Lars and the Real Girl: A Review

Lars is at once one of the more endearing and frustrating characters you can encounter in film. In the opening scenes of Lars and the Real Girl, we are introduced to a quiet and reserved guy who goes about life on the back row, making his way through his job, his church, his family, and what might pass for friendship without making too deep an impression. Because he offers so little, we get to know Lars primarily through the responses of others. We see his sister-in-law’s hunger to have him as a vital part of their family. We see the receptionist at work and the older ladies at church reach out to ask him about his life. We see the girl who shows obvious interest only to experience his awkward indifference. Taken together, we know little of Lars except that those he interacts with seem to like him, and so we can too.

With the character offered, we can let the squirming begin. His sister-in-law and brother are excited/bewildered when Lars shows up one night and says he has a new girlfriend and would like to bring her over for dinner and would like them to let her stay with them. Anticipating an exciting new chapter for the reclusive family member, they are shocked when he shows up with a life-size doll we had ordered off of the internet. They ran the gamut of emotions as they come to realize through the dinner that this is not a joke, and in fact Lars is fully convinced that she is real and is intent on cultivating a relationship with her.

The film navigates the awkwardness expertly. Lars is not interested in sex, and the chasteness in the relationship invites us to consider the nature of his delusion and his need for healing. We aren’t allowed to dismiss him, and in fact those that surround him refuse to. His family leads him to a psychologist, who convinces him of the need for them to meet weekly for his doll’s treatments. But as important as that relationship is, the key to Lars’ journey is the response from the community. His friends at work go along with the delusion, to allow him to engage socially in ways he has never done before. The church community embraces him and embraces her, finding a way to navigate the weirdness by emphasizing Lars’ place as a part of their family. His family feeds her, bathes her, dresses her, and goes to great length to incorporate her into their lives, all for the sake of reaching out Lars.

Over time, the community’s acceptance of the doll takes on comical dimensions. She eventually finds volunteer work in the community, and involvement that creates for her a life apart from Lars. While Lars has manufactured a relationship, the community essentially teaches him about the price of relationship, and the need to think unselfishly in our most precious relationships. While Lars created a relationship built around safety and control, he slowly comes to realize that relationships don’t function with that kind of control in mind.

For a film with a such a bizarre and often whimsical premise and beat, I was surprised to find how moved I was by its resolution. The community’s embrace of Lars and acceptance of the situation is tested in extreme ways, but the depth of character on display in their response was moving. Lars doesn’t experience a “Hollywood Healing” where everything is finally put together in his life, but he’s moved to a better place, and that movement is as gentle as the actions of those who served as its agents. We’re left with hope for his future, knowing that he has a remarkable community behind him.

Lars and the Real Girl was written and directed by two relative unknowns, Nancy Oliver and Craig Gillespie, but I hope the critical acclaim it has received invites more from them. I applaud their depiction of the church community, and find it an almost prophetic challenge to the real church. Can we be as accepting of the odd folks within our ranks? Is our church community the kind of place where broken people can walk through a gentle journey of healing? Lars is a remarkable picture of healing and the need for a community to embrace their broken people. At its best it offers a “gospel on display” that churches and Christians can and should find provoking as we reflect on our own community life, and of the powerful role that people play in each our healing journeys.

Putting the X Back in Xmas

Walking through the labyrinth of the catacombs in Rome, one comes across some of the earliest symbols used by the church. As people would gather and mourn their loved ones, sometimes because they had been martyred for their faith, they would carve expressions of their faith in the stone. One of the most common was what would appear to us as an “X” and and overlapping “P.” It was the combination of two Greek letters, “Chi” and “Rho,” the first two letters of the Greek word “Christos,” or Christ. For us, the most enduring symbol of the Christian faith is probably the cross. For the early church, it was most likely that Chi-Rho combination.

When did the letter “X” come into use to represent Christ? The evidence isn’t clear, though most trace its origins back to those early days of the church and this Chi-Rho symbol. What we do know is that as early as the 1400’s, when Johannes Gutenberg was first introducing the printing press, its use became widespread as one of many abbreviations that were highly valued in a day of high printing costs. X was widely used as an abbreviation for Christ, and terms like “Xmas,” “Xn,” and other derivatives were quite common and considered entirely appropriate.

One would think that 600 years would be enough time to get used to an idea.

I usually try to stay out of a lot of cultural wars, finding most of them just too exasperating and often silly. But one has come home for me in the last few weeks, and seems like it may be worth taking a break from reviewing films to comment.

Our church is holding a Christmas celebration this year. Striving to make better inroads into our community, we have done a lot to try and build up our annual tradition and add features that might be of interest to our neighbors, things like a petting zoo and a visit with Santa. We’ve been trying to get the word out, spreading the word with door hangers and public notices. And of course we’ve used the marquee on our property, which is where we got into trouble.

Having limited space with a lot to communicate, several of our postings over the past few weeks have talked about our “Xmas Celebration.” One would have thought we had posted “Happy Birthday Satan” on Halloween. I wouldn’t say we have been inundated, but there have certainly been several calls from usually less than gracious people offended at our posting. Despite our efforts to educate them about their faith’s own history, our callers are usually pretty much locked into their assessment that our church is set on “taking Christ out of Christmas.”

The topic fascinates me on several fronts. As my comments at the beginning might suggest, to anyone who strives to appreciate the rich and diverse history of the Christian faith, the debate itself is fundamentally flawed. The use of “X” to represent Christ is very much a Christian symbol. It’s ours, and using it offers us the chance to echo and honor the very earliest days of our faith and the people who, often in the face of great persecution, were used mightily by God to pass on a faith that endures across the world thousands of years later. It is a wonderful connection to a remarkable past that we should seek to honor and celebrate. In the midst of a season that offers us many positive and negative things to be shaped by, I’m glad to point to such a rich tradition that is there to shape us, and challenge the historic amnesia that pervades the church.

Of course even if the symbol didn’t have such a rich tradition, it strikes me that the debate is still remarkable silly. Reading an article the other day, the writer had observed a busy person working the checkout at a retail store. Handing the customer their package, the clerk offered “Happy Holidays,” to which they got a terse, and indeed merriless, reply “It’s Merry Christmas!” I expect that this person probably would have called had they seen our sign as well.

What’s the issue? We live in a diverse culture. Many celebrate Christmas, including many who do not worship the Christ for whom the holiday exists, but many do not. Do we want to see a culture where people feel compelled to pay lip service to a faith that they do not subscribe to? The media allows Chevy Chase and Bart Simpson to tell us about the “true meaning of Christmas” (as Bart would say, “We all know Christmas is all about the birth of Santa”). In that context, shouldn’t Christians (excuse me, Xns) seek to invest the holiday with greater meaning, so that people might encounter the real “reason for the season.”

Admittedly, there is a ridiculous hostility on the other side of this cultural war, too. In this camp, advocates are pursuing a “naked public square,” where symbols of any faith are stripped from public places. Pushing back against this is worthwhile, but the response requires a bit more subtlety than we are seeing. Our battle is not for empty symbols in the public square, but instead a context where we can have a robust and meaningful conversation about the coming of our Lord.

The way that Christians need to respond is of course complex and necessarily variegated. But at times it may mean that we appreciate the use of symbols that represent Christ in quieter ways. It is what Eugene Peterson speaks of when he calls Christians to practice “subversiveness” in their culture, offering a message and a lifestyle that quietly offers an alternative to the culture without having to stand in opposition to it.

So I guess we need to put the “X” back in “Xmas,” practicing a greater appreciation for symbols, and looking for quieter ways to express our faith and message in a culture inundated with hostility. One thing’s for sure, the non-Christians that saw our marquee wouldn’t care one wit about the “X” on our sign or the one whom the “X” represents until they see the lives of the people who put the “X” there.

Merry Xmas!

Beowulf: A Review

I’m just not sure if English teachers are excited or exasperated these days. In the course of seven months, we have seen two works of classic literature brought to life for the Internet generation. They are certainly borrowing from the same page. Like 300, Beowulf opts to interpret (or reinterpret?) this classic heroes journey into a visceral, hard-driving, emotive affair that is meant to bring you top-notch moviegoing “experience” more than it is seeking to invite reflection on the hero’s choices along the way.

Using that as our standard, it is worth saying that Beowulf works. The first film I have ever seen to demonstrate an actual future for 3-D technology in film, it succeeds at captivating your attention. While other attempts in the last year at 3-D have either seemed to be mostly unnecessary, adding little to an already solid work (The Nightmare Before Christmas) or gimmicky, throwing in a few “BOO!” effects to an otherwise mediocre story (Monster House), Beowulf finally demonstrates why so many filmmakers, among them James Cameron and George Lucas, have been touting 3-D as the future for blockbuster cinema. Here, the 3-D experience coupled with the high-level animation invites you into a world that is just enough like our world to be familiar, but different enough to keep us watching. When the gimmick effects come, and yes they do throw a few things at you in this one, they seem to just fit better to the grand-scale of the epic. Whether this is the “future of the filmmaking” is beyond me, but this film convinces me that we will be seeing more of this, and with good promise.

Oh, and there is a story here too. Kind of. Beowulf takes us to the early days of a courageous and brave young hero, who already is creating legends with his victories. He comes to the aid of a kingdom who is being attacked by a local monster, one with a story far more insidious than our hero know. The love-child of the king’s “deal with the devil,” this monster must be beaten, but even as he is, Beowulf is invited to make the same compromises that this king has made. He has pursued victories in the vain pursuit of glory and honor, and here in this battle, is finally given the offer that will secure his darkest dreams.

As one of the great stories of classic literature, this is obviously an epic story worthy of epic treatment. Here is where the film encounters its more severe limitations. The nature of the animation and the 3-D experience invite us to consider the “epic” nature of this film, but the story necessarily cuts short the hero’s character arc. Some of the most interesting parts of his story, namely seeing him slowly work through the consequences for the sins of his past, is completely absent, as the tale abruptly skips over huge portions of this hero’s life. This is understandable given the cost realities of digital animation. But in choosing to do this kind of story, the film is quickly standing on the shoulders of Lord of the Rings (or merely “the Trilogy” for fantasy buffs with to little appreciation for Star Wars), a film that understood better than about any other just what “epic” really means. While it stands on those shoulders, it fails to live up the promise of contemporary fantasy epic. We’re told to expect “epic” because of the novel technology, but the story opts instead for a sound-bit approach.

Despite this criticism, Beowulf, like 300, has an interesting place in our contemporary film diet. If you want to see the big dollars thrown at special effects that are intensely engaging and fascinating, both films succeed in the payoff. You can get a great experience, you may just have to search elsewhere to find the meaning in the journey. That the moral instincts of the film are largely sound, seeing a hero bear the consequences for bad choices, just makes us look forward to the time when costs would allow them to give more time to the story.

Take it for what it is, but be careful not to make more of it than you ought.

American Gangster: A Review

I think American Gangster is a film that wants you to feel conflicted. On the one hand, it is a difficult film to like. In it, you watch the ascendancy of Frank Lucas, a North Carolina native turned Harlem criminal who rose from obscurity to captain New York’s heroin empire in the late days of the Vietnam war. In watching this ascendancy, we watch a man who succeeds by force of a fierce personality who can boldly gun a rival down in the middle of the street surrounded by witnesses. He had a business acumen that exhibited itself in a remarkable creativity that allowed him to deliver a purer product to the streets for half the cost, destroying the profitability of the rival (mostly Italian) gangs. This allowed him to succeed at a dark and seedy game which produced wealth as it destroyed the lives of those who consumed its products and their friends and family.

At the same time as we watch this climb to success, we have to see the lives of those who are tasked to bring him down. Law enforcement personnel that were involved in these events have threatened lawsuits over the film, and I can certainly understand why. The law enforcement of this film are universally repulsive, embracing a culture of kickbacks and corruption and showing open revulsion at anyone within their ranks that might show signs of integrity or character. The threats of lawsuits of course depend much on the veracity of these assertions, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with the law enforcement of this film.

On the other hand, American Gangster is a difficult film to hate. Combining the strong direction of Ridley Scott and the exceptional acting of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, we are seeing masters of their craft take us through this journey. Lucas’ rise to success is as captivating as it is challenging. We are drawn into the world of early-70’s Harlem in a vivid way, and for what it is, it is a great ride. Beyond the excellence of the filmmaking, the story itself takes decidedly unconventional turns, turns that for my money work well to complement a difficult story. It begins with a decidedly Hollywood interpretation of the world, with Crowe playing the fiercely heroic Richie Roberts who, despite a mess of a personal life, is devoted to the cause of justice and determined to find the bad guys both within the police ranks and out on the street. This idealism leads him down a tangled journey until he stumbles on the rising star of Frank Lucas. While the film could have ended with the obligatory capture of Lucas, it doesn’t, and as it does, it invites into a much more complex picture of the characters and the story.

Among the criticism the film has received, some of the most fascinating has come from black film critics. While overall the reception has been very strong, there are a large number of black critics that have been especially dismissive of the film. Arguing that the film paints Frank Lucas and his lifestyle in too positive a light, some worry about its impact, as impressionable young men see the film and aspire to emulate Lucas’ success. They worry that Lucas will now become the hero of a new generation of criminals.

Their concerns are not without base. The Frank Lucas of American Gangster is a remarkably charming person. The casting alone can tell you that, as you’d struggle to find more than a handful of names with more charisma in Hollywood that Denzel. In Lucas’ story, you see a rags to riches that is built on hard work and innovation, and at times the consequences of this climb, or the horrific social cost that it is built on, seems to get only subtle allusions. In that, one might conclude that Scott is simply being irresponsible with his material, playing to our base emotions in providing us with a sadistic success story.

On the other hand, I am persuaded that Scott’s portrait is much more complex, and may simply reflect the reality of the story. After seeing the movie, I read several interviews with Frank Lucas and with people who knew him. It was an eerie portrait, as I encountered time and again the testimonies of people who had direct knowledge of his crime, even some who prosecuted him (including Richie Roberts himself) and men that sat on the bench for his cases who proclaim their affection for him. If Denzel offers the portrait of an evil man who is hauntingly charming, it seems that he is only reflecting the person he is trying to depict.

That Scott allows this portrait to emerge about Lucas strikes me as an important choice that elevates the film and its commentary. It would be easy for us to dismiss a Frank Lucas, whose rise to power is so despicable and whose “industry” is so clearly evil. But his rise, a climb to power that saw him rubbing elbows with leaders in entertainment and politics, was not done despite his personality, but often because of it. Indeed, the real portrait of evil itself is not unattractive, but in truth it is the attractions of evil that make it so alluring. If we are to be real about the truth of sin and evil in our lives, we would understand that temptation exists precisely because it is tempting.

American Gangster challenges us to consider the nature of evil in our own lives and the reality of temptation. We might look at Lucas’ rise to power and find his temptations easy to resist, but as we are drawn into his life, we are forced to recognize that we have our own temptations that seduce and call to us as well. We are not immune.

Gone, Baby, Gone: A Review

Gone, Baby, Gone welcomes us into the world of South Boston. It’s a world that seems to ooze with character. The Departed, Mystic River, and Good Will Hunting are just a few of the recent efforts to take us into this world, and Gone is a worthy successor to these solid films. I have mixed feelings about Ben Affleck as an actor, but he seems at least to have a future on the other side of the camera.

The film opens with the media circus already in a frenzy. A girl is missing, the mother is frightened, and the police are scouring the community looking for any possible leads. The problem is that this is the kind of neighborhood where not everybody talks to the police, and so the child’s aunt decides to hire Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennarro, two locals that have a small PI operation, to assist the police in the investigation. Reluctant at first, both agree, and being to turn over rocks in their neighborhood to see what they can find.

I found Gone’s setup a bit challenging to get through. Ultimately, Casey Affleck won me over with his solid performance, but at the outset, I couldn’t believe he was doing PI work. He actually was playing his true age, 31 at the time, but like Matt Damon, has such a young face it was hard to see him in the role. Moving through this distraction, though, the film quickly establishes why Kenzie would be an interesting hire for a desperate family. He knows the neighborhood, and knows its underbelly and the people that inhabit it.

Kenzie’s work leads him to work with Detective Remy Bressant and his partner. Bressant, played by Ed Harris, is a Louisiana native who has a lot of years in the neighborhood. Kenzie quickly wins over Bressant’s trust, showing his knowledge of the street that provides leads Bressant had no chance to drum up. Through Kenzie’s legwork, their work takes them into the depths of the local drug culture, as it becomes increasingly clear that Amanda, the missing girl, has been the victim of a drug deal gone bad.

The film does a very capable job of exploring the world of the media circus. At least since Al Pacino’s amazing performance in Dog Day Afternoon in 1975, the world of film has had many voices exploring the drive of the media to manipulate “human interest” stories to serve their own marketing ends. Here, the media creates the story of the desperate mother, victim of a cruel world, who only wants to be reunited with her child. The story is a myth, and we are forced to contend with the cruelty that lies beneath that surface, and the fiction of the public face. The media’s need to paint in broad brushstrokes, searching for clear heroes and villains, fails to comport with the real world.

This reflection on the media is an excellent setup for the moral center of the film. Ultimately, the plot brings us to a place where Kenzie is forced to contend with moral choices in a morally ambiguous world. While the plot itself may be a bit convoluted, the payoff is worth the suspension of disbelief, as the film refuses to let us off the hook. We want moral clarity and we want moral choices to receive their rewards. Gone won’t let us go there. To the extent we think the choices are clear, the more the film makes us see the price they pay for those choices. Left with a wrong choice that could produce right results and a right choice that will produce wrong results, we are left to wonder which is the right way to go.

I expect we will rarely be presented with the choices that have this kind of clarity in life, but the moral universe this film inhabits is nonetheless very much our own. We are surrounded by systems that are broken, that reward poor ethics and punish good behavior. Christians enter those systems with a worldview that calls us to a different kind of living. Standing against the brutish pragmatism that calls us to compromise, the Biblical call is to a kind of fierce commitment to kingdom living that is unwavering even when the price is high.

As vivid as this call may be in Scripture, it is a call that still exists in a real world where the consequences will be vividly felt. Gone, Baby, Gone invites us to feel in vivid terms the reality of our broken world, and challenges to remain unsettled regardless of our convictions. That is not a bad corrective to have before us regardless of the decisions that we are wrestling with.

Michael Clayton: A Review

In law school, it was a story told so frequently it was easy comedy. A fresh-faced One L (first-year student) would enter law school with wide-eyed dreams of fighting for justice, whether that be by keeping criminals off the streets, keeping those same criminals on the streets by fighting the inequities and injustice in the system, or by fighting for some other cause of the neglected and downtrodden.

Then came the second year. In the fall, when the interview season would open up for second-year summer internships, those same crusaders would be seen wearing their finest suits giving the firms with the long and impressive string of names a try. By the end of the third year, they were already researching the lease costs on their new car, planning their vacation and condo rental, and getting ready for their full dive into the world of the big firm.

This kind of path isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Michael Clayton invites us to explore the compromises that come into the play in this somewhat ordinary legal journey. The directorial debut for Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter for such strong scripts as the Bourne series and The Devil’s Advocate, another excellent film about the big time law firms, Clayton is a fascinating study of compromise in its late stages. George Clooney plays the title character, a man pushing 50 who traded in a career as a prosecutor for a role as a special counsel for one of the giant firms in New York. He is the firm’s “fixer,” the guy who cleans up the messes that the extremely wealthy and powerful clients of the firm find themselves in.

One of Clayton’s “fixer” projects was Arthur Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson, who is one of the partners at his law firm. Edens is a brilliant litigator and fierce fighter, but has struggled with mental illness throughout his life. Though the illness has been controlled through medication, it fell to Clayton years ago to get him straightened out when he had fallen off the wagon and threatened his career and the firm’s viability. Now, years later, Edens has gotten himself into trouble again.

Edens has been pouring himself into a single case. His client is an international agricultural products company and is facing a multi-billion dollar class action suit for allegedly introducing some kind of chemical into the water supply that has killed or injured a number of people. In the middle of a deposition of one of the plaintiffs, Edens goes off the deep end, and strips naked and runs through the building screaming.

In trying to help Edens out, Clayton is brought into a case that quickly puts on him a crises of conscience. Already struggling with personal failures, Clayton finds his firm defending the bad guy here, and he quickly becomes aware that there is much at stake in this battle. The company’s general counsel, played by Tilda Swinton, is fierce in her desire to defend the company and, perhaps more importantly, defend her boss. In the midst of his madness, Edens has discovered the fateful memo, the single document that shows that the company knew of the chemical’s risks, and signed off on the distribution based on their own cost-benefit analysis.

The film does a fantastic job of setting the stage for our entry into this life. Clayton’s world is a ruthless and vicious world, where lives are bought and sold in the name of self-interest and survival. Clayton, struggling with his own sense of disappointment in his life, seems to come at the case with a dawning realization of the price he has paid for the life he has lived. When he tries to raise some of these questions to his boss and mentor, he is pushed aside, with a reminder that he has always known how “we pay the light bills around here.”

The film poses more questions then answers. Clayton is essentially trapped within a system for which there is no answer. Even though he knows the truth, it is not as if he can simply come forward and betray his client. To do so, he would subject himself to disbarment and his firm to a bankrupting claim of malpractice. The film opts for some stereotypical Hollywood pyrotechnics to wind its way out of this mess. That’s all well and good, but it simply drives home how difficult the questions of real life become.

As an attorney, I represented some clients I found fairly distasteful. I wasn’t always sure I like the side that I represented. I rarely like the outcomes the cases had. My own wrestling in this world, a wrestling that led me first into public service and eventually into ministry, was a desire to live a life of meaning. In my own wrestling, I would often reach the end of my cases, look at the resolution, and say, “Is this it?” Hollywood rules dictates that Michael Clayton does something to solve the problem, but the real life version of this story may realistically involve nothing more than Michael Clayton finding the strength to walk away, knowing that some problems really can’t be solved.

In one of the more interesting scenes in the film, Edens recounts how many billable hours he had put into this case. As he toys around with the numbers, he winds up proclaiming that he had spent 12% of his life on this case. Edens is driving himself insane as he realizes he has wasted that much of his life in a worthless venture. It is the sadness of wasted time, the sadness of a wasted life.

The power of the Michael Clayton is in the call to count the cost. Perhaps the work we do will not take us down as dark of corridors as we see here, but the opportunity to compromise is still a daily pressure. Michael Clayton makes the bold proposition that many of those compromises aren’t that mysterious, and that many times we walk into these traps with our eyes wide open. Whether the seduction is money, or power, or security, or ego, the temptations only expose the darkness in our souls and our willingness to trade meaningful lives for meaningless enticements.

“What does it profit a man, if he gains the world, but loses his own soul?”

Shoot 'Em Up: A Review

They say that comedy involves risk. For Shoot ‘Em Up, that risk first comes to us as Smith, our “hero,” has to use a gunshot to sever an umbilical cord after helping a woman give birth in the middle of a gunfight. Hope you set your steel will in place for this one.

Smith is sitting at a bus stop when a pregnant woman runs by him, fleeing from some tough looking characters. Reluctantly, Smith comes to her aid, taking on the strangers and trying to rescue the woman. He fails, and the woman is killed shortly after the birth. With the newborn in his arms and having no real understanding as to what is going on, Smith determines to keep the child away from the bad guys.

I’m not sure that everyone who sees Shoot ‘Em Up will perceive it as a comedy, but it’s about the only thing that makes the film palatable. Standing in the tradition of Quentin Tarrantino (I’ll leave the question of whether it is a “grand” tradition in your hands), who himself was echoing John Woo and a long line of Hong Kong cinema, Shoot ‘Em Up is a satirical action movie that prides itself in capturing the absurd. It takes a classic American action setup - the lone action hero, drawn into a battle he can’t win, finds a way to overcome through grit and determination - and stretches it as far as it can. The action sequences have a lyrical quality, serving as a kind of ballet for alpha males. Even the obligatory female sidekick, this time a “fetish” prostitute with her own bizarre business, stretches stereotypes to the limit. It eventually draws us into an even more absurd political plot that makes Watergate look like shoplifting penny candy at a drug store.

For all of its grand action, the movie is kept more captivating than it deserves because of the great actors involve. Clive Owen, playing the hero “Smith,” shows the dark hero that will be familiar to fans of Sin City, while Paul Giamatti plays a truly despicable villain in Hertz. Owen gives us an understated performance, which contrasts well with Giamiatti’s broad performance. Between the two of them, we are drawn into their dance, “enjoying” an intense and fascinatingly bizarre ride.

Shoot ‘Em Up could serve as an easy escape for fans of extreme action film, but what is a Christian to do with this kind of exploration of violence? Like the Kill Bill series, this film explores the world of extreme action cinema, but Shoot ‘Em Up doesn’t wear its social commentary on its sleeve. Unlike Kill Bill, it sustains its sense as a revenge fantasy throughout, and to the uncritical eye, one could walk away from the film with a sense of affirmation of the extreme violence that it has explored. For this reason alone, many would reject the film outright.

The problem that Shoot ‘Em Up has is that it isn’t cleanly drawn. Yes, it’s a satire, but a satire of what? The extreme action genre? American violent entertainment? We’re not sure, and as the political plot unfolds, it is increasingly clear why. It’s hard to define what’s in view in the satire because in the end everything is in view in the satire. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is worthy of admiration. Like the Ecclesiastes writer, everything is meaningless.

I’m reminded of Jim, the bully from The Simpsons. After making some snide remark, a friend asks him, “Dude, are you being sarcastic?” He hangs his head and responds, “I don’t even know anymore.” Shoot ‘Em Up is an enjoyable entertainment as far as it goes, but as it pushes the absurd, with less art and style than a more capable director like Tarantino might exercise, it runs the risk of exhausting itself on its own cynicism. The great tradition of satire and absurd comedy works best when it offers a constructive alternative to the institutions or way of life that it cuts down. Shoot ‘Em Up has no idea how to go to that place.

3:10 to Yuma: A Review

During a couple of summers in college, I felt the lure of the West. Whether it was hiking in Colorado and Utah, or just making the amazing drive along the Tetons or across Montana, the West represented, and represents, a place for healing and renewal, a place with no memory and the promise of tomorrow. Over the years, many trips out there, now more often for snowboarding than backpacking, have proven to be just the kind of healing moments I have needed.

Because of that deep love I have for the West in my own story, I’m particularly intrigued to see Hollywood do its best to revive the Western genre this fall. 3:10 to Yuma is the first of several to come, and if Yuma is any indicator, we’re in for a treat. This is a remake of a 1957 classic starring Glenn Ford, and if you’re going to remake a classic, you would be hard pressed to find a better duo than Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, two of the very finest out there today. They deliver fine performances that are the centerpiece of this interesting drama.

Bale plays Dan Evans, a Union veteran and partial amputee who has made his way to Arizona with his family to make a new start as a rancher. Suffering under a brutal drought, he has buried himself in a debt to a local landowner who is set on getting Evans’ property out from under him to sell it to the railroad. He is a man without allies, fighting to survive in a harsh world where everyone is using his back as a stepping stone to bigger things.

While riding to town to deal with his debt, he comes across Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw who is in the process of robbing a stagecoach. Evans’ survives his encounter with Wade and his gang, and continues on to town, only to find that Wade has beat him there. The gang is in process of throwing the sheriff off their trail, but Wade shows his weakness, delaying because of a woman, allowing them to capture him. A representative of the railroad company, who was the victim of the robbery, recruits several people to take Wade to a nearby town, where he must make a prison train that is coming through the next day. Short several men, they recruit Evans to accompany them, giving him the chance to make some desperately needed cash.

It is a somewhat convoluted setup, but what it leaves us with is a long trail ride for Evans and Wade to interact. They are fascinating characters, defying many of our stereotypes from Westerns. Wade is certainly a villain, but he is also a charmer, drawing Evans’ wife to declare that he is “not what [she] expected.” His charm and engaging conversation could easily leave one disarmed, feeling safe around him. He takes advantage of that, of course, reminding us several times of the core brutality that has made him such a feared outlaw.

Evans can be frustrating to figure out. He seems to be trying to stand for the right thing, but at times it isn’t clear why. Is his intensity born out of stubborn pride or selfless nobility? The film eventually unveils more of his motivations, but even as we learn more of his past, the relative purity of his motives aren’t always made entirely clear. Perhaps in the end he is simply a man of mixed motives, as it is for almost everyone in the film’s universe.
I expect that people’s response to the film will be grounded in their ability to deal with the ambiguity of the moral universe. Similar to Unforgiven and other modern interpretations of the Western genre, we are not given many characters who are fully sympathetic or purely evil. Our hero and our villain each can at times be imminently likable and imminently detestable. This is appropriate, as it sets us up for a fascinating last action sequence, as our hero and villain remind us more of Butch and Sundance than Marshall Kane and his showdown. Their unlikely partnership with an unlikely goal allows us to see their best come out. We start by rooting for Evans, and wind up rooting for both of them.

This kind of ambiguity, reflective of many of the films of our more cynical age, is something I find myself resonating with. It is easier for me to relate to a flawed hero than a pristine one, easier for me to comprehend the villain with a spark of humanity than the wholly depraved one. The more we glimpse visions of sinner and saint coexisting within the same human being, the more the characters invite us to hold up a mirror next to them. We are indeed complex souls, shaped by forces both within and without, given to sin but not wholly devoid of that mark of true humanity that was our divine gift in creation.

Where I want to depart from this ambiguity, though, is when it comes to its vision of redemption. The film leaves us with an uncertain conclusion, as we are not sure what is going to happen or whether there was real redemption at all. I think it’s fair that many would leave the film with the sense that there was no redemption at all, merely the end of a single chapter that would repeat itself down the road with a new cast of characters. Others may find the promise that characters have grown and changed, and will be different because of their experiences. Either way, where I find hope is that the complexity and ambiguity that this film captures is not the end of the story. We are not doomed to forever be sinner and saint, but have the hope that there is an Outside Force stronger than the shaping winds in our lives that can yet decisively win this battle within us.

The Lives of Others: A Review

“To think that people like you once ran a country.”

The story is told of Lenin, who reached a point in the midst of the Russian revolution where he could no longer listen to his favorite musical work by Beethoven. Listening to it, he said, made him want to hug people instead of strangling them, something that the revolution required of him. What if he kept on listening? Could things have turned out different?

In the midst of the late August movie doldrums, I enjoyed the absolute treat that was The Lives of Others, last year’s well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Film, which sought to deal with this very question. This film transports us to 1984 in East Germany. Taking place not long before Gorbachev’s election as Soviet president, the words glasnost and perestroika are still unfamiliar to most people, and for the people we meet, from artists to politicians to members of the Secret Police, the communist state is well-entrenched and is here to stay. Within that bleak backdrop, we are introduced to Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, brilliantly played by Ulrich Mühe, who sadly passed away from stomach cancer a few weeks ago. A long-standing member of the Stasi, the East Germany secret police that monitored the activities of GDR citizens throughout its existence, our first glimpse at Wiesler shows him teaching a group of new recruits about the art of interrogation. Taking them through the brutal and unrelenting methods that bring out the “truth” from unwilling suspects, we see the cold and calculating approach that has made him brutally effective at his job over so many years.

Wiesler is tasked to open up monitoring on Georg Dreyman, a playwright who is introduced to us as the only East German artist read in the West that isn’t a subversive and remains loyal to the state. Started because of Wiesler’s prompting of his former classmate and now boss, Anton Grubitz, we witness the astoundingly thorough manner in which the Stasi would conduct their surveillance. The writer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, apparently meticulously researched the methods and technology of the Stasi, and so what we see is a remarkable reenactment of their work. Wiring Dreyman’s home with microphones and cameras, Wiesler then began a surveillance of every conversation, every phone call, and every visit, throughly documenting Dreyman’s life so that senior officials might find out the truth within this national treasure.

What should have been a routine surveillance, though, goes awry for both the listener and the suspect. For Dreyman, he is surrounded by other artists who have found different ways to express their dissatisfaction with the state. Most of these efforts have cost them, as friends are being denied the ability to publish, are being restricted in travel, and are undergoing other threats and intimidation to bring them in line. Although initially resistant to the temptation to criticize the state, Dreyman is brought to question his loyalty with the suicide of his friend and mentor, another playwright and artist. With the questions coming, Dreyman sets out to publish a criticism of the GDR in the West, bringing to light some of the dark underbelly that hasn’t been exposed to the world.

Meanwhile Wiesler is undergoing his own conflict. Our exposure to his superiors leaves us convinced of their inadequacies. For all of their talk of the great socialist state, his boss is an ambitious politician, who spends most of his time placating his superiors and planning his ascendancy to greater things. The party leader he is trying to win the favor of is a repulsive man who is more interested in seducing Dreyman’s girlfriend than he is in providing meaningful leadership. This is the painting of corrupted power that Orwell gave us in novel form. Slowly, we see Wiesler quietly observe this hypocrisy and, generally without verbalizing it, start to challenge their world.

In contrast, Wiesler is secretly drawn to Dreyman. He hears his music, he reads his books, he listens to his passionate relationship with Christa-Maria, and he seems to find himself wanting more. We get few glimpses into Wiesler’s world beyond his job, but what we see makes us understand that there is a desperation and a loneliness that defines his existence. The more he observes, the more he is drawn in, and so we see Wiesler start to cross boundaries. He orchestrates Dreyman’s discovery of Christa-Maria’s relationship with the party leader. When she declares that she is going to be with this party leader, he confronts her, persuading her to go back to Dreyman without exposing his relationship. As Dreyman’s questioning of the system becomes more profound, so Wiesler finds himself risking more and more to protect Dreyman.

I will leave the details for your own discovery, but within this journey lies the point that some found offensive about the film. For those that lived through life with the Stasi, the notion that there was a gentle and kind person inside an agent waiting to be brought out, a kind of “hooker with a heart of gold,” is difficult in the extreme. From what I’m reading, some want to see the people that participated in this evil regime as irredeemably wicked.

I remember an article a few years ago written by a Rabbi that had a title that was something like “Why the holocaust teaches us nothing about evil.” Essentially, the argument he was making was that the evil of the holocaust was so extreme that it could not be categorized alongside other examples of evil that we encounter. It was evil of a different stripe, not just a more extreme version of evil we encounter.

I hear echoes of this argument in the negative response to The Lives of Others. The brilliance in the movie is that it draws us into Wiesler’s world, letting us see the emerging conflict as he saw a different way of living than the way he had spent his career. His heroic acts, made all the more heroic because of the silent way that he endures their consequences, offer a glimpse into an emerging sense of humanity, a struggle with a moral universe that doesn’t seem satisfied with the choices he has made.

Much like Downfall and Letters from Iwo Jima, Lives lets us glimpse at the perspective of “the enemy.” What we see gives us hope. Hope that evil can be seen for what it is, and that good can emerge even in the darkest of backdrops. Hope that the glimpses of good are worth the heavy price they can exact. Hope that people can change, even if systems seem like they can’t.

Superbad: A Review

Seeing Superbad reminded me of many conversations with Steve Mackler. Steve was a foul-mouthed guy who was a year-older than me in school. I was on the debate squad, he did humorous interpretation, and so we had many weekends around each other at speech competitions. Steve had a knack for making the conservatives blush with his raw and frank sense of humor. He was also easily one of the funniest people I have ever known, with the ability to bring me to tears with his quips.

Jonah Hill is Superbad’s Steve, a foul-mouthed and horny high-school senior named Seth. Already dealing with the sad reality that he and his best friend, played by Michael Cara (to the delight of Arrested Development fans everywhere) will be graduating and heading to separate colleges in the fall, he is fairly myopic in his concerns. He doesn’t want to graduate from high school a virgin. He wants sex, and he wants it tonight.

What follows is a buddy comedy standing in a fairly deep tradition of similar comedies over the last 30 years or so. This one, coming from the same folks that brought us Knocked Up earlier this summer, is a good one, and in good I mean that it is extremely funny if you can handle that kind of humor. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow have given us The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and in all cases my wife has reminded me that she’s not sure she wants to admit to anyone that she’s actually seen them. That’s OK, I caught her laughing.

To accomplish his mission, Seth commits at school to providing alcohol to a party that night. The party is hosted by the girl that he’s after, and Cara’s Evan finds out that his interest is heading there, and so their adventure must take them into the liquor store. They find a friend, Fogell, with a newly minted fake ID, and so they set out on their trail. The trailers give some of the zaniness away, but to spare you, I’ll suffice it to say that Fogell, or should I say “McLovin” winds up riding around with the strangest pair of cops since Reno 911, Seth winds up way over his head in a death match at another party, and Evan bumbles his way through much before they get back together. Their quest is not easy.

Admittedly, the nature of the comedy makes this a difficult movie to recommend blindly. I have friends that I know would enjoy it, and I have friends that I know wouldn’t. Either way, there are several things about the film that interest me. First, I wondered as I reflected on the movie whether it should be required viewing for parents of teenagers. I expect many of them would be shocked and horrified at the way in which sexual topics are explored, but my sense is that it is much closer to the reality of what teenagers are being exposed to than what parents assume their kids know. The film takes for granted the widespread access to sexual information that is a basic reality for many teenagers in our wired world.

Second, like Virgin and Knocked Up, the film takes a surprisingly conservative turn by the end. This genre, probably set in motion most by Animal House, has a knack for being a sustained celebration of sexual liberation in all its forms. This film isn’t. The path to freedom for these guys, mainly getting their objects of lust drunk so that they can conquer them, is a hollow dream, and by the end they seem to recognize that. Despite having a shocking amount of knowledge about sex acts and the female anatomy, they have very little wisdom about relationships, love, and the rich meaning of sexuality. This divide between wisdom and knowledge seems very prescient in our culture.

In the end, the movie is more a celebration of male friendship. Their friendship is what they understand most deeply and is what means the most. They still have sex on the brain, but in their more sane moments, they seem to recognize that their pursuit of alcohol and sex are mere distractors or coping mechanisms. The characters are pretty bankrupt in their pursuits, but they aren’t without hope. I think the success of the film and of these filmmakers in this brand of comedy is that they are drawing up imminently relatable people. We too often find ourselves bankrupt in our pursuits, but hope that there is something deeper, something more substantive that might pull us through.

Of course, it may be that Apatow and Rogan are just throwing in the heart in these films to justify a whole string of racy jokes and seedy adventures. I don’t think so, but even if it is, then they have just backed their way into something more substantive than they might expect. The deeper strain of these characters, from this and their other films, are strains that I can live with. There are certainly worse places from which to start a conversation.

The Bourne Ultimatum: A Review

The Bourne Ultimatum is about responsibility. Sharing the spot with Ratatouille for the best reviewed mainstream film of the summer, it comes to us as one of the final “Part Three” films that seems to have defined the summer blockbuster lineup. Among those, it is undoubtedly the best of the lot.

The Bourne Identity introduced the movie-going public to Robert Ludlum’s much loved character Jason Bourne. We met Bourne at the end of an accident that left him with amnesia. Knowing nothing of his past, we slowly learned along with him that he had been a part of a CIA operation that trained the world’s greatest assassins and set them about performing some of the most seditious missions the government ever denied involvement in. As the mysteries surrounding his amnesia and the accident that produced it came to light, he became a hunted man by the very people who had trained him to be the killer that he is. In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason was thrust back into the espionage world by those within the system who sought to use his name to cover their own dark secrets. Where Identity was a journey of discovery, Supremacy was a journey that had a mixed bag of revenge and repentance, as Bourne was finding out more about his past and finding more to dislike about those discoveries.

In Ultimatum, the movie cleverly weaves its way into the final moments of Supremacy, taking us to a Bourne who is still on the run, still trying to discover more about his past as he is trying to stay ahead of the very people who have those answers. While Identity gave us Chris Cooper as a superb foil and Supremacy gave us Brian Cox as Cooper’s sleazy boss and Joan Allen as the virtuous agent who contends for truth, Ultimatum brings us David Straitharn as the exceptional leader who needs Bourne eliminated. As with Cooper and Cox, Straitharn gives us an agent who has little to redeem himself, who is an “avowed patriot” who seems to profit well from his patriotism. The villains of the Bourne films are enjoyable to watch because they have been played by such fine actors, but they are not ambiguous figures. We know who the bad guys are, and we are clear that they are bad.

Jason’s a bit tougher to figure out. Damon does well with the emotionally-stilted character of Bourne. While early on we might have excused his coolness as a function of his amnesia, as we learn more about him we see this as a product of his training. He has no emotion because he was trained to have no emotion. He was trained to have no emotion because he can have none to do the evil things he is called upon to do.

Of course, from the first film we have seen that the problem for Bourne is that there is something in him that can’t rest with this kind of withdrawn life. He bucked the system then, and he continues to buck the system here. What is interesting about this film is how it changes our perception of the system itself. In the trilogy as a whole, the government agencies are led by people who manipulate their underlings to serve their ends, ends which are often selfish and against the larger purposes of the country. This is a corrupt system that is broken because of a leadership that has no virtue (no political commentary there, I’m sure). Bourne is pitted as a hero who is standing against that system.

Here, though, the system is not entirely to blame for Bourne’s predicament. In a plot development worthy of the actor they use to develop it, we see in new ways how Bourne is what he is because Bourne wanted to be that way. While he was used by the system, it is harder to see that he was simply shaped by the system. The battle in Bourne’s life has not been man verses system, but man verses himself. He has a darkness within, and it is this darkness that is his greatest enemy.

While these ideas emerge from the film, it is worth mentioning that the pacing of the film makes them elusive. This is kinetic and energetic film making, with action sequences that at times border on the incomprehensible due to their fast pace. The great reviews for the film are probably evidence of the emotional excitement that this style of filmmaking produces. It is a fascinating combination of modern technique interpreting a very classic human drama. The freshness isn’t found in the special effects (a significant exception for a summer blockbuster) but in the energy in the story. The story lives or dies on our investment in the person of Bourne (I expect that some won’t like it because they don’t like the actor Matt Damon), and our enjoyment of the film hinges significantly on our visceral experience of the action. In other words, take your potty break before you enter the theater!

The ideas in Ultimatum need development in other places. In the end, it is an action piece that I expect many will take, enjoy, and leave without reflection. The nature of the film’s pacing doesn’t really invite that kind of reflection anyway. Nonetheless, the ideas are worthy of reflection because they strike me as particularly important.

In the last few months, I’ve had to have several tough conversations with people about the issue of responsibility. For all the good that our innovations in psychology and counseling have brought us, one of the challenges it has presented has been the way it has armed people who are prone to deny personal responsibility the language with which to rationalize that denial. Instead of exploring the past with an eye towards root causation and the way that sin has impacted our desires and the choices we make, we can instead find in our search the other people or events that can take the blame from us for the mistakes that we make. The basic sadness that I have seen in these situations is how it has fundamentally denied the ability to heal. We heal when we can acknowledge responsibility for that which we can and grow through the mistakes, not when we can lay the responsibility at other’s feet.

Bourne is a character with hope precisely because he is a character who seems to be trying to take that responsibility where he can. The films are not mere diatribes against the “system,” but instead a study of a life who is bearing the fruit from the seed that he has planted. Acknowledging that core responsibility, even in the backdrop of a complex system that manipulates and uses those bad choices and bad desires, is itself a significant statement in our contemporary culture.

Live Free or Die Hard: A Review

Ah, the summer blockbuster. Given that I was only 2 when Jaws came out, I never knew a world without it. The concept has morphed over the years and lately, with fierce competition for those precious summer dollars, it has become almost a caricature of itself. Big budgets, special effects and heavy action are supposed to draw us into the seats for an experience that can’t be replicated on our small screens. Unfortunately, of course, this has too often also meant a persistent recycling of old ideas, a neglect of story and character, and a pandering to the lowest common denominator as the films strive to appeal to the widest moviegoing audience as possible. Reading film reviews, there is typically a noticeable change in tone from a lot of these folks, many of whom have long since grown cynical about the whole summer tone to movie-going.

And so we turn to Live Free or Die Hard, the latest attempt to resurrect an old franchise. The first in the series, Die Hard, generally makes my short list for the best action films ever made. It combined a tight premise and clean “rules,” something that is vital for this genre, with great action and solid acting, particularly from Alan Rickman, who gave us one of the most delightfully vicious villains in film history. After that, the franchise failed to live up to its predecessor. The second was OK, though a shadow of the first. The third was better, but still less than the first. The challenge for both of those films was their need to get broader. In the first film, Bruce Willis gave us John McClane, a New York City cop that gets caught up in a terrorist attack on an office building. Part of the film’s strength was the boundaries of the building, forcing all the action to take place in tight quarters that imposed real limits on where the characters could go and what they could do. In the later films, the work got bigger, with John saving an airport in the second, and the entire city of New York in the third. As it got bigger, the franchise lost the hold that made the first film so exceptional, and the films became simply ordinary.

With that history in mind, I entered Live Free with some trepidation. In it, John McClane, still a New York City cop, is ordered to go pick up a known computer hacker as a favor for the Feds. As he is doing so, the apartment is attacked by assassins, who are set on killing the hacker. John rescues him, leaving him is as the only survivor of a simultaneous effort that killed a number of hackers. This is but one part of a larger mystery, as we see these same villains begin to infiltrate computers around the country, taking control of traffic signals in D.C. only to cause simultaneous accidents around the city, then infiltrating the stock exchange only to create a panic in the marketplace.

The film does a great job of drawing us into the emerging chaos that comes as the villains reveal their intentions. What we learn is that they are about attempting a “fire sale,” a simultaneous attack on every computer system of merit in the country, causing the entire nation to come to a grinding halt. The notion of a fire sale lies in hacker myth, but now we are seeing it unfold in reality. Of course, it’s up to John McClane to figure out how to stop it.

As I said, the franchise has kept building up the premises. It’s pretty far-fetched, but does a capable job of selling it to us. McClane is served up as an old-school fossil, an aging cop that doesn’t understand the high-tech world. The hacker, ably played by the goofy Justin Long, provides the comic contrast as well as the know-how that helps navigate the technological aspects of the battle. McClane fights to keep him alive, take out whatever bad guys he encounters, and eventually, to rescue his own daughter from the clutches of the henchman.

Live Free will have to compete with a lot of high-budget action movies this summer, but if it’s a big explosive few hours you want, you’ll do a lot worse than to check this one out. As an action piece, it certainly is the best of the franchise since the first. The villain, played by Timothy Olyphant, is no Alan Rickman, but the premise is just so broad, that it is amusing to see how they can pull it together and resolve it.

As a side note, the movie presents an interesting commentary on the ratings system. In an effort to get the adolescent movie dollars, they set out to make this the first PG-13 rated film in the franchise. They thus had to play with McClane’s signature line (“Yippee-ki-yay, mother_____”) but still pulled off an incredibly intense action experience. We’re OK with our kids being unsupervised and see government buildings and power plants blow up, helicopters and planes shot down, and a body count that was at least in the dozens, but can’t expose them to a single word referring to a sex act that unfortunately is pretty ordinary language of the street. Interesting.

Leaving the movie, I mused about the possible political commentary that lies underneath the film. Bruce Willis long carried the reputation as being one of the four Republicans in the movie business. He recently tried to distance himself from that reputation. This film involves a villain who, in his overzealous attempts to protect the country from itself brings the nation to the brink of disaster. Of course, while he is overzealously protecting the country, he also made sure he could make a tidy profit for himself and his own. Intended of not, thoughts of Halliburton and Guantanamo Bay danced in my head for awhile.

McClane is a quintessential American action hero. He is fearless and daring, inventive and bold. He is able to accomplish what the bureaucracy of the federal law enforcement, always mocked in this franchise, can’t accomplish because he is the only one that combines common sense with his heroic strength. As enjoyable as he is to watch, what interests me is how ordinary his picture of heroism is for us.

Whether its McClane, Jack Bauer, or Indiana Jones (coming next May), our heroes have a particular look and represent a value system that we are immersed in within our culture. That is all well and good, until we turn from our culture to other pictures of heroism. I think particularly of the Hebrew writer and his depiction of faithfulness in Hebrews 11. Within that story, heroism is entirely absent, but instead that which is worthy of admiration is faithfulness. In the seductive challenge to build up a story of faith, and a picture of a savior, that is so often in our own image, it is worth asking how much our pictures of heroism will alter, even corrupt, our images of faith, and particularly our image of our Savior. Left unchecked, this temptation suggests a spiritual cost that may be higher than rising ticket prices and overpriced popcorn.

Bridge to Terabithia: A Review

Spending my week on the beach last week with family, I logged many hours with my 2 and 6-year old nieces. I’m thinking now of one particular afternoon with the 2-year old, an afternoon full of adventure. We ventured to Neverland, only to find ourselves then swimming with mermaids under the sea. From one adventure to the next, for her the swimming pool and the kiddie pool next to it were constantly in a state of transformation, changing from one imaginary universe to the next. What a treat to glimpse at the world through her eyes, seeing the sparks of imagination fly as we played our games, sang our songs, and enjoyed the afternoon sun.

It was with this experience in mind that I watched Bridge to Terabithia, the adaptation of the popular children’s novel. In Terabithia, we meet Jesse, a misfit kid struggling to make life work in elementary school. His family lives outside of town, so he’s labeled a “country kid” in a city school. They’re struggling to make ends meet, and so he has to make do at times with hand-me-downs from his sisters, including the childhood horror of having to wear his sister’s sneakers with pink stripes. Fighting to fit in, we join him at the beginning on a morning run, as we see him striving to make his mark by being the fastest boy in the class. When recess comes, he sets out to prove himself, and does, beating out the competition that includes one of the class bullies. His joy is short-lived, though, as the winner of the race is Leslie, the new girl that showed up in class that morning.

Already frustrated at being beaten, and by a girl no less, he is further horrified when Leslie gets off at his bus stop, revealing that she has moved into the house next door to him. We see them struggle through the awkwardness of childhood, but in a fairly short time they begin to forge a real friendship, a friendship that is bound up in Leslie’s imagination. They venture into the woods, and there begin a time of wonderful childhood discovery.

Leslie looks upon the woods as an invitation to dream. They find a rope that crosses a stream and, ignoring the dangers, Leslie swings across and enters into a world of her own creation. She slowly draws Jesse into this world, and together they create Terabithia, an imaginary place full of mystical creatures. It is a world full of good and evil, and a place where they are constantly discovering their own magical powers as they fight for good and deepen their discovery.

As they grow in their discovery of Terabithia, their friendship also deepens. Leslie encourages Jesse to explore his talent as an artist, a gift he is embarrassed to share with others, feeling the glare of disapproval that he gets from his older sisters and especially his cool and practical father. His dad doesn’t have much place in his life for any of the wonder that Jesse is discovering through his friendship with Leslie, a sense that is a necessary component of his life as an artist. Through her he even gets the strength to speak to his music teacher, his secret crush who becomes for him a vital mentor that further sparks his imagination.

The movie at times seems to meander without purpose, but I think that even that itself is intentional. Childhood itself meanders, as the movement between the real world and the world of imagination is constantly in motion. For those, like me, who haven’t experienced the novel, we are left to wonder where we are heading with the plot, knowing only that the friendship is strengthening as they share their lives together.

Even while it moves through these quiet days, the movie gives us a number of precious images of friendship as we see these two grow up. He shares in her family’s experience in painting a room, and she goes with him to church, inviting their shared reflection on faith. This interaction was awkward but genuine, as we see children try to make sense of the mysteries of faith while still deeply entwined in the stories of their families of origin and the limitations that childhood necessarily imposes. Their reflections aren’t deep, but they are inviting nonetheless.

In truth, much of my experience of the movie fits that same phrase: awkward but genuine. I think the awkwardness stems from the film’s attempt to have us view the world as much as possible through the eyes of the children. As we see the world through their eyes, we are given a wonderful world of possibilities as the imagination is ignited. But we are also then given a limited vocabulary, as so much of the “adult world” that surrounds them involves new and strange experiences for which they have no language to process. When the movie succeeds, it does so by having us experience the same limitation of vocabulary while still giving us the experience of wonder that they know.

The movie does take a dramatic turn, and when it does it forces a confrontation between this world of imagination and wonder that Jesse has discovered and the often brutal realities of our world. What can sustain us as we make our own journey? What is left of that childhood sense of wonder?

As I reflect on the movie, I turn back to my time with my nieces over the previous week. There is an adult world that surrounds them. At times, it presses in on them and so they must glimpse realities for which they have no vocabulary and no way to process. Part of their survival will be grounded in their ability to experience the world of wonder that lies alongside those harsher realities. Indeed, that is a survival skill that will be needed even as they move further away from the years where imagination can reign supreme.

Terabithia invites us back to the kinds of worlds that Tolkien and Lewis explored with great depths in the past century. Living amidst the brutalities of our world, they invite us to remember the spiritual gift of wonder, a gift that looks at dying things and sees the life that lies beneath. They connect for us the truth that the gift that lets my niece see Neverland in the middle of the swimming pool is the seed of the gift that will let her look at the pain and hardship of life and see the Hand of God at work. The first may seem the trite wonderings of a child, but the second is indispensable.

May her Neverland never disappear.

Knocked Up: A Review

Knocked Up is a difficult movie to review. In fact, I have found very few Christian critics that were willing to even offer one. That's too bad, because its $30 million opening weekend take suggests that a lot of people are seeing it. It strikes me as an excellent moment for Christians to offer their voice on that experience. Having said that, I don't know too many people that I would recommend it to, even though I thought the movie was exceptionally well done. Like Borat, the controversial "mockumentary" from last year, the movie offers an uncomfortable mix of poignant cultural observations, at times winsome and likable characters, and outrageously funny but extremely offensive comedy. While those first two features offers much for many people, I expect the brand of comedy that the movie offers severely limits its audience, particularly within conservative Christian circles.

Knocked Up stars Seth Rogan as the aptly-named Ben Stone, an aimless twenty-something who fills his days smoking pot and hanging out with his friends. Unemployed, he makes his way by stretching out the proceeds of a government settlement. The $14,000 payment has lasted him nine years and counting, so materialism isn't really his problem. He's not without his ambitions, though. He and his friends have been working on a website that will collect information about the nude scenes of famous actresses. So the productive side of his life is spent "gathering research" by watching movies that contain nudity and logging the information about each scene. An abundant life, indeed.

In contrast to Ben, we have Alison Scott, played by Katherine Heigl. Alison is a rising star on the E! Network. Having worked her way up as a production assistant, she finally gets her big break with an opportunity to appear on camera as an interviewer. Thrilled at the opportunity, she decides to go out and celebrate with her sister. At the bar, she meets Ben, who clumsily buys her a drink. With encouragement from his friends, and a little bit of "liquid courage" Ben approaches and talks with Alison. As the evening progresses, their relationship follows a familiar track, as the alcohol begins to takes over where wisdom belongs. It leads them to her place, and you could fill in the rest.

Then the morning comes. For Alison, the morning brings the awful awareness of what she has done. As she stares down at Ben in the bed, she has an understandable mix of regret and horror. For Ben, he doesn't remember much of anything, and for the next few hours they must get to know each other anew. Alison quickly realizes that she has not found "Mr. Right," and the oddness of their conversation ends with polite promises to talk again.

That talk probably never would have happened until a few months later, when Alison realizes that she is pregnant. In the days that follow, Alison walks a familiar track, as she has to grapple with the reality of the pregnancy, contact Ben and let him know, then try to make sense of what this means for her future. Ben is understandably overwhelmed by the experience, realizing very quickly that he has no idea what he is doing and that he is entirely unfit for parenthood.

While Alison begins the process of picking a doctor, trying to keep her job going without them knowing about the pregnancy, and preparing for motherhood, Ben and Alison decide to give a relationship a go. The film wisely takes its time trying to cultivate this unlikely relationship, working its way to convince us that a guy like Ben could actually have a relationship with a woman like Alison. This effort works because the filmmakers are patient enough to let their relationship move slowly and in fits and starts, as we see Ben try and fail to figure out how to grow up.

Like Director Judd Apatow's breakout hit The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up is a coming of age film for an overgrown adolescent male. In Virgin, it was Steve Carrell's shy comic book-loving bachelor trying to figure out relationships long past the point where he should have. Here, it is a loser learning about responsibilities like working and relationships in the context of unplanned fatherhood. In both cases, the movies succeed because of skilled writing and a great comedic beat and because of great casting choices, particularly in their choice of leads. Rogan's Ben is a loser, but a lovable loser, and while he is certainly unfit for a relationship and for fatherhood, his unfitness echoes the awkwardness that many of us feel when we reach these steps in life. These characters are likable because they are real, and as we laugh at them we are laughing at ourselves.

Also like Virgin, one of the things that intrigues me most about the film is the stark contrast between the comedic beat of the film and the underlying value system the movie seems to uphold. After all, in the real world, could this story ever be told? An up-and-coming career woman with no identifiable faith background has a mistaken one-night stand with a hopeless loser and winds up pregnant. With little prospects to get meaningful help through this process and with a career that would likely get derailed by having a child, how many in our culture would opt for, as Knocked Up describes it, that word that "rhymes with Shma-shmortion." Although the movie takes a moment to acknowledge her "choice" to keep the child, there is surprisingly little conflict over this. Instead, it seems from the beginning that there is instinct to keep the child, and to contend with the impacts that the child will have on her and their lives.

Alongside this choice is her immediate reaction to involve Ben in her life and her desire to cultivate a relationship, if only for the benefit of their child. Even Ben, hopeless loser that he is, feels a responsibility to act well on behalf of his child and to make things work as much as possible. He talks to his Dad, trying to seek advice about how to make things work. He stumbles on the way, but seems intent in his best moments at wanting to make things right for both Alison and his child. While I don’t want to give away the ending, I’m impressed with the way the character grew, and found myself rooting for him throughout his journey.

Although it was slow to develop, I wound up enjoying a subplot that focused on the relationship between Alison’s sister and her husband. Early in the film, the relationship seemed little more than a foil, a chance to glimpse the stereotypical negatives of marriage and commitment and offer Ben and Alison a chance to see what they needed to stay away from. As the film went on, we get to know the couple more, and especially get to enjoy the budding friendship between Ben and Pete.

As in Reign Over Me, another recent release I reviewed awhile back, the time between Ben and Pete, particularly in a quick road trip they take together late in the movie, provides opportunities for reflection on male friendship. While Ben has been spending his life around his buddies, Pete has become locked down in a marriage that leaves him little time for male companionship. In a clever parallel, as he seeks to sneak time to be with fellow “nerds” we see him acting like a man cheating on his family. As much as the movie offers reflections on family values, it is also offering some thoughts on male friendship that are worthwhile.

Knocked Up is a fascinating juxtaposition of conservative values and tasteless comedy. Its comedy serves as a language that allows the film to communicate to the college crowd and the young adult audience that should be its primarily field (keep the teens away, please). The values it communicates, though, are some that I think Christians of all ages should be largely echoing. The film’s instincts are that the unborn need protection and care, that two parents should be devoted to raising a child with love, that there is a need in our lives for real friendships, and that careers and other pressures in life are secondary next to the value of life itself. There’s more that we need to say, certainly, but what it is saying is significant, and worth celebrating.

Having just had my first child two weeks ago, the film’s birthing scenes, which included some of the most outrageous and most memorable comedy in the film, were extremely fresh for me. The freshness only enhanced that the film’s strength is in its ability to walk the same paths that we all walk in different ways, and to muse about the comedy we encounter along the way. The movie captures in part what I just experienced in whole: that birthing a child is at least one if not the most painful, most intense, and most emotional experiences a person can know in this life. But holding a newborn child in your arms, indeed, holding your newborn child in your arms, changes your perspective forever, and leaves no question in your mind that the experience was worthwhile. I even think my wife would agree with that.

Little Children: A Review

Sadness reigns in Little Children. We begin with a summer playground populated by three bored housewives and their children. This is their daily ritual, a morning at the playground, engaging “conversation,” which is more a series of anecdotes and opinions delivered to nobody in particular. In brief glimpses, we know the basic unhappiness that seems to define each of their lives.

Alongside this conversation, we meet Sarah Pierce, Kate Winslet’s too-bright mother, struggling to find some place in this universe. A doctoral candidate in English Literature, her bright mind is unchallenged by the life she has chosen, and finds the playground a small solace that gives her a change of scenery, if not a real escape from the madness she feels lurking below the surface of her life.

While we come to know Sarah more than the other women, she seems at home with them in dealing with a malaise about her life. Having fiercely fought to stay home as the primary caregiver for her daughter, she questions why she took that stand, and finds herself desperate every day for the small amounts of time she has to herself when her husband comes home. Her marriage, though, is becoming increasingly strained. Her husband, presented to us as a dreadfully dull advertising executive, excuse me, “branding” executive, has himself become lost in a fantasy world. One click of the button began his slow seduction into the world of internet fantasy, and we observe one of the most realistic depictions of the comic-sadness that is internet pornography (a $4.9 billion industry, by one count). While Sarah catches him in the act, we never watch them fight through the issue. Instead, Sarah seeks her solace elsewhere.

For awhile, that solace will be found in the arms of Brad. We first meet Brad as the “Prom King,” dubbed so by the Playground Three for his frequent visits to the park with his son. He is the handsome stranger, and on a whim and a bet, Sarah meets him, and finds herself drawn to him. Their first encounter has its own strange ending, but eventually they come back together, and forge a “public friendship,” spending afternoons at the pool while their kids play.

Brad has his own struggles. A law school graduate, he is studying for his third attempt at the bar exam. While he readily accepts and talks about that failure in his life, he also finds himself drawn to various things, whether watching boys skateboarding or playing night football, that offer the hope of rediscovering his own since of masculinity. He’s married to a bombshell wife, played by Jennifer Connelly, and she pours herself into her job such that we sense a basic distance in their marriage from the very beginning.

Brad and Sarah find in each other a fantasy that they can live out. For Sarah, she sees in Brad a handsome lover who finds her engaging. He sees in her someone that believes in him, that sees the man in him that he no longer sees in himself. Their affair has been played out in their minds long before they ever act on it. When they do, it is nothing more than the raw expression of the pent up fantasies they have been living out in their minds since they met.

Then there’s the sex offender. In one of the stranger subplots in recent memory, we are introduced to Ronnie, a sex offender recently released from prison and now living in the neighborhood with his mother. Our first glimpse of him is only through the posters that the “Committee for Concerned Citizens,” actually just one unemployed ex-police officer, is putting up around the neighborhood. The town is abuzz about his presence. Everyone has an opinion about him, opinions he seems to confirm with every turn throughout the film.

We first meet him when he comes to the pool and swims around with goggles. When the police remove him from the premises, he protests that he was only there to “cool off,” but we know otherwise. In perhaps one of the saddest dating scenes in recent memory, he shows the depth of his sickness with the blind date his mother setup for him. He is a deeply disturbed man, and creates a level of discomfort any time he is present in the film.

While one might get lost in the increasing diversity of these characters, the film finds its heart in a single discussion. Invited to a book club to discuss Madame Bovary, Sarah endures a rant from the most arrogant of the Playground Three, who dismisses Bovary’s wanderings as the actions of a “slut.” Enduring the rant, Sarah responds with her gracious assessment of the character. She sympathizes with her for the unhappiness that defines her existence, and her willingness to fight against it. While she understands that she fails in her efforts, she admires her effort.

Hence, the film gives us characters who are each dealing with a defining kind of disappointment with life. For each, redemption comes not in a destination or a solution to the problem, but in a willingness to fight against that unhappiness.

Director Todd Field wisely resists a Hollywood solution to this drama. I found myself cringing through much of the last 20 minutes of the film, expecting a mundane turn in the plot. Despite several chances to do so, though, Field opts to stay true to his premise. This is not a film that gives easy solutions to its drama. I don’t even know if Field has an answer to the questions he’s asking, which allows him to find a more honest conclusion than he might otherwise have offered.

I expect that Little Children is the kind of film that a lot of Christians would have trouble seeing, but it may be just the kind of movie that many of them should see. It’s understanding of the despair that can take hold in a prosperous life is something that is probably familiar to many of us. One need only observe the balding 40-something in his convertible, the sports-obsessed at any weekend game, the conversations at a local Starbuck’s or at the local mall to see the reality of angst in the midst of success and the power of escapism to offer a salve for this angst. Perhaps we would easily dismiss the solutions these characters find for their problems, but I don’t know that we are always leading the way in finding better solutions.

The piece that I admire most about the film is its unwillingness to settle for despair. This is the necessary first step in the fight for joy, a fight that to my mind defines the Christian’s existence.

As I write this, I’m awaiting a phone call from my wife to tell me that she has gone into labor with our first child. I await word on her grandmother’s heart surgery and my cousin’s chemo treatments. I recall my conversations with friends in recent days over their frustrations over their jobs and their excitement about their pregnancies, coming weddings and graduations.

What is the outcome of this constant mix of joy and sadness, pleasure and pain all played out in a life that can move from seeming terminably long to dreadfully short in a span of hours? For many, the outcome is the kind of malaise that Little Children understands so well. We can come to see joy as a periodic byproduct that may or may not come in the midst of our journey, but certainly can’t be expected in the midst of life’s disappointments.

I think the Christian story describes a different kind of reality. It takes the desperate searching that the film describes, but points it to the Source of joy itself. C.S Lewis tells us that the basic problem of the human condition is that we are often too easily satisfied, settling for lesser pleasures than that which we are meant to know. Little Children understands some of the reasons for that, because for some the mediocrity of living makes real joy just seem to hard to actually experience.

If we are to engage in the kind of pursuit that both Lewis and Little Children consider, it may take the kind of dissatisfaction that the movie explores. If we are satisfied with a new convertible, a decent IRA, relatively conflict-free marriages and obedient children, what is there in us that will crave the passion of delighting in God above all things? Little Children understands what it takes many of us years of heartache to learn, namely, that these things will not satisfy. Resisting the temptation to settle for the mediocre as the best we can find, our call is to fight for joy, and to keep fighting until we find the real thing.

Spider-man 3: A Review

“If you want forgiveness, get religion” - Spider-man

Christ gets a prominent role in Spider-man 3. Driven to desperation, Eddie Brock, the photographer who failed in his attempts to surpass Peter Parker at the Bugle, finds himself in a church. Kneeling towards the front, he looks up at the crucifix, a vivid image of Christ on the cross, and begins his prayer. Humbled, emotional, weakened, he stumbles in the address until he finally states his single request to God: “Kill Peter Parker.”

OK, so maybe it’s not the best showing for faith in film. Nonetheless, the Spider-man saga has provided interesting commentary on heroism, if not faith, over the years. Building around the mantra that Stan Lee gave to the character from early on, “With great power comes great responsibility,” we have seen through the films a young man fighting to understand the nature of the abilities that were thrust upon him and how he can best make use of those powers for good. But Spider-man isn’t Batman, and consistent with the character the movies haven’t tried to move too much into the inner life and explore Parker’s motives. We have seen his sorrow over Ben’s death, and we have seen his failed response to that death. Beyond that, most of the emotional drama that has driven Parker to date has been his struggle to live out his new existence while still living an “ordinary life.”

Spider-man 3 is a worthy, if lesser, successor to its predecessors. $300 million can buy you some eye-popping special effects these days, but it seems it can’t always buy a good editor for a script. While the movie resists the “franchise-killer” label that other superhero “thirds” have embraced (see Batman and Superman for excellent examples), it is still a franchise that is at a crossroads, struggling to make a decision as to whether or not it is going to let these characters grow. Peter and Mary Jane have now secured their place on the list of the most boring romantic couples on the screen, having a relationship that is still marred by a thoroughly adolescent inability to communicate the barest of emotions, and as a result we feel like we’re lost in an endless relationship cycle manufactured by silly misunderstandings. While it may be unfair to simply shout at the characters, “Grow up,” the movie often fails to lets us see them grow at all.

Despite this weakness, Spider-man 3 does give us hints at a deeper voice that makes the film imminently watchable. The film’s three villains, Green Goblin, the Sandman, and Venom, all provoke Spider-man to face three basic issues in his life. In Green Goblin, the identity assumed by Peter’s friend Harry Osborn, Parker must encounter the costs his alter ego has imposed on the people he loves. In this journey, Goblin takes Spider-man on early in the film, and winds up losing his memory. This lets us glimpse at a rejuvenated Harry, freed from his resentment of Peter as he is freed from his memory of Spider-man’s involvement in his father’s death.

Alongside Harry’s story we are introduced to Flint Marko. A fugitive, we see him first on the run from the police, pausing in his run to visit his daughter. After seeing his softer side, we see him stumble into a restricted location into the middle of a radioactive science experiment (always the magic elixir of the Marvel universe). This transforms him into the Sandman, the springboard for some of the movie’s best effects. Oh, and it also turns out that he was also involved in Ben Parker’s murder, a revelation that is laid on Peter as an early piece of the unwinding of his relatively joyful existence.

Our third villain in the rogue’s gallery is Venom/Eddie Brock. Eddie is an ambitious photographer bent on stealing Peter’s job. Venom’s origins remain a mystery in the film, but originates as an alien black oil-like substance that first finds its way to Parker. The parasite tends to act as a symbiote, first attaching itself to a host then magnifying certain characteristics of its host, particularly the aggression within the host. This is key, because it tells us that whatever we see of the people who become victim to the parasite exhibit that which was already within themselves.

For Parker, the parasite’s first victim, it brings out an aggression and anger that we have only briefly glimpsed in previous movies. On the street, he is ridiculously confident, oblivious to the disgust of others at his newfound swagger. In costume, he is angry and aggressive, showing no restraint against his foes. For Brock, the second victim, the effects are even more pronounced. Consumed by anger, he transforms into the character Venom, a vicious parody of Spider-man, set on killing him. Both victims manifest their darker side, and so allow us to glimpse the shadows of their souls.

With the stage set for a grand piece of action, spiritual themes emerge that shape the film in significant ways. Chief of these is the matter of forgiveness. When Ben died, Peter went after the one he assumed was his killer, the one that he failed to stop shortly before Ben’s death in the act of committing a theft. While he wasn’t directly responsible for the thief’s death, Peter blames himself for both deaths. Facing the Sandman in this film, he does his best to kill him, and through all three stories Peter must face his need to forgive. As Aunt May reminds him, the key for Peter is not in forgiving others, but in forgiving himself.

This theme of forgiving oneself is echoed in other recent films. I think especially of The Lookout, a recent suspense film that deals deeply with a character driven by his own failure to forgive himself. In both cases, we see people who shape their lives around the realities of unforgiveness. For Peter, one of his greatest needs in his life is to extend grace to himself, and his failure to do so proves destructive to his most precious relationships. Both films suggest a broader need in our culture to contend with our failure to forgive ourselves for the mistakes of our past.

Along with this theme of forgiveness, we also see the theme of vengeance. This is such a common theme in modern super-hero films, often manifesting the values of the old westerns, that we could often pass on the issue without comment. Here, though, the desire for vengeance is paramount in Peter’s struggles. When Peter learns of Flint’s involvement in Ben’s death, he is consumed with a need to bring him to “justice.” After he assumes that he has done so, he is angry with Aunt May for failing to share in his exuberance. Aunt May reminds him of the limits of “vengeance,” and the need to let go of the pain of the past.

Peter can’t let go, and so we are invited to connect his desire for vengeance with his failure to forgive himself. Indeed, they are the same problem, as Peter can’t forgive either himself or others. He is tied up in the past, and is desperate to know the freedom of forgiveness.

Standing behind these two issues is the issue of sin itself. Actually, sin is not the film’s word, so maybe we should speak of it as “corruption.” The film’s world-view posits that Peter’s desire for vengeance and unforgiving attitude are not character flaws that exist in a vacuum, but are manifestations of a darkness in his soul. Peter doesn’t forgive because there is something within himself that doesn’t want to, a dark spot that revels in the blood lust of vengeance.

The problem with Spider-man 3 is that it doesn’t believe it’s own vision. The film positions itself well in trying to understand the universal corruption of the human soul, that which Christianity calls sin. But what is the solution to that corruption? For the film, the solution lies within Parker himself. Similar to his mantra, Parker comes to see his need to “make good choices,” knowing that bad choices will always prove tempting.

This reveals a basic failure to understand its subject. If Parker has this darkness within himself, if the aggression, anger, and selfishness that we see when he dons the black suit is truly an expression of his deeper urgings, why should we believe that there exists within that same person the ability to “shut it off?” If this corruption is real, than it should effect the whole person, including whatever faculty that Parker must rely on to make that good choice.

It strikes me that the filmmakers are ready to give us a universe that has good and evil, and even see some of that evil lying within ourselves. But they’re not ready to call that evil “sin,” and as such, there is something missing in their moral universe. The Christian view helps us understand Parker’s problem. Through the Christian story, we see Parker’s corruption, made manifest through the alien symbiosis, as the expression of the darkness that we all inherit from the fall. But this problem of sin cannot be solved by ourselves. The darkness is too deep, and it consumes too much of what we have become.

I don’t want to be too hard on the film, because too often Christians believe the same thing that the film does. We don’t like to talk about sin, and at times the church can present the false notion that we are generally decent people in need of minor correction. The gospel story, that we are desperate sinners without hope but for the divine intervention of the cross into our lives, falls away as we present ourselves as morally upright and upstanding citizens. We redefine our moral boundaries so that we can suggest that we generally comply with our diminished moral universe, and can praise God for covering over the slip-ups.

What the we need, and what the film needs, is a deeper understanding of the human condition. Yes, we need to forgive ourselves, and yes, there is a vital connection between our failure to forgive ourselves and our inability to forgive others. But these are merely manifestations of the deeper problem from which we need rescue. At our core, we are in need of transformation, and that transformation must ultimately be found outside of ourselves. We cannot generate it, and we cannot maintain it. We are paupers in need of grace, no matter how good our disguise.

Spider-man 3 understands the need for salvation. Christianity speaks of a need for a Savior. The difference between these two is critical, because in the end we cannot have the former without the latter.