Rev Bob's Blog

2011; a great year for British films and proof you don’t need Hollywood big bucks to make great movies.

2011-12-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

Among this years low budget hits Attack the Block was written and directed by Joe Cornish (from the TV Adam & Joe Show). This is an exciting funny and acute take on the alien invasion theme. It honours its filmic inheritance, but does not, a la Shawn of the Dead, parody it. Wyndham Towers is the tower block in South London attacked by aliens and defended by black teenage hoodies. It stars no-one you have heard of, mostly new faces, but they are convincing and engaging. It speaks up for inter-racial and inter-generational understanding, and is a kind of coming-of-age movie. Boys become men, or at least step towards true courage and dignity.

Monsters was made for less than £500,000, mainly because it was written directed, designed and photographed by one man, Gareth Edwards, with a cast of two, a largely improvised script and home-made special effects - again by Mr. Edwards This is Science-Fiction again, but with very different aliens, and a love-story. The director, actors and sound man traveled across Mexico looking for locations and recruiting amateurs as they went. No doubt he will be offered mega-bucks for his next movie, but Monsters showed that he does not need them to entertain us.

Ken Loach usually works on a low budget too (perforce) and his Route Irish is as committed and passionate as any of his works. Route Irish is the dangerous road that led through the Green Zone from Baghdad to the airport during the 2^nd Gulf War and subsequent occupation. British troops in Iraq were gradually replaced by ‘private security personnel’ aka mercenaries (often the same men who had served as soldiers there). Mark Womack plays such an exSAS trooper, trying to find out what led to the death of his mate, played in flashbacks by the Scouse comedian John Bishop. But this is no comedy. It is a political and personal thriller, with serious intent. If you appreciate Loach’s films, see this.

I will include Eire as British in order or praise The Guard, written and directed by J M McDonagh, and starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Rory Keenan and Mark Strong. This was shot around my beloved Galway Bay, Gleeson’s homeland, and he plays the local Police - or Garde - sergeant, caught up in a drug plot being investigated by the FBI agent played by Cheadle (who played such in Traffic). This is a culture-clash comedy, a buddy movie, a comedy caper, and utterly unPC. I loved it.

Two more British films had bigger budgets, but did not use them for flash-bang-wallop. Strictly speaking Never Let Me Go is also science fiction, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, (though of course if a novel is good surely it cannot be science fiction!). Carey Mulligan Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley live in a parallel present to our own, and a darker one. Their performances are quietly underplayed, its moral message understated. and both are all the more moving for it. The film is beautifully shot, and scored.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor is adapted from John le Carre’s novel, directed by Tomas Alfreson, the Swede who made the brilliant Let the Right One In. Competing with the beloved 6 hour long BBC/Alex Guinness version is a hard task, but Alfreson concentrates on the feel as much as the plot, and it is not the world of James Bond. MI6 is presented as a seedy, squalid, suspicious, sexist, snobbish world (oh, rather like Bond’s after all). A wonderful (if rather under-used) British cast, includes Gary Oldman as George Smiley, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and Mark Strong. Despite the convoluted plot Alfreson has the courage to take his time, to allow us to watch Smiley, watching, thinking, suppressing his responses. A friend of mine said she loved it, but hadn’t a clue what was going on. I give thanks that an intelligent demanding movie topped the charts.

Another film with a British Director and leading actors is The Debt. John Madeen directed Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love, but this is different, a thriller about an Israeli Mossad squad’s attempt to kidnap a Nazi war criminal and take him from East Berlin back to Israel to be put on trial. But the snatch goes badly wrong. Thirty years on we see the fall-out from that failure. Helen Mirren plays the older version of the agent played as a younger woman by Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds play her colleagues. This remake of an Israeli film has a script worked on by Peter Straughn, who also contributed to the adaptation of Tinker, Tailor…. and is a taut political thriller with a moral edge. What is the debt, and to whom is it owed?

Of course the biggest budget went to the last Harry Potter; the Deathly Hallows part 2. in which David Yates ‘brings the closure that Potter fans have been seeking and dreading – something they and Harry have in common.’ (BFI) For years I assured parents worried about the ‘witchcraft’ element that this series was simply a morality tale about the victory of good over evil, of love over hatred, and Harry did not win his battles by being a better magician than Voldemort, but by the courage and loyalty of his friends (and Hermione doing her homework!). The question was never 'will Harry defeat Voldemort', but how. Now we know that J K Rowling was a Christian all along, but did not publicize it. If I had, she said, everyone would work out the ending.

Source Code was the second film by the British director Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, who had a critical hit with his low budget sf hit Moon in 2009. This time he used his bigger budget well, with Jake Gyllenhall and Michelle Monaghan (so good in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) a convoluted plot and great special effects – but the message is that love conquers all. Ahhh. Stylish.

There have been some great classic DVD/Blu-ray releases this year including Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Scorcese's Taxi Driver, and Blood Simple, (both the Coen Brothers dark original and a hilarious Chinese version by Zhang Yimou, of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony fame). Also John Carpenter’s hilarious Dark Star, another low budget triumph and Douglas Trumbull’s prophetic Silent Running, and Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth and West Side Story.

So, three good new sf films and the release of three sf classics. Three handsome literary adaptations, and the best year of the British film industry for some time. I hereby declare 2011 to be a good vintage!

Entertaining Angels

2011-10-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

What's this Blog about?

Film and Faith is the topic, and this blog contains my thoughts and critiques of movies going back over the last 25 years.

I started publishing these when I was a Diocesan Youth Advisor in the Anglican Church back in the 1980’s for colleagues and other group leaders. Some entries are just an aide-memoire and a line or two about applicability. There are also longer (sometimes much longer) articles about some films, and these are primarily theological in their approach. I am a working priest and although cinema provides an important cultural source I know that most of the time people go to see a movie but do not make the connections between its themes, concerns or images and their own faith. How many times has someone said to me ‘I have seen that film before, but I had never thought about it like this’?

Here you will find notes on recent films, details of two 'film seasons' I ran in my church recently, and then the A – Z of around 100 films, followed by longer, articles on over 20 films including Hero, Slumdog Millionaire, the first Narnia film, Beowulf, The Dark Knight, Doubt, The Lives of Others, American Beauty, Hannah, Toy Story 3, Inception, The Road, A Serious Man, Doubt. Pleasantville, Taken and Wall-E. You will also find some 'round up of the year' articles.

You may agree or disagree with my theological stances and comments; they have no more authority than any of your own. But writing them has helped me deepen my own enjoyment of going to the movies, to understand which deep bells in my heart and soul they have chimed with - or been in profound disharmony with - and I have learnt so much from them.

Some of these article may be published under my name elsewhere, and I retain copyright, but I am happy for anyone to copy and use this material for church use, as long as the original authorship and source - and your edits - are clearly acknowledged.

I hoped you enjoy these ‘Entertaining Angels’!

Light in the Darkness; films for Advent

2011-10-23T00:39:00.000-07:00

light in the darkness

A season of films around this theme in preparation for Advent.

(Light shines in the darkness. Christians believe that the light of Christ will not be overcome by darkness. These films explore darkness in different dimensions; the political, commercial, personal, in grief, guilt and the shadow of Auschwitz. All of them are in their own ways difficult to watch, or to hear. Those in the early stages of grief may find Truly, Madly, Deeply to much to handle. Those who find 'strong language' -as the BBC coyly puts it) will struggle with Precious. Two have subtitles, and that may be difficult for some viewers. When we show films we are responsible to those we invite, so let us be careful, and make clear what people can expect. )

Persepolis; an animated autobiography about a girl’s life under in the Shah’s Persia, during the victory of the Ayatollah, her exile in Paris and return to Tehran – a funny account of dark political times. (Cert 15)

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) has to address corporate darkness and his own complicity in corruption as he seeks justice for a colleague driven to madness by their companies activities. (Cert 15)

In I've Loved You So Long, Kirstin Scott Thomas plays a woman released from prison after 15 years, trying to rebuild her life and relationship with her sister. (In French with subtitles)

I'm a Cyborg is an unsettling romance set in a Korean mental asylum, directed by the celebrated Korean Park Chan-Wook, (Cert 15, subtitles) Precious is abused, rejected, illiterate and dangerously over-weight. This is our toughest film, but is about people’s capacity to learn, grow, and flourish, when their preciousness is recognized. (Cert 15)

Truly Madly Deeply (Julie Stevenson & Alan Rickman) is a passionate story of love, life and death. ‘Ghost for the thinking classe’s, both funny and demanding.

Life is Beautiful in Roberto Benigni’s film, even when Guido’s family is overshadowed by the Holocaust. This Italian film was nominated for 3 Oscars in 1999. (subtitled)

The Fisher King, directed by Terry Gilliam, is as visually fantastic as we would expect, but also a funny and moving story of guilt, grief, love, madness - and free Video club membership.

Sitting in the shade of The Tree of Life.

2011-08-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

Terrence Malick’s latest film, The Tree of Life, has confused and divided critics.

It has been described as incoherent, self-indulgent and grandiose. Some have added that it is ‘Christian’, using this as a negative description. Others have described it as an inspirational, deeply personal meditation on life, the universe and everything.

Of course any film critic or fan will approach a new Malick film with high expectations. Three of his previous films, Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line have an assured place in the history of cinema. When Days of Heaven was released in 1978 Variety unhesitatingly claimed it as ‘one of the greatest cinematic achievements of the last decade’ and Newsweek described it as being ‘hauntingly beautiful, unashamedly poetic, brimming with sweetness and bitterness, darkness and light.’ Malick has been described as American cinema’s great poet-philosopher. After Days of Heaven he did not produce another film until The Thin Red Line in 1998. Opinion was then, and is still now, divided on that film, but it is certainly unique among World War 2 movies in its portrayal of the spiritual, emotional, ethical and physical needs and dilemmas of men facing violent death on a daily basis. Malick universalized these issues, exploring the cosmic drama of death and birth, destruction and creativity. All three films addressed the particular and personal, the horrific killing spree of Kit and Holly in Badlands, the farmers losing their harvest to locusts in Days of Heaven, and the daily life of soldiers at war in The Thin Red Line, but each attempts to relate them to the greater themes that concern us all.

The Tree of Life attempts the same, but this time the particular is much more directly personal to Malick. In this film the O’Brien family are raising their 3 sons in Waco, Texas, Malick’s home town, during the 1950’s, Malick’s own teenage period. The O’Brien family mirrors Malick’s own - tragically so in that the middle brother in the film dies aged 19 and one of Malick’s own brothers killed himself some years ago. The O’Brien story is told almost impressionistically, with little dialogue or exposition. The narrative seems to be the memories of Jack, the oldest boy, recalled during a mid-life crisis of his own. The voice-overs are often confused, as the young Jack struggles with his Oedipal feelings towards his parents. The power of the ‘dare’, the fear of failing to fulfill such a dare, or to go against the gang’s group mind, make young Jack feel guilty when he does things that he hates doing. Young teenagers may not always have a moral code, but they do have powerful emotional responses to right and wrong, and when Jack steals from a neighbour’s house an item that has clearly erotic connections with his feeling for his mother, he is deeply ashamed. All this, even including the death of the brother, hardly reaches the scale of tragedy portrayed in most theatrical dramas. When the tragic telegram arrives Malick introduces a long sequence depicting the birth of the universe, the formation of stars, the shaping of our planet and the emergence of life on Earth and this has confused and troubled many critics. The disparity of scale seems to have shocked them. But Malick is interested in exploring the depth of the ordinary and its connection with the over-arching, even the transcendent. His films are not about heroes and heroines, or grand dramatic figures undergoing extraordinary experiences. They are about people like you and me. And they are about scale.

In their book The View from the Centre of the Universe ⁽¹⁾ Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams suggested that human beings have a unique view-point on the Universe. We can glimpse both the microscopic and the macroscopic, the inner workings of the atom and the vastness of time and space. ‘Consider the size of a living cell and the size of the universe. Think of a single cell on the tip of your finger. That cell is as tiny compared to you as you are compared to Planet Earth. A single atom in that cell is as tiny compared to you as you are compared to the sun.’ (p177)

This awareness of the ‘little and large’ may not be comfortable for us. In comparison with the lifetime of the Universe, calculated at some 3,700,000,000 years, our short span seems insignificant. Compared to the vastness of space, which we measure in millions of light years, our local reach is laughable. In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams wrote of the Ultimate Perspective Vortex, a device that would drive any human being mad simply by revealing to them their utter insignificance in the grander scheme of things. (It is true that Zafod Beeblebrox III came out of this device even more impressed with himself than before, but he was crazy before he went in to it).

But I remember an anecdote about a Professor of Astronomy who told his students that ‘from the point of view of astronomy we are miniscule organisms crawling on a speck of dust, orbiting around a pin-point of light, a sun that is only one of a hundred thousand million suns in our galaxy; a galaxy that is only one of a hundred thousand million others. From the point of view of astronomy’, he concluded, ‘we are utterly insignificant.’ But he was contradicted by a student. ‘No, Professor, I beg to differ. From the point of view of astronomy, we are the astronomer.’

We have invented the telescope and the microscope, and are poised betwixt the views they offer. We try to connect these perspectives and make sense of them, and of our own lives, caught in this parallax view. Philosophy and theology, science and art each attempt this in their own ways. Very rarely, movies also explore the tension between the cosmic and the quotidian,the life of the Universe and our own all too brief lives. Charlie Kaufmann introduced a brief resume of cosmology into his film ‘Adaptation’ (2002) as a joke, and it was a good joke. ButThe Tree of Life attempts to make this connection in a very serious and explicitly theological manner.

Malick asks ‘how can we live in this universe and believe in a benign creator God?’ His film explores the very nature of the Creator of the universe, the God for whom, as the theologian Sally McFague suggests, the Universe is a metaphor. ⁽²⁾ In The Tree of Life Mrs. O’Brien is in love with God – and with God’s creation. She delights in the glory of light and the playfulness of water, she walks beneath trees in the dappled sun-light and plays with her three boys with uninhibited pleasure and freedom. She believes in Grace, not Nature. She sees Grace as self-less; nature as self-ish, Grace as yielding; nature as power seeking. And she believes that the point of our God-given life is love.

‘There’s a joke among cosmologists that romantics are made of stardust, but cynics are made of the nuclear waste of worn out stars.’ Mrs. O’Brien is certainly some kind of romantic. Oscar Wilde quipped that a cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. And the values we bring to our appreciation of the universe and our place in it dictate if our view is inspirational and hopeful or despairing and resigned.

Jeol Primack is a professor of physics and his wife, Nancy Ellen Abrams is a science philosopher, artist and lawyer. They believe that we exist at Midgard, the unique point of scale in the universe. We are midsized. And our size makes it possible for us to be intelligent.‘Creatures much smaller than we are could not have sufficient complexity for our kind of intelligence because they would not be made of a large enough number of atoms. But intelligent creatures could not be much larger than we are, either, because the speed of nerve impulses – and ultimately the speed of light – becomes a serious limitation.’ (p174). Without intelligence there can be no evaluation. Being the size we are we cannot only think the Universe, we can value it.

Primack and Abrams recount the cosmologist’s joke about romantics and cynics (p279) and describe these attitudes as a choice between an existential or a meaningful response to the scientific facts. ‘When the Newtonian picture destroyed the comforting medieval universe and people stared out into endless space and shivered at how small they were, they felt for the first time the existential terror of cosmic insignificance’ (p120) But they argue that we are not insignificant, we are capable of giving meaning to the universe, and therefore to our part in it.In this sense we are central. There is no evidence for or against this; it is an attitude. ‘There is nothing in modern cosmology that requires the existential view, nor anything that requires the meaningful view. The bottom line of both views is scientific accuracy. Both hold that interpretations of reality where science is compromised for ideological purposes should be rejected. But given this bottom line an attitude towards the discoveries of modern cosmology is every person’s choice.’ (p274f).

Malick also sees humankind as meaning-makers. We not only observe the Cosmos, we can make a meaningful connection with it, despite the disparity of scale. He believes in the Creator God. Primack and Abrams also believe in the Creator God. They once adopted the existentialattitude, a position initially reinforced by Primack’s work on the Cold Dark Matter theory in the mid 1980’s. But the more they explored the implications of scale, and our mid-placed position at the Uroboros, the center of the universal scale, the more they were able to see the unique value of humankind – and of our ability to value the universe. Thus the possibility of a loving God, the One who gives ultimate meaning to all things, became more tenable for them.They saw that ‘the more that people discover about the universe, the faster God keeps expanding, always ahead, pulling yet teasing scientists. As God expands, God also deepens at all levels.’ (p277) This is close to the medieval view that all science is a sub-set of theology, the meta-physic, the study of ultimate reality (qua Paul Tillich).

This film is a work of art, not a scientific or philosophical argument. But the same distinctions between the existential and the meaningful, the natural and the graceful, is explored here, and at a deeply personal level.

This film also addresses the question raised by the existence of suffering in a universe created by a loving God. What can be more deep and personal than grief? The death of Jack’s brother weights down on him, and contributes to his mid-life crisis, which is the framing device of the film. This is not simply the crisis brought on by middle-age, the waning of powers, the force of gravity, and the prospect of death, but also a crisis of faith. Was his mother, who he loved, right to believe in Grace, or was his Father, who he feared, right to believe in Nature?

‘I am more like you than I am like her’ he once told his father. Mother and Father reflect differing images of God. Can he love and be faithful to the mothering God of Grace, when grace means yielding to the power of death? Can he believe in the gracious nature of a God who created a universe in which suffering and death are inevitable, and our struggles against them are ultimately futile? Or should he embrace his father’s determination to be strong, to survive even if it means looking after number one at whatever cost?

Earlier in the O’Brien’s family’s life Jack’s father was made redundant. He never took a day off work and every Sunday he went to church and paid his tithes, and yet he was made redundant.This was not fair. There are explicit references in the film to the Book of Job, directly quoted from and explored during an overheard sermon. Job was a good man who did not get what he deserved. Or rather, he got it and then lost it. His harvest, beasts, children, home, fortune and health were taken away.

And Job raged against God, asking in effect ‘why aren’t you being fair to me?’

The poet who wrote the book of Job painted in words what he knew of the majesty of creation – and therefore of the Creator – and rebuked Job for his arrogant assumption that he knew how creation works, and could therefore find grounds to complain that his life was not working according to plan. Job’s faith was being tested, but not his faith in God. Job never stops believing in God. If he did he would have no-one to blame. No, what was tested was Job’s understanding of the very nature of God. Job wanted God to be fair. Just as we do when we complain that arbitrary suffering exists in the universe created by a loving God. As if love meant the negation of suffering. As if love was safety. As if we had a better pain-free working plan for the universe.

Suffering and the God of love, the Theodicy question, has burdened Christians since the earliest days. As Jurgen Moltmann puts it in ‘The Trinity and the Kingdom of Heaven’⁽⁵⁾ ‘The suffering of a single innocent child is an irrefutable rebuttal of the notion of the almighty and kindly God in heaven. For a God who lets the innocent suffer and who permits senseless death is not worthy to be called God at all,’ (P 47). This is, Moltmann goes on to say ‘the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound. The person who believes will not rest content with any slick explanatory answers to the theodicy question. And he will resist the temptation to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over a suffering world, and the more passionately he ask about God and the new Creation.’(p49)

For Moltmann, and for many, this is an eschatological question; it can only be answered at the end of time. In the meantime we have to ‘survive, to go on living’.

It seems to me that the question of ‘suffering and the God of love’ is most problematic when we, like Job, want God to be fair and just and even nice, and therefore the universe, that metaphor for God, to be fair and just and nice.

But the universe is what it is. It is all we have got. It is not nice, but it is profoundly beautiful.Among the infinite reaches of space and in the light of impersonal stars intelligent life and self-giving love have sprung into existence. God is found in both Nature and Grace, in the cruelty and splendor of natural processes. God may not be nice, but God is beautiful, even when this is a terrible beauty. God is life-giving love. Our proper response, as living, loving elements in this universe should not be that of resignation and despair, but of gratitude and hope.

In ‘Being a Person; where faith and science meet’ ⁽³⁾John Hapgood recalled Teilhard de Chardin’s thoughts on death and suffering in Le Milieu Divin. de Chardin’s work, bringing together theology and cosmology, was controversial, but Hapgood, also a scientist and priest,writes that ‘(de Chardin) is surely right to believe that human being need some grand vision of the cosmos by which to live, and which can make sense of both the heights and depths of experience. Scientific visions currently on offer tend to marginalize the very things which are most central and precious to ordinary human life, those most closely associated with our consciousness of being persons.’ (p235.)

In ‘A Big-enough God; artful theology.’ ⁽⁴⁾ Sarah Maitland wrote ‘We need to accept all the data that we have got; we, you and me, our experiences, identity, history, personality, our selves, are an integral part of the revelation of God in creation. (p10)

The Tree of Life brings together the cosmic and the mundane, the immensity of Creation and the apparent inconsequentiality of human life. But it tells us that these are inseparable. That the one only finds meaning in the other. Without the Cosmos being the way it is there could be no life, no meaning and no love. We, as human beings, may not be the point of the Universe, that would be an hubristic assumption, but the ability to know, to value and to love, which we sometimes - imperfectly - embody, may well be. The Creation miracle is that the first light has evolved into what we are, or may be becoming.

The Tree of Life is a grand cosmic vision, addressing the heights and depth of human experience, and seems to be seeking to acknowledge all the data we have got, cosmological, evolutionary and personal, in ways that may be unprecedented in cinema. It has left audiences and critics divided. That is hardly surprising, because so has the question of the existence and nature of God, which is this film’s explicit focus. It will divide believers from non-believers, but it will divide believers too.

There is very little dialogue in this film, the emotional details and depth and complexity are conveyed by old fashioned acting and directing skills. This film shows rather than explains. The cosmic and evolutionary passages are literally luminous, guided by Douglas Trumbull, the special effects master-mind of 2001: a Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind andStar-Trek who temped out of retirement to help bring this vision to the screen. These last two characteristics, the reliance on image and the ground-breaking use of light, connect The Tree of Life to another film that Trumbull worked on, and also severely divided critics 30 years ago,Blade Runner. That film was also concerned with the meaning and value of life. ‘What is life?’ it seemed to ask. And it answered ‘life is precious’. That is not life’s definition, but its value. If we so choose.

In The Master and his Emissary, the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World ⁽⁶⁾Iain McGilchrist reminds us that purely intellectual enterprises only use half of our brain, or rather, one of our brain’s two hemispheres. Our left hemisphere offers us explanations, and we like explanations. Our left-brain capacities for logic and rationality are essential, but they are not, McGilchrist argues, the roots of wisdom. Wisdom pays attention to the emotional, spiritual, intuitive and relational capacities of the right-hemisphere. Art is an expression of our right-brain’s capacities. Art is not logical, or explanatory, but it is meaningful. As Robert Ornstein wrote back in the 1970’s, ‘the left brain is as brilliant as the sun, but unless the sun sets we never see the stars.’ ⁽⁷⁾ Malick has produced an essay in light, not words. He has not only used left brain rationality and logic (for making a film is huge logistical problem), but also right brain emotional intelligence and eloquent images.

Some may find The Tree of Life confusing, even shocking. But it is a visually poetic work of art that addresses a complex philosophical and theological question. It is also, in my view, a thing of beauty and grace. We may have devalued the word adult in art and entertainment, but this may truly be the most adult film I have ever seen.

Bob Vernon. 2^nd August 2011

1 Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams. 2005. The View from the Centre of the UniverseFourth Estate. London

2 Sallie McFague 1993. The Body of God; An Ecological Theology. Fortress press. Minneapolis

3 John Hapgood. 1998. Being a Person; where faith and science meet.

Hodder and Stoughton.London

4 Sara Maitland. 1995 A Big-enough God; artful theology.Mowbray. London

5 Jurgen Moltmann 1991 The Trinity and the Kingdom of Heaven SCM. London

6 Iain McGilchrist 2009 The Master and his Emissary, the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Yale. New Haven & London

7 Robert E Ornstein. 1975 The Psychology of Consciousness.Jonathan Cape. London

Some further thoughts;

Watching the closing sequence of the Russian Director Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia on More 4's The Story of film - an Odyssey, where the camera pulls back from the cottage in the background and the pond in the foreground to reveal that we are in the ruins of a Cathedral, the disparity between the landscape and the building in which it is contained, and the dominant themes of the movie connected me with Malick's The Tree of Life.

In Malick's film the mundane is set in the realm of the spiritual, the domestic in the context of the cosmic. Some say the cosmic renders the domestic meaningless, but the opposite is surely what Malick and Tarkovsky are saying.  The evolution of the Universe, and of life on earth is our context. The death of star in a galaxy a million light years ago is absolutely connected with the birth of a child on earth. Hydrogen, helium and light have evolved into matter that can both grasp (and gasp) at the scale of the Universe, and learn (failing, failing again, failing better) to love.

Both film makers invite us to travel on journeys in which the images show more than the words can say, and the emotional import and juxtaposition of images is more important than their literal meaning. They are not 'easy', and do not try to be. Tarkovsky's films Nostalghia, The Mirror, Solaris and Makick's The Tree of Life all meditate on themes of memory, love, loss and growing to maturity, and do so in ways that confront our normal modes of viewing and reading films.

Go, go read your Perrault; Hannah as fairytale.

Surely Hannah is a fairy tale. This intention is clearly signaled. The references may be oblique and do not follow any one fairy-tale story line, but we may easily see Hannah as Snow White, genetically ‘poisoned’ and disowned by her wicked step-mother, a ‘mother’ who sharpens her teeth, or as a wolf posing as granny, a cruel hunter who also lives in the woods (check out her bedroom wall; a forest) and Hannah may be an empowered Little Red Riding Hood, cunning, fearless and deadly. This girl does not need her wood-chopping father to disembowel a deer, or wolf. The Red Riding Hood theme surely addresses issues around the onset of puberty; Hannah is 15, and has never been kissed. Hannah is also the Sleeping Beauty, asleep to the world beyond her wilderness until her quest begins. She is Gretel on her way to the treacherous Gingerbread House. Hannah is a kind of princess, special, gifted and beautiful, pursued through exotic landscapes by relentlessly evil – and absurd – people; a bottle-blonde Tom Hollander as an effete hit-man?! She is helped on her way by enchanted children, children enchanted by her, and by unwitting adults. And her story has a hard ending. Fairy tales are not comfort zones, but places where cruel realities are told and fears faced. Some critics have pointed to plot difficulties, but fairy stories are not subject to logical expectations. They are fantastic. So go, go back beyond the conventions of the modern thriller or Disney's cartoons to the originals, Perrault, and Grimm and their predecessors, and enjoyHannah for what it is, a beautifully filmed, action packed, character filled fairy tale.

An A - Z of movies

2011-08-25T10:11:00.001-07:00

The Addiction (1995 Abel Ferrera) The director described this black and white vampire movie as an exploration of redemption and 'a way to express the relentless search for truth and light in a world that paralyses us with its anger and darkness.' (see also The Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996) from the same director and writer.

Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection.... (1979 Ridley Scott.......) The original was groundbreaking in its design, the second has a wonderful full on battle between Ridley in a Waldo suit and the great alien mother, the third lacked any mise-en-scene and I found Resurrection really rather moving. I just love to see that you don't need Arnie's muscles to take on the toughest alien.

American Beauty (1999 Sam Mendes). Here's film to divide opinion! I have heard it described as a classic of redemption and as a male wet dream. Pauline Kael (may she rest in peace watching heavenly movies through all eternity) said it 'is a con. Can't educated liberals see that it sucks up to them at every plot turn?' and I can see what she means- while still enjoying being suckered buy the crisp direction, witty script (by Alan Ball who went on to write HBO's Six Feet Under) and terrific acting by the whole cast. Does Lester find the answer to life in the dying moments of his life, or is this an adolescent moral and sexual fantasy? See Further thoughts about American Beauty elsewhere.

Apocalypse Now! (1979 Francis Ford Coppola) This ultimate 'stoned war' movie raises the 'ends and means' question as it explores Conrad's Heart of Darkness and transplants it to Vietnam. The final scenes speak of a moral madness that aspires to the certainty of the gods, an absolute conviction that whatever we need to do to defeat evil is worth doing. Listen to Col. Kurtz and find an answer to his argument.. Do go for the longer Director's Redux cut if you can. Living in Hong Kong in 1972 I heard so many stories from GI's on R & R from Vietnam that persuaded me that this is the most accurate film of that war, not in fact, but in tenor.

The Apostle (1998) Robert Duvall. Written directed, paid for and starring Duvall, as a southern preacher who falls (spectacularly) from grace, but never loses his faith or stops talking to God. Billy Bob Thornton lends a hand in this powerful film.

Avatar (James Cameron 2010) see Blessing the Prey and praying for the planet

The Bad Lieutenant (1992 Abel Ferrera) maybe the hardest of Ferrara's movies to stomach, with drug taking, rape, masturbation and redemption stirred together in the darkest brew. Harvey Keitel's performance as the cop who goes from bad to worse to redemption is truly remarkable. (see also The Addiction (1995) and The Funeral (1996).

Batman (1989 Tim Burton) The Joker (Jack Nicholson) finds that 'dying is great therapy. 'It kinda liberates you', but he puts his liberation to dark intent in this gothic comedy. By aiming for the lucrative 12+ market the producers lost the chance to really explore Batman's implicit pathology, but the design, lighting and photography are (almost) in the Blade Runner league, and Michael Keaton hints at the dark depths of his character. Eventually the franchise took off again with Chris Nolan's help. See A ray of light in The Dark Knight elsewhere on this blog.

Batman Begins. (UK/USA, director Christopher Nolan) Nolan made Memento, so I was not surprised that this was the best Batman since Tim Burton started the franchise with Michael Keaton, and sharing its intelligence, visual richness and moral ambiguity. See A Ray of Light in the Dark Knight.

Beowulf See ' Beowulf, a two dimensional hero?'

Big. (1988 Penny Marshall) The first and best of the genre as Tom Hanks convinces us that he really is a 13 year old in the body of an adult. The Kingdom of God is made of such as these.

Blade Runner; The Director's Cut. (1982 - 2008) . Ridley Scott. I fell for this film the first time I saw it and bought my first VCR player so that I could own a copy of it. Twenty years later my affection for it has only been deepened by time and the release of the Director's Cut. It still rings deep bells. Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel 'Never Let Me Go' explores the sentimental education of children born as clones. They have been given life in order to donate their organs. They will not live out their full span. The protagonist, Kath, searches for the original model of herself, but also wants to protect her life-long friend Tommy, another clone, from the possibility that they were copies from 'junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps'. Tommy wants to protect her from other things, and the novel celebrates that loving impulse. Ruth Scurr, reviewing the novel in the TLS (25/2/05) wrote 'The clones have been created because of the human desire to postpone death indefinitely by finding protection in everlasting biological health. Far from deconstructing this desire, the lives of the clones further affirm it; they too want passionately to go on living and protect the things they love dearly'. The androids in Blade Runner were also created to protect humankind by doing the most dangerous jobs. Like Ishiguro's clones, they have a limited life-span, but 'they too want passionately to go on living and protect the things they love dearly'. 'In a fanzine review, written when Blade Runner was first released, I said that the film asks 'What is life?'and answers 'Life is precious'. Ford Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauger, Darryl Hannah, Sean Young, and film's direction and design and photography are magnificent.

Bram Stoker's Dracula. (1992 Francis Ford Coppola) Very much Francis Ford's Coppola's movie, this story of love and redemption is light years away from the Hammer Horrors using Coppola's maverick genius to produce an astounding visual treat while holding close to Bram Stoker's original. Gary Oldfield is mesmeric, Anthony Hopkins is miles over the top and Keanu Reeves is English?! It is easy to forget that this story is about love being stronger than death.

Broken Flowers (USA/France) Director Jim Jarmusch is a true independent spirit, distrusted by the Studios and beloved by his actors and collaborators, in this case Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton and Jeffrey Wright Bill Murray plays this tragedy so deadpan you could almost miss it in a film that could also have been called The Consequences of Love This is the nearest US cinema gets to European, and it took European money to get it made.

Bruce Almighty. Great fun and a great group discussion starter. What would you do, given the powers of the almighty? Jim Carey and Jennifer Anniston are fine, and any film that has Morgan Freeman as God has got to be a winner with me.

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. (1969 GeorgeRoy Hill) A cult movie if ever there was one, and shown time after time on TV at Easter. Could that be because it deals with death and resurrection - especially in the 'cliff jump' scene and in the frozen frame ending where the Great Director in the Sky leaves our two heroes eternally victorious?

The Butcher Boy. (1997 Neil Jordan) A film about abused, poverty, wretchedness, religion and murder, and each with an Irish twist. Eamonn Oewns is brilliant, and Patrick McCabe's original novel is a wonderful source book well adapted in Neil Jordan's script. Who wrote 'To understand is to forgive, even oneself'? (actually it was Peter Chase in Perspectives 1966), but I prefer Shelley's' line that 'to be greatly good (we) must imagine intensely and comprehensively, put ourselves in the place of another and of many others; the pains ands pleasures of our species must become our own.' Shelley was writing in defence of poetry, but only because he had never been to the movies.

Carla's Song. (1996 Ken Loach) Robert Carlyle stars in two love stories - one between a Glaswegian bus driver and Nicaraguan refugee, the other between Ken Loach and the Sandinistas of the 1980's . The Sandinistas have gone, but the issues still remain.

Changeling. (Clint Eastwood 2009) See Films of the year 2009.

The China Syndrome. (1979 George Jenkins) Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas show us dangerous nuclear power can be in the hands of human beings who dare not admit that they have made a mistake. An exciting and prophetic film.

Chocolat (2000 Lasse Hallstrom) From Joanne Harris's novel. With Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp as eye candy, this fairy tale/morality tale has enough filling to run a Lent course on; but do we really want it covered with so much milk (rather than dark) chocolate? Probably.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (1977 Steven Spielberg) Bernard Levin, who usually reviewed Wagner and Mozart, came of seeing this film in a state of exultation believing that not only Mr Spielberg, but the universe had got things right. The idea that advanced aliens might be profoundly peaceful was rare in mainstream sf movies. Although the majesty of the images really needs a cinemascope screen it can still work on DVD.

The Commitments. (1991 Alan Parker ) As well as the great ensemble playing, soundtrack and direction this can be used to see how groups, not just bands, form and storm and sometimes don't manage to norm; a great tutorial in group dynamics for leaders.

The Constant Gardener. (USA/UK/Canada/Germany. Fernando Meirelles) The best film adaptation of le Carré since The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. A furious exploration of the corporate evil that lurks just beyond our ken; but only because we cannot be bothered to raise our eyes or our moral vision. Terrific cast, great photography and soundtrack.

The Consequences of Love. (Italy, Director Paolo Sorrentini) This remarkable European film is about courage; not the kind found on the battle field or in the face of disaster, but the long, slow burning enduring courage demanded by love and loyalty. Toni Servillo plays one of the most unlikely and worthy heroes of the cinematic year, and Luca Bigazzi photographs it with grace and the audacity to hold the shot.

Crazy Heart (2010) See Movies of 2010

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (2000 Ang Lee) 'Ang Lee's beautiful, intimate epic is - one would have thought self evidently - a luminous work of art' said Salman Rushdie. I love the whole thing, especially its take on women and the challenge that its protagonists should live as courageously as they fight, taking responsibility for their actions. The final shot, of Jen's leap of faith(?), is well worth thinking and talking about.

Cry Freedom. (1987 Richard Attenborough) This is not about Steven Biko, but about the effect he had on Donald Woods, the white newspaper editor who thought he was a liberal until introduced to the reality of Black South African life, and decided what price that knowledge demanded of him. Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington are superb, and this story should not be forgotten just because Apartheid was dismantled.

Cyrano De Bergarac (1990) Jean-Paul Rappaneau. Gerard Depardui does the fighting, Anthony Burgess does the rhyming couplets for the subtitles and we are swept along by the emotions so lavishly portrayed. There are plenty of diamonds in the ashes, and panache aplenty.

The Da Vinci Code (see Breaking the Da Vinci Code article)

Dark City (1998) Alex Proyas. An original take on the 'sealed world' sf theme, with deep psycho-analytical influences and questions about identity.

The Dark Knight. see the article A ray of light in the Dark Knight below.

Dark Star (1974. John Carpenter) Somewhat like 2001: a Space Odyssey made for $20 and with much more wit and much less obscure symbolism - while still including a philosophical discussion with an atomic bomb.

The da Vinci Code. (Ron Howard). See ‘Breaking the da Vinci Code' below.

Dead Poets Society (1989 Peter Weir) This film really annoys me! I think it carefully manipulates us to approve of a naive and irresponsible character (Robin Williams's teacher) but one senior manager in the Church suggested that it is a fine parable about Anglicanism. What do you think? It is certainly watchable.

Dirty Dancing. (1987 Emile Ardolino) First dance, first love, the time of your life...This tasty and erotic teen movie still works and challenges assumptions while reinforcing some good ol' family values.

District 9 (2010) See Movies of 2010

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2009) John Patrick Shanley’s drama opens with the Roman Catholic priest Father Flynn asking his congregation “What do you do when you’re not sure?” We are in America in the year after the assassination of J K Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the United States, and some of his parishioners may be asking themselves ‘if such a thing as this can happen to such a man as this is there a God in heaven?’ But to live with doubt is not to live alone, Father Flynn assures them.

This is an unashamedly didactic drama. It explores the tension between the comforting assurance of a man’s innocence and the driving conviction of his guilt. Sister Aloysius, Principal of the parish school, has encountered a child-abusing priest before and her suspicions that Father Flynn is grooming, if not abusing, one of her boy pupils soon hardens into certainty. Young Sister James on the other hand is eager to accept his explanations as proof of innocence. At every point in the film the evidence is questionable, the responses ambiguous. We should all be left in doubt. There is no answer. This is expertly constructed drama, adapted and directed by Shanley from his original play. It is well acted with Oscar nominated performances by Meryl Streep as the School Principal, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the priest and Amy Adams as the young nun, and – for just one scene – by Viola Davis as the boy’s mother. As a Child Protection trainer I would use it as a case study. (see Caught between Doubt and Conviction’ below.)

Edward Scissorhands. (1990 Tim Burton) A surreal parable/ fairy story/ fable that is unique, weird, gothic, satirical, funny and touching. Johnny Depp is wonderful, and well supported by a great cast. You decide what it means to you!

ET. (1982 Steven Spielberg) I think this still works on the small screen, thanks to Spielberg's knack of making us wait for what we want - and then giving it to us in an unexpected way, not to mention the discovery of what 'loving the alien' really means, and that love is stronger than death. Indulge yourselves.

Event Horizon (1997) Paul Andersen. 'Behind the civilised surface of life there's an extra dimension of hell, damnation and chaos just waiting to rip us apart' A very bloody film, but one that does offer a modern view of hell that has deep resonance. With Laurence Fishburn and Sam Neill.

Fearless. (1993 Peter Weir) Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini and Rosie Perez. Two people survive an airplane crash, one of them, Carla (Rosie Perez) loses her child and cannot stop blaming herself. The other, Max Klein (Jeff Bridges,) loses his fear of dying and cannot stop pushing the limits. Is he a Christ like hero, bringing healing to others, or a broken man who cannot be healed until he faces his own needs? Gareth Higgins raises that question and goes to write ' Max Klein thinks that he has been transformed by the plane crash - he says "I walked away from that crash with my life - the taste ands touch and beauty of life'" but he is only really in limbo until he acknowledges his need for salvation. In acknowledging his need for his partner - the one who loves and knows him best - he can learn to live with his extraordinary experience in a way that allows it to make sense without destroying him ore those around him' (How Movies Saved My Soul p 73f). The slow final reconstruction of the plane crash -accompanied by Gorecki's 3rd Symphony - is amazing and moving, and so, for me, is the film. Compare it with American Beauty?

A Fish Called Wanda. (1988 Charles Crichton) Cleese's most humane creation, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline playing hilariously together. Well worth watching again simply for its own sake.

The Fisher King. (1991 Terry Gilliam) Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, Mercedes Reuhl and Amanda Plummer explore the Christ-like legend of the Fisher King in New York, or the Jeff Bridges character learns to grow up the hard way in the company of a holy fool, while a wise woman waits patiently in the wings. This is a Terry Gilliam movie, so extravagance, visual and dramatic flair and a touch of madness are to be expected.

First Blood. (1982 Ted Kotcheff) Yes this is the first of the Rambo movies, and yes the rest of them were truly dreadful, but here John Rambo is a traumatised ands tragic figure desocialised by the violence he trained for, executed and suffered in Vietnam. How they got to the sequels from here beats me. A good way to unsettle teenage boys (or men) who want to glorify violence.

Flaming Star. (1960) Don Siegel. Elvis Presley starred in this Civil War Western melodrama about divided loyalties, but it could just as easily have been Marlon Brando. A solemn and unusual western with a down beat ending, and sadly unique in the Presley oeuvre.

Flight of the Navigator. (1986 Randolf Kleiser) David is 12 years old, but is 8 years late for dinner and everyone wants to know why. the answer lies in one of the most beautiful space ships you have ever seen. I play this for 10- 12 year olds ,and the adults are enraptured. simple things are not to be despised.

Fly Away Home (1996). Carrol Ballard, a parable, a meditation on lost and love, an adventure in which a young girl adopts and mothers a flock of goslings, - and then has to lead their flight across America to the breeding site. It is also, it seems, a true story. Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin do well.

The Full Monty. (1997) Peter Cattaneo. Simon Beaufoy, the scriptwriter said the film's 'politics centre on the disenfranchisement of working class men. I get particularly pleased when people comment on the sadness at the heart of the film.'

The Funeral (1996 Abel Ferrera) A gangland movie with Christopher Walken, Isabella Rossellini and Benicio del Toro, as overblown and intellectually facile, or as morally challenging and dramatic as the rest of Ferrera's output. Discus. Whichever you decide, Ferrera is a very serious movie maker with deep spiritual questions to ask.

Gorillas in the Midst. (1988 Michael Apted) Sigourney Weaver plays Dian Fosse in the true story of her crusade to protect the Rwandan mountain gorillas with a devotion that eventually cost her life. This is a fine, honest and moving film about a determined and courageous woman - and there are still not enough of them about.

Gremlins. (1984 Joe Dante) A simple and urgently relevant morality tale about stewardship and ecology - if that's how you see it. Gizmo is a delightful creature and the ultimate pet, as long you keep three simple rules Break these, and all hell breaks loose.

Grosse Point Blank (1997) George Armitage. Hilarious thriller and love story. John Cusack is the very professional assassin returning to his High School re-union to find his lost love (Minnie Driver) and maybe himself. Alan Arkin plays his terrified shrink- before Analyse That!build a whole film round the same idea.

Groundhog Day (1993. Harold Ramis) If today was the last day of my life what would I want to do with it? Bill Murray runs through most of the options, as his last day is repeated over and over again until he finds a way to be a better, happier human being. He has only one day; We have only one life. Thank goodness the film is so funny!

Hannah (2011) See Go, go, read your Perrault!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (UK/USA, Director Mike Newell) Best of the series, darker and more complex. 'The times is coming, Harry. when you will have to chose between the easy and the good' says a worried Prof Dumbledore, but Lord Voldemorte admits that there is only one force more powerful than evil; love.

Hero (2000 Zhang Yimou) The most subversive Chinese director takes the whole martial arts movie genre apart at the seams, and uses its prime exponents to do so. Amidst the grace, beauty and excitement each of the differently coloured versions of the same story gives us a different perspective on what it is to be human. A revelation. (See Questioning the Hero elsewhere.)

Hidden. (2004 France/Germany/Austria/ Italy, Michael Haneke.) Daniel Auteuile and Juliette Binoche display unglamorous talent in this deeply subversive film as it slowly reveals the long term effects of the racism and violence the State - and public- would rather forget. It is also raises philosophical questions about the role - and responsibility - of the observer.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (USA/ UK, director Garth Jennings) How good it is to see a real ( = American) budget used to bring high class British comedy to the screen without having to compromise too much for the US market (see also Wallace & Grommet). Marvin the paranoid android is wonderfully created. Sermon point: The good Christian, like the wise hitchhiker, always carries a towel; if only metaphorically, because we ought to be ready to wash feet at any opportunity.

Hook. (1991 Spielberg) Let's forget about appropriate models of leadership and parental anxiety and just let it pick us up and sweep us along, enjoying Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins having the time of their lives. If you want to switch on your brain, or your Youth Leaders, think about the 'is he really Peter?' sequence and the imaginary feast.

The House of Flying Daggers. (Hong Kong/China, Director Zhang Yimou). Asia is currently producing the most visually beautiful movies in the world, and this is high among them. Ask yourself, when did you see such gorgeous images in a European or American movie? This is very different to Zhang's previous film Hero, being a love story, or rather two love stories, but once more he exploits his native Chinese cinema's narrative traditions and then subverts them brilliantly.

The Hurt Locker (Katherine Bigelow 2009) See films of the year 2009.

I Am Love (2009) see films of 2009

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam 2009) See films of the year 2009

Inception (Chrir Nolan 2011) See Toy Story 3 and Inception.

The Incredibles (US 2004 Brad Bird) A terrific witty exciting knowing flash bang wallop of a movie with animation and characterisation so good that we stop thinking of it as animation. The super-gifted family have to hide their abilities from a blaming society until they are really needed again. Meanwhile their superkid is told that everyone is special - and retorts 'so that means no-one is special'. And if everyone is loved by God?

Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (1989 Steven Spielberg) For me this is the best of the Indiana movies, as his father, Sean Connery guides him to find the Holy Grail of enlightenment. The Harrison/Connery combination and competition is deliciously funny, and it certainly opens up questions of faith (crossing the void) and the meaning of the search and Grail.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (1955 Don Siegel) This original could be as pertinent to today's America as to its original target, the Senator McCarthy' drive to purge everything UnAmerican and impose conformism. It might be fun to compare with the 1978 remake starring Donald Sutherland, and Abel Ferrera's 1993 version, Body Snatchers.

Irma Vep. (1996 Olivier Assayas) . A low budget French art house film about the making of a low budget French art house homage to the classic silent movie Les Vampires, with Maggie Cheung. Hilarious and nostalgic and becoming a French art house classic itself. "Desire. It's what we make films with." (Maggie Cheung as herself in Irma Vep. 'But it is also what makes us watch films, This circuit of desire unites those who cast life-like shadows on a wall with an audience that re-animates them in their heads' (Sight & Sound. March 1997 p 52)

I've Loved You So Long. (2009) see Films of the year 2009

Jesus of Montreal (1989 Denys Arcand). French Canadian, subtitles, starring no-one most people had ever heard of, this film is about the devising and performance of a Passion play by a group of impro-actors; a play that proves too hard for the church to swallow, or for the actors to stop feeding into their own lives. Well worth seeing if you don't know it.

The Jewel of the Nile. (1985 Lewis Teague) I prefer this sequel to 'Romancing the Stone' with Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny de Vito in a helter skelter rom-com romp set in North Africa and concerning a vary different messianic figure.

Jude. (1996 Michael Winterbottom) From Thomas Hardy's novel, with Kate Winslet and Christopher Ecclestone. 'The films intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspirations are daunting' said Sight & Sound, and some critics didn't think it fulfilled them; but there is still plenty to grapple with and performances to appreciate.

Kingdom of Heaven. (USA/UK/Spain/ Germany. director Ridley Scott). The Church Times Editorial for Epiphany says that "Christians are ....seekers after truth, and take their place alongside Muslims, Hindus, Jews and all others who ask for spiritual strength to participate more fully in the enterprise that Christians call the Kingdom" This film has been seen by some Christians and Muslims as a helpful part of the current debate, with its condemnation of Crusade and its willingness to find wisdom and good will on either side of the so called holy war, even if the misuse of religion turns people against their faith. A very well intentioned film. There is a ‘Director’s cut’ with much added footage, wekk worth the extra time.

Kundun (1998) Martin Scorcese. A NY Catholic boy with a taste for the Grande guignol films the early life of the Dalai Lama? Yes, sumptuously, but profoundly aware of the tragedy.

Ladyhawke (1985 Richard Donner) A medieval magical mishmash for a younger audience, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer as star-crossed -or rather Bishop becursed lovers saved by Matthew Broderick and Rumpole (sorry- Leo McKern) The running commentary is the Broderick's ongoing conversation with God, which makes most prayers sound like legalistic gobbledegook, and can be used in excerpts.

The Last Starfighter. (1984 Nick Castle) The future of the civilised universe (which does not yet include us) depends on the extraordinary gift possessed by an otherwise ordinary teenager living in a mid-American trailer park. Dare he trust his talent? Sharp, witty, so much less portentous than Star Wars and with a better female lead role.

The Last Temptation of Christ. (1988 Martin Scorsese) The pre-release furore by pre-outraged Christians obscured the serious intent of this attempt to film Kazantzakis's novel. Scorsese had spent decades trying to get it made, and it is well shot and acted, but maybe too long and wordy to do justice to the idea. Worth using as part of an images of Jesus season, however, along with Jesus of Montreal, The Life of Brian, the Gospel according to Matthew and One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfreson 2009) See Films of the year 2009.

Life is Sweet. (1990 Mike Leigh) An hilarious and humane slice of life with Alison Steadman (of course) Jim Broadbent, Jane Horrocks, Claire Skinner, Stephen Rea and Timothy Spall, as one family suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous adolescence and life, but manages to do more than survive.

A Life Less Ordinary. (1997 Danny Boyle.) Ewan MacGregor, Cameron Diaz and Holly Hunter in a surreal comedy romance about kidnapping and angels.

The Life of Brian. (1979 Terry Jones) Python's infamous, hilarious and accurate attack on religiosity and half a dozen other worthy targets - in fact just about everything apart form Jesus Christ. There are so many good points to pick up on if you enjoy Python's essentially prep school humour, and I think the crucifixion scene could only be filmed by those who see death as a penultimate reality (See Bonhoefffer and discuss)

The Lives of Others. (von Donnersmark . 2006) See my articles The Lives of Others; a STASI fable or a human truth?)

Mad Max Beyond ThunderDome (1985 George Miller) I love the design and the witty use of Tina Turner, but most of all the liturgy the colony of children use to keep alive their story and hope of salvation. Try producing something like that for all age worship telling of our gospel!

Magnolia (1999 Paul Thomas Anderson) the dying Jason Robarts played a dying man, Tom Cruise played a deeply unattractive human being, William H Macy played an everyman loser (again?) and Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly add to an amazing cast in this complex and challenging movie. It will either inspire you or hugely irritate you, but hang on for with its plague of frogs ending, and ask what kind of liberation (if any) have these characters experienced. And where, if anywhere, is God?

A Man for All Seasons. (1966) Fred Zinnerman from Robert Bolt's play. David Lean. Thomas More told Henry VIII 'I am the King's good servant, but God's first.' And being obedient led inevitably to his martyrdom. Complex, literate and gorgeous to look. Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, John Hurt.

Mask (1985 Peter Bogdanovich) The true story of Rocky Dennis, a 16 year old suffering from the rare disfiguring disease Lionitis that was expected to kill him before he reached his teens. Cher deservedly won Best Actress Oscar playing his mother, and Erick Stolz played Rocky in a film that is emotionally hard but ultimately rewarding.

Michael (1996) Nora Ephron. John Travolta as an overweight, womanising, charming slob, who is also, as it happens, the Archangel Michael.

Milk (2009) See Films of 2009

The Mission. (1986 Roland Joffe) This is a big film both visually and theologically, as the gospel of love and the power of the Church militant collide in the Latin American jungle. There is a wonderful early sequence about repentance and forgiveness. The Jeremy Irons and Robert de Niro characters offer extreme solution, but the papal nuncio (Ralph McNally) has to choose the path of painful responsibility rather than attractive purity. At least that is what the closing shot means to me, as McNally stares out at us and silently challenges us to judge him.

Mona Lisa. (1986 Neil Jordan) Bob Hoskins is the ex-con who takes the job of driving prostitute Cathy Tyson, and eventually falls for her. But on his journey he sees her through many eyes, from tramp through lady to slut, always seeing what he most wants to see - well, isn't that how it always is?) but this is also a taut thriller with an engaging lead part for Hoskins.

Monty Python's Life of Brian. see Life of Brian.

Moon. (Jones 2009) See films of the Year 2009

Moulin Rouge. (2002 Baz Luhrmann) 'I will love you till the end of time'. Outrageously brilliant, extravagantly romantic, unique and successful reinvention of the musical. Just enjoy it.

Mystic Pizza (1988 Donald Petrie) A coming of age movie about three young women (including Julia Roberts) rather than the usual male protagonists, which reverses some stereotypes (one of the girls loves having sex with her boyfriend, but doesn't want to be tied down by marriage. An obvious issue opener for a girls group - but why shouldn't young men face up to these issues as well?

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This faithful version of C. S. Lewis's confused and medieval version of Christianity left me depressed and concerned that those who enjoy the movie (and it is enjoyable) might think it had spiritual lessons for today. (See my special rant Jesus, the Lion King? below)

Near Dark. (1987 Katherine Bigelow) Brings the vampire movie and the Western together, with shocking impact. This modern take on vampirism is worth looking at, and comparing with Abel Ferrera's 1995 The Addiction.

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 Wes Craven) Watch out for the classic mythological and psychological themes ands symbols; observe how it taps into typical adolescent anxieties, consider its very conservative morality; enjoy Johnny Depp in a very early role - and let it scare the living theories out of you. The first and best of the bunch.

Nil By Mouth. (Gary Oldman). Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke tell it how it is, horrifically, to be trapped by alcohol and abuse in this searing film.

One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest. (1975 Milos Forman.) A man comes into the world of the asylum, filled with people imprisoned internally and externally, dumb, crippled, damaged, frightened, dependant, depressed and controlled by the 'carers' in charge. He gives them respect, hope, stimulus, autonomy - he even gets the dumb to speak. He leads patients out into the real world, where they are taken to be doctors and psychiatrists; takes them fishing; allows them to be free, if only for a while, from their dominators and definers. The powers that-be turn on him. Billy betrays him, and then - when the Pharisees exert pressure, kills himself. Mc Murphy is destroyed (his body remains but his spirit is gone) but the big man moves the stone and breaks out into new life. The spirit of McMurphy lives in him. Jesus was persecuted for blasphemy. McMurphy is guilty of statutory rape - sex with an under-age girl. Today we call that child sexual abuse. Blasphemy carries little shock value today, but was the crime of Jesus as shocking to his peers as McMurphy's is to us? Is Child Sexual Abuse the closest we have to 1st century blasphemy? We certainly respond to it with murderous rage. Watch and see if you agree that story parallels the passion. I am certain that Ken Kesey did not write his book, nor Milos Forman make the film thinking of Frank McMurphy Christ, the Nurses as Pharisees, Billy as Judas or Chief Broom as Peter, but for me (using my post-modernist licence) they provide a powerful and challenging way to see the passion of Christ.

Pale Rider. (1985) Clint Eastwood directed and starred as a kind of 'supernatural Shane'.
Pretentious? OK, but there are some good bits, including mature advise about what to do when a minor falls for the youth leader/pastor/curate.

Parenthood (1989 Ron Howard) I first saw this in Norway with English dialogue but Norwegian subtitles. Unfortunately, the audience read the punch line laughs before the actors had finished saying them and their laughter drowned them out for me. So I saw it again back in England. This multi-stranded comedy has an All American Happy Ending (it was directed by Ron Howard, after all) but contains plenty of funny and usable episodes about our most difficult relationships and the sticky reality of adolescence. With Steve Martin, Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, Mary Steenburgen, Martha Plimpton and Dianne Wiest.

Pleasantville. (1998 Gary Ross) Two teenagers of the 90's find themselves in a version of the 1950's that resembles Eden before the fall. ' A provocative, complex and surprisingly un-nostalgic parable wrapped in the beguiling guise of a high concept comedy' wrote Joe Leydon in Variety. Right on. Toby Maguire, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, Reese Witherspoon and William H Macy add to the joys. See Pleasantville: let me out of the Garden (films of 2010)

The Pledge (2001 Sean Penn) Jack Nicholson stops playing Jack the lad in this truthful and moving story of a cop, Jerry Black) who swears, 'by his soul's' salvation', to find the killer of a murdered child. and is doomed by this pledge. This is a brave, rare, depressing film, taking loss and grief and failure head on and the rich cast, including Helen Mirren, Micky Rourke, Robin Wright Penn, Vanessa Redgrave and Sam Shephard, do not detract from the purity of line and performance achieved by Penn and Nicholson.

The Proposition (2004, GB/Australia, Lesli Glinka Glatter) Written by Nick Cave, with Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Emily Watson, this is as hard, driving and deep as many of Cave’s songs, an unlovely film about an unlovely subject - colonial violence and corruption. Despite the violence and melodrama, however, it contains some finely nuanced writing and performances.

Pulp Fiction (1994 Quentin Tarantino) Never mind the brilliant interweaving of four stories and time frames, the wit and knowingness, courage and sheer technical brilliance of the script, photography, direction and acting; this films centres on a miracle and how recognising it redeems one hood while failing to recognise it condemns another.

Priest. (1994) Antonia Bird Written by Jimmy McGovern this maybe throws to many issues into the pot (liberation theology, priestly celibacy, homosexuality, child abuse and the Roman Catholic hierarchy's response to all of the above) but it certainly keeps them bubbling. Linus Roache is the Curate, Tom Wilkinson is his Parish Priest. and Robert Carlyle is his lover. Adam Mars-Jones recommended it to anyone who had never heard the words 'piss off' and 'out of my diocese' in the same sentence. The US Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights condemned it as 'designed to stick it to the Catholic Church' and attempted to prevent its distribution. That might be recommendation enough for some.

The Reader. (2010) The Reader is about many things, but I wonder if one of them is abuse? A 15 year old boy is seduced by a woman in her thirties. The relationship lasts for months, and then, without a word, she leaves. We may think that such a seduction is every 15 year old boy's fantasy, but this boy turns into a man who is emotionally crippled. In a film, and original novel, that address deep issues of guilt and shame I wonder why this aspect has been so overlooked. Is it simply hidden in the darkness of the shadows cast by the Holocaust, a darkness so deep that we cannot distinquish other shadows within it?

The Right Stuff. (1983 Philip Kaufman) John Glen ran for the office of President, and Ronald Reagan accused Glen of being a 'celluloid hero', forgetting that Glen was one of the real life heroes of this film, a revisionist history of the early NASA exploits written by Tom Wolfe and done full justice on the screen by Kaufman. This is a big, beautiful, heroic and surprisingly funny film, illuminated by Ed Harris as John Glen, Dennis Quaid, Scot Glen and Sam Shepard - as Chuck Yeager, the finest pilot in the USA and the man with the 'right stuff' but the wrong background for NASA. And why did the two Brians, Close and Clough never manage our national cricket and soccer teams?

The Road. (John Hilcoat 2010) See On the Road and a Serious Man.

Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Ok, so Costner's Robin is as charismatic as a carrot, but Alan Rickman's Sheriff plays the villain as if he were a lover (just as he plays lovers as villains, a trick he must have learnt from James Mason) and Morgan Freeman (the Magnificent) provides the real spiritual centre as the Moorish warrior and healer.

Roxanne. (1987) Fred Schepisi. Steve Martin wrote and updated Cyrano de Bergerac and takes the Cyrano role, carrying it off with flair and wit. Not as moving as Rappaneau's 1990 film, but funnier and very enjoyable.

Secret's and Lies. (1995 Mike Leigh). Award winning portrait of a family finding redemption through sharing its pain ands secrets, with Timothy Spall, Brenda Blythin and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. (see also Life is Sweet, 1990).

A Serious Man (Coen Brothers 2009) See On the Road and a Serious Man.

The Shawshank Redemption. (1992 Frank Darabont) Tim Robins is the banker wrongly imprisoned for 20 years. Morgan Freeman is the lifer who shows him how to survive. There are some wonderful moments and the getting of wisdom is not all clichéd.

Shine. (1996 Scott Hicks) David Helfgott's true story in which an eccentric individual acts 'as a lightning rod for the values and prejudices of everyone he meets - and is brought back into the community through love'. (Sight & Sound)

Shutter Island (Martin Scorcese (2010) see Movies of 2010

A Simple Plan (1998 Sam Raimi) One greedy, and oh so tempting decision leads to the relentless unfolding of a tragedy, as morality and people fall. With Bill Paxton, Billie Bob Thornton (showing that Slingblade was not his only card) and Bridget Fonda. This is beautifully acted and deeply moving, and the question remains; what would you have done in treh same situation?

Sin City. (USA Director Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller.) If Narnia had not celebrated Christmas for a hundred years, Sin City may never have had one. This world of true spiritual darkness leaves men ( and I do mean men) with no guiding lights save their own corruptible perceptions of honour, vengeance, loyalty, sentimental love and the pursuit of loveless sex and pleasure without moral boundaries. This and The Kingdom of Heaven make a contrasting pair; and the difference being the redeeming hope that faith in humanity and/or the Kingdom brings.

Sling Blade. (1990) Billy Bob Thornton's calling card; he wrote directed and starred in this challenging and moving movie with a six sided Oedipal triangle.

Slumdog Millionaire (UK 2008 Tony Boyle) See Slumdog Millionaire; the Fairytale.

Spiderman/Spiderman 2. and 3 Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, learning that 'with great power comes great responsibility' (in fact with any degree of power comes the same degree of responsibility). Spiderman's Christ like nature is shown in the personal cost of his public powers, and vividly in his crucifixion in S2. Our understanding and forgiveness is sought for the 'villain' in the same film, played by Alfred Mollina (why is it that most American film-stars feel that they can't afford to play villains, and studios have to import British or European actors to take the money? Do find exceptions and discuss.) I didn't think the 'darkside'theme in S3 worked as well.

Star Wars; & The Empire Strikes Back, (1977 George Lucas, 1980, Irvin Kershner) I lost faith after the first two episodes of cowboys and Indians in space playing out the eternal battle between good and evil, with good always triumphing in the ends through spiritual dedication and vulnerability. Even stripling youths, mystic Muppets and teddy bears can defeat the mighty war machines of evil if the Force is with them.

The Straight Story. (1999 David Lynch) Richard Farnsworth recreates the real life 300 mile journey an elderly man undertook riding his only available transport, a lawn mower (ok so it is an American style lawn mower) to make peace with his brother before either of them died.. David Lynch amazed the film world with this perfectly straight retelling of an simple act of reconciliation. The 300 mile gulf between the two brothers, and the determination and courage tit took to bridge it is a perfect parable. This is a visually as well as morally beautiful film.

Superman Returns ( US 2006) Superman returns with style - and grace - in this return to form for the Superman franchise. Overtly religious in its symbolism, it is family fun with a powerful and attractive message.

Taken.... See 'Taken for a ride?'

Thelma and Louise (1991 Ridley Scott) Is this Scott's finest film? It is much more than a feminist road movie- while still being the best feminist road movie ever - and Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Brad Pitt and Harvey Keitel bring the pathos and humour, courage and love and gritty realism of Callie Khouri's Oscar winning script to the screen. (This is a Percy Main Production; and that is a Geordie Joke.)

Thirst. (Park Chan-Wook 2009) See films of the Year 2009

Three burials of Melquiades Estrada (US/France, Tommy Lee Jones, 2005) This is a stark powerful morality tale of loyalty, integrity and redemption, played out of the Tex-Mex border. Tommy Lee Jones was a room-mate of Al Gore at Harvard, and his intelligence shines through his direction and acting, as he plays the simple ranch foreman who keeps his promises.

Tootsie. (1982 Sydney Pollack) Dustin is superb as the actor so desperate for job that he becomes a female star in a dreadful soap. Jessica Lange is the woman he loves, but who thinks he is a woman. Teri Garr is the woman who loves him, but doesn't know what to think. He thinks he is a better person when he is a woman than when he is a man.

The Tree of Life. (Terrence Malick 2011) see longer article, Sitting under the Tree of Life.

Truly, Madly, Deeply. (1990 Anthony Minghella) Hailed as the RSC ' 'Ghost' is really does provide a master-class in acting from Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Bill Paterson and Michael Maloney but also, and much more importantly, traces the stages of grief with accuracy and wisdom. A wonderful film to use with pastors and other bereavement supporters, but do have plenty of tissues!

The Truman Show. (1998) Peter Weir. Jim Carey (thank God) sets aside his gurning in this parable, playing the Tru(e)man and discovering that his whole life is a carefully and expensively maintained lie. He has to give up his life in order to find it. in this cheerfully subversive (near) masterpiece. I resist that fact that his 'creator' and controller is called Christos.

United 93. (2006, USA Paul Greengrass.) ‘Sober, unconditional film that is at once dramatically involving and morally challenging’ (Phillip French. The Observer) Maybe it took a British director to stand back and record non-judgementally and unsentimentally the events on the hijacked Flight 93 on 9/11 as it headed towards destruction, and the flight control and military command centre powerless to intervene. I noticed that the hijackers and the passenger pray - but for different outcomes.

Wallace & Grommet: The Curse of the Were-rabbit (UK/USA, Directors Nick Park/Steve Box.) . US budget + British comic genius triumphs for the second time in a year. Nothing remotely religious (despite the Vicar) but good wholesome and therefore holy laughter rule. And how good to see real models, on real sets, lit by real lights instead of computer graphics! (So maybe there is something incarnational about it after all?)

Wall -E see article 'an Axiom for our Times' below.

The War Zone. (1998) Tim Roth. This is a bleak brave film about child sexual abuse made by those who claim to know it from the inside. As hard to watch as it ought to be. Ray Winstone, Tilda Swanson, Lara Belmont.

When We Were Kings. (1996 Leon Gast) The 1974 Ali/Foreman fight mined for all its symbolic, iconic, literary and pugilistic riches. 'A genuinely inspiring film about a real 20th century hero.'

Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jones 2010) See longer article.

Unravelling the rainbow of Hero

2011-08-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Background.

Zhang Yimou's 2002 film Hero is set 2000 years ago in China and presents itself as a martial arts movie, building on the world-wide success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). This is no homage to the genre, however, but profoundly subverts it in a complex essay in light, love and morality.

Zhang Yimou trained in Beijing's Film Academy as a cinematographer, and formed part of the '5th Generation' of Chinese film makers, along with Chen Kaige, for whom he was camera man on Yellow Earth (84). He also shot Wu Tiangming's Lao Jing (87) before going on to direct eight of his own films in China during the late 1980's and through the 1990's. His star and muse then was Gong Li, and the films they made together range from the noir gangster genre of Shanghai Triad, to the domestic melodrama of Raise the Red Lantern and the social critique of Qiu Ju. These films won international acclaim for their star and director. His recent films have followed Qui Ju in their focus on modern China's social concerns. Zhang Yimou has always used colour with bravura, from his camera work on Yellow Earth through Red Sorgum, Raise the Red Lantern and Shanghai Triad, and now he has brought this to powerful effect in Hero. When making this film Zhang Yimou worked with the Hong Kong based director of photography Christopher Doyle and Hong Kong stars Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Donnie Yen plus Zhang Ziyi, Jet Li and the musician Tan Dun. Christopher Doyle, Zhang Ziyi and Tam Dun were all applauded for their work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Much as I enjoyed Ang Lee's film, Hero impresses me and moves me more profoundly. This is perhaps the most beautiful film I have ever seen. The bravura use of colour to separate the different plot lines and provide a useful visual mnemonic is given deeper meaning because it is illustrates the character not only of the individuals but of the view of humanity implicit in each segment. This film is concerned with what it means to be human, so part of my deep enjoyment comes from finding within it values and themes close to my Christian heart.

The Plot in four stories - Red, Blue, White and Green.

The provincial king of Qui plans to conquer and unite the other six provinces of China. For ten years he has lived in fear of three assassins; two men, Sky and Broken Sword, and a woman; Snow.

Three years previously Snow and Broken Sword had stormed his palace and Broken Sword nearly killed him. Since then the King has allowed no-one but his council and servants within 100 yards and worn his armour constantly.

Nameless, a lowly local prefect, has killed Sky in single combat. For this he is generously rewarded and allowed into the Kings presence - at a distance of twenty yards. He and presents the King with the swords of Snow and Broken Sword. As it is well known that these swords would never be parted this is proof that their owners are also dead.

The King therefore rewards Nameless ten fold and allows him within ten yards. The King asks Nameless how he managed this feat and is told the Red Story - Red because in this section of the film the two assassins and their servant girl Moon's costumes and the set's palette are predominantly red. Nameless tells the king that three years ago Snow slept with Sky for one night, and Snow and Broken Sword have not spoken since, communicating only through the servant girl Moon. This Red story is about Broken Sword's feelings of betrayal, jealously and revenge and Snow's feelings of rejection and murderous rage, all deliberately exacerbated by Nameless. Reminded of Snow's betrayal Broken Sword has sex with his servant girl Moon, using and abusing her devotion in order to punish Snow. He tells Snow that she is 'longer in his heart'. Snow kills Broken Sword. Moon attacks Snow, who treats her with distain, and impatiently kills her too. This scene becomes suffused with blood red.

The King's army is at hand and Nameless arrests Snow and duels with her, surrounded by the Army, killing her easily, so undone and remorseful is she by killing her lover in such foolish anger.

The Red story introduces the art of calligraphy and its links with sword fighting skills. Broken Sword has been studying calligraphy - and become a master. Nameless found him in a calligraphy school and asked him to draw the character for Sword on an eight-foot canvas. This ideogram, painted in red, is presented to the King by Nameless. In it, says Nameless, lies the secret of both arts, calligraphy and sword-fighting. There are nineteen different ways to draw the ideogram for sword - and this is the twentieth. The king cannot decipher it, and Nameless says that he can only partially do so. The King tells Nameless that when he has conquered all of the provinces there will be only one language, a simple calligraphy for all to understand, so that people can communicate easily and live in peace.

But the King does not believe Nameless's Red story. He has encountered Snow and Broken Arrow, and seen in them too much courage and strength, honour and integrity to believe that they were so 'emotionally frail'.

The King believes that Nameless and Sky had become allies, and that Nameless himself seeks revenge on him. He believes that after ten years of trying and failing to assassinate the King Sky had joined in Nameless's plot, deliberately given his life and thereby earning Nameless the kudos to enter the king's presence, and the possibility of killing him. 'What gallantry and courage,' the King muses, 'to give his life so that I might die.' But Nameless then had to kill Snow or Broken Sword to get within 10 paces of the king.

In this, the King's Blue story, Nameless persuades Snow and Broken Sword that he does have the skill to kill the King from 10 paces. But his skill with the sword is so fine that he can also deliver what appears to be a fatal blow, but which, by avoiding all major organs, wound rather than kill. The Army, witnessing this blow delivered by Nameless to either Broken Sword of Snow, would believe it was fatal. Nameless asks if one of them will appear to die, even thought risking death, to gain Nameless so close an audience with the King? They agree. As they approach the army Snow stabs Broken Arrow so that he cannot duel with Nameless and risk being killed. She strikes an instant before he can stab her for the same reason. Each is willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the other, and the emotions in this story centre on their calm, serene, selfless loving and sacrificial. This Blue story fits with the King's perceptions of the lover's characters. Snow is not distracted during her duel, but calmly urges Nameless to strike the necessary blow, 'Make your move now' she whispers to Nameless, while still giving a convincing display of her fighting skills. But Snow does die, and although Broken Sword must fight Nameless to fulfil the demands of honour, neither will kill the other. Broken Sword kills himself, gifting his sword to Nameless, so that the swords and the souls of the two lovers will be united in death as in life. This Blue story is based on the Kings admiration for his adversaries.

The King had told Nameless that the Red story underestimated the Kings perception. Nameless now tells the King that his Blue story underestimates Broken Sword. He now tells the White Story. When Nameless tries to recruit Broken Sword and Snow into his plan Broken Sword tells him that as long as he is alive he will not allow anyone to kill the King. Snow knows that three years ago Broken Sword was in a position to do so and refused; she still resents this, and says that she will help Nameless if he will help her attack Broken Sword. He does so and Broken Sword is wounded, freeing Snow to go to the duel, and receive the cunning blow from Nameless.

Broken Sword tells Nameless the Green story. In this he meets and falls in love with Snow, the daughter of a general slain by the King of Qui. She is sworn to avenge him. Broken Sword learns the twin arts of sword play and calligraphy, and through then a truthful simplicity of heart. Snow tells him that when the King is dead she will take him home, to a place where there are no swords or swordsmen. For Snow's sake storms the palace with her, cutting their way through three thousand guards until Snow can hold the door to the palace and Broken Sword can confront the King. The Palace is swathed in green silk, and the two men fight in the billowing confusion. As they fight the silk curtains begin to fall, until the two of them stand with a clear view. The King rushes Broken Sword, who parries him and draws blood from the Kings neck. The King knows that Broken Sword held back from what could have been a fatal blow. We were told early on in the film that Snow had slept with Sky three years previously. I wonder if that was in response to Broken Sword's reneging on his promise? In a well crafted narrative the logic of ths tory bleeds our beyond what we see and hear.

Why did you not kill him? asks Nameless. 'Have you given the last ten years of your life to hatred and the desire for revenge?' asks Broken Sword. 'Completely' answers Nameless. 'Here is what calligraphy has taught me' says Broken Sword 'what is in my heart is in these two words.' He draws them in the sand with his sword. They are 'Our Land.' He rides off, leaving his sword for Nameless. The servant girl Moon tells him that in all the time she has been with Broken Sword he had never been wrong. 'Consider his words' she says. According to Broken Sword 'Only the King has the power to end the killing and bring peace by uniting the land. Compared to the greater good one man's pain in nothing.'

'No one has ever grasped what I am trying to do' says the King, when he hears this story. 'Even my court regards me as a tyrant.' He turns to the ideogram. 'To have been understood by such a man as Broken Sword allows me to face death without fear.' Now the King understands the ideogram for the first time; how the swordsman unites with his sword until he no longer needs it to kill; a blade of grass is deadly in his hands. But then the true warrior moves beyond violence and seeks only to embrace all people and live together in peace. The ultimate ideal is when the warrior lays down his sword. The King gives his sword to Nameless and turns his back. Nameless does not kill him. He drops the sword.

Snow learns from her servant that the king lives and confronts Broken Sword.

'Is Our Land all that you have in your heart' she demands.

That; and you.' he replies.

How can I believe you? She asks.

'Is the sword the only answer' says Broken Sword as Snow attacks him. Broken Sword does not parry her lethal blow, dropping his sword as she strikes. Appalled, Snow cries 'Why did you not defend yourself?'

'So that you would finally believe me' says Broken Sword, and dies.

Snow screams with grief and the realisation that she was wrong. They are transported to a high point on the rocks and Snow gathers Broken Sword in her arms and tells him she will take him home, to a place without borders. She thrusts the sword further, through his body and into her own, killing herself.

In the Palace the army gathers and the courtiers scream at the King for permission to execute Nameless. 'This is the sacred law they' cry in unison. 'If you are to unite the land then we must execute him.' The King sadly gestures his agreement and a storm of arrows flies at Nameless as he calmly waits for his own death. He dies an assassin, but saluted by the warriors who carry his bier and buried as a hero.

We are told that Qui united the provinces, and that even now, two thousand years later, the Chinese still speak of their country as Our Land.

Means, Motifs and Motives.

The colours speak clearly to me.

The passionate Red is of betrayal, jealously and revenge, rejection, murderous rage, and abuse. Even Moon is abused by her master and killed by her mistress. But this story is not the truth.

Blue is used here to signal courage and strength, honour and gallantry, calmness and serenity, selfless love and sacrificial. These are admirable; but this story is not true either.

White may be the truth. The colour White contains all colours, including red, and it is true that Broken Sword betrays Snow's desire for revenge. Snow does attack him in rage and kills him. But all the blue virtues are also here. And something else. The Green story is about something new, about spiritual growth as Broken Sword turns from murderous revenge, gives up not only the sword, but also the way of violence- even if it costs him his life.

The green shoots of hope take root in Nameless too, and he does not kill the vulnerable king. The King has seen the living green in the blood red ideogram, and through it understands and values himself better than before, accepting the possibility of death and making himself vulnerable to his assassin.

And Nameless, always clothed in black, gives up his ten-year quest, and his life, to let the King live in the hope that green peace will flourish. He knows this is a costly decision; it will cost many lives; and his own will be the first.

Nameless's corpse is not seen. We do not see the arrows pierce him. We see the space where he stood against the Palace Wall, a space that is surrounded by hundreds of arrows, but is empty. His body is covered in red silk for his funeral, a hero's funeral. The soldiers salute him as they carry his bier, but who would declare him a hero, if not the King?

Is there another colour? Yes. The first fight scene, between Nameless and Sky, is largely grey. Does this have meaning?

Is there another Hero? Consider Moon. In Ang Lee's 'Crouching Tiger...' Zhang Ziyi played an arrogant princess. In this film she plays a humble servant girl. Only in the Red sequence do we see her being violent, as she attacks snow, but we may not believe the Red story to be true. No-where else does she allow her obvious love for Broken Sword come between her master and Snow. It is Moon, speaking to Nameless, with great humility and conviction and telling him that in all her time serving Broken Sword he has never been wrong, who perhaps tips the balance in Nameless mind to accept Broken Sword's final words to him. I hope that she finds a home in the school of calligraphy!

Motives

There have been suggestions that the film is an apologia for totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and a paean to the present Chinese Government. But is the King a totalitarian? His courtiers have certainly seen him as a tyrant - he tells us so. But surely totalitarians do not hand their swords to would-be assassins? And it was the King who told the Blue story, surely a reflection of his own idealistic aspirations. Broken Sword understood the King's higher ambition of peace through unity. That is why he did not execute him. And the King comes to understand the highest virtue of the warrior - to seek peace above all and to lay down his sword. The question is, when?

The film is clear that there is a high cost to pay for this ultimate peace; and most of those who pay it will not do so voluntarily. That could be said of the historical formation of any united kingdom, including our own, and of many contemporary foreign policies, including our own. The question of ends and means hangs over any polity and there are no simple answers between the poles of pacifism at one end - taking no violent action either in aggression or defence - and at the other a totalitarian certainty that our ends do justify whatever means are necessary. The ethics of Just War provide a matrix that is used between these poles by those who seek some moral justification for causing suffering to others, including the innocent, intentionally or unintentionally - but inevitably.

Motivation is important. Hero is clear about motives. It is not so explicit about who the hero or heroes are. The Chinese ideogram for Hero does not differentiate between the singular and plural. Could the King be one of them? If so it would not be because he was a totalitarian, but because under his armour beat the heart of an idealist, but one who accepted the cost of his decisions, accepted responsibility for his actions, and was willing to stand under the judgement of others, including the assassins. Totalitarians accept no judgement but their own. I am reminded of the last lingering shot of The Mission where the Papal Nuncio, played by Ray McAnally, meets our gaze and silently challenges us to judge him for taking responsibility for his effective action as opposed to the pure but ineffectual brother Gabriel. We have to choose between purity and responsibility, as Alistair MacIntyre once said.

Motifs

As someone brought up in the Christian culture I see rich Christian images and themes here. The willing sacrifices of Sky and Snow as they trust themselves to Nameless's sword strike; Snow and Broken Sword doing what they can to spare their beloved the risk of dying in combat with Nameless; Broken Sword dropping his Sword and dying to save Snow from the hatred and revenge that rule her heart. All of these have Christian echoes, and I am also reminded of the pieta as Snow cradles her saviour's body in her arms. The courtiers demand the death of one man for the sake of the people, as the Pharisees and crowd demand the death of Jesus in the gospels under another sacred law. The empty space where Nameless died can be seen as an empty tomb, and his fate, to be executed as a criminal but then revered as a hero, can be compared to that of Jesus. Above all is the vision of the costly peace, a vision embraced at last by the heroes, a peace that can only be made real in a new Kingdom. This is a peace worth dying for. If the Kingdom of God can be seen as a Kingdom of values, then it is worth asking what values these heroes are pursuing. I also warm to a film in which the plot is driven by character. It maybe that there is something profoundly incarnational here, an honouring of motive and autonomy, a determination that our lives and spiritual identity should not be shaped by the stars, accident or intervention, and should not be reactive, but proactive. This is so rare in the movies that it may confuse those who are accustomed to looking for plot rather than character driven action and denouement.

There are a few moments in the film when the protagonists appear to find serenity and peace, and are beatified by them. When Sky rushes Nameless in the opening duel; when Snow wounds Broken Sword to prevent him duelling Nameless and looks back at him for what may be the last time; when Broken Sword drops his sword during their final confrontation, knowing that Snow's blow will kill him; and possibly when the King turns his back on Nameless to contemplate the calligraphy - and possibly his death; and when Nameless faces the massed arrows of the King's guard in the moment before he dies. Each of them has come to terms with their own death, offered up for the sake of what they believe, or a person they love.

This self-emptying is identified as a characteristic action of Christ by Paul and named kenosis in Philippians 2:7 '(Christ) emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,' stripping himself, even to his death on the cross. If we want to stay with New Testament Greek words, choosing them because of the added layers of meaning provided by their scriptural use and context, we could say that each of these heroes became Kalos, (beautiful/good) undergoing metanoia, (transformation or turning to a new path) in a moment of Krisis (judgement). Their aphesis (radical letting go) led to their anastasis (rising up, standing up, resurrection).

Hero is profoundly subversive of the kung fu, wuxia martial arts and Western cowboy genres, in-so-far as they are all driven by the search for honourable vengeance. Broken Sword's enlightenment, presented as his ultimate spiritual maturity as a swordsman, calligrapher and human being, is manifested by his renunciation of vengeance, no matter what that implies about his loss of honour, or life. Nameless also accepts this renunciation of vengeance and violence; and does so by listening not only to his ally, Broken Sword, but also to his enemy, the King of Qui. This is shocking and counter-cultural in the East, so it may not be surprising that Hero has not received a warm reception in China itself. But even Western critics have warmed to the cinematography and performances rather than to the theme. Zhang Yimou may have lost some audiences by pursuing this line. Broken Sword has to lose his own life in order to convince his beloved that he is serious.

Christian and human Virtues

Hero is not a thesis, it is a film about people, about love and responsibly, jealousy and betrayal, about truthfulness and integrity, human failure and human triumph. It is also very beautiful. I am happy to apply Keat's judgment that beauty is truth, truth beauty. This film is often suffused with beauty, sometimes a terrible tragic beauty. And so is life. St Paul called on believers to look for, recognise and celebrate the things of God in the world, wherever we find them. As St Paul said (in Eugene Peterson's translation of the passage known as the virtues in Philippians Chapter 4) we will 'do best by filling our minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious - the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.'

The more I see Hero the more I am moved by its virtues and inspired to praise it.

Jesus, The Lion King?

2011-08-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Jesus, the Lion King?

Narnia; The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is a very enjoyable film; but does it help communicate the Christian faith? I don't think it can be seen as anything other than Christian, but I do believe that it presents a very outdated and unhelpful vision of Christianity and Christ.

The C. S Lewis book and film are both religiously motivated and there is simply too much religious language and content to pretend that it is anything other than Christian propaganda. Sons of Adam, daughters of Eve, banishment of Christmas, the sacrificial death of Aslan the sinless one, to pay for the sin of the guilty, and Aslan's subsequent (and predicted) resurrection, all speak clearly of Christianity to anyone who has ever been to Sunday School.

The film sweeps us onwards with great verve and charm, aided by a great cast of adults and children, the beauty of the New Zealand landscape and state of the art animatronics and CGI. But a saga needs to be rooted, just as Lewis's friend J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of Rings was rooted in and supported by a coherently created world. Tolkien complained that Narnia was a careless, lazy creation. It has no mythological or historical back-story, no context, or joined up theology. We know that Lewis had little time for formal theology, but that was a weakness when he came to write a spiritual and religious allegory.

Early on in the film and book we are told that there has been no Christmas in Narnia for a hundred years, and so winter has ruled. But we are not told who has the power to banish Christmas, to deny the incarnation, and silence the gospel of love. Is it the wicked White Witch, ruling in place of the exiled

Lion King Aslan? We know she is evil, but are not told the source of her power. . If the Aslan is the Christ why had he disappeared, and why did he need the four children to come into his world to redeem it? Surely the incarnation is about Christ coming into our world?

Narnia was conceived after the triumph of the Second World War, and during the last days of the British Empire, (1950 - 1956) so Aslan's great roar could well be seen as that of the British Imperial lion. Christians are used to seeing the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John represented by an angel, a lion, a bull and an eagle. St Mark is represented by a lion because his gospel is thought to emphasis Jesus' kingship, and/or because the lion is seen as the King of the beasts; the natural world paying homage to Jesus, lord of all creation. The book of Revelation refers to Jesus as the Lion of Judah triumphing over evil, and one translation of psalm 22 verses 15 - 17 reads

'Dogs have surrounded me, a bands of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced me like a lion, my hands and my feet',

a verse taken by some as prophetic of the death of Jesus. In medieval times it was believed that lion cubs were born dead, and only came to life when their father breathed life into them, three days later. Many people today look forward to the day when God's kingdom shall reign, and the lion, no longer ferocious, will lie down with the lamb. So there is plenty of biblical and historical symbolism for those in the know to connect with here.

But this is a film aimed at children, and they will not deconstruct the Lion image, but take it straight, seeing this Christ-like figure as a powerful, beautiful, wise and (usually) gentle lion. But he is, none the less, a lion, and a giant at that. Aslan is a willing sacrifice; yes, but he knows that he will be resurrected, living on to rip out the life of the evil witch.

I have a more than a little difficulty reconciling this image with the suffering servant and prince of peace, born in a barn and suffering execution at the hands of evil men, asking God to forgive them, even as he dies.

C. S. Lewis has been described as a monarchist, militaristic and imperialistic misogynist. Even his admirers admit most of this to be true, but excuse him, saying that we should not be surprised or offended. He was, after all, a motherless child from the age of ten, brought up in boy's schools, having rather difficult relationships with women; he lived as an Oxbridge bachelor before, during and after World War Two, a place stuffed with monarchist, militaristic and imperialistic misogynists.

He was also a medievalist, an expert on the Courtly Love romances. . From the viewpoint of the 21st century many see these tales providing false and pseudo-religious validation for male violence, glorifying both the domination of women by men and (perversely) female adultery of the emotional if not physical kind. . If this environment shaped Lewis, he chose to be shaped. He may have been a child of his time and place, but are his attitudes relevant or helpful for children today?

Back in Narnia the arrival of Father Christmas Claus to give the child heroes and heroines weapons to use in the coming battle raises other questions. The Church militant, the Body of Christ here on earth, is not the church military. Some of us have given up Crusades and Holy Wars. Spiritual Warfare is just that, spiritual, not a call to actual arms. That may be easier for us to see now, after Vietnam and the invasion of Iraq, than when Lewis wrote his books after the end of World War 2, but is it coincidental that the American Christian Right provided the money to bring this film to our screens now?

Similarly the view of monarchy has also been through some changes since 1950. Few of us see monarchy as divinely ordained or essential in a Christian country, so the crowning of our four protagonists at the end of the film seems rather anachronistic.

As far as the misogyny is concerned we may now be prepared to see the epitome of evil portrayed as a woman as simply equal rights for women. But Lewis was very particular about this woman. The White Witch is not a daughter of Eve, and may in fact be Lilith. . In Jewish demonology Lilith is the first wife of Adam, created with him, not from him. She lives in the ruins with the wildcats and hyenas having rejected Adam because he insisted she be subservient to him, to literally lie under him. She cannot bear children herself and roams the earth seeking children to devour. Lewis knew all this, and at the end of the battle in Narnia the Witch meets her end lying beneath Aslan, the male Saviour Lion King.

As for the 'good' girls, we have to wait for The Last Battle, the final volume, to discover the rather cruel fate Lewis dishes out to Susan.

Enjoy the film, for there is much to enjoy, but if your children watch it be prepared to face - or even encourage - some awkward questions. Remember, this is not the Gospel, even if it does show children the Christian virtues of large-heartedness, faithfulness, forgiveness and self sacrifice.

It is easy to watch this movie, and accept it uncritically, but it might be better to pick out the good, untangle some of its confused religious symbolism and know that this is not how Christ or Christianity has to be seen in the 21st century.

Beowulf: a two dimensional hero?

2011-08-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Beowulf is a retelling of the oldest English poem still in existence, a thousand years old. Beowulf is a Scandinavian hero, played by Ray Winston, but the whole cast are filmed in Motion Capture, like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, where their movements and expressions are filmed and then digitalised - and changed, so Ray looks 8 inches taller and 25 years younger, and fit.

Ancient warriors such as Beowulf wanted to find fame and immortality through their strength and courage, killing their enemies, be they in human or dragon shape. Their glory lasted for as long as the bards sang of their exploits. Beowulf is up for that. He’s on the glory trail and comes to the rescue of an old Danish king, Hrothgar, whose halls are being attacked by a man-eating monster, Grendel. Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, and when his dragon-mother takes revenge on Beowulf’s men he goes to her lair to kill her too. Grendels’ mother is a shape-shifting golden dragon, played by Angelina Joilie, who needs no digitalisation to make her look gorgeous and glamorous. Glamour is something Beowulf knows all about; he has the glamour of a hero about him. But the word glamour once meant the power to bewitch. And within her cave Beowulf is bewitched and seduced by Grendel’s mother, now in the shape of a gilded water-nymph, and by the fame, riches and the immortality she promises him. We are told that old king Hrothgar had given into the same temptation years before, and the monster Grendel is actually his child, a hideous grotesque, filled with the rage of the child rejected and unloved by his father. The old king needs this monster to die. So Beowulf is recruited, but then he falls into the same golden honey trap.

The new script is co-written by Neil Gaiman, who also co-wrote Stardust. But Stardust was confectionary; this is rather more substantial. J R R Tolkien was an expert on this kind of literature, and the new script changes the old story, picking up on J R R Tolkien’s insight that it is all about fathers and sons. Here two sons are betrayed by their fathers at the very moment of their conception, the first by the old King, and then Beowulf, who also fathers a child by the golden dragon. The time comes when he too has to face his misbegotten offspring.

The new film can be seen in 3D, and 3D is oddly appropriate, because a third dimension has been added to the old style saga by its Christian author. Although it’s set in the pagan 6th Century the poem was actually written by an English Christian, some 400 years later. So the 3rd dimension added to the pagan saga is the Christian view of how to be a human. In the film we are told that the Christian God doesn’t want us to achieve immortality by strength, courage and violence. Not to be a heroes, but rather to be willing to die, if necessary, as martyrs. Being a martyr is much less fun than being a hero, its true, but the Christian promise is not fame, but real eternal life.

In the film Beowulf’s final act is to try to end the cycle of betrayal and death by killing the dragon-child he conceived with Grendel’s mother, even thought he knows it will cost him his life. So has Beowulf himself become some kind of martyr? Perhaps; but as the film closes his best friend and successor is also being tempted as the golden girl, Grendel’s mother, invites him to join her in the sea.

In the ancient Christian world the sea was the home of chaos, and gold was symbolic of the fading glory of the world. In Seamus Heaney’s translation of the poem, at Beowulf’s funeral his gold is buried gold under gravel, gone to earth/ as useless to men now as it ever was.

So is this just an ancient legend? Or has it something to say to today? Why not, we are no different. We are all tempted. Grendel’s mother, Mephistopheles, Satan, The Father of Lies, The 0% interest rate, fame, wealth, celebrity, we give our tempters many names. But they are all shape shifters, seducers, skilful liars, offering us what we want rather than what we need, and stealing our souls in return. Sleeping with monsters still begets only monsters.

Eric Fromm was a psychoanalyst. In one of his books, called To Have or To Be. Fromm said that the pagan heroes’ achievements are measured by what they have, the trophies of victory, the gold and sex, fame, glory and glamour. But the truly human being, the three dimensional kind, is measured by who they are, by the essence of their being, by the degree to which they share in that which is real and true and eternal, rather than illusory, false and temporal. It takes more courage to be than to have.

So the tragedy of Beowulf shows us the hollowness of those false promises. His story is ancient, but the worship of possessions and fame and glamour, still rules today. And Christians are called to choose to live real three-dimensional lives, lived in the light of Christ, who was no pagan hero. He had nothing, he gave everything, and he was everything.

A ray of Light in The Dark Knight?

2011-08-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

We know from the start that this film is going to explore shades of grey. The pre-credit Warner Brothers’ emblem is not the usual gold and blue shield against a sunny sky, but grey on black. At one level this film is about the moral questions and human dilemmas that fall between reassuring white and black. It is about good and evil; but it is not straightforward. Good people do bad things, sometimes to the people they love and for what they think are good reasons. They do bad things or they allow someone else do them. Is this the good cop, bad cop thing? asks the prisoner in the interrogation room. Not exactly says the good cop, leaving his partner to do his worst. His partner is not a cop.

Heath Ledger is the villain, The Joker, the wild card, the agent of chaos. His anarchy is loosed upon the world like a tsunami, and Ledger holds the screen with a fascinating, intriguing, shocking and dreadfully attractive performance that blows Jack Nicholson’s earlier and celebrated attempt out of the water. One of his first lines is whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger, a huge improvement on the old Norse nostrum, and a warning to us, the audience, that this man is very strange. The film is worth seeing simply for Heath Ledger, without any of the sentiment attached to his death. It is also worth seeing because of the issues it raises, even if it fails to explore them in any real depth. You have nothing to threaten me with; nothing you can do with all your strength taunts The Joker, and in the shadow of 9/11 and 7/7 we in the mighty West know the futility of our nuclear and conventional strength when opposed by the suicide bomber or the terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction in a suitcase. We are still living in the contradiction and uncertainty of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, to quote another line from The Joker.

He also asks why the violent death of an innocent civilian on our streets is given more moral and tragic weight than the deaths of half a dozen of our soldiers in a war zone. Is it, as he suggests, because the soldier’s lives and deaths are part of the plan, the inevitable consequences of our deliberate political and military actions? Is that why we accept these deaths, daily, with regret but not outrage?

Torture is also a tendentious question. Does it make moral sense to torture one person in order to save the lives of many? If we choose not to use all the means available to us to extract the information needed to save them are they simply paying for our moral scruples, to salve our consciences?

Jon Barnes’ review of The Dark Knight in the Times Literary Supplement quoted from Yeats; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. I think a longer section of that poem provides an appropriate commentary.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

W. B. Yeats. The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre; Batman is the falcon, wheeling and swooping from the high towers of our civilization through our concrete canyons, seeking his prey. But The falcon cannot hear the falconer; now he does not know where to find his moral footing. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold because mere anarchy is loosed upon the world by The Joker, the man who recognises no laws of logic or conventional reward. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed by The Joker’s disordered violence and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned despite the best intentions of its guardians. The best lack all conviction, confused and lost in the world of The Joker, or of the terrorists who think they are moral heroes, or of the abused who need no justification to inflict upon the world vengeance for their own suffering. The worst are full of passionate intensity, and they fascinate us.

Yeats wrote these words in 1921, in the aftermath of The Irish Rising, amid the bombs and tanks, riots and arrests in Belfast, Londonderry and Dublin. This was a time of enormous political, moral and social confusion, marked by passionate intensity, betrayals and civil strife. Everyone was having to ask who do you trust?’ This film constantly repeats that question.

In the first scene bank robbers discuss cutting their boss out of the proceeds. Their boss is The Joker and they little know how terminally he will cut them out. The District Attorney Harvey Dent is betrayed by a prosecution witness who changes his evidence in court and then tries to kill him. The Policeman Jim Gordon has, we later learn, been betrayed from the start. Dent and Gordon both suspect that the other’s office leaks information. They hold their super-grass witness at Police HQ because neither of them trust the officials ‘at county’ with his safety. I don’t trust them here either says Dent. Then he, the best hope for Gotham, nearly throws his reputation away by threatening another prisoner with torture. The Jokers asks Gordon if he is safe to assume that his police officers are still ‘his people’ and advises the Batman that you’ll be dropped at the first sign of trouble, and when the chips are down these people will eat each other. We are even reminded that when Rome suspended its constitution to give war-time power to Caesar he betrayed that trust by taking it for life. Time after time the question is asked do you trust him? Do you trust them?’ And the answer usually turns out to be no. Betrayals pile up, be they for gain, out of fear, or even from of what seems to be love. There are very few major characters who do not betray, and are betrayed in one way or another.

The Batman develops a massive monitoring system using mobile phones in order to track The Joker. I have to find this man he tells Lucius Fox, his friend and technical wizard. At what cost? asks Lucius. This is unethical and dangerous. This is too much power for one man to have. Too much power for one man, and for any government, we might surmise.

We thought we could be decent men in an indecent world, Jim Gordon tells Harvey Dent, but The Joker wants to prove that even the best of us can fall. And he is right, the best can be driven to despair and in despair forsake their ideals, even their sanity. ‘When the people see the real Harvey Dent all the good things he has done will be brought down to The Joker’s level. So they must never know what he did. But the only way to prevent The Joker’s moral victory is to lie to the public, to deny the fall of the District Attorney hero, and turn the Batman into a scapegoat. Who do you trust?

This is also a film about heroes and villains, and the symbiosis between them. Who needs a hero if there is no threat? Does Batman need to act out his need for vengeance? Does The Joker need the Batman as a suitable adversary and nemesis?

‘I don’t want to kill you. You complete me.’ he says to the Batman. But as he falls to what ought to be his death he cackles with glee; or is it despair? He knows that the Batman will not let him die, out of his silly sense of righteousness?

The Batman’s new costume is more flexible and more vulnerable than the old, and it is not black, but grey. We know how mixed his own motives are; how deep is his need for revenge on the criminal world that robbed him of his parents; how impatient he is with the slow arm of the law; how distrustful he is that the courts will dispense justice. That is why he is the vigilante, and that is why he is a popular hero. We the people share his impatience and distrust and desire for vengeance. But now the Batman wants to hand over the safety of Gotham to a hero with a face, to a true hero.

He has seen what kind of man he would have to become to stop men like The Joker. The Joker warns him to them you’re just a freak, like me. But he is wrong here, the Batman is the only super-hero who is not a freak. That notwithstanding, one of the disturbing aspects of this film’s reception is that to some The Joker himself has become a kind of hero.

Could the Batman be seen as following in the long line of comic book a Christ figures? He is trying to defeat the forces of evil but he rejects their tactics. He will fight but not kill. He will use no weapon other than his own flesh, and he bear the scars of each battle. Like Jesus, he has no superpowers. He falls from the heights, physically and symbolically, with his arms spread wide to save us. He is determined not to become like the Joker, the tempter who shares his wilderness. Like Christ he operates beyond the law, believing that is the only place where the true battle can be fought and won. The Law will not save us, only the one who is prepared to live without its protection and its inhibitions can do that. And he must be prepared to be the scapegoat, not the hero; to be despised and rejected and acquainted with grief.

The film plays out an old moral conundrum. There are two ferry boats in the harbour, one filled with criminals, the other with innocent civilians. All of them now hostages. Both boats are filled with explosives and each boat has been given a remote detonator to blow up the other. They are told that at midnight both will be blown up - unless either of them blows up the other one first. As Reinhold Neibhur told us long ago in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society we will do things by committee we would never do as individuals. Here the ‘innocent’ on one boat put blowing up the ‘criminals’ on the other to the vote. But even if this little society does vote to use the detonator will any individual actually do so?

The Joker believes that the whole world is corrupt or corruptible. He may have been persuaded of that by whatever event made him who he is. We never learnt The Joker’s true back-story, the origin of his horrific scars and madness. He may have come to believe that whatever happened to him was not the exception, but the norm. This is how things are, so nihilism is the only way to live. The only hope is hopelessness. At one stage The Joker wears a suicide-bomb jacket, and who does not believe that he would pull the detonator cord?

Batman’s butler and confidante Alfred tells us a story of bandit terror and jewels in the Burmese jungle. Some men only want to see the world burn says Alfred, they cannot be bought, bullied or negotiated with. The Batman asks how did you defeat the bandit? Alfred replies we burnt the jungle down.’ The Joker is sending a message. Everything burns. We may remember Apocalypse Now, the burning jungle of Vietnam and mad Colonel Kurtz who The Joker resembles in one deeply shadowed shot. Kurtz had a revelation of the true nature of his adversary and it came to him, like I was shot with a diamond bullet right through my forehead. What he realised was the absolute nature of his opponent’s moral code, a code so extreme and alien that we would consider it insane. Bullets, burning, jewels, madness. The horror.

Do I really look like a man with a plan? The Joker asks, again with glee or despair. Schemers try to control their little worlds. I’m just trying to show them how pathetic their little plans are. Look what I can do with a some cans of gasoline and a few bullets! The Joker is an agent of chaos, and for him only chaos is fair. If nothing makes moral sense then everything must be a joke.

But when the people on the ferry-boats are told to kill or be killed they refuse. Both the so-called innocent and the so-called guilty refuse to conform to The Joker’s dark expectations. He is denied his fireworks and is ultimately defeated morally, not by the police or even by Batman, but by the people.

An article by Geoffrey Macnab in the bfi magazine quotes Christopher Nolan, the film’s producer, director and co-writer, saying we just tried to write the most entertaining script possible within the terms of storytelling that this genre of film demands and to meet audience expectations. We try and do it in such a way that we’re really writing about the things that move us and excite us and frighten us. (Sight & Sound September 08 p10.) I think they have succeeded. This film moves and excites and frightens. The performances are all well judged, the action is spectacular, the photography luminous and the script witty and tragic without descending to burlesque or sentimentality. I think it is a shame that despite its two and half hour the film’s over-long and complex plot leaves us little time to consider the issues it raises. In some ways this iis a two and a half hour trailer for a more thoughtful film. Maybe one dayt we will see it, as we eventually saw Ridley Scotts longer and more coherent original version of Kingdom of Heaven.

But this dark, grey film deserves and rewards a second viewing. It does shine a beam of light, and not to project the Batman profile onto the clouds seeking help. It searches the human heart and finds hope there. It is not easy to find it amid the pessimism and despair but the hope lies in this; we are not perfect and the battle with our own moral greyness will go on., but despite our corruptibility and self-delusion, despite our moral uncertainty, despite our habit of creating and depending on heroes - and then scapegoating them, in the end we have no one else to trust but ourselves. We, are not perfect, but we are good enough. So the white search-light eventually says trust the people. Perhaps there is a message here for our guardians, elected and self-appointed. Guardians need power, and power tends to corrupt. Guardians, even with the best on intentions, mislead and even lie to those they are guarding - for the good of the people or course. But we should not lie to those we are responsible to. We should not lie to those who ought to be able to trust us. We should not lie to those we trust. Trust the people.

Slumdog Millionaire; the fairytale

2011-08-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Slumdog Millionaire (UK 2008 Tony Boyle) is a fairytale. It is as gritty as the classic tales, with its deprived motherless children, bitter sibling rivalry, a cruel bandit, or in this case a cruel beggar king. There is deception, mutilation, adventures and escapes, the quest for a beautiful princess. There are tests that have to be met, and questions that have to be answered correctly by the hero, and the answers he needs are embedded, like jewels, in the story, in the experience of the hero, rather than learnt from books. Of course it is also a fantasy, an unrealistic tale of romance and danger and the triumph of love. But it is no more a ‘feel good movie’ than the time tested fairy tales of Grimm and Perieau were ‘feel-good stories’. These tales included fearful monsters – or worse, fearful relatives – so that their hearers could learn to face and manage their anxieties in childhood playtime before they had to do so in adult reality, as Eric Erikson said. Bruno Bettleheim analysed their content for therapeutic purposes, understanding that Fairy tales are to be told and heard, so that children and adults share the knowledge that even parents are not perfect. The wicked Step-Mother or step-Father may be at one remove from blood-line parents, but they are still parents. And the world is a dangerous place, but victory awaits those who do not succumb to their fears. Tales are made to be told, to be shared, and films are also made to be shared, seen primarily in public, and so inform our consensus. The contribution of Slumdog to this public discoursed is to assert the victory of hope over despair, the triumph of good over evil, truth over deception and loyalty over betrayal. Of course it is a morality tale, and so it is not a feel-good movie but a be good-movie. Not be good in the goody-goody sense, but be part of the good, believe in the good, trust the good, and try to live it out, not in fear but in hope. It is also, of course, a love story, because love is the ground of hope and the vanquisher of fear. So, according to St John’s epistle, this is a theological movie; God is good, and God is love, and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

The Lives of Others; a STASI fable or a human truth?

2011-08-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

This 2006 German film, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign language film, has raised much admiration and controversy. It concerns the redemption of a Captain in the STASI, the East German Secret Police, and a critic of the STASI and of this film, Anne Funder, wrote in Sight & Sound, The British Film Institute magazine (May 2007) that

‘Writer-Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s script (for other People’s Lives) is brilliant and his direction flawless. This film is cleverly plotted, nicely detailed, emotionally powerful, and ….it looks beautiful. The cast …are magnificent, the design and score exceptional It is the best film I have seen for a long time.’ (Sight & Sound page 16.)

But, she says, it raises the question of ‘the responsibility of art - or entertainment - in history and to justice.’ (p20) The Lives of Others falsifies a fundamental truth about the East German regime in order to make a more uplifting entertainment. Stasi men did not have a change of heart, they did not help their victims, they did not side with the oppressed. ‘This never occurred. This was impossible.’ (p16).

The director says this is ‘a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.’ And Funder tells us that Von Donnersmarck spend four years researching this film. ‘and knows as well as anyone that there is no case of a Stasi man trying to save his victims. He has said ‘I didn’t want to tell a true story so much as to explore how someone might have behaved. The film is more of a basic expression of belief in humanity than an account of what actually happened.’

Funder ask ‘how would we feel if a wonderfully moving film, one alive to nuance and contradiction and acute about the human desire for forgiveness, was made about a Gestapo officer who had a change of heart and started trying to save Jews he had been ordered to persecute?’

But Funder Questions are more about context than content. Her objection is to the way a battle is currently taking place in the German media, the courts and on the streets of Berlin. Funder quotes from Dr Hubertus Knabe the current director of the Hohenschonhausen, the former jail for political prisoners in Berlin, now a memorial museum, who says that ’there is a creeping rehabilitation going on.’ ‘Even after 16 years after the fall of the SED dictatorship, most Stasi people are still of the view that they did nothing wrong.’ (p 20) Funder tells us that Groups of Stasi men are becoming increasingly belligerent. They write articles and books, conduct lawsuits against people who speak out against them, intimidate former victims are affiliated with the SPD (the successor to the SED) which is a powerful group in government.’ (p19).

Funder’s rage is clear, and so is her loyalty to the victims of the Stasi. These are the ones who should be heroes, she believes. But I wonder why she is so insistent that any incident resembling the change of heart and mind portrayed in The Lives of Others could not have happened. It may not have been recorded in Stasi files, and the beneficiary of such surely have kept quiet about it to protect their saviour. But maybe Funder cannot believe in this possibility because it offends her fixed views about the absolute effectiveness of Stasi indoctrination and the immutability f the human heart. Is there a contradiction here? Surely indoctrination changes minds and hearts - unless all the Stasi officers and operatives were born callous and vindictive and invulnerable to human empathy and compassion. And if they can be changed once, surely they can be changed again.

But Funder may be too close to the injustice she believes is still being done to the Stasi victims, and to the atheistic philosophy that dominated East Germany for four-year to see the possibility of redemption and the ongoing need for forgiveness and reconciliation. Funder wants justice.

The battle for the reputation of the Stasi men currently being waged in the media, the entertainment business, the courts, in personal intimidation of former victims and in demonstrations on the streets of Berlin cannot be understood without understanding that it is being waged with the Third Reich in the back of everyone's minds. The Stasi men are furiously fighting so as not to go down in history as the second lot of incontestable bogeymen thrown up by 20th-century Germany. And many Germans themselves are deeply uncomfortable about recognising the chilling inhumanity of this, the second dictatorship on their soil.

Several times on my book tour in 2004, in both former West and former East Germany, a sad and telling question was asked. At the end of the reading, after any ex-Stasi who were there had left, someone would say, "What is it about us Germans, do you think, that makes us do these things?" By "these things" they meant the totalitarian and administrative cruelties of the Nazi and the Stasi regimes. I have no answer; I do not think they are particularly German things to do. But there is such terror and tragedy in the question that I can see why a fable of forgiveness might hit the mark.’

The fable of forgiveness? I wonder how seriously Ms. Funder can take the true stories of forgiveness that followed in the years, the decades, after the Holocaust?

Further thoughts about American Beauty

2011-08-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

In a recent book, The Story of Joy; from the bible to Late Romanticism, Adam Potkay ask 'Do we know joy?' and 'do we want to rejoice?' Margaret Thatcher wanted us to rejoice over victory in the Falklands, and there are various churches relentless urging us to rejoice' in a triumphalist way that many of us may resist. Potkay traces the modern concept of joy to Thoreau, and those moments when we understand, for a moment, that we - and always the plural 'we' - are forgiven and redeemed. In that moment joy is the emotion of gratitude, not only for our self, but for every other person. Pokay finds a modern example of this in American Beauty, Sam Mendes' 1999 film of Alan Ball's screenplay. At the end of his mid-life crisis, indeed at the end of his life, Lester Burnham recovers joy, not through sex or pot or the endorphins released by weight training, but by discovering "an intense joy .. in every single moment in my stupid little life". This moment of pure gratitude transforms Lester. The fact that he is killed a moment afterwards is immaterial - to him. But - and this is me talking now - such moments of grace ought to be the motive for transforming our society in ways that take seriously the redeemed nature of every one of us, and the socially transforming power of forgiveness. In those last moment of his life Lester has surely accepted forgiveness - and there was much to be forgiven for in his 'stupid little life' - but had also, surely, forgiven. The Church has always tried to hedge forgiveness, to make it conditional, and to be the gate-keeper. That was the position and power of the Temple in Jesus' time, and he confronted it with his unconditional gospel 'your sins are forgiven'. Two thousand years later we still struggle to even imagine what a society would look like if it was based on the reality of forgiveness and that unconditional love built into our universe by the Creator.

Entertaining Angels?

2011-08-22T04:22:00.000-07:00

Entertaining Angels?

Keep on loving each other. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews Chapter 13. verse 2.

Angels, the Bible tells us, in what ever form they arrive at our door, bear messages from God. bring us messages from God, and by entertaining them, we are welcoming God. Sometimes, it seems to me, the angels entertain us. In fact they literally need to entertain us, the word comes from the Latin tenere, to hold. Some one or some thing has to take hold of our attention. One of the things that takes holds of my attention, entertains me, is going to the movies.

And I meet Angels there. Not just the lady with the ice cream tray, but the films themselves. And they really don’t have to be explicitly 'religious' films to be angelic. They certainly don’t have to be made by confessed Christians. In order to engage and entertain us film makers spend tens of millions, scores of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars or pounds and employ the skills and talents of scores of people. So if God can speak to us though films how sad it would be, after all that cost and effort, if we chose not to listen.

I am of course not original in this belief, Some of you may also believe that all creativity is a God given gift. You may also take an approach to the gospel that is exploratory and imaginative, valuing the incarnate as well as transcendent.

I certainly find that some movies ring bells deep in my soul and resonate with my present understanding of life and death and love and community. Some films express my deepest, sometimes unspoken values. I am constantly encouraged and cheered by the way other people respond to the same films and their embedded values. Some films challenge me, and raise questions I may have avoided, or put me back in touch with emotions I have buried. Some put me into another person's shoes, and give me a chance to learn more of empathy. Others provide me with a metaphor, and through that metaphor I find a deeper understanding of my self, of others or of life itself, and give me an illustration to share with others. And some films simply pick me up and carry me forward on waves of pleasure.

I often find that I am so caught up a film so much the first time I see it that I need to go back and see it again to try and work out why it worked so well on my mind and heart and soul. And I try not to analyse a film when I am first watching it; I need time to reflect. Without getting deeply in semiotics, I still find that having some analytic tools to work with helps me understand my responses better and be clearer about them.

If you are planning on showing a film to a group (egg sucking time coming up) I find it essential to watch it myself first to gauge its suitability for the group's members and programme, and my own sensibilities. Group leaders may be more embarrassed by sex and language than the group members - especially with youth groups - and this dis-ease will communicate to the group and make discussion difficult. We do not, of course have to agree with a films content or message to show it and can use films to raise issues that concern us. Discussion can be useful immediately after the showing or at the next session, and it helps if you provide a framework for discussion. On the other hand the context in which a film is shown may be enough. I never use a film I do not enjoy, no matter how worthy it is. And I try to keep aware that my reading of it exactly that; and has no more validity than anyone else's. I am happy to share my enthusiasm and what ever I find of value in a film, but I believe that films deserve the freedom to work on each and every person individually. There might even be something about the 'breaking of the Word' here. If God can speak to us through these angels it is not our job to get in the way or impose our own interpretation. Let the film - and God - do the work first.

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

2010-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Blessing the prey and praying for the planet

2010-03-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Films of the year 2009

2009-12-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

In no particular order, my favourites are

Changeling and Milk, two ‘true(ish) stories well told with superbly well acted leads by Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn. I thought that Changeling is much better than Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s other directorial offering this year.

Two films posed moral dilemmas, again with outstanding leads, from Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt, and Kate Winslet and David Kross in The Reader. Doubt left us in absolute uncertainty about the guilt or innocence of the priest accused of child abuse, a most uncomfortable state of mind, but one we have to face sometimes. The Reader was also about abuse, but this issue was so morally over-shadowed by the film’s Holocaust background that the abusive nature of its central relationship was seldom remarked on.

Four films chosen for their Directorial qualities are; Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle, Inglorious Basterds, by Quentin Tarantino, The Hurt Locker by Kate Bigelow and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. by Terry Gilliam. The last three showed a return to form by their idiosyncratic, inconsistent but sometimes wonderful Directors, with Gilliam’s film being completed by the hasty additions to the cast of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, as a fitting tribute to their friend Heath Ledger.

I don’t usually like Vampire movies, yet two figure this year; Let the Right One In was directed by the Swede Tomas Alfreson from John Ajvide’s script of his own novel. This is a tender pre-adolescent love story, set in modern Sweden, recognising and gently subverting the genre’s traditions. I was really moved by it. Thirst is very different, from the leading Korean director Park Chan-wook, previously known for the Vengeance trilogy and I’m a Cyborg But that’s OK. This could be called I’m a vampire but it’s not OK! as we follow the transformation of a Catholic priest who inadvertently becomes infected with vampirism. Song Kang-ho is persuasive and sympathetic as the tormented priest, and Kim Ok-bin outstanding as the young woman who becomes his lover. This is a complex moral and theological tale, told with bravura and style but certainly not for the squeamish. Like most vampire tales it is about sex and death and blood, love and (eventual) redemption. But the sacramental aspects of blood supping, the dark side of desire and the yearning to be with those we love, for ever, are taken very seriously, in this very black tragi-comedy.

Last year the best animation film for me was Walle -E; this year it’s Up! Both are from Pixar, of course. Both address adult and younger audiences. Up! is beautifully realised, very moving in its early sequences, later on very funny and it makes good use of 3D, not as a gimmick but as a real tool to enhance the effect of the story. (I am told that Coraline does the same , but I only saw that on a plane).

Where The Wild Things Are is not a children’s film. It is a movie about the world of childhood; chaotic, mercurial, confusing, where adults say things we don’t understand and make jokes we don’t understand. Where people have feelings we feel impacted by, but we do not understand what they are feeling or why we are reacting the way we are. Where alliances can shift with bewildering and frightening swiftness. We want to be wild, and we need to be loved. This is a place where a howl can speak a thousand words. Don’t be tempted to view this film through the tunnel of expectations, or be distracted by irrelevant questions. Just go for the ride; feel what it invites you feel, and think about it afterwards. WTWTA has a groundbreaking script by Dave Eggars, inventive direction from Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak’s whole-hearted approval, and a wonderful cast.

District 9 is a political science fiction film from South Africa, with a most unexpectedly heroic protagonist. Moon, made by David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, is virtually a two hander, with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, made for pennies, original and moving. Star Trek, the best of the franchise, bursts with fun and excitement and invention.

My two near misses were Watchmen, a great comic strip very well translated to the big-screen, but 20 years too late, and Paranormal Activity, made for even less than Moon, and a very clever home-movie, but one that did not get the hairs on the back of neck standing up the way it was meant too. Maybe I’m just jaded.

My two Turnkeys were definitely The Day the Earth Stood Still and X Men Origins: Wolverine.

My favourite DVD releases this year were Red Sorghum, The Ashes of Time (redux) and Chungking Express, all from China; I’ve loved you so Long from France, but starring the divine Kirstin Scot Thomas; and classic British films The Spy Who Came in From The Cold, (surely Richard Burton’s best performance); Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Orlando. The 1987 TV series Tutti Frutti with Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thomson has at last been released.

Caught between Doubt and Conviction

2009-09-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

Caught between ‘Doubt’ and Conviction.

John Patrick Shanley’s drama opens with the Roman Catholic priest Father Flynn asking his congregation “What do you do when you’re not sure?” We are in America in the year after the assassination of J K Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the United States, and some of his parishioners may be asking themselves ‘if such a thing as this can happen to such a man as this is there a God in heaven?’ But to live with doubt is not to live alone, Father Flynn assures them.

What is the evidence? The boy, Donald Miller, is the only black pupil in the school, and we are told he has not made friends. There is some low-key bullying, but Father Flynn is his protector. He shows him a ‘special regard.’ Is this compassion or is he grooming the boy?

The boy has been called to the Rectory to see Father Flynn alone and returned upset. There was alcohol on his breath. An explanation is given – and verified - but are lies being told by the priest and the boy? Then there is the mystery of the vest; is the priest’s explanation sufficient?

Why does Father Flynn get so angry when Sister Aloysius says she has spoken to a nun in his former parish? Why does he insist that she should have only spoken to the new pastor there. Are the priests in league, covering each other? Is his anger a genuine response to her breach of protocol, or is he guilty?

Are Father Flynn’s appeals to Sister James that he is living out the love of Jesus genuine? Many abusers claim they are acting ‘ in love’.

At every point in the film the evidence is questionable, the responses ambiguous. We should all be left in doubt. There is no answer. I know of one couple who saw the original play, and were convinced of the priest’s guilt. Then the saw the film and were convinced of his innocence. In the film he is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor with great charisma, but abusers often have great charisma. And when Sister Aloysius confesses at the end that she has ‘such doubt’ we do not know if this is about the priests guilt, or more profound. Is she asking ‘if such a man as this, ordained by God, can do such things as these, is there a God in heaven?’

This is expertly constructed drama, adapted and directed by Shanley from his original play. It is well acted with Oscar nominated performances by Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams, and – for just one scene – by Viola Davis as the boy’s mother.

As a Child Protection trainer I would use it as a case study. What I would not do is make a judgement about guilt or innocence, and that is the film’s great value. It is comfortable to presume guilt or innocence, but often we need to live with doubt. As we wrote in one of the first Anglican Child Protection Guidelines ‘to suspect is not to judge’. Father Flynn asks, “What do you do when you’re not sure?” and the answer has to be ‘follow good child protection guidelines”. (The next training session on such guidelines will be on October 4th, 10 - 12.30 at St. Mary's, Bournespring Trust, Holdenhurst Rd, Bournemouth, open to all churches and secular groups working with children, youths or vulnerable adults.