moving him out of his own house – and offering him bear-hugs and Bordeaux wines in consolation.