Recommended. Saw this on video. I love chick flicks. And I love movies like this about women’s struggle in this life. I’m a softy for a good subtle feminist flick, cause I think there’s always some truth to their claims of oppression. This story reminds me of another little movie about women that I loved titled, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her. Between Strangers is three stories of women dealing with their fathers or husbands and how they are connected to each other, though strangers. That’s one of the points of this film: how we are looking for human connection and healing and how we become strangers to those closest to us, yet can find intimacy through others who are strangers. One woman plans to kill her father, who is just out of prison after 20 years for beating his wife to death, the woman’s mother. Yet, this revenge alienates her from her own family. Another woman seeks to find her passion of drawing with a crippled selfish husband who doesn’t even notice her, let alone care about her. And the third woman is a news photographer struggling in a relationship with her over-achieving famous photographer father while dealing with the morality of shooting pictures of pain and suffering without actually helping the victims. She actually shot a picture of a girl rather than saving her from a collapsing building from which she could have saved her. The acting in this film is superb and by some of the better actors out there who aren’t in blockbusters. They are all united by seeing a vision of a little humming girl who represents the innocence or past they have all lost. The ex-con father redeems himself by saving a stranger woman from thugs and being beaten to death instead of her. Substitutionary atonement. Redemption for him in the eyes of his daughter who could not forgive him except for this kind of change of heart. Truly moving. The artist seeks her long lost daughter she gave up for adoption and goes after her dream to visit Florence. Her husband is a stranger, but decides to help her a bit in the end, rescuing his otherwise toadstool selfishness. And the photographer decides that she cannot follow in the footsteps of her heartless yet successful father by taking pictures of pain rather than helping relieve pain. His rationalization of helping their abstract “cause” rings hollow with actually helping actual people. All of these are excellent relevant moral dilemmas that touch the heart with power. This is one of those movies that I love that show lives of different people who appear unconnected and by the end of the film, they have some kind of providential crossing that connects them. It gives me the sense of how all those thousands of people in the background of MY life, are actually living important and complex lives of their own, are all looking for human connection, just like me. Strangers in our lives are valuable intimate friends in someone else’s. We need a little less egocentrism and a bit more human connection.
Drama
The Village
Recommended. DO NOT READ THIS BLOG IF YOU HAVE ANY DESIRE TO SEE THE MOVIE. Because the plot twist is very very important and will ruin the movie for you to know. Warning, Will Robinson! Go back! GO back! Okay, you’ve been warned. I love Shyamalan’s movies because they are so unpredictable and so unlike any other movies being made – and all rated a safe PG-13. Just for that alone, I applaud him. This story of a village somewhere in the early 1900s that is surrounded by forest monsters that keep them from adventuring out into the wild plays as an obvious metaphor. I mean, come on, you have to wear certain safe colors and avoid the unsafe color red that seems to draw “those whom we don’t speak about,” unseen monsters in the woods. And the town elders have black locked boxes of their past that no one can look inside. Well that’s fine. I like it, but I must admit about half way through I started thinking, just show us what it’s all a metaphor for. If you don’t know there’s a twist, you’re absorbed in the story (like Sixth Sense), but this one obviously has some explanation and you just want to find out too quickly. The plot twist is that this little town is actually an attempt by a modern billionaire to start his own old fashioned society away from the pain and evils of modern 21st century society. The “elders” of the city are all people at a counseling center who lost their loved ones to violent crime, so billionaire William Hurt convinces them to live in this enclave and raise new families in a huge forest preserve he owns. So the other townsfolk never realize they are living anachronisms. And we don’t know it either until the very end. Anyway, the blind girl who has fallen in love with a Joaquin Phoenix must venture out through the woods to get medicine for her lover, knifed by a crazy local. She is not only in danger from the monsters of the woods who may not let her pass, but the wild nature of “the towns” where she is going. But as Joaquin says, “The world moves for love.” So off she goes. Well, I reckon this movie can be interpreted two different ways. First, one may see it as an attack on traditional values. You know, the view that says, “Back in the good old days, people were more moral and if we could only turn back the clock, things would be better.” The town is ruled by elders, and they have created fear of monsters to keep the locals in line with their idyllic values of community. This is very much like the secular humanistic social theory about religion. Secularism has faith in naturalism and presupposes the death of God. Therefore, since religion CAN’T be true in their little myopic worldview, then religion MUST be the “creation” by clergy or elders of the supernatural to explain what they don’t understand of the natural, and fear of ethereal punishment to control the people to do what they say and avoid “progressive” society which will lead them astray into its accompanying wickedness and immorality (read: “free them from our control”). The problem is that this rejection of modern progress and society is a two-edged sword. The big city or “the towns” as they call them, are full of wickedness and evil, but they also have created the good advancement of medicine and technology that will help and heal man. So the very progress that brought increasing evil also brought increasing good. So if we try to avoid the bad, we will also be missing out on the good. Well, I am not entirely sure that this is the intent of the story. The reason I think this is because I know that Shyamalan has a spiritual worldview. He seems to be positive toward religion because of his background. Now, He does have a New Age spiritualism type view, but it is nonetheless positive toward the supernatural. So it is difficult to believe he would be attacking religion here, unless his New Age spirituality is the predictable “individual spirituality” that disdains “organized religion” in favor of unorganized so-called personal spirituality. Basically the religion of Individualism and relativism. Anyway, that is why I thought maybe another view may be more appropriate. That is 2) He may be attacking the secular humanistic “noble savage” theory of Rousseau. This is the belief that man is inherently good and his problem is civilization corrupts this goodness, so if he went back to a state of primitive nature, without modern civilization, he would find redemption. Okay, think of it, religion is conspicuously absent. The monsters in the wood are not considered angels or spirits but mutant physical beasts (evolution?). This is more akin to secular mythology than religious. Secondly, the whole flaw of the elders is shown in that they tried to get away from the evil that they experienced in the big city society, as if man is inherently good and society is bad. But the problem is that man is not inherently good, but inherently evil. So he will take his evil with him WHEREVER he goes. You cannot escape it. Society does not create evil, evil resides in the individual. And so crime comes to the small town in the form of the attempted murder that they tried to escape from in the big city. In other words, there is no such thing as a Utopia and cannot be because of man’s inherent nature. The problem with this take is that the small town is really not an attempt to be in nature without the rules of society, but rather another society, but just one that is more controlled by the elders. So, that would contradict the theory. But because of today’s postmodern eclecticism that likes to pick and choose beliefs that contradict one another, I suspect that this movie may be a little bit of both of what I suggest. The inconsistencies being a mere trifle to a New Age postmodern like Shyamalan. But no matter what, it really makes you think, and I like that.
King Arthur
Kinda recommended for it’s interesting take on an epic legend, but not really recommended because of its paganism. Trying to be a pagan Braveheart. Doesn’t work. Paganism simply does not provide the necessary preconditions of a world that gives things like courage, love, honor and nobility meangingfulness or validity. Okay, this was a cool concept of trying to “get to the true historical figure” behind the Arthur legends. The problem I have with it is that the actual historical information available is so scarce as to render this theory of Arthur as a 6th century Roman Briton named Artorius, to be basically a new legend replacing the conventional legend. Of course, I’m not against such speculation. It makes for interesting fodder and theory. The problem is that modernist storytellers like David Franzoni, the writer of this movie, are so awash in their own modernist “realist” mythology that they actually think their Demythology mythology is somehow the true and “objective” perspective of reality and history. Ahh, ignorance must be bliss. Couple that with the fact that so much of this story is actually made up that it is all quite dishonest to bill it as the real historical Arthur. These people must have no clue that they are in fact simply replacing one mythology for another. Modernist naturalistic realism for romantic idealism. One prejudice for another. Again, there may be some truth to it, but let us not fool ourselves into such prejudicial imperialism of history. One of the deliberate fabrications of this story is Arthur’s connection to the arch-heretic Pelagius. Very relevant that Franzoni picked this guy. Keep in mind, that Franzoni wrote Gladiator with the deliberate desire to downplay Christianity and exalt paganism, the opposite of what most sword and sandal epics used to do (and, I might add, the opposite of historical reality, as Christianity was one of the primary downfalls of the Roman Empire according to Gibbon, but alas, I digress). I quoted him saying as much in my book, Hollywood Worldviews. The guy knows what he is doing and he does it well. And this movie is no exception to Franzoni’s hate affair with Christianity. Unfortunately, since the movie takes place around the 5th century, when the Roman papacy was still not established, but getting there, then Franzoni is not merely criticizing Roman Catholicism, but Christianity itself. In this story, there are “uncivilized” pagans of the woods, who end up allying with Arthur and are good guys, and there are the barbaric Saxons, but the worst monsters are the Christians, who hold up torture chambers to torture people in the name of God like a Pre-Inquisition Inquisition. It always leads to Inquisition for these bigots of Hollywood. Rome is basically the center of the Faith and is described as “those who take what does not belong to them.” Well, the coagulation of Christianity with pagan Rome certainly did create monumental problems, but in this story, the “True” picture of Christianity is painted in the heretic Pelagius. Pelagius was the teacher who Augustine rightly condemned as negating the sovereign glory of God and elevating man’s autonomy to an idolatrous equality with God. Pelagius denied that man was born into sin and asserted that man’s will was entirely autonomous from God’s effect. Therefore, man, does, by his own autonomous power, do all that he does, both good and bad. Mankind has no sinful nature. Funny, but the Living God I worship says, “there is no one who is good, not even one,” (Romans 3) and that humans are by nature, evil (Ephesians 2:3; Matthew 7:11), and are slaves of sin (Romans 6:16-19), and that man is responsible for his actions, but is not free from the control of God in any way (Job 12:16-25; Ephesians 1:11; Acts 4:27-28). But IN THIS story, Pelagius is a hero championing individual rights, personal freedom and the like. Arthur believes in Pelagius’ teachings because he teaches that all men are free to choose their own destinies and are free by right from the control of others, such as the institutional church of course. It’s a very clever coupling with the theme of political and theological freedom that Franzoni creates, though ultimately philosophically invalid. Unfortunately, the freedom Pelagius espoused was humanistic self-idolatry, not true freedom. Man is the ultimate power in his own life, not God, man is the creator of his own destiny, or as Arthur chimes in, “The home we seek is not in some distant land (read: heaven) but in our hearts. As free men, we choose to make it so.” With the emphasis on WE CHOOSE TO MAKE IT SO. (Ahem – as in “not God” or anyone else) Okay, I can dig the whole free from the tyranny of other men thing, but so-called Free Will of man, which is actually the “autonomy of the human will from God” has lead only to the gulags and killing fields and cultural purges and gas chambers of the twentieth century. 100s of millions dead in the name of autonomous human will. And they complain about Inquisitions and Crusades? Sheesh. Religious intolerance is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the evils done in the name of man’s absolute freedom from God. Anyway, the whole point of the story is that Arthur begins as a loyal Christian man of integrity, who obeys his orders from the bishop in Rome, even when they are foolish. The Cardinal tells him to do one last quest before he and his knights are free from their Roman military duty. And that quest is a rather indulgent meaningless one, to rescue an important and utterly selfish Roman leader simply because his son is in line for leadership. But Arthur obeys authority. But the progress of the story step by step shows that this Christianity Arthur is committed to is cruel and despotic. It’s rulers are cowards, they throw away people and lands who have been loyal to them for years and years at a whim, when the Saxon’s invade. They leave those poor people to their deaths. But not Arthur, who tries to save a whole village from the Saxons. This Faith tortures people in the name of God, abuses people’s freedom, basically CONTROLS people. And that is the metaphor for the film, CONTROL VERSUS FREEDOM. Arthur starts out thinking Rome Is where “the greatest minds in all the world come together in one place to help make mankind free.” But by the end of the story, concludes that “The home we seek is not in some distant land (read: heaven) but in our hearts. As free men, we choose to make it so.”And ends up giving up that Faith of his fathers to marry a pagan wench, okay, one of the hottest pagan wenches in movies ever, in a pagan ceremony in the midst of a mini-Stonehenge (another pagan reference to the Druids) Ah, shades of Spinal Tap—mini-Stonehenge. That is the power of subversive drama. Make the hero be a committed loyal member of the worldview you want to discredit, a worldview that many in this world believe, so that by the end of the story, when the hero reluctantly changes his view about the world, it gives the audience the affirming encouragement to do so as well. After all, the hero is the good guy, right? And we want to cheer on the good guy, right? So, before you know it, you are cheering on leaving the Christian faith because of how cruel it is – or rather how cruel it has been portrayed. Interesting, this Pelagianism. Pelagius considers each human born to be an entirely innocent and autonomously free chooser. They create their own destinies by their own choices. God has no control in their lives at all. Therefore, man ultimately saves himself by his own power of doing good over doing evil. People do not need Christ to redeem them, because it is all up to their own choices and power. This is salvation by works, not “free will.” That is why Pelagianism is heresy, because it damns those to hell who believe in it because they do not place faith in Christ, but in their own “free will.” It is all up to them. As a matter of fact, this “salvation by works” is really what every other religion and worldview reduces to EXCEPT Christianity. Which is no surprise why pagan Franzoni chose Pelagius as a hero. Because his own humanism negates God and places man’s destiny in his own hands. Man is his own god. [If you want to read more on this issue of Free Will and God’s Sovereignty, click here for my very long article: “Whatsoever Comes to Pass: A Personal Journey Toward the Sovereignty of God”] ALSO, here is some sweet irony: Arthur praises Pelagius’s theology of the absolute free will of man, and yet, he prays this mighty prayer to God to help him in this last task of duty. As if God can do anything according to this man’s theology? He posits that man is absolutely free and then asks God to do something when all the events of history are accomplished by free acts of autonomous men. Dude! You just preached that man is free from God’s control! What the heck are you asking God to do anything in history for? But then, heresy and false doctrine is never very consistent anyway. And neither is the secular humanism that Franzoni writes into his otherwise interesting historical epics. Here is what I wrote about his movie Gladiator in my book:
The 2000 Academy Award winner Gladiator marks an achievement of respectability for paganism in modern filmmaking. Writer David Franzoni has said that he deliberately wanted to offer a contrast with the sword-and-sandal epics of yesteryear:
The film is about a hero who has morality, but that morality is a secular morality that transcends conventional religious morality. In other words, I believe there is room in our mythology for a character who is deeply moral, but who’s not traditionally religious: I loved that he was a pagan, not Christian or any other traditional/established religion. All those Roman Empire movies from the ’50s and ’60s were religious morality plays, and had to maintain the Christian status quo, it’s all very conventional. You would never have been able to portray a pagan afterlife back then, either. Maximus is a man who will die for his family, and he will die for what’s right. (1)
Apparently, the contradiction of a “secular morality” derived from Roman paganism does not bother Franzoni. Maximus does “what is right” as his religion conventionally defines it for him. (2) So Franzoni has replaced the Christian convention of morality with another religious convention, that of Roman paganism, thinking that this somehow points to a secular morality that transcends them both. (3) Be that as it may, Maximus’s pagan heaven was depicted as real, which is extremely rare in a mainstream movie of such prominence, and it marks the cinematic postmodern openness to religiosity that is decidedly non-Christian.
[(1)Quoted in John Soriano, “WGA.ORG’s Exclusive Interview with David Franzoni,” WGA(2)There was nothing more conventional in Rome than the religious belief in Elysium and in strength and honor.
(3)“Transcendent secular morality” is an oxymoron. Secularity cannot be transcendent, because by definition it is immanent, that is, of the world rather than of the transcendent spiritual realm. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, if there is one thing that the history of the secular philosophy of ethics illustrates, it is that when people reason “secularly” (from themselves), rather than from the transcendent God, they can only end in subjectivism (each person decides for himself or herself), and that is certainly not transcendent. Without a transcendent absolute standard, this secular moral relativity reduces to the will to power—whoever is in power (the majority) defines what is right and wrong for the rest (the minority). This will to power is the essence of Rome, and it is the same will to power that was embodied in the German Nazi state of the 1930s and 1940s. The director Ridley Scott understood this, and that is why he modeled the look of the Roman cult in Gladiator after the fascist imagery of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will.]
The Terminal
Recommended, but not highly. There is just something magical about Tom Hanks to me that makes everything he does so appealing as the everyman. Which is why, if this was some other star in the movie, I would have considered it somewhat plodding. This is a story, about a traveler, Viktor Navorsky, from a small Eastern European country who is stranded at JFK airport because his country erupts in civil war which makes it cease to have national status, and therefore places Viktor unable to enter the United States or to fly home because of legal technicalities with international passport laws. He is a man without a country. He then ends up living in the Terminal for almost a year, while the head of security, played by Stanley Tucci relentlessly hounds him as the antagonist. And of course, Viktor falls in love with a stewardess, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Viktor’s cute little anecdotal experiences with some of the airport personal make for some humorous, if not very believable, episodes. The themes behind this film center around waiting for life to happen versus making your life through your choices. Not bad. The stewardess is a woman who can’t extricate herself from an adulterous relationship with a married man, because she keeps foolishly hoping against hope that he will divorce his wife. Men can be pigs – but boy, women can be stupid. Of course, he won’t leave his wife, and she wastes her life waiting. Until she meets Viktor, who loves her for who she is and treats her with the respect she needs. One of the cool things I liked about this film was its unusual point about character. The stewardess never can give up her hope for the married man. She keeps going back to him, and therefore loses Viktor in the end. Viktor moves on when his country is back together. It is a bittersweet ending, but a good one. Viktor is too good for this woman, and we see that the romantic emotions of love are not the highest value, but character is. Very unusual for a romantic comedy for the boy NOT to get the girl. But another cool thread carries the film, that of grace, and loving the unlovable. Of course, the airport personnel are quirky characters. Anyway, when the security head discovers that several of the airport personnel are good friends of Viktor, and that they each have reasons to be fired, he uses this against Viktor to try to get him to go home rather than stay in New York and achieve his ambition of fulfilling his father’s dream of getting a famous Jazz singer’s autograph. If Viktor does not go home on the next plane, the security head will fire these guys and deport one of them back to India where he awaits charges of assault and battery. The Indian guy, with the name Gupta, was a fugitive from his own country. And Viktor became one of his only friends. Viktor sacrifices his dream to protect his friends. But when Gupta finds out about this, he basically turns himself in to the police with a diversion and allows Viktor to go and get his father’s dream autograph. Gupta gets himself deported. Now the security man cannot stop Viktor cause he has nothing over him. It’s a perfect picture of grace. Gupta is shown grace by Viktor’s sacrifice, the innocent for the guilty, so Gupta responds with repentance and accepts his own responsibility for his past actions. Very powerful grace and atonement theme. Those who respond to grace (Gupta) find redemption, and those who do not (Stewardess) continue on in miserable lives.
To End All Wars
Very Highly Recommended. Possibly one of the best films ever made. Okay, I wrote the screenplay so I might have a tiny conflict of interest here ☺. Here is what Gene Edward Veith said of it in World Magazine:
COMING SOON TO A THEATER near you: a World War II drama featuring Kiefer Sutherland, one of the movie industry’s hottest stars. It is rated R. It is a product of Hollywood. And it is one of the powerful cinematic expositions of the Christian faith.
To End All Wars might have been pitched to the mainline filmmakers as Chariots of Fire meets Saving Private Ryan. Fans of the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, the true story of an athlete who refused to run in the Olympics on the Sabbath, will note the same Scottish accents, a similar soon-to-be church worker positively portrayed, and comparably high production values. But whereas Chariots of Fire, for all of its virtues, never got around to mentioning the gospel, To End All Wars amounts to a sustained meditation on the core of Christianity: Christ dying for sinners, and what that means in the most extreme trials of life.
To End All Wars is based on the true story of Ernest Gordon, the long-time chaplain at Princeton University. Mr. Gordon, who died just a few months before the film was completed, was a captain in a Scottish Highland regiment in World War II. When the Japanese took Singapore—in those early days of the war when Japan was sweeping away all opposition—Mr. Gordon was captured. He spent the next three years in a Japanese POW camp, enduring hardships, brutality, and spiritual challenges that became for him a crucible of faith.
The film, based on Mr. Gordon’s autobiography Through the Valley of the Kwai, does not shrink away from the torture, degradation, and cruelty of the Japanese camp. It also dramatizes how evil breeds evil, even in its victims: Allied prisoners, struggling to survive in this dog-eat-dog environment, start adopting the values and behavior of their captors.
But then, to hold on to whatever shreds of their humanity are left, a number of prisoners remember their old vocations and decide to exercise their callings in the teeth of the most hostile surroundings. A former university instructor organizes a philosophy seminar, and prisoners get together, in the mud and squalor of the camp, to discuss Plato’s philosophy of justice.
Another prisoner had been an actor. He forms a troupe to perform plays by Shakespeare (which he had thankfully learned by heart). A group with musical talents carves recorders out of bamboo, making themselves into an orchestra that plays Bach.
They also form relationships with their guards, some of whom are transfigured from stereotyped villains into genuine human beings.
But the brutality reasserts itself. Prisoners are punished and pushed into betrayals, compromises, and impossible moral dilemmas.
The issues they had been learning about in their “Jungle University” are tested. What is justice and can it really be achieved in a sinful world? What does it mean to love one’s enemies? How could Christ take other people’s sins upon Himself? What does it mean that Christ died for sinners, atoning for them and granting them free forgiveness?
The movie climaxes in a shocking, yet unforgettable scene of redemption.
You can buy the movie at Amazon.com by clicking here.
Judas
Not recommended. Okay, they pulled this one out of the crapper because they thought that the success of the masterpiece, The Passion, would somehow help this trite TV junk. What were they thinking? Unfortunately, I can’t help but compare it to The Passion. But first let me say that this was a sympathy piece, not quite on the level of Monster. It is an attempt to craft a believable motivation for this most despised character in history. In that sense it wasn’t all bad, just mostly. It paints Judas as a guy who is sympathetic with the Zealot cause (nothing new, Last Temptation did it better), and he is driven by his desire to see the Romans overthrown. His hearty zealousness for Israel is frustrated by Jesus’s spiritual kingdom, rather than a military one. Okay. But you know, no mention is made of the fact that Judas as a greedy S.O.B. He used to pilfer from the disciples’ treasury (John 12:6). And Judas is honestly surprised and angered that the high priest, Caiaphas, does not give Jesus a fair trial. What is he, an idiot? Ah, but a sincere idiot. I see. He was only handing in Jesus expecting that Jesus would be fairly treated. So maybe he is a leeeetle bit more honorable than the Scriptures portray him. And he is certainly a whole lot prettier. They used some pretty boy actor to make Judas seem more heroic. All right, The Passion and Judas: Both were made by Roman Catholics, yet Judas stunk to high heaven of agenda, while the Passion was informed by Gibson’s Catholicism, without artificially forcing the Catholic interpretation onto anything. Examples: In the Passion, we do not see Joseph, the father of Jesus. Now, it is historically probable that Joseph was dead by the time Jesus was this old, because the New Testament seems to fail to mention him. Okay, but in Judas, They make a point of saying “Joseph is long dead.” Jesus’s siblings are studiously avoided in order to propagate Mary’s “perpetual virginity.” Well, in The Passion, I don’t mind the avoidance of his siblings because it is so exclusively focused on the Passion, but in Judas, going out of their way to point it out reeks of agenda. Then, in Judas, they show the scene where Jesus talks to Peter and tells him “upon this rock I will build my church…” Fine. That’s in Scripture. But what isn’t is the portrayal of the disciples talking about this moment as Peter’s “elevation.” Yeah, right. The R.C. belief here is that this was when Peter was “elevated” as the most important apostle, from which the papacy claims its lineage. Don’t think so. Jesus wasn’t elevating Peter, he was elevating HIMSELF as Christ! The rock Jesus would build his church upon was not Peter, the man, but the doctrinal declaration of Jesus as Christ. And they try to reinforce this fallacious “elevation” by showing Jesus telling Peter, “I give you the keys of the Kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” Well, what they DO NOT show you is that this statement was made not merely to Peter (Matt 16:19), but to ALL the Apostles as progenitors of the new faith (Matthew 18: 18). The proclamation of the Gospel message would bind or loosen people, not mere humans. Another repugnant Roman Catholic agenda forced onto the story was that at the last shot of the movie, after Judas had hanged himself, some of the Apostles pray over his dead body. This comes from the unbiblical doctrine of Purgatory. R.C. believes that when a member of the church dies, he goes to purgatory to burn off his sins before he can go to heaven. So that is why they pray for dead people, because they believe they still have a chance after death. Contrarily, in the Bible once you die, that’s it, baby, no more chances, “It is appointed to men to die once and then face judgement.” (Heb 9:27). Not only that, but this doctrine of purgatory denies the very essence of New Covenant salvation. The Bible says that Jesus died once and for all for the sins of his people (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10). To claim that one can burn off their own sins, that is, pay for their own sins denies the heart and soul of the Gospel. It denies that Jesus pays for your sins. This is the opposite of faith in Christ.
And speaking of Christ, the Jesus in the movie Judas is what I call the Dr. Phil-Scooby-Doo-Shaggy-Malibu Jesus. Yep. First of all, here’s a real laugher. Jesus gives Judas the money purse for the disciples because, “I’m terrible with money. I seem to lose it.” Good grief! And that after Jesus APOLOGIZES for turning the tables over of the moneychangers in the Temple. Yeah, that’s right. He says, “I lost my temper.” What kind of a god do these Roman Catholic filmmakers worship???!!! I lost my temper?? So, Christ sins too? Shades of The Last Temptation of Christ. And then the psychobabble Jesus regurgitates when he tells Judas, “I wish you could love yourself the way I do.” Yeah, right. All those poor criminals of history are just victims of their own self-esteem. Funny, the Jesus of the Bible assumes the fallen nature of self-love as the starting point to CHANGE FROM when he says, “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Matt 9:19) We ALREADY love ourselves. That’s the problem! Jeeesh! And then this stupid Malibu Jesus is frustrated about spreading his ministry, so Judas says, “Why don’t you give us your powers so we can go out and multiple the effects?” Or something as idiotic as that. Then, Sho ‘nuff, Jesus thinks, “Hey great idea” and gives the disciples his powers of miracles and such, like he didn’t think of it. Oh, and let us not forget the politically correct liberal hate speech of the filmmakers when they have Caiaphas, the high priest, and villain, complain that Jesus is attacking “traditional values.” Boy, and the Jews think they are suffering prejudicial attacks in these Jesus movies. Just try being a conservative who believes in biblical morality; you’re then on the level of a… well… a Judas, I guess. Like Jesus would be against “traditional values,” which, by the way folks is merely a synonym for Biblical values. Uh huh. That’s right, this TV Jesus is against the Bible. And lest we leave out politically correct religion, Jesus also says, “I see God in everyone.” Unlike the Jesus of the Bible who calls unbelievers, sons of the devil (John 8:44).
Last, but not least, the language of this film was laughable. In an attempt to “modernize” it or help us stupid moronic Westerners relate to the story, the characters use out of date 80s style lingo. Stuff on the level of “This town’s not big enough for the both of us.” I can’t remember it all cause I was already drenched in notes about the above stupidities. For more on Jesus as he is portrayed in the movies see my article: “Jesus in the Movies” on my website.
In America
Recommended. Written and directed by Jim Sheridan with his daughters, this film, part autobiography, is about an Irish immigrant family coming to New York in the 1970s to try to make a living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s a very touching story of family and love and overcoming prejudice. The parents struggle with the loss of their baby boy in an accident. The father has taken it the hardest. He loses his faith in God, and his ability to smile, as well as his heart to act (He’s an actor trying to get work, and keeps losing auditions because of his inability to act “from the heart”). The story chronicles his rediscovery of these vital elements of life through his daughter’s and a fellow neighbor’s zest for life. It was a very spiritual story, though subtle.
Calendar Girls
Hard to recommend. This is another movie that has some wonderful character moments, great lines, real humanity to it, even some fine subthemes about compassion and character, but suffers the problem of pragmatic morality, a spiritually heinous deception. It’s a true story about some elderly women in the Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire, England, who take their clothes off in order to raise funds for a hospital in memory of a husband who dies of cancer. Simple as that, the whole story plays extremely well on the irony of women who are otherwise past their prime, and past relevancy in the modern world. But this story brings out their beauty, character and value as each one struggles with overcoming this stigma. According to the deceased man, “the Women of Yorkshire are like the flowers of Yorkshire. Their last stages are more beautiful than their first. — And then they go to seed.” It’s a compelling tale that focuses on two women who struggle with their friendship, newfound fame and truly helping people vs. personal glory. All good themes. What happens is that the women make the calendar, a monthly display of the mature women in their gardens and kitchens in the nude, (not naked!), to raise money to actually do some good, which the organization has a reputation for, but little experience in. The calendar is “tastefully” done without showing privates, and the scenes are also humorous without exploiting. What happens is that it becomes a surprise megahit, going all the way to Hollywood, that ultimately raises half a million pounds for cancer research. So the central premise of this movie is that it is okay to violate public norms of decency if it is for a good cause. In other words, the ends justifies the means. Pragmatic morality. The brilliance of drama is that through humor and universal identification with lovable characters, the average person will see this and figure, “yeah, hey, it wasn’t skanky, and they did it for good, so what the hey?” And that is the diabolical brilliance of pragmatic morality. It addresses the moral tension of two opposing values by pulling the heartstrings in order to divert attention from one of the values. The real evil of pragmatic morality is not understood until one takes it to the logical conclusion: If the ends justify the means, then it is okay to kill poor people to get rid of poverty. “Outrageous!” would be the response of most people. “Why that doesn’t justify killing people!” Ah, but if the ends justify the means, then it does. The second you start putting moral obligation onto the means and judging it, you have just admitted that both means AND ends should be morally judged, so one does not justify the other. And if you apply morality to some means and not to others, then you are being arbitrary or prejudicial, which is the deathknell of your ethic. The bottom line is that both ends and means are accountable to morality, and therefore, one cannot justify public nudity because “it accomplishes some good.” Public nudity is right or wrong whether or not it accomplishes good.
Lost in Translation
Dramatically recommended, but not morally. This is the sleeper indie film of the year. A real milestone for Sofia Coppola, coming into her own as a writer-director. Great dialogue, great acting, humorous understated moments, and poignant cultural insights about people’s alienation and search for human connection. Just bad morals. The story is about a has-been 50-year old film star and a newly married young woman making a human connection in the midst of great alienation. Bill Murray is the bored celebrity, Bob Harris, boringly married 25 years, who has to do some whiskey commercials for a week or so in Tokyo and Scarlett Johansson is Charlotte, a young woman, married two years to an entertainment photographer who is on assignment in Tokyo as well – and much too busy to spend real time with his beloved. Well, Bob and Charlotte meet in the hotel bar and strike up a friendship based on mutual alienation from the world around them. Everything in this movie very creatively communicates our alienation and our desire yet inability to “translate” or make real human connection with other people. Some of it is very amusing, and all of it is tragically poignant and true. Murray trying to understand the directions of his Japanese commercial director, who speaks for 30 seconds but is translated into a few English words; the differences of East and West culture; and even the tendency toward alienation in marriage. Charlotte’s husband’s world is vain emptiness as we meet one of the actresses he has photographed and her empty-headed shallow lifestyle. Bob is visited by a prostitute who is sent by the Whiskey company, who mistakenly thinks he wants or needs one. She can’t speak English so she plays a role of “being forced upon” all the while not realizing that Bob really doesn’t want to have sex with her. The whole lack of human connection in prostitution or anonymous sex is really spelled out well here. The movie does drag out a couple times with some overlong sequences that tend to bore. For instance, there is a karaoke sequence that is, oh I don’t know, about 5 minutes long or so, and it could have been a mere 30 seconds. Instead they croon on and on, singing their songs, long after the funny point has been made about the shallow false human connection we have with our own entertainment. Bob’s removal from so much of the shallowness and insanity around him is revealed in a great line when he says to Charlotte, “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less things upset you.”
Interesting that this is Scarlett’s second movie this year about intimacy without sexuality, the other one being Girl With A Pearl Earring (see my 2003 movie blog). I have to say that for all the clever moments, and all the great writing and acting, etc, this movie is unfortunately a story that celebrates emotional adultery. The very clever and unique thing is that the lead characters never consummate their relationship with sexual intercourse, and so the sexual tension is the essence of the subtext throughout. Of course, this is only a tension because we are brainwashed in our Romanticized humanistic entertainment culture into thinking that a deep connection must lead to sexuality, that the ultimate human contact is the sexual love of another person. Not necessarily true. But unfortunately, this story is a celebration of a human connection that is made in the midst of great loneliness and alienation. The bad thing is that this connection is not shown to be illicit, but redeeming. As the characters share their experience with one another, they find a connection that neither of them have with their spouses. Bob’s marriage of 25 years has degenerated into mere function, raising kids and being a father with an unromantic relationship with his wife. They don’t talk about missing one another, but about what color should he pick for the carpeting in his new home office. At one point, his wife senses he is experiencing the mid-life crisis when he says he wants to eat more healthy and be more healthy (the typical response of a man who has a newly discovered lust, I mean “love”). She asks him, “Should I be worried about you?” He replies, “Only if you want to.” He is so desperate for intimacy, and yet she glosses right over it by pointing out that his kids miss their “Father,” with an emphasis on that word “father,” stressing his moral responsibility. No mention of HER MISSING HIM. She stresses moral obligation over emotion, which is empty. This story is another “follow your heart over do the right thing.” Feelings over morality. Charlotte’s husband is insensitive and a workaholic, which also is a rationalization for her emotional infidelity. After they go through their experiences and fail to sleep together, Bob is on his way to the airport home, never to see Charlotte again. The tension of them wanting to be with each other is at its apex. Bob sees Charlotte walking down the street and stops his car, runs to her and shares an intimate kiss and whisper that we as the audience cannot hear. They then leave each other and there is a sense of satisfaction, of that verbalization of what they were both suppressing the whole story, and not really saying. They make the human connection. One almost has the impression that it gives hope for the future. Deliberately ambiguous to keep some openness, but the connection is definitely made, and it is a connection outside of their marriages, rather than a revelation pointing them back to their marriages. It is adultery of the heart, which Jesus said is just as serious to God as physical adultery. But rather than Charlotte’s and Bob’s experience leading to an appreciation and celebration or redemption of their own marriages, their “connection” turns out to be their little secret with one another that they cherish outside of their marriages. This is the Romantic humanistic selfish worldview, the easy way out. Rather than working hard and fixing your marriage, rather than “do the right thing,” the story suggests “follow your heart” and find connection elsewhere. These kind of movies miss the heart of what real love and intimacy is all about, changing one’s self through interdependency with another. Real love is often painful, because real love is as much about becoming a better person as it is making a human connection. Real intimacy and love reveals one’s selfishness and forces you to change yourself. Lost in Translation is wasted potential. An almost-great movie.
American Splendor
Ambivalent Recommendation. This is an interesting movie based on the real life, below average existence of pessimist Harvey Pekar, a file clerk who became a comic book legend (along with a couple of his coworkers). The movie is done with some very creative self-reflective storytelling. Though the film is a dramatic narrative, there is an occasional cutaway to the real Harvey Pekar in documentary style self-reference, commenting on the movie and interacting with the actors. Harvey even comments on how the actor playing him doesn’t really look like him (he actually does). The premise is the premise of the comicbook, namely that Harvey is inspired by his hum drum existence and pessimistic perspective to make a comic book about “real” life, about the insanity of normalcy, to combat the unrealistic flights of fancy that most people read about in comics (and the movies in this case). His mantra throughout is that people need to face “reality” and stop living in dream worlds. Interesting though that the film is self-aware that it is NOT reality with its documentary anecdotes and the comicbook style cinematography. Harvey gets cancer and we go through this part of his life as well, the “reality” of it being edited down to brief references. And that is the central deceit of “realism.” Whose “reality” is reality? To suggest that one’s own perceptions and interpretations of reality (Harvey’s being pessimistic) are the center of the universe, the “true reality” that others are missing, is perhaps the most ignorant and unreal self-absorbed arrogance. To claim privilege of perception is the prerogative of deity. So realism is actually more akin to original sin: pride. A better story would be for Harvey to grow up and realize that maybe there is a “reality” outside of his perception and negativity. That indeed, HE is the one who is blind to a world of possibilities outside of himself. It’s a fallen world, yes, but it is fallen splendor, a world created by God as “good,” with much pain, but much beauty. Wake up, Harvey. You’re in the Matrix.