Existentialist romantic dramedy. Steve Martin has written a rather thoughtful piece here that seems deeply heartfelt and struggles with the issues of true love, transcendence and the ache of lonlieness in our existence. Claire Danes is a young woman who has to decide between an older man uninterested in comittment and intimacy, but wealthy and fun (Steve Martin), and a young poor artistic kid who grows up and seeks to give her the intimacy she longs for (Jason Schwartzman). Of course, she goes with the older man and experiences the fun, while the young man goes and finds himself and learns how to love by listening to hours of “relationship” lectures while being a roadie for a rock band. There is some rather pedantic narration in the film by Steve Martin that spells out the theme of Claire’s quest. He tells us she is seeking for some “omniscient” person to come down into her life and give her meaning and intimacy to quiet her lonlieness. She thinks the older man with his maturity can do this, but of course, he cannot connect with her as she needs. Claire ultimately realizes she can “hurt now or hurt later,” and finally chooses the young man who has by now transformed into more of a gentleman who has concern for making her happy. Knowing Steve Martin’s background in philosophy, and considering his line about the woman wanting someone “omniscient” to come down into her life (shot with a heavenly perspective, down through her sun roofed house), I can’t help but think that this is an existentialist parable about man’s quest for transcendence in deity, but his ultimate inability to find his real need for personal connection in that deity. Martin plays the mature father figure who is rich and has everything and bestows gifts as he wills upon Claire. He is benevolent, but distant, unable to truly connect on a personal heart level. The young man Claire opts for is a bit rough, earthly and human, but he can love her at her level, the human level. This is a common theme in humanist and existentialist literature. The belief that God is somehow distant and unable to fill our “human needs.” Thus only another human can meet that need, and thus, the highest love to these people is the romantic connection with a lover. This is certainly an understandable sentiment, and not altogether unforgivable, as man is indeed distant from God and cut off from the personal touch he was created to have. But this is the dilemma, the problem. It is the story of a blind man telling us there is no light or visual images, so we must accept our darkness. As heartfelt as this is, and even honest, I don’t buy it. God is personal, more personal and more intimate with us than we can even imagine. The fact that we are blind or limited in our finitude does not mean reality is subject to our ignorance. As a matter of fact, God did become the earthy, sweaty human in order to connect with us, in order to meet us on our level, in order to love us intimately and personally. He did this in his Son, Jesus Christ. John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. He lived, he cried, he drank, he sweat, he bled and he died, all for his people, those who would believe on his name. And his resurrection was the very thing that established him as that transcendent omniscient being who could in fact come down and rescue us and give us meaning and intimacy that we long for. The problem with the existentialist is that he acknowledges man’s need for transcendence and deity, he just assumes there is none to meet that need. This is perhaps the saddest ignorance of all. Acts 17: 23-31 Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Movies
Capote
Heavy psychological drama. This biopic of the infamous effeminate, lisping, out of the closet homosexual author of In Cold Blood focuses on his relationship with one of the killers of that heinous crime of the 60s. It rather insightfully captures how Capote’s simultaneous obsession and manipulative relationship with that killer created a moral crisis in his life so effective that he never wrote another novel afterwards. It is not a flattering portrait, but it is not an attack piece either. It is at once, both sensitive to the unfriendly suspicion of him by a morally upright society who nevertheless loves his writing, and unhesitatingly frank about Capote’s own aristocratic and hypocritical snobbery toward that same society. And in this movie, I found the morality of that American society refreshingly fair and without the harsh hateful judgment of it made by so many other movies. And yet, it reveals Capote’s self-delusion of being an honest man who “doesn’t lie.” He fancies himself honest and frank, but in reality, he lies from beginning to end to the killer in order to get his story. He masquerades with a pseudo-concern for the man’s rights against an unfair system of capital punishment, but between his lines we see that he is concerned about getting enough time to finish the story. And his concern for the humanity of the killer, is really a ploy to get inside the head of the killer to figure out what motives drive the evil that men do. Yet, in this course, he does connect with the humanity of the killer and finds himself in the killer. In the same way that the killer used his victims without concern for this humanity to achieve his ends, so Capote has used the killer as a thing to achieve his story without concern for his humanity. But so much of this is understated by showing Capote’s emotional reactions to specific events, like the killer’s death row last meeting, but not explaining his actual thoughts. Capote’s own ambiguities come through elsewhere when he reveals tidbits of his personal struggles. The theme of the movie is expressed when Capote says to his companion, Harper Lee, that he sees the killer and himself as being raised in the same family, but the only difference is that killer went out the back door and Capote went out the front door. Very powerful insight into the nature of crime and evil that I think is very needed in this world. It is a premise that I work from in my own writing, namely, that the interest in evil is not that it is something remote and fascinating for it’s own sake, or that it is an example of how environment or even chemicals makes “them” different from “us.” But rather that the evil that resides in such abominable beings, resides in us all. Depravity is an inheritance of the whole human race, me included. Well, I don’t want to scare anyone, but when I write evil characters, like killers, evil guards in POW camps, cowards, or whatnot, I simply look deep into myself and take what selfish or evil traits I struggle with and expand them to an extreme, as if I had fed them instead of feeding the pursuit of righteousness that I must continue to do. Capote is dialogue heavy, but I enjoyed it because Capote was a witty and Shaw-like man of words, and the movie captured that so well. Philip Seymour Hoffman embodies him so truthfully that I was captivated by listening to what he said at every moment.
In Her Shoes
Romantic melodrama. A tale about two sisters, diametrically opposite in personalities and lifestyles, who battle through life, yet find themselves as necessary to each other’s existence as yin and yang. Toni Collette plays the lead, a slightly homely, bookish lawyer at a firm in the city, who struggles to find a man of quality who will love her with integrity. Her foil, and yang sister, played by Cameron Diaz, is the blonde promiscuous modelesque bimbo, who literally cannot read well, but can catch any guy she wants, at least for one night. In a way, these are complete stereotypes, but because their story is rich with background and relational detail, it did not bother me one bit. In fact, I think this is the best kind of “universal” writing that incarnates character types but gives them complexity, thus enabling us to find ourselves in them, without reacting to caricatures. Toni finds herself in a predicament when her immature sister, Cameron, is out of a job and a place to stay. We quickly discover their antagonism as opposites and are devastated by the ultimate betrayal, when Cameron sleeps with Toni’s new hopeful boyfriend. This sets in to motion a story that is clearly a “unity of opposites” story, a yin and yang worldview that culminates in the conclusion that Toni needs her sister to compliment her existence, no matter how crazy she makes her. In this sense, the story has a definite dualistic worldview that drives it. This pagan approach however does not negate the powerful emotional truths that are throughout it. Cameron discovers a grandmother (played with pure class by Shirley MacLaine) they thought was dead and seeks her out at a “retirement community for active seniors.” What she discovers in the process is herself, and a way out of her selfishness, when she works at a local care center for the seniors and becomes a fashion shopping assistant for the elderly ladies. This is a wonderful story of redemption. Unfortunately, in order to get there, much of the movie is a fashion show of Cameron’s body in various sexy outfits, obviously an attempt to make an otherwise serious melodrama more “appealing” to mainstream audiences. I found it indicative of the mistrust of this genre by the marketers that they cut the trailers to make this look like a romantic comedy, which it wasn’t. It was more Terms of Endearment, than As Good As it Gets. Be that as it may, it was a touching and humorous experience. And there was a particularly poignant scene that only a woman could write (well, not really, but most men just don’t get it) where the two sisters talk at a diner and Toni tells Cameron that she is foolish to live as she does, giving herself to every man, because she is getting older and she will lose her looks and then where will she be. By then, all the men she allows herself to be used by will go for a prettier 20-something and cast her aside. A 50-year old tramp is not attractive, she’s pathetic. This seems to me the single most powerful sadness of the promiscuous woman. She thinks she is liberated, but she is actually more enslaved by the worst of humanity that the male species brings. Another great sequence shows how this “openness” to men’s appetites makes her a vulnerable and blind victim to predators, as she naively takes a car ride and drinks from two male strangers “helping” her find her towed car. Well, Toni finally realizes a quality man who had been around her all the time, but she missed him, because he was shy, but in the end, his character was revealed by his concern for Toni’s happiness than his own, a fine definition of love. Unfortunately, Toni has such serious emotional psychological problems with her family’s past that she cannot allow herself to be loved, which jeopardizes her engagement to said quality man. It all surrounds the fact that their mother killed herself when they were young. She had psychological problems and stopped taking psychotropics so she could be more “there” for the girls. But when her husband threatened putting her in a hospital, she killed herself. Thus giving the husband a guilty conscience in hiding his daughters from the grandma because she would blame him for the mother’s death. By the end, everyone is forced to at least begin dealing with their issues in communicating to one another their fears and issues. Very redemptive story. One element I did not like was the conclusion where Toni’s sister is reconciled to Toni and she says this poem at Toni’s wedding. Then, when Toni leaves with her new husband, there is this connection that is communicated between the sisters in voice over as well as visual that they are necessary to each other to their dying days. Well, this viewpoint is obviously written by a writer who has clearly not experienced the sacred unity of husband and wife that trumps old family connections and creates a new deeper one, a bond of spirit and flesh (Genesis 2:22-24). Spirit is thicker than blood. But that doesn’t mean blood is irrelevant, and this movie brings a welcomed, though slightly flawed, appreciation of those blood ties.
A History of Violence
Viggo Mortensen plays a diner owner, Tom Stall, in a small town whose act of heroism puts him in the news and reveals his whereabouts to the mob, who happen to know his true identity as a mob hitman on the run from Philly. The mobmen come after him and taunt his wife and kids until he fights back and returns to Philly to settle his score. This is Cronenberg, so it is graphic. It’s actually a rather redemptive tale of identity that contrarily wallows in gratuitous graphic physical pictures of violence and sexuality. I get the sense that this contrast of exploitation with strong moral underpinnings is more a reflection of Cronnenberg’s own struggle of two natures, one to the flesh and one to goodness, than it is a justifiable aesthetic of hard hitting morality. Anyway, Tom’s journey is one of rejecting his past of violence and embracing a normal life of mundane living – and enjoying it. This is the profoundly moral aspect of the tale. Unlike the sniveling regretful snitch in Goodfellas, who grudgingly lived a “normal” life under the witness protection plan, we see in Tom a hero who embraces goodness AS good, and kindness AS preferable. Quite a respectable irony in a movie like this. One is reminded of the haunted soul of William Munny in Unforgiven, who must become his old “evil” self in order to defeat evil. This is the same for Tom, who has an almost dual personality and turns it on and off, but with somewhat more control than Munny. The problem is that Tom did not CHOOSE his life of normality. He ran from the mob NOT out of a desire to change, but out of mere self-preservation because he screwed up a situation. He was hiding in normality, NOT desiring it. It wasn’t until he met his wife that he was redeemed in his character by love. So even though Tom has changed in some way, his current desire to be a different person is not equaled by a desire to right his wrongs or even pay for his sins, but rather by a desire to run from his past. (He blinded a guy with barb wire, which ruined his brother’s chances to move up as kingpin). So of course, his past comes looking for him in the form of the mob who wants payback (the blinded Ed Harris). So Tom must go back to face his mob past and ends up killing the men (in self defense) who want to kill him, thus atoning for his sins and returning to his small family life, begging his family to allow him back in. This very family that he betrayed with his secrets, but certainly without malice. Now, he proves he really does want to be a new man, because he comes back out of choice. So Tom’s redemption is in his seeking to be a new man of goodness, not evil, and he is tested by this and proves enduring in his intent. Perseverance of the Saints. But is Tom truly atoned for? What of all the men he killed in the past? Is it justice for their blood to cry out from the ground unavenged? Is this an example of grace? A man allowed to avoid payment for his sins? I think this is what unsettles me about the story. I see true grace as changing a man to accept responsibility for his past. I saw a news story about a man who was acquitted of a murder 25 years earlier, who after becoming a Christian went and confessed to the crime and did his time – 25 years later. Now, this is grace to me. This is true redemption, true change of natures. Forgiveness that makes a man courageous enough to face the legal consequences of his behavior in order to start anew, and out of love for the victim. Well, the movies don’t always work as well as real life I guess.
Flight Plan
A great basic thriller about a woman, played by Jodie Foster, who accompanies her daughter and the casket of her dead husband home from Germany on a huge airplane. Jodie falls asleep and wakes up to discover her daughter is not only nowhere to be found, but no one remembers her being there. Is this all a delusion of Jodie’s or is there a conspiracy to sabotage the plane? Well, one very annoying element was the obvious red herring that they put in the film. A group of Arabs are made to look suspicious and then are accused by a Joe Average looking American to be terrorists plotting this whole thing, because Jodie remembered seeing them in a hotel looking at her earlier. Well, the trick here is to play off our prejudices and show that our biases blind us and that the real terrorist is yet again only after money. This is a cliché Hollywood gimmick that I remember even from the days of Die Hard. Hollywooders do not believe in true believers. They still actually believe (even after 9/11) that everything, even religion and ideology, is motivated by money. Now, the real sad fact is that all Arabs are not terrorists, but most all terrorists are Arabs. So what other movie or tv show other than 24 has portrayed this reality? None. Instead they make movies and tv shows that show how bigoted people react against Arabs unfairly accusing innocent people. While this is definitely a concern, it is clearly the LEAST concern in light of the actual thousands of innocent people being killed by ARAB TERRORISTS. Why do they suppress the truth? True to form, Hollyweird is more concerned about hurting criminals’ feelings than the innocent victims they murder. I reckon the real reason why they have no problems making evil criminals out of fundamentalist Christians while totally avoiding the reality of evil criminal Islamofascists is because they know that Christians won’t put fatwas on them and blow them up. Hmmmmm.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Boring British stuff. Although it has my favorite character name of all time, Zaphod Beeblebrox. I just love saying that name. Anyway, this story is a road trip movie without much real heart to keep interest. I fell asleep during it. Earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway, which is clever. But then the escaping hero jets around the universe with his hitchhiking friend meeting all kinds of strange aliens until he can finally get together with the girl he had a crush on. What makes this movie particularly distasteful is that it makes mockery of man’s quest to find meaning and purpose in life through transcendence and religion, in the tradition of Monty Python, and ends up concluding that it’s just in romantic love that there is any meaning. This humanistic romanticism is unsatisfying and insulting to the truth. It’s the attempt to satisfy man’s internal need for the eternal with the temporal. It doesn’t hold water and ends up unsatisfying, as are all naturalistic reductionist love stories. Woman and man cannot fill the need for the eternal God. The finite cannot meet the need of the infinite.
Just Like Heaven
The antidote to Million Dollar Baby. Mark Ruffalo plays a guy grieving over the death of his wife, who moves into a flat, only to be haunted by the spirit of the previous owner, Reese Witherspoon, who has unfinished business of her own. Great little romantic comedy. It turns out that Reese is not dead, but is in a coma, and her spirit is just able to get out and commune with the guy. Only problem, she doesn’t remember who she is and so he helps her try to find out who she is by interviewing neighbors and co-workers. Of course, she finds out she was so alienated from everyone because of her obsession with her job that she never lived life to the fullest. And then the ticking clock is that they are about the pull the plug on her because she has been in a coma for 3 months and her brain activity is supposedly declining. Can they stop them from doing it so Mark has a chance to be with her? Well, Reese, who used to be all for such euthanasia, is now against it, because she sees that she still has potential in the real world to wake up and live life as she should. Ruffalo realizes that he thought she was dead, but really HE was dead, spiritually, that is, because he gave up on life because of his grief rather than moving on and growing. Of course, this is another bit of humanistic Romanticism, as the language for heaven (Like the title) is used as a metaphor for THIS life. And the love of another person is the highest expression of meaning and existence. As the Romantics say, “To love and to be loved” by another human is the highest existence. But I like the idea of facing our need for meaning in life by facing our mortality. And the moral compass here are pretty high, as Ruffalo refuses to be tempted by the Seductress next door, which is honorable and worthy.
Lord of War
Kind of Recommended with qualifications. A black comedy polemic about arms dealers. Nick Cage is an amoral arms dealer to whoever can provide money, regardless of cause. As he pursues his “American Dream” with the help of his brother, played by Jared Leto, his brother cannot take it and eventually dies trying to do the right thing. Now, I don’t entirely agree with the moral equivalency argument or worldview of the storyteller, Andrew Niccole, but I respect his storytelling and thought he did a great job of presenting his viewpoint, and made some great points with very witty words. Though I am not sure he realizes how contradictory he may have been about some of them. And the narration made it too heavy-handed and was a bit overdone. He has a great opening that follows the manufacturing, production and distribution of a single bullet from arms manufacturer all the way to the gun in some African rebel’s hands as he shoots it into the head of an innocent young boy. VERY CLEVER and very enticing of a creative point. The whole story takes the hero as an anti-hero really, who is only interested in money and contrasts him with others like a CIA operative who only sells arms to “take sides.” This CIA agent answers the charge that he armed both Iranians and Iraqiis with, “Did you ever think I wanted both sides to lose?” Some great dark comedy lines about the immorality of the heros’ alleged ammoralism: “You’re not a true internationalist until you sell guns to those who kill your own countrymen.” “I’m an equal opportunity merchant of death.” “The real weapon of mass destruction is the AK47, not the nukes,” because nukes sit in silos, but the body count of AK47s surpasses anything in the world. “Often the worst atrocities occur when both sides call themselves freedom fighters.” (Of course, calling yourself a freedom fighter is not the same as being a freedom fighter. Some really are and some really are liars.) Cage’s entire goal is to extricate himself from the responsibility of what he is doing by rationalizations galore. And part of that is his evolutionary worldview. He says to his brother who is outraged at how men can act cruelly like a pack of dogs, “You’re really just a two-legged dog. It’s part of being human.” But at the same time, he takes a toy gun away from his son and throws it in the trash, showing he doesn’t want for his own family what he foists on others. A particularly poignant moment occurs when Cage realizes that the CIA dealer had his uncle killed and is now in the position to kill the CIA dealer. The evil Baptiste, to whom Cage is selling arm, gives him the opportunity to shoot the CIA dealer dead, but he can’t. So Baptiste says, “So you want him dead. You just don’t want to do it yourself.” The ribald hypocrisy of Cage’s character is the point of the whole film. The fact is, money as a motive is NEVER without morality. This man who claims to divest himself from those whom he arms to kill others is responsible for his part in the evil. And he knows it. The fact that Cage does not learn his lesson but continues on at the end, even after losing his entire family and life, is not cynicism, but the challenge that this continues on in our world unless we put a stop to it and take responsibility. Now, it appears to me that Niccole has a specific anti-gun agenda that goes beyond the actual proven argument of the film. I say this because of his conclusion at the end of the film that the “Biggest arms dealers in the world” are the US, Germany, Britain and a few others, and these same big five are on the security council of the United Nations. As if this is some kind of irony or indictment against the US. But he wallows in a problem here because all his film has really proven if you look closely is that we should morally choose the right people to arm in wars. Niccole suffers a logical non-sequitur: he concludes that the gun is the cause of the evil, not the evil men who do the killing. The fact is, his story proves to me that the U.S. SHOULD arm the defenders of democracy or freedom or the United States, NOT that we should get rid of guns and somehow this will stop the bloodshed. Close to a million people were machetied to death in Rwanda in the 1990s. They didn’t need the guns for their atrocity and it didn’t stop them, not having them. In the story, Cage says, that some people say that evil prevails when good men do nothing, but “what they oughta say is, “Evil prevails.”” This is a cynicism from our deluded hero, but it unwittingly makes the point that his story simply proves NOT that we should not deal in arms but that we should support and arm those who ARE on the just side of a war or situation. Since our selling of arms is morally responsible, then, like the CIA agent, let’s only arm those who are on the right side against evil in a particular conflict. Of course, the relativist makes the moral equivalence argument that tries to halt all commitment to all causes. The fact is, a country may have some evil aspects to it, but if in a particular war, it is on the side of justice, then in THAT particular war, it is on the right side and should be supported. In a way, Niccole, wittingly or unwittingly makes this argument when he shows that Baptiste is an evil man who engages in atrocities and should not be armed, or should be armed against. Arming his enemies is therefore morally right if they fight to stop such evil. And yes, as the movie makes the point very cleverly that one revolution often overthrows the tyrants only to replace them with new tyrants. But the fact that one evil sometimes replaces another evil is not an argument against stopping the first evil. The point is whether or not one evil should be fought against or not. We cannot always determine what an ally will end up doing. I would contend though, that the issue is more complex than I would like. For instance, in arming the mujahdeen in Afghanistan to fight the Russian communists in the 1970s, we were arming enemies of the U.S., that would eventually end up using those arms against us. NOW THAT is cause for qualification and concern. The same goes for allying with the Soviets in WWII who turned around and used that advantage to fight the Cold War against us. But I understand that the argument is that we ally with non-allies only against a greater threat. But I am not entirely convinced of this argument. Especially since we are now eating the fruit of having armed Bin Laden’s kind during the Afghanistan conflict, and they then used those same arms against us. So, I recognize that the issues can be complex. But certainly cannot be reduced to the naïve simplistic formula that gun themselves are the problem (As Niccole evidently does by showing the homicidal maniac, Baptiste blame the lack of discipline in youth on MTV, rather than the gun he is swinging around and using to arm the youth of his country). This kind of faulty anthropology that blames the weapon for the evil denies man’s essential evil, ultimately leads to slavery. Because man will always be evil until the end, so if we don’t take that into account in our political or sociological theory of how to fix the problem, we will only lead to the slavery of the good by the evil who WILL NOT STOP doing evil. Therefore the provision of weapons defense is necessary. We must just make sure that they get into the hands of just causes. The fact that men use knives for evil does not negate the manufacture of knives because not only are they used for good, but for good self defense against evil men. The fact that evil men use guns for evil is NOT an argument against guns, it is an argument to arm good men or good causes against evil. I suspect that based upon the context of the movie, this is not what Niccole intends. It is, however what I think he ends up proving. Niccole unveils some insightful problems and issues, such as the fact that when the US leaves a field of operations, it is often cheaper to leave the munitions when it leaves than to take them with them and dispose of them. This is a problem with the dismantling of the USSR in the 80s, which ended up having Russian arms sold by black market operatives. Yes, these show the morality of fiscal choices, but they do not prove the immorality of weapons manufacturing or supplying. Also, Niccole conveniently avoided showing that it was REAGAN who stopped the Cold War, not Gorbachev as he shows it to be. But he does have a guy shoot a picture of Reagan, showing Niccole’s hostility against this greatest hero of the 20th century. Interestingly, a scene where the Interpol agent chasing Cage tells him he will do everything he can to delay Cage, even if it is by just one day, because that one day prolongs the life of the innocent who are killed with his guns. Well, I don’t suspect that Niccole realizes that this is the exact same argument of pro-lifers who block abortion clinics. Would he support those pro-lifers as well? Seeing the effect on kids is very strong here, whether it is seeing the innocent kids killed by the wars or those who are drafted into armies before they are mature enough to be a soldier is a strong and effective argument here. NOT against the sales of guns, as I suppose Niccole intends, but rather for arming those who fight against such evils. So, while I don’t buy Niccole’s complete worldview about the nature of evil residing in the existence of weapons, I still consider some of his points to be powerful reminders of the morality of all behaviors, including Capitalist ones. But I would qualify that with the moral necessity to fight evil and violence by arming the good against the evil.
The Constant Gardener
Not Recommended. Story of a political lobbyist of some kind (Ralph Fiennes) who seeks to discover why his wife was killed in an accident only to discover a cover up by drug companies who are using the poor in third world countries as guinea pigs for drug experimentation. The film is visually creative and acted well, but was boring as a story. They revealed the twist about the drug companies experimenting on the poor at about the half way point or less and then failed to reveal anything beyond this for the rest of the picture, unless I missed something when I dozed off, but I don’t think I did.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Highly Recommended. This is a story based on an allegedly true story that occurred in Germany in the 1970s. It’s been updated to today and place in America. It’s the story of a trial of a priest charged with negligent homicide in the death of a young girl, Emily Rose, in the midst of her exorcism. In our modernist world of naturalism that presupposes the negation of the categories of the supernatural, this movie is a welcome counterbalance to Enlightenment pseudoscientific bigotry. I enjoyed the unpredictable mixing of genres, horror and courtroom drama. A legal and logical examination of the issues punctuated with the terrors of supernatural experience. Which makes this movie very postmodern. A story that counters reason with experience, and experience is forced upon the rationalism of modernity as something that CANNOT be ignored any longer. Our precious naturalistic assumptions about reality and proud rationalism are just not adequate to address all of reality. This is of course, the good side of postmodernism in challenging modernity. The dark side of the pomo worldview, well, I’ll talk about that in a moment. I know the director and he has said he is a postmodern Christian. So this is a conscious attempt to break through the ignorance and prejudice of modernity. The heroine, played by Laura Linney, is the attorney who defends the priest and she is an agnostic who decides to use demon possession as a defense in a court of law, not because she believes it to be real, but because her client does, and that this is, in an HONEST court of law, a legitimate consideration, the sincerity of the believers. To assume that the girl’s death (by self-inflicted and other bodily injury) MUST be negligence because “as we all know” demons are simply religious fairy tales, is itself an ignorance of prejudice. And this is exactly what the prosecutor embodies when he claims that a witness’s testimony of demonic possession should be struck down on the basis of “silliness.” And of course, most audience members at that point would agree with the prosecutor. How can we allow this kind of “faith” testimony in to our system that is supposed to be based on fact? And that very assumption is perhaps the most revelatory ignorance of the modernity we are current victims of: The assumption that EVERYTHING has a natural cause in physical chemicals. As the defense lawyer proves, even science itself is based on faith. The very claims of Emily’s demonic symptoms being reducible to psychotic fits of epilepsy are shown to be NOT FACTS, but beliefs or guesses of so-called medical scientists. Because the fact is, science and medicine are not only based on faith commitments, but they are merely observational interactions with symptoms. Much of the time, they have no clue how or why a drug is working, they are merely creating explanations that they BELIEVE is the reason. Thomas Szaz has written extensively on the fraudulance of the medical drug culture as well as psychotherapy in The Myth of Mental Illness and Pharmocracy. So the doctors notice a certain drug results in suppression of symptoms, so they theorize that the problem is therefore reducible to physical origins or causes. But the defense gives an entirely legitimate counterfactual that the drugs suppressed Emily’s mental and physical capacity to withstand the demons, thus contributing to her death. What Derrickson does extremely well here is to fairly portray both sides in the courtroom. In fact, he does this so well, that when each side presents its case, you find yourself changing sides in what you think the answer is. This makes for truly good drama. What I liked about the demon possession was how “realistic” it was. That is, it was not driven by gory special effects but more accurately the kind of effects that have historically been connected with real possessions. And that could be explained through medical physiological explanations as well. Even though there are the usual multiple voices, strange contortions, etc. Scott does the opposite of typical demon possession movies. Rather than the white eyes with a tiny pupil, he has an enlarged pupil which was totally scary in a new way. Surprisingly, there are no foul cuss words that I remember coming from the demons, as is the usual fare with horror movies of demons. Thus proving you can be scary without the foul language. Scott’s scare tactics were all based on simple old techniques of suspense, the shadow we barely see, the noise in the hall, whispering voices. But he does it so well that once again it proves we don’t need more gore and pushing the envelope of impropriety to be scary. The whole moral of this story is simply spoken through the agnostic lawyer’s summary that this is a story about “possibilities.” A story that makes us consider the reality of the supernatural to widen our understanding of reality. It is not the “believers” who are blind to reality, it is the proud anti-supernaturalist, who assumes so much by faith that he doesn’t even realize it. That he doesn’t see the demon right in front of his face. Of course, this isn’t presented with a propaganda approach because in fact, most every demonic encounter is presented in flashback, testimonial form, complete with some variation, thus reminding us that even this is not absolutely certain. Although I would argue that experience gets a stronger edge here. Which is of course the weakness of postmodernism. The strength of the modernist prioritization of rationality does prove the fact that experience can be interpreted differently depending on one’s worldview, AND ALL PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE NOT EQUAL. Some are provably wrong. And that people can be deceived because of their presuppositions. Let’s face it, the history of medicine does show that certain religious beliefs DID blind some people to the truth of infectious diseases etc. So the good that anti-supernaturalism brought was the unveiling of much superstitious ignorance and even charlatanry. But of course, two wrong extremes don’t make a right. The sword cuts both ways in blindness, and Christianity is the only true balance that started modern science and medicine by acknowledging the lawlikeness of God’s ordered universe without ignoring the spiritual side. But I digress. I like the idea of via negativa, “way of the negative,” that is, proving God’s existence by proving the existence of evil supernatural. If there is an antichrist evil spirit, then there is the ultimate Good Spirit of God. One Roman Catholic nun reviewing the movie said that this fear orientation is a medieval means of getting people saved. But of course, this is more autobiographical of that nun and her postmodernity than it is the Bible. So Jesus was medieval when he used fear to scare people into the kingdom? (Matt 10:28; 5:22; 5:29; Luke 12:5) In fact Jesus used fear so much as a motivation in his parables about wailing and gnashing of teeth and eternal darkness etc. that I would wonder if this nun, and those like her, even read their Bibles (assuming she even has one.) And was God himself an irrelevant medieval peasant when he commands us to FEAR him over 200 times in both Old and New Testaments – more than he commands us to love him? Well, I would certainly NOT say that fear is the only draw to salvation, but it is certainly a part of the BIBLICAL GOSPEL, though it is not a part of the modern or postmodern gospel. We SHOULD fear hell and love God. Both fear and love are equally ultimate truths in the Bible (sometimes described in the same paragraph or sentence – Matthew 10:26-31). But at the end of the day, one simple movie CANNOT CONTAIN the entire Bible in it’s theology. There are plenty of movies available that do express love as a motivation to salvation (Bruce Almighty). We need some that deal with fear too. So there. What I didn’t like about the movie: Well, there are some serious theological issues I have with it. I do not argue that these are reasons NOT to see it or reasons to reject the movie, but simply reasons for discernment and disagreement. You don’t have to agree with everything in a movie to see the value of it. And it doesn’t have to be theologically perfect to accept the good that it does bring in context with the culture. First, a very minor thing (not theological) was that I thought the appearance of a cloaked figure in the distance was not at all consistent with the heart of this story. It was out of place and a bit too melodramatic and literal. Secondly, the heroine starts as an agnostic and ends as an agnostic very clearly, which makes this an unsatisfying story in terms of character. It is an elementary necessity of good storytelling to take the hero from one pole to another, the character arc. If a hero starts out an unbeliever, they need to in some way at least, end with a seed of belief. If they start a believer in something, they must end up skeptical of it. If they start selfish, they should end selfless, and on and on. This is the stuff of great storytelling. By the hero’s journey, the truth of the story is incarnated. So the audience can journey with the hero. So to have a hero that does not change is not only anathema in storytelling, it is unsatisfying. But not only that, I would argue it is counterproductive to Derrickson’s own worldview of Christianity. It is fine to have some characters not change, but NOT the hero. They must change or the audience is left hanging. This is perhaps where Scott’s postmodernism gets the best of him. His story INCARNATES the suggestion through the heroine’s lack of change, that religious beliefs are not important, what IS important is her professional ethics. Because this is where she does change, in her ethics. But Agnosticism is not a viable or even good worldview. So if the heroine would have at least made an indication that she saw the world differently now, that would have been enough. I’m not saying she should “accept Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior,” but merely that her life is truly changed because of her journey. But alas, the only thing she changes in is in her professional ethics, and this is no doubt good. Yes, she quits a bad legal firm and shows character, but the real issue of the movie was NOT the politics of the legal system (that was a subplot), but the reality of the supernatural. In simple terms, she starts ignorant and ends ignorant. Not a satisfying story. One theological difference I have is that the very heart of the Roman Rites of exorcism do not have biblical foundations. Now, I’ve talked to Scott about demon possession and he claimed that there is so little in the Bible that we cannot make dogmatic claims either way. While I acknowledge there is certainly freedom in this area to service the story (I do so in my upcoming supernatural thriller), I nonetheless am persuaded that what the Bible DOES say about it, little as it may be, is still truthful and relevant. And in the only place where exorcism occurs in the Bible is Acts 19, where the sons of Sceva were exorcists and they had no power over demons who ended up beating them up. It seems that everywhere in the New Testament, demons are simply cast out in the name of Jesus Christ by faithful believers (sometimes requiring prayer, but not ritual). I suppose you could make the argument that this movie supports that because they never did exorcise her. She died after all! On the other hand, I certainly admit that ritual is more cinematic and dramatic. In fact, one executive reacted to my movie, that has demons cast out of people, by saying that they cast the demons out too easily. Well, that was because we have been so conditioned by the Roman Ritual view that we don’t realize it is more real (Biblical) for believers to simply cast them out! Anyway, I do acknowledge that the priest does eventually call on the name of Jesus Christ in his attempts and am surprised that the studios let Scott do this. Another major concern is with the entire purpose of the demon possession. It is portrayed as God’s intent to show the world the reality of the supernatural through having one of his believers (supposedly) possessed by a demon. But it is one thing to have demons taunting believers, that’s true. It is quite another to completely disregard the reality of the Holy Spirit that is supposed to be within the believer themselves! Believers in Jesus Christ possessed by a demon is simply and seriously unbiblical (1 Cor 6:19). A contradiction in terms and reality (1 John 4:4). As are visions of the Virgin Mary which is supposedly how she received this purpose. Talking to the dead is strictly forbidden by God (Deut 18:11; Isaiah 8:19), so it strikes me as odd that this is portrayed positively in the movie, as if God does communicate through this means. It could be argued that there was no indication that Emily was a true Christian, but this doesn’t square with the context of the movie. It is certainly strongly implied that she is. And another important element is the arbitrariness of the possession. There is no indication of how the demons were able to get into Emily. The history of demon possession indicates that demons do not willy nilly enter people. There has to be some occultic or pagan involvement or opening up to the dark side. The Exorcist did this extremely well by having the child play with a Ouiji Board. But in Emily, they just take her without provocation or invitation. Too arbitrary storywise to be satisfying. You know, it’s interesting, I wouldn’t be as picky if this was fictional, because fiction is intended to be metaphors or parables of something else. The reason I would be so picky is because this is claimed to be based on a true story.