No, No, Noah, but thank you, Calvary.

Any one who has read this Blog for a while will know that I usually see films through 'theological spectacles’.    That is, they can engage my living faith and my understanding of that faith, and  impact on them, positively or negatively.

I am not an academic theologian, or even temperamentally an intellectual.    Sometimes I read theologians 'in dialogue with film'  and wonder what they are talking about.   That is not their fault, I am sure they think clearly, it’s just that they don’t think the way I do.  Or rather, I don’t think the way they do.  Some of them, however,  have really valuable insights that do make sense to me.  One of them  is Robert K. Johnston, an American who taught at the Fuller Theological Seminary. 

In one of his books Johnston talks about different axis we can use as we respond to films.  

One of these compares the Experiential, or Sacramental with the Reflective/Analytical.   

The Sacramental includes the Holy and the Human, while the Reflective includes the experience of staying ‘in the movie’ and learning from it as a Theological Partner.   So a film can lift us beyond itself, and be revelatory, a sacrament, and/or it can be a thing in itself, to be appreciated as it is, and become part of a dialogue.   

Wondering how to put flesh on these bones brings me to the last two films I have seen.  Noah and Calvary.    Both are obviously concerned with faith matters, the story of the flood in Genesis on the one hand, and the spiritual journey of a parish priest on the other.

As I was watching Noah I found it really difficult to ‘enter into the film’.   I was continuously distracted by its use and misuse of the Biblical story, the bizarre additions to it and the changes made  in it.   I was often annoyed and sometimes amused.   I kept asking myself ‘why?’.   Why has Aronofsky, the writer/director, added fallen angels clothed in lava?  Why is the family structure of Noah changed so radically.  Instead of three sons, each with a wife, we have three boys and one adopted – and seemingly barren  - girl.   How anyone knows she is barren when she is a virgin is a just another distracting  question.  Tubla-Cain, Noah’s half brother according to Genesis, is now a king , using his forging skills to wage war on Noah for possession of the Ark, and then stowing away on it. 

It seemed clear that Aronofsky had not found the original story dramatic enough, so he added to it and changed it.   I wondered why is he being so free with scripture on the one hand, while also trying (presumably) not to offend faith communities – this story being important in Judaism, Christianity and Islam -  by never naming God, other than talking about the Creator.   Noah does not ‘hear from God’, he has herbally induced visions.   And he totally misunderstands the nature of God – and his task.  If there is one 'good' thing about the movie it is that eventually Noah learns that love and forgiveness are more important than judgement and punishment.    But even after that I was disappointed that Aronofsky, like most other people, completely ignored the point of the Rainbow Covenant; that God will not kill us, but that if we take a human life our own life will be taken, not as punishment, but in compensation.    Genesis  chapter 9 verse 6 is a difficult text, but it is there. 

So this is a film that never allowed me to ‘enter into it’.  It kept me at arms length.  It never offered me the chance to learn with it, as a ‘theological partner’.   Nor did it offer a sacramental experience by helping me enter into the divine any better, either in its transcendent or its Incarnational dimension.  I learnt nothing new about God or humankind. 

By seeing what this film did not offer I understood what Johnston was saying some films can offer.

And then I saw Michael McDonagh’s new film, Calvary.   You can read my critique of it below, so I will not go into it in detail.  But I notice that having seen Noah I had nothing to say about afterwards, whereas as I could not stop thinking about Calvary.

On the one hand I was totally engaged by Calvary from the first to the last.    It has a kind of who-dun-it structure, or rather a who-will-do-it?  The central character, Father James is told at the start that someone intends to kill him in a week’s time.   So we wonder who the intentional killer is.  But that is not the point of the film.   This is not a thriller.  Father James says he knows who it is, but he does not  tell the police.  Something else is going on here.    As the film introduces us to some of the members of the parish we see that  most of them are troubled, angry and often in pain.    The priest’s own daughter is depressed, recovering from a botched suicide attempt, and angry with her father for not ‘being there for her’ when her mother died and she needed him most.    It seems that his own grief in still unresolved in many ways.    Maybe it is relevant that I too am an ordained widower,  that I know how parishioners can project all kinds of virtues and vices onto their priest, that they sometimes seem to think priests are immune from hurt, or that they we can deal better  with loss, bereavement and grief.   That we are somehow more than human and less than human.  But this film did not simply reinforce my self-understanding;  it stretched it.  

Calvary also spoke to me of the sacramental nature of faith and priesthood.   In this context I must say that I have always believed in the priesthood of all believers, and in the particularity of how our individual priesthoods are expressed and offered.     Watching Calvary  was revelatory, it taught me new things.   It was sacramental, it was about the Holy, and at the same time it opened itself up to me, both as a ‘thing in itself’ and also in reflective dialogue.  I have been talking with it ever since I saw it.

Calvary has helped me understand Robert Johnston’s point by seeing in this film each of the dimensions of this particular critical matrix.   By doing so it will, I think, help me think more clearly about the films I have seen, and will see.    

There are many more critical tools and valuable insights in Johnston’s book; Reel Spirituality, theology and film in dialogue, Baker Academic, 2000.   If you, like me, take pleasure in reflecting on the films you see I commend his book to you.   And maybe  I should also be grateful to Aronofsky for his dreadful film. As someone once said, everything has a value, even if it is only to be a bad example. 

Despised, rejected, and acquainted with grief, the road to Calvary.

This film starts with a quote from Augustine.

Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved. 

Do not presume, one of the thieves was damned’.  

We might think that this is therefore about redemption, but it is much more complex than that.   John Micheal McDonagh, who wrote and directed it, must surely know that this was one of Samuel Beckett’s favourite quotes.     McDonagh himself says it is part of his suicide trilogy.   I think it is one of the most arresting films I have seen for some time.    I saw it 24 hours ago and have not stopped thinking about it since.

I last saw Brendan Gleeson in McDonagh’s film The Garde.   In his new film Gleeson plays another West Coast Irishman, another loner, another maverick,  and again the smartest man in the room, but how different the priest in Calvary is to the Garde.   He looks different, and it is not the priest’s beard that does it, it’s all in the eyes.   

This priest, Father James Lavelle, is the classic scapegoat.  He will pay the price for the sins of the community, those of the Church and of his parishioners.  He is described at the start of the film as an innocent man, carefully chosen as a victim because he is innocent.   But he is not naïve.  One of his parishioners says he is just a bit to smart for this parish.   And he is not innocent like a lamb.   In some ways he is more like a goat.   He is a powerful and assertive man, willing to confront his ‘sheep’ if he thinks they are straying, and to correct them if they show insufficient respect for Christianity or the Church.  And he is no saint.   He is not without sin, not without falling short.   When push comes to shove he is willing to shove back, hard.

The Sligo landscape in which this film is set is dominated by a huge square, squat hill (I think it’s Mount Knockarea), its former towering heights now crumbled, and its flat top surrounded by a ruin of fallen rock.    Is this a deliberate visual reference to the state of the Church in Ireland?   It still dominates the landscape, but its former glory has decayed, its moral power is diminished.  Its current priests live in its shadow, and too many of its victims still live in darkness. 

At the start of the film I assumed that this was to be the story of Father James’ Calvary, but by the end we see that most of the film’s characters are carrying their own heavy crosses.   They are hurt and angry.  Calvary is concerned with anger, its roots and effects,  particularly people’s anger at the Church that allowed so much abuse to happen and then go unacknowledged, unpunished and often unapologized for.   Calvary is concerned with the way the past sins of the abusing priests have distorted their victims lives and still impact on those around them.    And these sins are not only those committed in Ireland.   The historical cruelty of Christian missionaries in Africa is also referenced.     This is a film about anger, but it is not an angry film.  Its last, wordless, scene is surely about forgiveness.   It ends literally on a grace note.

We saw some of the cast in The Garde, including Pat Shortt, Gary Lyndon and the diminutive Michael Og Lane.    In Calvary we also see how Chris O’Dowd can play straight.   Domhnall Gleeson (Brendan’s son)  plays a cameo, and I did not recognize him - even though I enjoyed his work in True Grit,  Anne Karenina and About Time.  This was   not because he was heavily made up, he was not.  He simply played his character so convincingly I didn’t look past the ‘persona’.

Kelly Reilly, who I last saw as Mrs. Watson in the two Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes Movies, plays Father James’s daughter (his wife, her mother, died before he was ordained).    Hers is a quiet, understated, yet crucial performance.  

Dylan Moran plays a less convincingly written character, representing the financiers who’s criminally irresponsible behavior brought about the ruin of the Southern Irish economy, and yet walked away unpunished.    Unpunished, but not content.  At one point he pisses on a painting.  It is  Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, with its famous anamorphic skull.   He is trying to impress the priest with his indifference to his own wealth.   The priest is unimpressed,  but the painting itself is a reminder, amidst the pomp and power of the political world, of our common mortality. 

Some other characters are emblematic, and McDonagh acknowledges this himself within the film.   One of them, Dr Frank Harte, tells us he is ‘the atheistic Doctor, it’s a clichéd role.’

Calvary is a serious film, unflinching yet essentially humane.   It pulls no punches in order to make its point, and maybe it tries to land too many of them.   But it is held together by the strength of Brendan Gleeson’s central performance, one of the most convincing portrayals of a priest I have seen on screen.    I also admire Mr. Gleeson’s commitment to Irish cinema.     He has played in many big budget movies, including Braveheart, Michael Collins, Lake Placid, Mission Impossible  II, AI, Gangs of New York, Troy, and The Kingdom of Heaven, Harry Potter.    He could so easily become Hollywood’s Irishman of choice, but he keeps a home on Galway Bay, and his presence and considerable gifts have made movies such as The General, The Butcher Boy, In Bruges The Garde and Calvary successes.

Xan Brooks recently wrote in The Guardian, that Gleeson “plays God’s servant as a recovering alcoholic with an impossible task, variously fuelled by rage, reason and sadness.  Here, at least, is a Christ we can relate to” and  “How refreshing it is, in the wake of Darren Aronofsky’s lumbering, self important Noah, to see a spiritual saga that is smart enough to take route the less traveled, the low road to glory.  Calvary touches greatness.  It crawls clear through the slime and comes out looking holy.”

I could not say it better myself, so I wont try.  

The Captain Saves America From Itself.

The man who has a secret has great power, said Aristotle.

With great power comes great responsibility, said Peter Parker’s Grandad.

A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means wrote  Sallust, in his history of the 1^st c. BC  Jugethone War) 

In the latest Marvel movie,  Captain America: The Winter Soldier,  the Global Security Organisation SHIELD has secretly developed a vastly powerful intelligence gathering project – and the airborne hardware to act on that intelligence and take out terrorists before they even know they are terrorists.   Pre-emptive retaliation meets The Minority Report.

Captain America, who comes from a time when it felt easier to tell good from evil, is profoundly uneasy with the moral and ethical implications of this.   His previously unquestioning obedience begins to unravel.   Maybe he would rather be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.    Like Lucian Fox in The Dark Knight he thinks too much information is dangerous, especially when allied to irresistible power.   

But when Captain America's  loyalty to SHIELD is severely tested and his very survival threatened who does he find alongside him?   The Black Widow, the Russian assassin, the member of the Avengers team he most distrusts.  Like Edward Snowdon in order to survive he has to learn to trust  the Russian.   And all this before he discovers that SHIELD has been penetrated and houses a subversive parasitic enemy. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes to task the political reactions to the 9/11 Two Towers disaster and the ongoing threat of terrorism, implicitly criticizing the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney axis, their Homeland Security program  and the ongoing NSA/GCHQ ambition to know everything about us in order to protect us.     This is therefore a political movie, and so Captain America, like Jason Bourne,  eventually falls into the murky waters of the Potomac, the river that runs through Washington DC.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier gives its smaller cast of characters more room to breath than the previous Avengers movies.   Chris  Evans, as Captain America is given the opportunity to flex his acting chops as well as his pecs,  and Andrew Mackie, as his new ‘wingman’  Sam, is given a much better role than in the appalling Gangster Squad.   Robert Redford has a chance to subvert his (rather boring) good guy baggage, which he takes with relish.    Scarlett Johansson may sometimes need a stunt double, but she still looks as if she is perfectly capable of the precise and acrobatic savagery with which the Black Widow dispatches her adversaries, and we also learn a little more of her own inner turmoil.     And who is the Winter Soldier?     He is played by Sebastian Stan, and although his character’s history is initially shrouded in secrecy those who saw the first Captain America film  will not be puzzled for long.  

The sibling directors, Anthony and Joe Russo  – who have been working TV since their 2006 comedy hit You Me and Dupree - show they can handle the demands of tent-pole action alongside more intimate scenes.  The design and music are up to the expected Marvel standard.   

The whole Marvel franchise is growing on me.   The previous – and ongoing - high production values and artistic integrity of these productions, alongside their refusal to take the easy route of camp self regard now also has a political edge.  What’s not to like?

Please do not leave before you are sure that the credits have run their course.   Joss Whedon has directed a small addendum to remind us that despite this victory over internal subversion the threat of alien tech has not gone away.   

Enjoy your stay at The Grand Budapest Hotel

This film is like a Faberge egg.   It is intricately and elaborately designed and engineered, decorated with sumptuous jewel-like performances, detailed and delightful.   It is also a temporal jewel box, with four time zones interlocking, spanning (maybe) most of the last century.   It is also a comedy, and therefore never takes itself seriously.  A comic Faberge.

The eponymous Hotel is set in a named but geographically unspecified – yet precisely realized - mittl-European location.   Over the course of the film the hotel becomes much less Grand, declining like Eastern Europe from hedonistic decadence to drab  adequacy.   The presiding politics, though never explicitly stated, seem to move from  monarchy/Imperialism through Fascism to Communism.    The parting on the right is now the parting on the left, as Pete Townsend almost wrote, and the uniforms change colour but the dominant brutalism remains the same.   

The Hotel is, for a while, a bulwark against this totalitarianism,  a temple catering to the whims and indulgences of its obscenely rich guests,  be they gastronomic or sexual.   Gustave, the Concierge, is it’s High Priest, training his staff to answer their guests prayers before they are even uttered.    Ralph Fiennes brings his precise physical energy and quicksilver intelligence to this role, along with his (too often ignored) comic ability.   He is accompanied by a newly recruited actor Tony Revolori as Zero, the newly recruited Lobby Boy,  who accompanies M Gustave in his adventures and misadventures. 

These two central performances are surrounded by established leading actors - guests, delighted to be invited by Anderson to be in his movie and grateful for the jewel-like baubles given to them; from Tilda Swinton’s octogenarian dowager  through Willem Defoe’s leather-clad hit man,  Bill Murray and Owen Wilson as scarcely glimpsed fellow concierges,  Harvey Kietel’s  bald criminal mastermind, Adrien Brody as an avenging aristocratic devil,  Edward Norton as an old style Army officer,  deeply embarrassed by his own men’s coarseness,  F.  Murray Abrams as the older version of Zero,  Jeff Goldblum as a (properly) frightened lawyer,  Jason Schwartsmann as the modern Hotel Concierge with much less poise than his predecessor,  Mattieu Amalric as a Major Domo,  Jude Law as the younger version of the author of the story we are seeing.   The older version is played by Tom Wilkinson and based on Stefan Zweig, whose writings inspired this script.   Saoirse Ronan has a more substantial role as a sweet-heart cake maker.    The list goes on.   

Each of these sparkle, but the true genius is that of Wes Anderson, for this Faberge egg of a movie moves, it is driven by smoothly engineered hidden clockwork and  Anderson is the master engineer and artist.    It is, of course,  a miniature.   An exquisite toy.

And what does it all mean?   What does a Faberge egg mean?   Maybe it has something to say about nostalgia; nostalgia for a time that never was.  Maybe it says something about chaos theory as applied to political and personal history.   Maybe it simply shows us that in the face of implacable ugliness and banality there is still a place for beauty and originality, even if it only to lift our eyes and delight our senses for a moment.  Surely observing such craftsmanship brings its own reward.