Jane Got a Gun.

It seems that Jane God a Gun had a troubled production.      The Scottish Director Lynn Ramsay left while shooting it, and  Michael Fassbender, Jude Law and Bradley Cooper had already pulled out.   This left Gavin O’Connor to take up the directing, plus Natalie Portman (who co-produced) and Joel Edgerton (who contributed to the script) to work with Ewan McGregor and Noah Emmerich and bring it home.   The film was given a limited release in the US January (a dead month for movie goers) and seems to have lost a lot on money.   Many reviewers thought it was too slow, too somber, and that Portman’s Jane was not dynamic enough.

But I liked it.     It is a slow burning Western with a female lead, and concerned with human relationships as much as with gun-play.   In fact the ‘gun’ that Jane has to get to help her protect her family is a man, her former lover, played by Edgerton, an actor I much admire.   When I watched The Great Gatsby again I had to reconsider the character of Tom Buchanan, as Edgeton’s performance revealed subtle depths to it on second viewing.   Here also,  in what may seem to be a straightforward part,  he reveals layers of complexity as flash-backs reveal more and more of the history between him and Jane.    

Nor did I miss the kind of ‘anything you can do I can do better’ female gunslinger beloved by some.   Jane is a rotten shot with a handgun – and why would she have ever needed to be otherwise? – but she is a crack shot with her rifle, used to shooting rabbits and coyotes rather than men.   Of course Jane is very good looking and well turned out for a prairie wife, but there is little Portman could do about the former without resorting to silliness, and she does wear pretty much the same (period and practical) outfit throughout the movie.    It is good to see subtly in a Western.   The music is understated – for the most part -  and the direction unfussy, unspectacular and unobtrusive.     It looks as if O’Connor simply got on with shooting the script rather than imposing himself on it. 

The DVD I watched ‘Jane’  on also had  trailer for The Keeping Room, another Western with female leads – and a female point of view - that did not do well at the Box Office.    That starred Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld and Muna Otarus.   I will look out for it.    

I have remarked elsewhere that the pov of vampire movies has changed in the last ten years or so,  to consider what it would be like to actually be a vampire (Thirst, Let the Right One In, Byzantium, Only Lovers Left Alive).   In some recent films, such as the two mentioned here plus The Homesman, Meek’s Cutoff, True Grit and Cold Mountain, we are invited to wonder what it would have really been like to be a woman in the 19^th century American West.   The answer ?  Often much tougher than for the men, coping, as Lindy West  has pointed out in The Guardian,  with the combination of societal lawlessness and personal vulnerability.    Is this Revisionist?  If that means seeing in a new way I welcome it.    

The Captain may not be Fantastic, but good enough for me.

Captain Fantastic.  

The Captain is Ben Cash living deep in the American North West forest,  well off the grid, teaching his six children the skills of hunting, first aid, climbing, armed and unarmed combat along with vigorous daily exercises.   It this Captain a rightwing Survivalist or Evangelical?  No, he teaches his children to celebrate Naom Chomsky’s birth rather than Christ’s and provides a deep home education in philosophy, literature, science,  civil rights and left wing politics.  He encourages his children to argue their opinions and to hear each other’s arguments.  

Ben, played by Viggo Mortensen,  thinks he is saving their lives from the disaster of modern society,  and it seems that their mother agreed, at least before her hospitalization.      But when she dies the family suddenly have to deal with her parent’s more conventional ideas and those of society in general.   

So first of all we see the utopian ‘alternative’ lifestyle in an extreme form, with the family almost totally separated from society, entire unto themselves for food, education and entertainment,  living out a clear, if rigorous, vision.   But then they have to deal with the children’s grieving maternal grandparents, Jack and Abigail (played by Frank Langella and Ann Dowd).   They are rich retirees, living in a huge house on a golf-course, and Jack is severely critical of Ben’s life choices, seeing them as physically dangerous and emotionally abusive.   After the funeral Ben and Jack clash furiously.   The family’s response to this precipitates another crisis, one that forces Ben to reconsider his stance.   Will he now will retire alone, leaving all six children with their grandparents?     Or what?

Despite his mainstream success in the Lord of the Rings  and lead roles in Hildalgo, A History of Violence, Easter Promise, A Dangerous Method, and The Road Viggo Mortensen is, I think, unappreciated by  the Hollywood establishment (how he could not even be nominated for his role in The Road is beyond me)  but maybe that’s because he does not fit the Hollywood convention of a Star.   Here he is as persuasive as ever,  tough enough  and intelligent  enough to make the Captain credible.   I will also add, for those interested, that he appears full frontal naked in one scene.    And for those easily offended by language;  you will be.  

He is wonderfully supported by Frank Langella and the younger cast members playing the children; George MacKay, the English/Australian actor (who I last saw in How I Live Now) plays Bo, the eldest boy, working his way though the various dimensions of Marxism (he was a Trotskyite, now a Maoist)  but seeking to escape the Arcadian forest for Academia.     Rebellious 12 year old Rellian (Nicolas Hamilton),  Samantha Isler (Keilyr)  and Annalise Basso (Vespyr)  are convincing teenage twins, alongside the younger Shree Crooks (Zaja) and Charlie Shotwell (Nai).   All the children have been given unique names, reflecting their uniqueness as human beings.   

The children are taught the value of dialectics, and this movie is certainly dialectic.  The point of dialectics is that the clash between  a hypo-thesis and its anti-thesis  leads to a new thesis, in this case a new way of being.    By the end of the movie the dialectic is resolved.   Not hypo-thesis A or anti-thesis C but, we presume,  an acceptable B (or maybe D?)    We are not shown or told how the grandparents – or children -  come to agree with this resolution,  or define the essentials of living it out, and that is a shame, but I can see how detailed negotiation in the last reel would defuse the dramatic tension.  

The film may end with a rather conventional solution,  and not everyone will find it satisfying, but at the very least it comes about after an engaging, often amusing and sometimes rather moving argument and narrative,  one that visits the horrors of modern American (and increasingly the Western) lifestyle, with its waste, obesity, rampant consumerism and alienation from both the natural and philosophical realms, but also points out the isolationism, desocialisation, and ultimately dysfunctional nature of the extreme survivalist/back to nature impulse.   We do need to find a way to live ‘in this world’, even if we do not want to be ‘of this world’,  being properly dismayed by many aspects of it.      

I was, however,  disappointed by the way Ben teaches his children to utterly dismiss Christianity.   I think there are many informed reasons to criticize the Church, but Ben’s does not seem to be informed, chucking the essential Christian baby out with the polluted waters of the Church.      Ben’s children have been taught, however, that we should be defined by our actions rather than our words, and no matter how comforting it would be for Christians (such as myself) to separate the body of the Church into distinct parts and claim that we have nothing to do with the actions of the parts we see as deluded, ignorant, un-biblical, populist, right-wing, abusive, greedy for riches and power, theologically and intellectually corrupt, or even blasphemous (do add your own ecclesiastical bêtes noir) it is still hard to find a theology to support this consoling tactic.     At the end of the day I think The Church is The Church is The Church, no matter how much I dislike so much of it.   

The photography  is sumptuous.   Stéphane Fontaine previously shot  A Prophet (2009) and the amazing Rust and Bone (2012).  The soundtrack includes an original score is by Alex Somer, and music by Sigur Ros, Bob Dylan, Bach and Chopin and provides an intelligent and sometimes satirical commentary.   El Hilo de Ariada  was written by  Viggo Mortensen and George MacKay,  and the whole  family join together to sing throughout the film.

The good Doctor Kermode has also pointed out the relevance of the lyrics of Bernie Taupin and Elton John’s  song  Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and even though the writer says he made no such connection they really do fit (read them again when you have seen the film).   

Captain Fantastic, raised and regimented, hardly a hero

Just someone his mother might know

Are there chances in life for little dirt cowboys

Should I make my way out of my home in the woods

For there's weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter

Broken young children on the wheels of the winners

And the sixty-eight summer festival wallflowers are thinning

For cheap easy meals, hardly a home on the range

Too hot for the band with a desperate desire for change

We've thrown in the towel too many times

I do encourage you to see this movie.  It certainly made me think and that is enough for me to give thanks for, even without the engaging performances in this film.    The Captain may not be truly fantastic, but  it is, I think, individual, thoughtful, moving and amusing.   

An A - Z of movies? Whyfor?

As a person, priest, preacher, teacher and trainer the movies have always been an important source of inspiration, illumination, entertainment and puzzlement to me.   Way back when I was a youth leader I used them with youth groups and when working with other leaders.   Some of my colleagues started to ask for advice.     What movies could they use when running residential events to entertain and yet also subtly contribute  to the content?    They knew I would not suggest ‘religious movies’  which their teenagers would quickly spot as propaganda.    So I began running informal workshops at regional and national youth leader training events and later for clergy.  I started providing lists.  In the 1980’s  computer print outs,   in the 90’s a booklet,  then an experiment with RW-DVDs, and at last a blog.     

I also found myself writing longer articles and sometimes study packs to put on the blog.   Writing these helped me explore in greater depth some of the theological and ethical dimensions of some movies.   Of course I do this mainly for my own satisfaction.   If I enjoy a film I want to know why.    I wonder what deep bells it has rung in my heart and soul.    If I dislike a movie I still want to question why.    So writing a shorter or longer introduction to it adds to my enjoyment.    

When I mention theology and ethics I do not mean I am approaching these movies as an academic, or even inspecting then for overt theological content.    I am an ‘incarnationalist’.  I will not divide creation into sacred  and secular.    I believe that divinity is built into everything.   Sometimes it is honoured, sometimes it is defaced.   I also believe that ‘quality’ is a virtue in and of itself.   

A ‘good’ film is a good film and that has nothing to do with its subject matter.   

Of course I celebrate movies that chime with my values, that lift my soul, that seem to reflect the best in humanity.   But a good movie can also explore the darkness, and by doing so honestly can illuminate it.   There are a few films listed I deplore, and I give my reasons. 

Anyway; here is the A – Z, in three blocks for easier access, followed by the articles they sometimes refer to.     I have taken out most - but not all - of the specific ‘teaching points’ and references to scenes in a movie that could illustrate a particular point,  as this is now for a much more general audience.  

You will notice that I do not have a ‘comments’ facility.    I really do not want to get into long discussions or arguments – especially having read the Comments on many other sites!  Sorry, but. 

I would really like to have a ‘search’ capacity to make things easier to find, but I simply don’t know how to do it.    Nor have I found a way to insert high quality pictures.     Any advise gratefully  received via my email; revbobvernon@hotmail.com.   And of course, even without a Comments button I would enjoy  thoughtful responses, corrections and suggestions.    Enjoy!

Please do not miss The BFG!

Upfront; I am not a Roald Dahl fan.  Some of his work strikes me as misogynist,  much of it seems to celebrate hatred and violence, and may even be anti-Semetic.    Of course his word play was brilliant, and he could see into the mind of childhood.   But children can have nasty minds too, and I think he sometimes celebrated that nastiness.

However.   

I do love The BFG.  It may not justify the rest of his output, but it is his most popular book, and richly deserves to be.

I also love many of Spielberg’s movies, from E.T. to Munich,  Tintin to Bridge of Spies,  Hook to Close Encounters, AI to Catch Me If You Can.  (Let’s just pause for a moment to consider his uniquely enormous genre and tonal range, adding your own poles-apart-examples if you like.)    

So; you will not be surprised to learn that I really enjoyed Spielberg’s film of The BFG.     

Of course I admire the technical brilliance  his team bring to the task, aided to an enormous extent by Mark Rylance’s performance as he provided the voice, the bodily movement and the facial expressions fed into the computer for digitization to create the on-screen BFG.   This seems to be almost ‘essence of Rylance’,  an amplification and distillation of his warmth, wisdom, humour, inventiveness, grace and humanity.     I have long thought that Andy Serkis should have an Oscar or BAFTA category created for his digital work, but now at last he has a rival. 

The storyline is thin, and the late lamented Melissa Mathison resisted – or was discouraged by the Dahl foundation from giving in to- the temptation to add to it.   The cast of characters is limited, and many of them are not really developed characters.    But there are two real in-depth people,  the eight year old orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) and the BFG, and they are what the whole film is about.   The other - truly gigantic - giants, Human-Bean Eaters,  the magnificent fart jokes, even the dream-jars and the enchanting dream lake and tree so beautifully created by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s go-to cinematographer, do not overwhelm the central relationship.    They pay detailed attention to each other.  They care for each other,  they tell each other stories.   At times they mother and father each other.     They befriend and protect each other.   They matter, to each other, and (if we will let them) to us.  As Mark Zoller Seitz says on the Roger Ebert site, this is a kind-souled movie about kind souls.   It is deeply humane, and that works for adults as much as for children.   

Please do not dismiss this as a children’s movie and miss seeing it.