My daughter has learned to crawl over the last few weeks. Among the many changes that this brings to her parents’ world, I find myself musing about how she sees our home, the people in her life, and the world that we are now both mobile in. After all, when I need to get by her, I can just step over her without any trouble, and when she’s crawling around, we literally tower over her. Her perspective is no doubt different because of her small size, and it amuses me to consider how big our world must seem to her, turning a modest bedroom into a grand playground and a walk around the neighborhood into a trip into the great yonder.
It was with those thoughts swirling around in my head that I saw Horton Hears a Who!, the latest and most successful attempt to adapt Dr. Seuss to the big screen. The story centers on Horton, a gentle spirited elephant making his way through his home jungle. He is a self-appointed teacher, telling his friends about the world around him. His efforts to teach are turned on their head one day when he hears a tiny voice. He figures out that the voice is coming from a tiny speck that has come to rest on a small dandelion. The voice is that of the Mayor of Whoville, a delightful place where life is celebration and bad things never happen. In an amusing connection to the end of Men in Black, Whoville’s residents are entirely oblivious to the reality that their world is but a speck in an entire universe. The connection between the two worlds has never been made until now.
Whoville has a problem. Their life on the dandelion is uncertain, and for all of their spirit of celebration, they need Horton to bring their dandelion to a safe place where their world will be protected from the dangers of Horton’s world. Trying to do this for them, Horton encounters one obstacle after another, driven mainly by the fact that nobody in his world believes him. He’s the only one who can hear the Whos, and as his nemesis the Kangaroo reminds all of them: "If you can't hear, see or feel something, it does not exist.” Skepticism abounds, and it runs the risk of destroying the people Horton is trying to protect.
As Horton fights for the Whos, the mayor encounters similar problems. For a world that has never known things to go wrong, he must convince them that something is quite wrong, and that they need the help of a big voice that none of them can hear. In pursuing their best ends, he must endanger his relationship with his family, his friends, and the grand tradition of his office.
For a movie directed at children, Horton raises fascinating questions that are worth wrestling with at various levels. The film reflects on the need for imagination and wonder, a gift that can lie instinctively within children but that can be lost as we grow older. The Kangaroo, offering a great summary of a secularist perspective, is herself filled with jealousy and envy, and mostly joylessness. It is Horton and those who can live lives of imagination and wonder who experience the richness that life has to offer, especially the richness to see an entire dimension to his world that nobody had ever experienced before. The film is a celebration of imagination, and succeeds in inviting us to join them in their sense of wonder.
Alongside this is Seuss’ signature phrase: “a person's a person, no matter how small,” the tagline for the film that invites reflection through its deceptively simple message. It intrigues me to think about this line, written in the early 50’s, and its easy later co-opting by the pro-life movement. Of course, that kind of political commentary is far beyond Seuss’ intent, but it’s interesting to see the line come back in a 2008 film release, where the political implications would seem to be obvious.
While I expect that this kind of political jockeying is well beyond the filmmakers’ intent, I celebrate the idea and like its connection with Horton’s call to imagination. Just as our need for imagination is a celebration of life, so is our calling to protect the smallest voices. We embrace a life-giving message when we reach for those who can’t speak for themselves, who find their voices drowned out by the loud arguments of politicians or the deceptive ends of agenda-setters. Seuss’ twin values, very much alive here in the film adaptation, are as pressing and present for us today as it was when he first wrote the words.
Horton is not a perfect movie, but I was pleased to see a Seuss adaptation that could sustain the simple and complex nature of his messages without losing itself in the gimmicks that come with converting his books to feature-length films. Whether it’s the nieces that I saw the picture with, or the daughter that I step over to get where I’m going, I realize that Seuss’ messages are worth them knowing about, mostly for the deeper truths that they will point them to as they live in a world that loves to steal imagination and step on the innocent.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Be Kind, Rewind: A Review
Be Kind, Rewind has a quirky concept that I expect will leave some cold, but I found worth a chuckle. Mos Def stars as Mike, an employee of an aging video rental store owned by Danny Glover’s Elroy Fletcher. It’s an aging store, hanging onto VHS against the DVD revolution, in an aging section of a decrepit New Jersey town, fighting to hang onto its life in the face of “urban renewal.” Trying to figure out how to keep the business going, Fletcher heads out of town and leaves the business in Mike’s hands. Struggling to prove himself, Mike tries to keep it all together, including trying to enforce the one clear rule: “Keep Jerry Out.”
Jerry, played by Jack Black, is Mike’s odd friend with lots of odd notions. Quickly after Fletcher takes off, Jerry gets the idea for he and Mike to sabotage the nearby electric power plant, trying to get them back for causing his headaches. After Mike bails, Jerry somehow is able to get himself magnetized, something that they slowly discover over the next few days as complaining customers bring Mike to realize that his friend has inadvertently demagnetized every single one of his tapes.
Panicked at the destruction of the business, Mike and Jerry concoct their grand act of desperation (and the grand suspension of disbelief for the film) to save the business: instead of buying new tapes, they pull out a camcorder and decide to film their own versions of the films. The film takes the most time with their filming of Ghostbuster’s, which was pretty hilarious. Everything is done uber-cheap and uber-fast, making for a great recreation of this and other films. They’re dependent on their memory of these films, which is sometimes less than perfect, adding greatly to the comedy.
The second act of the film shows their budding success. The real comedy is not that they pull off these films, but that increasingly people find out about their work and demand more. They become local celebrities, and their efforts, now dubbed “Sweding,” morphs to involve incorporating the customers into the films.
Running underneath the comedy are some fascinating social commentaries. The film is itself a celebration of film and its ability to bring people together in community. Despite the individual nature of watching a film at a theater, the film delights in showing the ways in which popular film becomes the lingua franca of a community. One discussion about The Lion King engages strangers who are decades apart, but share in their delight in particular aspects of the film.
The “Sweding” process reflects on our desire to be participants in the elements of our pop culture. While film unites, it also isolates, as it can keep us from creatively participating in our culture. This process reminds us of our own desire to participate. Whether it’s the internet boon and its interaction with the celebrity culture, the You Tube generation, or the rise of “fandom” for all aspects of pop culture, the entertainment industry itself is acutely aware of the power of encouraging this kind of participation, and the film seems to understand the power that participation brings.
Still, the film takes a significant plot turn as the studios find about Mike and Jerry’s creative efforts. Showing up with injunctions and damage awards, Mike and Jerry are quickly faced with the challenge of saving the business again, as well as saving the community itself. Without walking too much into the third act, they decide to make their own film, this one focusing on their own town’s history. As much as “Sweding” has brought their town together, so will their film unite people around their own community.
It is here that Be Kind, Rewind offers the most intriguing commentary, and one that I think extends far beyond the films boundaries. As they pour themselves into their town history, they encounter the reality that legends have built up that just aren’t historical. Rather than seeking to find the truth, or to describe legend as legend, they, and the participants in the story, just decide to make up their town’s history as they go along. Truth takes a backseat to this celebration of community.
It is a fascinating example of a postmodern treatment of history. Community is celebrated, and the experience of telling history, even fabricated history, is unifying and thus good. Within the context of the film, it works. We’re rooting for these people and their struggling town, and aren’t too worried about the veracity of their story. We just want them to find some pride in their town and enjoy the experience of working together for a better community.
Even as their story comes together, though, I could only wonder about the places in life where this kind of story would ultimately be destructive. Within the contemporary American church, there are a number of voices who offer a version of the church’s history that show about as much fabrication or simplistic misinterpretation as Be Kind’s storytellers. There is a spirit among many that echoes the film’s values and shows less concern about the veracity of our telling of history than of the emotive power that our telling has for our present community. We don’t care about whether the story is true, only that the story has emotional power for us.
It is in this place that Be Kind offers an interesting caution. For a community trying to save itself from dreadful poverty, I expect there’s not much harm in a little homegrown story about a community legend that isn’t grounded much in fact. But the story of the church is rooted in the Story itself, and the Story’s only meaning is found in the historical reality that it actually happened. The testimony of the Christian church is that it finds its strength when it tells its story well, and that includes that it tells the story how it really happened.
The ultimate value of Be Kind, Rewind is in elevating community over truth. The church has the same temptation today, but the testimony of the past, indeed the testimony of Scripture, is that those two values aren’t in opposition to each other, and in fact depend on each other for their real meaning.
Jerry, played by Jack Black, is Mike’s odd friend with lots of odd notions. Quickly after Fletcher takes off, Jerry gets the idea for he and Mike to sabotage the nearby electric power plant, trying to get them back for causing his headaches. After Mike bails, Jerry somehow is able to get himself magnetized, something that they slowly discover over the next few days as complaining customers bring Mike to realize that his friend has inadvertently demagnetized every single one of his tapes.
Panicked at the destruction of the business, Mike and Jerry concoct their grand act of desperation (and the grand suspension of disbelief for the film) to save the business: instead of buying new tapes, they pull out a camcorder and decide to film their own versions of the films. The film takes the most time with their filming of Ghostbuster’s, which was pretty hilarious. Everything is done uber-cheap and uber-fast, making for a great recreation of this and other films. They’re dependent on their memory of these films, which is sometimes less than perfect, adding greatly to the comedy.
The second act of the film shows their budding success. The real comedy is not that they pull off these films, but that increasingly people find out about their work and demand more. They become local celebrities, and their efforts, now dubbed “Sweding,” morphs to involve incorporating the customers into the films.
Running underneath the comedy are some fascinating social commentaries. The film is itself a celebration of film and its ability to bring people together in community. Despite the individual nature of watching a film at a theater, the film delights in showing the ways in which popular film becomes the lingua franca of a community. One discussion about The Lion King engages strangers who are decades apart, but share in their delight in particular aspects of the film.
The “Sweding” process reflects on our desire to be participants in the elements of our pop culture. While film unites, it also isolates, as it can keep us from creatively participating in our culture. This process reminds us of our own desire to participate. Whether it’s the internet boon and its interaction with the celebrity culture, the You Tube generation, or the rise of “fandom” for all aspects of pop culture, the entertainment industry itself is acutely aware of the power of encouraging this kind of participation, and the film seems to understand the power that participation brings.
Still, the film takes a significant plot turn as the studios find about Mike and Jerry’s creative efforts. Showing up with injunctions and damage awards, Mike and Jerry are quickly faced with the challenge of saving the business again, as well as saving the community itself. Without walking too much into the third act, they decide to make their own film, this one focusing on their own town’s history. As much as “Sweding” has brought their town together, so will their film unite people around their own community.
It is here that Be Kind, Rewind offers the most intriguing commentary, and one that I think extends far beyond the films boundaries. As they pour themselves into their town history, they encounter the reality that legends have built up that just aren’t historical. Rather than seeking to find the truth, or to describe legend as legend, they, and the participants in the story, just decide to make up their town’s history as they go along. Truth takes a backseat to this celebration of community.
It is a fascinating example of a postmodern treatment of history. Community is celebrated, and the experience of telling history, even fabricated history, is unifying and thus good. Within the context of the film, it works. We’re rooting for these people and their struggling town, and aren’t too worried about the veracity of their story. We just want them to find some pride in their town and enjoy the experience of working together for a better community.
Even as their story comes together, though, I could only wonder about the places in life where this kind of story would ultimately be destructive. Within the contemporary American church, there are a number of voices who offer a version of the church’s history that show about as much fabrication or simplistic misinterpretation as Be Kind’s storytellers. There is a spirit among many that echoes the film’s values and shows less concern about the veracity of our telling of history than of the emotive power that our telling has for our present community. We don’t care about whether the story is true, only that the story has emotional power for us.
It is in this place that Be Kind offers an interesting caution. For a community trying to save itself from dreadful poverty, I expect there’s not much harm in a little homegrown story about a community legend that isn’t grounded much in fact. But the story of the church is rooted in the Story itself, and the Story’s only meaning is found in the historical reality that it actually happened. The testimony of the Christian church is that it finds its strength when it tells its story well, and that includes that it tells the story how it really happened.
The ultimate value of Be Kind, Rewind is in elevating community over truth. The church has the same temptation today, but the testimony of the past, indeed the testimony of Scripture, is that those two values aren’t in opposition to each other, and in fact depend on each other for their real meaning.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Once: A Review
One of my favorite music moments was about 13 years ago. Spending some time in Britain, I traveled up one weekend to St. Andrews to visit a friend who was spending a year studying there. We had forged a friendship first through our shared love of the guitar, and after we spent some time touring this great town, we found ourselves holed up in his room passing his guitar back and forth. We shared songs we knew, songs we were working on, and in the course of conversation, spent some time writing a couple of tunes. We certainly weren’t masters (well, I wasn’t, he was actually quite talented) but in the rich moments of sharing music and poetry, the quality faded to the background as we drank deeply from the beautiful bonds of music.
It’s this kind of experience that drives Once, the fascinating ultra-low budget “modern-day musical” that just took home an Oscar for Best Song. It stars Glen Hansard, who plays “Guy,” a true starving musician who makes his living playing guitar on the streets of Dublin. One night, “Girl”, played by Marketa Irglova, listens to him singing some of his original work, songs that he tends to only play during the slow hours. She is impressed, and over the next few days they get to know each other a little bit. She herself is a keyboardist, and as they start to share their lives, they start to share their songs.
The film could quickly turn into a traditional romantic comedy, but it avoids the pitfalls. It is a love story, though, it’s just a love story about the music. She connects him with a friend that runs a studio and persuades him to take a weekend and record some of his stuff. They gather some musicians together, and thus begins a rich weekend of musical creation.
“Guy” is an amazing talent, and in the course of the weekend we get to witness the process of musical creation. The style of the film dominates, and I expect that one’s enjoyment of the movie hinges greatly on one’s ability to enjoy its documentary/reality style and the Irish folk/pop style of the music. I enjoyed the first, and was captivated by the second. As the music unfolds, their conversation becomes the occasion to talk about the hurts of their past, their hopes for the future, and the anxieties they carry in the present. In all, the healing salve for both of them will be found in the music.
I love the sense of restraint in Once. It’s hard to watch these two interact and not root for some kind of relationship to emerge. But that isn’t what this is about. As one reviewer put it, this movie is “a little ditty about a girl he once knew.” But in that restraint is the film’s strength. It believes in its own message about the power of music to connect, to process our past, and to heal.
As I’ve thought about the movie, I’ve thought about musical moments with friends like the one I opened with. I’ve had a lot of enjoyable musical moments, and a few especially powerful ones. Many of these people aren’t still in my life, but I’m grateful for the healing power the shared moments we had provided and the meaning they had for me along the way. It’s a picture of grace for the moment, the grace that comes into our lives and provides us what we need when we need it. It doesn’t solve everything, but it doesn’t have to. It just helps us keep on moving.
I’m glad to see this movie get some attention, because it offers an intimate picture of relationship and healing that’s worth talking about. It certainly made me pull out my guitar and sing a few songs from my own past, enjoying singing a few stories about life along the road.
It’s this kind of experience that drives Once, the fascinating ultra-low budget “modern-day musical” that just took home an Oscar for Best Song. It stars Glen Hansard, who plays “Guy,” a true starving musician who makes his living playing guitar on the streets of Dublin. One night, “Girl”, played by Marketa Irglova, listens to him singing some of his original work, songs that he tends to only play during the slow hours. She is impressed, and over the next few days they get to know each other a little bit. She herself is a keyboardist, and as they start to share their lives, they start to share their songs.
The film could quickly turn into a traditional romantic comedy, but it avoids the pitfalls. It is a love story, though, it’s just a love story about the music. She connects him with a friend that runs a studio and persuades him to take a weekend and record some of his stuff. They gather some musicians together, and thus begins a rich weekend of musical creation.
“Guy” is an amazing talent, and in the course of the weekend we get to witness the process of musical creation. The style of the film dominates, and I expect that one’s enjoyment of the movie hinges greatly on one’s ability to enjoy its documentary/reality style and the Irish folk/pop style of the music. I enjoyed the first, and was captivated by the second. As the music unfolds, their conversation becomes the occasion to talk about the hurts of their past, their hopes for the future, and the anxieties they carry in the present. In all, the healing salve for both of them will be found in the music.
I love the sense of restraint in Once. It’s hard to watch these two interact and not root for some kind of relationship to emerge. But that isn’t what this is about. As one reviewer put it, this movie is “a little ditty about a girl he once knew.” But in that restraint is the film’s strength. It believes in its own message about the power of music to connect, to process our past, and to heal.
As I’ve thought about the movie, I’ve thought about musical moments with friends like the one I opened with. I’ve had a lot of enjoyable musical moments, and a few especially powerful ones. Many of these people aren’t still in my life, but I’m grateful for the healing power the shared moments we had provided and the meaning they had for me along the way. It’s a picture of grace for the moment, the grace that comes into our lives and provides us what we need when we need it. It doesn’t solve everything, but it doesn’t have to. It just helps us keep on moving.
I’m glad to see this movie get some attention, because it offers an intimate picture of relationship and healing that’s worth talking about. It certainly made me pull out my guitar and sing a few songs from my own past, enjoying singing a few stories about life along the road.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Atonement: A Review
Arguably, the scene in Atonement that does the most to take us out of the story’s emotional journey may invite us directly to its thematic center. Towards the middle of the film, we join Robbie Turner, played by the remarkable James McAvoy, as a soldier making his way through the beach of Dunkirk, in the midst of the British Army’s miraculous retreat across the sea. Over the course of a 5 minute tracking shot, we walk with him through the madness, seeing the sense of panic, injury, organization and madness in this strange scene. Yet, for all of its madness, we stay on Turner, as he somehow tries to climb through the madness, much of it beyond him and most of it out of his control, as he seeks to find the most basic of needs, in this case food, sleep and first aid. Without a word, we see in the madness that somehow even these basic needs may elude him.
Atonement should be a pretty straightforward period love story. In 1935, Robbie Turner is the son of the housekeeper for a aristocratic British family. Due to their long tenure, the family sent him to Cambridge, and so even as he works around the elaborate gardens of the family estate, we quickly realize he is an intelligent man with ambitions to rise above his station. He is friends with Kiera Knightley’s Cecilia Tallis, the oldest daughter of the hosting family. As she lounges with friends and plays arrogant with Robbie, one sees the romantic tension underneath. This is a relationship-in-waiting, searching for the right moment for their youthful passions to come together.
But then there’s Briony, Cee’s 13-year old daughter. She clearly has a crush on Robbie, and we quickly realize that this is the kind of thing that should make us nervous. An aspiring writer, we see her in early scenes trying to convince her playmates to act out her play, and in her failure we see her desire to control, her deep imagination, and her unintuitive interaction with other people.
It is a formula for disaster, as a series of events unfolds that puts her misunderstandings at center stage. Catching Cee and Robbie by themselves, she misinterprets their actions and comes to falsely accuse Robbie of other crimes. It is this fateful moment that changes the lives of all three of them.
The first act of 1935 sets the stage for the flash forward to the early days of World War 2. Given the opportunity to get out of prison, Robbie is fighting in France. Cee and Briony have both become a nurse, though Cee has no interaction with her family since the false accusation. Each are searching to rebuild a life destroyed by that one night. Robbie longs for a relationship with Cee, Cee longs for Robbie to return safely, and Briony somehow wants to find a way to make peace with both of them. At every turn, the world seems to orchestrate to keep them from achieving any of their ends.
The title is of course intentional, and it invites us to consider the nature of “atonement.” What can we do to make up for the mistakes of our past? The bleak perspective of the film is that sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes the mistakes we make, even the innocent ones or those that are most understandable, yield consequences far beyond our imaginations. From the film’s perspective, Briony’s act set in motion events that would unwind their lives, and nothing she can do can put that back together.
It’s not a message we want to hear, but it may be a message that we need to hear. Searching for justice, reconciliation, or harmony is at times an impossible or unreachable goal when left to human efforts. The inability to find this peace can be the very thing that drives us to the Divine. We cannot achieve “atonement” by our own power, and must contend with the consequences of our actions. Our hope is not that we will make it all right, but that He will work redemptively to make things right, both here and now and, ultimately, in the age to come.
At a number of points in Atonement, we find characters looking back on their life, wishing moments could be redone or that their choices could be undone. But of course they can’t. And so we come back to that tracking shot. In the midst of this bleak picture of war, the shot comes upon a group singing a hymn, and leaves them behind singing the simple refrain, “the still small voice of God,” words that are echoed again at the end of the shot. In the midst of madness, as we deal with choices we make, the choices others make, and the seemingly random events of our lives that at times drive us towards messy ends, we have the single hope, the promise even, that God is at work, if quietly, and is directing all things to His own good purposes. It is that faith that can sustain us when everything else around us seems bleak. It is that faith that points to the real atonement that we can hope for.
Atonement should be a pretty straightforward period love story. In 1935, Robbie Turner is the son of the housekeeper for a aristocratic British family. Due to their long tenure, the family sent him to Cambridge, and so even as he works around the elaborate gardens of the family estate, we quickly realize he is an intelligent man with ambitions to rise above his station. He is friends with Kiera Knightley’s Cecilia Tallis, the oldest daughter of the hosting family. As she lounges with friends and plays arrogant with Robbie, one sees the romantic tension underneath. This is a relationship-in-waiting, searching for the right moment for their youthful passions to come together.
But then there’s Briony, Cee’s 13-year old daughter. She clearly has a crush on Robbie, and we quickly realize that this is the kind of thing that should make us nervous. An aspiring writer, we see her in early scenes trying to convince her playmates to act out her play, and in her failure we see her desire to control, her deep imagination, and her unintuitive interaction with other people.
It is a formula for disaster, as a series of events unfolds that puts her misunderstandings at center stage. Catching Cee and Robbie by themselves, she misinterprets their actions and comes to falsely accuse Robbie of other crimes. It is this fateful moment that changes the lives of all three of them.
The first act of 1935 sets the stage for the flash forward to the early days of World War 2. Given the opportunity to get out of prison, Robbie is fighting in France. Cee and Briony have both become a nurse, though Cee has no interaction with her family since the false accusation. Each are searching to rebuild a life destroyed by that one night. Robbie longs for a relationship with Cee, Cee longs for Robbie to return safely, and Briony somehow wants to find a way to make peace with both of them. At every turn, the world seems to orchestrate to keep them from achieving any of their ends.
The title is of course intentional, and it invites us to consider the nature of “atonement.” What can we do to make up for the mistakes of our past? The bleak perspective of the film is that sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes the mistakes we make, even the innocent ones or those that are most understandable, yield consequences far beyond our imaginations. From the film’s perspective, Briony’s act set in motion events that would unwind their lives, and nothing she can do can put that back together.
It’s not a message we want to hear, but it may be a message that we need to hear. Searching for justice, reconciliation, or harmony is at times an impossible or unreachable goal when left to human efforts. The inability to find this peace can be the very thing that drives us to the Divine. We cannot achieve “atonement” by our own power, and must contend with the consequences of our actions. Our hope is not that we will make it all right, but that He will work redemptively to make things right, both here and now and, ultimately, in the age to come.
At a number of points in Atonement, we find characters looking back on their life, wishing moments could be redone or that their choices could be undone. But of course they can’t. And so we come back to that tracking shot. In the midst of this bleak picture of war, the shot comes upon a group singing a hymn, and leaves them behind singing the simple refrain, “the still small voice of God,” words that are echoed again at the end of the shot. In the midst of madness, as we deal with choices we make, the choices others make, and the seemingly random events of our lives that at times drive us towards messy ends, we have the single hope, the promise even, that God is at work, if quietly, and is directing all things to His own good purposes. It is that faith that can sustain us when everything else around us seems bleak. It is that faith that points to the real atonement that we can hope for.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Juno: A Review
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.
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.
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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