And so we cap 2007, Hollywood’s “Celebration of Life.” So that might be a little extreme, but it is interesting that at least four mainstream films (Waitress, Knocked Up, Bella, and Juno) deal quite explicitly with the question of new life from a somewhat consistent perspective. While it is clear at least in the cases of Waitress, Knocked Up and Juno (I haven’t seen Bella yet) that the creative force behind them are probably not NRLC members, they allow the key character to “choose life” and explore the consequences along that journey, even as they take decidedly different turns.
Of those three films, Juno certainly should have the broadest audience. For folks that can appreciate a certain juvenile, frat-house male humor (and if you read my review of Knocked Up, you’ll figure out that I do), then Apatow’s Knocked Up is for you. But for the rest, Juno offers a much more accessible comedy that manages to achieve much with well-drawn and well-delivered characters.
Juno is a clever and charming 16-year old girl who has her life changed after a single sexual encounter with her boyfriend. As she slowly awakens to the reality that she might be pregnant, she heads to her local convenience store to be sure. The tests aren’t lying, and as her friend working checkout reminds her as she shakes one of the tests, “That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet.”
Dealing with the shock, she rises to the occasion and starts working through her options. She reaches the place where she is going to get an abortion, but an encounter with a pro-life advocating friend and her experience at the fairly creepy abortion clinic convinces her otherwise. As she tells her father later, “I mean, it has fingernails, allegedly.” She’s going to have the child.
While she wrestles with the option of raising the child herself, she settles pretty quickly on the idea of finding an adopted family. Even in the midst of the comedy, we sense the creeping reality of just how much Juno is stepping into an adult world. What began as a single sexual experience that was as much born out of boredom as deep desire has now given her the responsibility for a life inside her. While she has a glib and casual manner, beneath the quips we see her slowly realizing what she’s walked into.
She takes it on herself to find an adopted family, and finds what seems to be an ideal match. The Lorings, played ably by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner, are the ideal suburban couple. Wealthy, beautiful, they seem a perfect home for her child, and so Juno agrees to give the baby up. In the course of the pregnancy, she gets to know them better, especially Mark. Mark is a former member of a rock band who now writes music for commercials, and their shared love of music, guitars, and film helps them strike up a quirky friendship. The film wisely avoids any kind of sexual dimension to the relationship, which allows us to relax and watch Juno as she slowly understands the challenges in the Lorings’ relationship.
All is not right in the pretty Loring household. Vanessa is very serious about adopting a child, as she is very serious about everything else in her life, including presenting a clean and beautiful existence. Meanwhile, Mark has within him something of the old rocker, and we see him wrestling, if quietly, with the banal trappings of his suburban existence.
Each step along the way, Juno rises to the occasion, even while she is facing more responsibility than she ought. The plot twists along the way are yours to experience, but throughout the gentle comedy and the naturalist approach of the actors reinforce how this film has moved from the art-house to the mainstream. The strength of the film is that it doesn’t allow it’s quirky beat and intelligent writing to detract from the journey.
As polarizing as contemporary political discussions are about abortion, I wonder if a film like Juno offers something of a pathway to healthier conversation. As Juno navigates decisions that she shouldn’t have to make and deals with an adult world that has come to her to soon, she is aided by the support of those who stand behind her, even when they do so quietly or from a distance. I was intrigued in watching it at how much she needed this help to make her way.
For those of us who bemoan our culture’s sacrifice of the unborn, I was challenged by Juno to be thinking more deliberately about how I can be a part of a “culture of life,” and help cultivate environments where people can ably choose to work for life.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
No Country for Old Men: A Review
It’s taken me awhile to write about No Country for Old Men, the latest film from the Coen brothers. I saw it over a month ago, and it still is sticking with me. Yet, the darkness of the film is just so deep, it eludes comment. Maybe that darkness can best be described by the words of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the hero played by Tommy Lee Jones. As he looks out over a vast Texas landscape, he mumbles the words, “I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come into my life somehow. And he didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does.” And so there isn’t much reason to feel hope.
The film starts as a slow-moving chase. It begins with Llewelyn Moss, a ordinary guy in West Texas that happens to be out hunting one day when he comes across the leftovers of what appears to be a drug deal gone bad. Out in the middle of nowhere, he finds several vehicles, a few dead bodies, one guy who is clearly on the verge of dying, and a briefcase full of cash. Without too much hesitation, Moss ignores the dying man’s request for water and takes the briefcase and leaves. He heads home to his trailer, hides the briefcase underneath the building, and spends the evening with his wife.
It would be a clean getaway until, appropriately enough, his conscience gets the better of him. Lying awake in the middle of the night, he decides that he needs to give that man some water, and so he heads back out to the site. While there, his truck is discovered by men who are trying to retrieve the case, and so the chase is on.
We then wind up witnessing the story through three views. Moss is on the run, trying to stay ahead of the men who are hunting him down. Despite moments of cleverness and his best efforts to conceal, we quickly get the sense that he is simply over his head, and barring intervention, the end game for him will not be a positive one. He has several men after him, but none more ominous than Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. Chigurh is a Frankenstein-like monster who seems indifferent to life itself. He kills casually wherever he goes, and seems undeterred in his intent to hunt down Moss and kill him.
The third view is the Sheriff. He is the wise man of the film, trying to train a young deputy in the details of criminal investigation, while he seems to be growing increasingly concerned about the nature of this search. Throughout, it is Bell who seems to understand where this is heading, and supported by Jones’ typically excellent understated delivery, helps us feel his own sense of helplessness.
In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, he visits his dad, himself a retired sheriff. Ed Tom Bell’s conversation with his dad has the makings of a pretty typical conversation between old men (remember the title), as he pontificates about how much worse things seem to be getting. His dad provides the tough response that shapes a lot of this film, by essentially telling him that things really aren’t getting worse, they’re just as bad as they’ve always been.
His dad gives Ed Tom Bell a tough call for any that want to fight for good things in the world, but it’s a realistic call. Those that are called to work for good must deal with the reality that their work will often appear vain, as if they are merely providing the thumb in the dike when the flood is coming. It’s a call to work without any sense of immediate reward, and I expect it’s the experience of many who work for good in our world.
I tend to find myself drawn to the Coen brothers’ comedic fare, like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. But there seems to be a connection between these films. In all of them, there is a searching for grace in the world that struggles to offer it. In No Country, they seem to propose an answer that in God’s silence, there simply is going to be no answer found.
It’s pretty bleak, but it has forced me to reflect on the rich tradition of lament within the Biblical corpus. It an important tradition that comprises much of the voice of the Psalms. But it’s also a voice that we don’t use much within the church today. No Country is a challenging reminder that we lose something when we lose that voice.
No Country deals with God’s silence and seems to conclude that no answer is coming because there is no one to offer an answer. The lament tradition within Scripture offers us a reminder that believers will in fact experience seasons where we feel God’s silence as vividly as this film. But it offers a language to pour that aching over God’s seeming absence back to God Himself, converting what would be a kind of rejection into a form of worship. The wisdom of the lament tradition is that in can offer us a path that can take us from the darkest places to the true source of comfort.
As I said, I struggled with what to say about No Country for Old Men. When one encounters such a pervasive picture of depravity and emptiness, my own gut reaction is simply to remain silent. Scripture’s lament tradition offers a different voice, modeling for us a way to speak to the Silence, longing for the day when the Voice will be heard again.
The film starts as a slow-moving chase. It begins with Llewelyn Moss, a ordinary guy in West Texas that happens to be out hunting one day when he comes across the leftovers of what appears to be a drug deal gone bad. Out in the middle of nowhere, he finds several vehicles, a few dead bodies, one guy who is clearly on the verge of dying, and a briefcase full of cash. Without too much hesitation, Moss ignores the dying man’s request for water and takes the briefcase and leaves. He heads home to his trailer, hides the briefcase underneath the building, and spends the evening with his wife.
It would be a clean getaway until, appropriately enough, his conscience gets the better of him. Lying awake in the middle of the night, he decides that he needs to give that man some water, and so he heads back out to the site. While there, his truck is discovered by men who are trying to retrieve the case, and so the chase is on.
We then wind up witnessing the story through three views. Moss is on the run, trying to stay ahead of the men who are hunting him down. Despite moments of cleverness and his best efforts to conceal, we quickly get the sense that he is simply over his head, and barring intervention, the end game for him will not be a positive one. He has several men after him, but none more ominous than Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. Chigurh is a Frankenstein-like monster who seems indifferent to life itself. He kills casually wherever he goes, and seems undeterred in his intent to hunt down Moss and kill him.
The third view is the Sheriff. He is the wise man of the film, trying to train a young deputy in the details of criminal investigation, while he seems to be growing increasingly concerned about the nature of this search. Throughout, it is Bell who seems to understand where this is heading, and supported by Jones’ typically excellent understated delivery, helps us feel his own sense of helplessness.
In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, he visits his dad, himself a retired sheriff. Ed Tom Bell’s conversation with his dad has the makings of a pretty typical conversation between old men (remember the title), as he pontificates about how much worse things seem to be getting. His dad provides the tough response that shapes a lot of this film, by essentially telling him that things really aren’t getting worse, they’re just as bad as they’ve always been.
His dad gives Ed Tom Bell a tough call for any that want to fight for good things in the world, but it’s a realistic call. Those that are called to work for good must deal with the reality that their work will often appear vain, as if they are merely providing the thumb in the dike when the flood is coming. It’s a call to work without any sense of immediate reward, and I expect it’s the experience of many who work for good in our world.
I tend to find myself drawn to the Coen brothers’ comedic fare, like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. But there seems to be a connection between these films. In all of them, there is a searching for grace in the world that struggles to offer it. In No Country, they seem to propose an answer that in God’s silence, there simply is going to be no answer found.
It’s pretty bleak, but it has forced me to reflect on the rich tradition of lament within the Biblical corpus. It an important tradition that comprises much of the voice of the Psalms. But it’s also a voice that we don’t use much within the church today. No Country is a challenging reminder that we lose something when we lose that voice.
No Country deals with God’s silence and seems to conclude that no answer is coming because there is no one to offer an answer. The lament tradition within Scripture offers us a reminder that believers will in fact experience seasons where we feel God’s silence as vividly as this film. But it offers a language to pour that aching over God’s seeming absence back to God Himself, converting what would be a kind of rejection into a form of worship. The wisdom of the lament tradition is that in can offer us a path that can take us from the darkest places to the true source of comfort.
As I said, I struggled with what to say about No Country for Old Men. When one encounters such a pervasive picture of depravity and emptiness, my own gut reaction is simply to remain silent. Scripture’s lament tradition offers a different voice, modeling for us a way to speak to the Silence, longing for the day when the Voice will be heard again.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
There Will Be Blood: A Review
I found myself surprised in the early moments of There Will Be Blood, the latest critical hit from one of my favorite directors, P.T. Anderson. The film stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a prospector turned oil baron, documenting his rise to power and the consequences of his success. The last time I saw Lewis it was in The Gangs of New York, where he played Bill ‘The Butcher” Cutting, one of the most deliciously evil characters in recent film history. The look of the character Plainview is a clear echo, intentional I’m sure, of Cutting, and so anytime we look at him early in the film, there is a natural instinct to dislike him or to not trust him.
But then we watch Plainview. In a fascinating sequence, the opening moments of the film, without using a single word, draws us into this man’s existence. We see him as a lonely prospector, risking his life mining for silver on his own. We see him with a small crew a few years later, working hard to dig his first oil well. When one of his crew member’s is killed, we see him take the man’s son in his arms, embracing him as his own. And we flash forward again, this time to Plainview as a legitimate “oil man,” trying to convince a town to lease him their land. As he talks, he speaks of family values and integrity, and even walks away from the deal because of the dissenting voices in the room. And we think, maybe, just maybe, this guy really wants to do it right.
We’re left with those lingering impressions even as the story slowly takes an ominous turn. The heart of the tale is found when Plainview is approached by Paul Sunday, the son of a poor goat farmer in remote Texas. Paul knows that there is oil on his land, and wants to work a deal with Plainview to let him mine it. Daniel pays Paul $500 as a finder’s fee, and then begins his investigation. This is a time when oil companies are jumping over each other to find the next big claim, and so Daniel has a deliberate process that he must go through as he begins his efforts to buy up the mining rights for the town.
It is at this point that we are introduced to the other key character, Paul’s brother Eli. Played by the same actor, it can be a bit confusing to make the connection, but where Paul has quietly put together a business deal than can give him his start in the world, Eli is concerned with weightier matters. He is the minister of the “Church of the Third Revelation,” the local charismatic church that is a major influence in the town. Because of his influence, Eli wields power, and despite his somewhat restrained demeanor, we quickly realize that he is very deliberately using that power to accomplish what he wants.
It is here that we begin to see Plainview’s character emerge. He is passionate about mining his oil and building a pipeline to the sea, and to do that he must placate those who can stand in his way. He does his best to get along with Eli, even as we get glimpses of his antipathy for him and his brand of religion. But as his efforts encounter barriers, Plainview finds himself required to play to Eli’s world more than he would like.
As I was watching the film, I kept thinking of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the classic Huston/Bogart film that deals with the emerging greed and obsession among three prospectors. Afterwards, I was intrigued to read that Anderson would watch Madre every night before filming. But where Madre dealt with an emerging greed that consumes otherwise decent people, Blood seems more interested in exploring a rage that is suppressed and finds ways to emerge. Looking at the film from the end, I don’t think he’s asking us to think of Plainview as a good man gone wrong, but to think of him as a man whose evil inclinations found their voice through a lifetime of self-serving pursuits.
That kind of picture of Plainview sits alongside a view of Eli that is pretty similar. While his brother uses his fee to start a nice business and to care for others, Eli continues to use his religion as a way of gaining power, influence, and wealth. In one of the most poignant scenes in the film, Plainview is able to get Eli to shout out “I am a false prophet and God is a superstition” over and over. It is exactly what we have come to know that Plainview thinks of Eli, and our opinion of him by that point isn’t much different.
There Will Be Blood is a powerful picture of greed and the consuming nature of sin. Plainview is consumed with himself and his own greed, and oil becomes the means by which he pushes away every good thing in his life. Eli finds that religion serves the same ends. Both are tools to pursue what it is they want. “God” for Eli seems nothing more than a word to speak that offers the prospect of power and control. Even when both get what they want, it is clear that their end is hollow, as everything of meaning is lost to them by the end.
The film is filled with quietly modest people that offer a different kind of model for living. But what it doesn’t see is how the search for power and control, whether that is gained through wealth or religion, can end up well. There’s a healthy challenge there, to recognize our own inclinations for evil desire and our ability to justify using good things, even the best of things, to serve those ends.
But then we watch Plainview. In a fascinating sequence, the opening moments of the film, without using a single word, draws us into this man’s existence. We see him as a lonely prospector, risking his life mining for silver on his own. We see him with a small crew a few years later, working hard to dig his first oil well. When one of his crew member’s is killed, we see him take the man’s son in his arms, embracing him as his own. And we flash forward again, this time to Plainview as a legitimate “oil man,” trying to convince a town to lease him their land. As he talks, he speaks of family values and integrity, and even walks away from the deal because of the dissenting voices in the room. And we think, maybe, just maybe, this guy really wants to do it right.
We’re left with those lingering impressions even as the story slowly takes an ominous turn. The heart of the tale is found when Plainview is approached by Paul Sunday, the son of a poor goat farmer in remote Texas. Paul knows that there is oil on his land, and wants to work a deal with Plainview to let him mine it. Daniel pays Paul $500 as a finder’s fee, and then begins his investigation. This is a time when oil companies are jumping over each other to find the next big claim, and so Daniel has a deliberate process that he must go through as he begins his efforts to buy up the mining rights for the town.
It is at this point that we are introduced to the other key character, Paul’s brother Eli. Played by the same actor, it can be a bit confusing to make the connection, but where Paul has quietly put together a business deal than can give him his start in the world, Eli is concerned with weightier matters. He is the minister of the “Church of the Third Revelation,” the local charismatic church that is a major influence in the town. Because of his influence, Eli wields power, and despite his somewhat restrained demeanor, we quickly realize that he is very deliberately using that power to accomplish what he wants.
It is here that we begin to see Plainview’s character emerge. He is passionate about mining his oil and building a pipeline to the sea, and to do that he must placate those who can stand in his way. He does his best to get along with Eli, even as we get glimpses of his antipathy for him and his brand of religion. But as his efforts encounter barriers, Plainview finds himself required to play to Eli’s world more than he would like.
As I was watching the film, I kept thinking of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the classic Huston/Bogart film that deals with the emerging greed and obsession among three prospectors. Afterwards, I was intrigued to read that Anderson would watch Madre every night before filming. But where Madre dealt with an emerging greed that consumes otherwise decent people, Blood seems more interested in exploring a rage that is suppressed and finds ways to emerge. Looking at the film from the end, I don’t think he’s asking us to think of Plainview as a good man gone wrong, but to think of him as a man whose evil inclinations found their voice through a lifetime of self-serving pursuits.
That kind of picture of Plainview sits alongside a view of Eli that is pretty similar. While his brother uses his fee to start a nice business and to care for others, Eli continues to use his religion as a way of gaining power, influence, and wealth. In one of the most poignant scenes in the film, Plainview is able to get Eli to shout out “I am a false prophet and God is a superstition” over and over. It is exactly what we have come to know that Plainview thinks of Eli, and our opinion of him by that point isn’t much different.
There Will Be Blood is a powerful picture of greed and the consuming nature of sin. Plainview is consumed with himself and his own greed, and oil becomes the means by which he pushes away every good thing in his life. Eli finds that religion serves the same ends. Both are tools to pursue what it is they want. “God” for Eli seems nothing more than a word to speak that offers the prospect of power and control. Even when both get what they want, it is clear that their end is hollow, as everything of meaning is lost to them by the end.
The film is filled with quietly modest people that offer a different kind of model for living. But what it doesn’t see is how the search for power and control, whether that is gained through wealth or religion, can end up well. There’s a healthy challenge there, to recognize our own inclinations for evil desire and our ability to justify using good things, even the best of things, to serve those ends.
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