Family melodrama. A brilliant mathematician (Gwenyth Paltrow) must take care of her brilliant mathematician father (Anthony Hopkins) who is losing his mind with Alzheimers. This is a very touching story that also includes the ubiquitous Jake Gyllenhall as the love interest. Well, it started out like the play it was based on, a lot of talk that sounded staged and was redundant. We hear Gwenyth recount her entire last evening events with her sister that we already saw. And it is a bit difficult to believe Paltrow as a genius, but that is the genius of this movie because the dramatic question is Did she write the brilliant notebook full of breakthrough mathematics during her father’s brief remission or did he? Once the plot kicked in, the play-likeness faded and I was able to enjoy it more. And of course, the whole idea of how can she prove she wrote the proof is a reflection of the difficulty of modernity in which we live. What is proof? Her appeal to Jake is to trust her. Just as she has learned to trust him. A faint echo of the truth that all reason is based on a faith commitment or trust in the underlying uniformity of nature, something we assume but simply cannot prove. In other words, in order to our Reason to be legitimate, certain preconditions of reality must exist or our reasoning is unintelligible. And one of those is the law-likeness or regularity of nature. If nature is not uniform, that is, lawlike then we cannot use reason because in fact one moment the law of logic we appeal to may be valid, one moment it may not. Only if we assume that logic is always true can we even use it to prove anything. But it can only be a proof if nature is law-like, that is, the same everywhere at all times, past, present and future. But since we are finite and cannot be everywhere in the universe at all times to see or know that logic works, then we are ASSUMING or presupposing that it does outside of our little ignorant tiny corner of knowledge in a vast universe beyond our comprehension. In a non-Christian worldview we simply cannot know that the future will be like the past, therefore we cannot know that nature is uniform and will continue to operate the same in the future in a way that we can reliably count on it in our reasoning. The appeal to inductive reasoning of science as being valid because “that’s how it has always operated in the past” is begging the question. So our entire edifice of Reason and science is in fact founded on faith – faith in the uniformity of nature—just as Augustine said, “I believe in order to understand.” And I think that the Hopkins character is a great incarnation of the insanity which is the ultimate end of a modern Enlightenment metaphysic that reduces reality or truth to mathematical theorem.
Just Friends
Romantic Comedy. Obese high schooler grows up, gets hot and successful, comes back home 10 years later and tries to bed the only woman he loved in high school, who loved him as JUST FRIENDS. To anyone who has ever experienced this terror of “just friends,” and I have a couple times in life (including with my wife, who I finally caught), this movie rings with deep truth – and humor. A bit crass at times, but more restrained than say, Wedding Crashers or 40-Year Old Virgin. Chris, who loved Jamie, but was not loved back with the romance that he felt, goes away, gets ripped, gets successful in the music business and becomes promiscuous with women, since his rejection taught him true love was not possible. So when he ends up in his home town, rediscovering his old flame, he tries to catch her for all the wrong reasons: Just to bed her, just to bring closure sexually. But he soon discovers that he is still in love with her. Unfortunately, he is not a quality person who deserves her because of his promiscuous lifestyle which he must learn to reject. And what is really great is how his rival, Dusty, is a reflection of Chris, with the same dorky high school crush on Jamie, but now, Dusty is everything Chris is not, a dashing Paramedic who saves Jamie, plays the guitar, works at the hospital with old people, gives concerts to children in churches. He’s too perfect, too manly and too sensitive for Chris to compete with – until he realizes that its all a scam by Dusty to bed women. So the cool redemption in this story is Chris seeing himself in Dusty and seeing what a louse his promiscuous using of women really is. What I didn’t like about this movie is the Rock and Roll Slut that Chris, as record producer, had to pacify on his stay in his home town. In one sense it was a great mockery of the insanity and sheer immaturity of the Rock Star world. They made great fun of her. She’s stupid, bawdy, ignorant, uncultured and insensitive. But she’s also horny and one of the subplots is Chris’s younger brother trying to sleep with her. This stuff was inappropriate. HOWEVER, it is interesting that he never does sleep with the rock star girl which is really rather moral, since he is only like 18, and usually movies fulfill that male fantasy with its irresponsible sexuality. The fact that he does not sleep with her is quite a positive moral statement. It was also cool that once Chris gets the opportunity to sleep with Jamie, he doesn’t – because he knows it is wrong to use her in that way. They never have sex and his return to her involves the desire to marry and have children with her, so it is a rather Christian morality to the story. A promiscuous man learns that true love is possible and promiscuity is irresponsible using of women.
Walk the Line
Biopic of the famous/infamous Johnny Cash and his relationship with June Carter. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon WILL receive nominations for Oscars and Reese WILL win the Oscar for her performance. This was an eminently interesting story about yet another tortured artist. Oh well, we are all somewhat tortured. I must confess the ubiquitous drug addiction that seems to be a part of so many celebrity stories is at once both pitiable and redundant. The subplot of Johnny’s incessant desire to please an unpleasable father who unabashedly and shamefully preferred Johnny’s dead older brother is a very universal pathos that rings with authenticity. Here we have a man who rose to the pinnacle of achievement with his music and his father still felt that it should have been Johnny who died in an accident rather than his brother. Even Johnny himself felt his brother, who was to be a preacher, was more deserving of life than he because of his “goodness.” This is the story of Cash’s redemption and finding his value through the heartfelt love of June Carter, which as I understand it, is precisely what Cash himself had affirmed in real life. Though it is one of those stories that shows a man in love with someone other than his wife, it seems to veer away from the typical Romantic elevation of feelings over duty. Even though the adultery did in fact occur, it shows June Carter very conflicted even to the point of walking away from the man she loves because of the moral inappropriateness. It shows her disdain for drugs and Johnny’s guilt behind his actions. It shows Cash seeking to do right, though faltering in that quest, like all of us. What I did not like about the film was twofold. First, I did not care for the celebration of rebellion that comes through. In one sense, Cash realizes that he must find someone to identify with and criminal prisoners seem to be that person. His Folsom Prison Blues is the theme song of the piece. Okay, that’s fine that he finds some redemption in reaching out to these men. But the way he reaches out in the music of the movie is to identify and celebrate their depravity. The songs he sings, at least what words I could catch, were not redemptive but celebratory of criminal misery. Now, on the one hand, this is not a problem IF you also show the redemptive songs he may have sung, like his Gospel tunes, but in fact, this is not done, his entire Gospel songs repetoire is virtually ignored, which results in more of a rock and roll exultation of rebellion than a redemptive identification. And that brings me to the bigger thing I hated about this story: The lack of Cash’s central defining characteristic, his spiritual quest with Christianity. Christianity was alluded to in several moments of the film, but it was essentially a defining aspect of his identity that was relegated to near irrelevance. There are only a couple moments of his faith in the film and most are negative. At the end, when Cash cleans up his life, we see June take him to church in a moralistic context. We see June reacting to Cash’s immorality but more out of moralism than out of her faith, which we are never really introduced to except through a quick reference to her parents. What we are not shown is how she came out of a very Gospel music background, which would be a defining element of her identity as well. Religion is minor in this story, and replaced with moralism, morality without real religious focus. Now, the other place it shows his “faith” is when he first broke in to recording. He sings a typical Gospel tune, and the recording producer tells him it isn’t unique. It isn’t genuine. Gospel is dead. They want something more authentic, something that comes out of his experience, out of his emotion and misery. The Producer tells him, “It ain’t got nothing to do with God, it’s about believing in yourself.” (humanism) So Johnny Sings Folsom Prison Blues, which interestingly DID NOT come out of his experience, and yet this is somehow considered more genuine. Cash’s music is, according to this movie, genuine when he believes in himself, not God. And when Johnny challenges the producer by saying, “You saying I don’t believe in God,” the answer is that it is not authentically from him which really means that his faith was not authentic. Maybe it wasn’t at that time. Fine. But the sense is that the faith he had was therefore never really authentic. And the rest of the move never really brings in his faith struggle throughout his misery years. So the overall conclusion the movie makes is that it was not really a defining element of his identity or his music. I have no problem with the crazy things he did, with his prodigal nature, but to virtually ignore the faith that was so much a part of everything he was in the midst of that prodigality is simply dishonest and manipulative. My claim is that if you don’t like his faith, fine, then DON’T TELL HIS STORY. Tell some other humanist’s story, or an atheist’s story. But it is lying revisionism to tell a man of faith’s story and virtually ignore his faith or relegate it to near irrelevancy. This ticks me off because it is so often done. Mark my words, the upcoming The New World movie about Pocohontas by Terence Malick, I bet you will also ignore Pocohontas’s Christianity or relegate it to the problem or flaw of the Western Culture that is imperialistic. Why do these people have to rape religious stories? Why can’t they tell their own stories? How would they feel if I wrote a story about Carl Sagan and ignored his science and atheism? Or how about a story about the founder of Greenpeace and I virtually ignored his love for nature and the earth? But of course this is the imperialistic nature of humanism, to retell the stories of Christianty in a naturalistic fashion, so that everything is explainable in terms of cultural or natural causes. Moralism, not Christian faith is the religion acceptable to humanism. I think that stories are so important and valuable that to deny the heart of someone’s identity in a story is narrative rape, especially when it comes to God in their life.
Pride and Prejudice
I am a fan of the BBC 5 hour adaptation, but I have to say, I was surprise and pleased with this one. It is a very well done 2 hour version, which is hard to do with all the relationships that have to be truncated for it to fit. But the language in this is wonderful, witty and eloquent. What can I say? I love words. Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth and Matthew MacFadyen as Mr. Darcy were very satisfying, despite Kiera’s beauty. What I liked so much about the BBC version was its authenticity of character and lack of Hollywood prettiness, but it didn’t bother me much here because Kiera is such a good actress. I also think that I may have appreciated this “short” 2 hour version because I may have unconsciously filled in the holes of the story from the BBC version so it is hard to be objective here. Nonetheless, this story of finding love in the midst of Victorian conventions is really uplifting and authentic. Although this story takes place in the Regency period prior to Queen Victoria, they are nevertheless culturally connected to the Victorian period. The plotline of fighting lovers may be a bit of a dangerous cliché but it works just fine for me here. Some people dislike Jane Austen stories because they have a disdain or contempt for aristocratic culture. But I think this misses the boat. I think Austen points up the good and bad of such a society. I think she shows that in fact some propriety is right (Liddy’s foolishness at eloping with Wickham, as well as sexuality saved for marriage) and others are wrong (Lady Catherine DeBerg’s aristocratic snobbery). She mocks the male pursuit of women as objects for their betterment in the Pastor Mr. Collins, and she elevates love over status in Darcy and Elizabeth. The argument that Victorian society (and its predecessors) was somehow hypocritical because it was moralistic and trying to force people to behave morally in public while they did not do so I private is naïve. Is it hypocritical to make laws against lying, cheating, stealing and killing because so many in society do not keep those laws? Of course not. We don’t have laws of proper behavior or social norms of proper behavior for the sake of the criminals, but the victims. It is the protection of society not the individual that propriety is for. It helps to foster a positive environment for the cultivation of good morals. It is not about forcing people to be good based on the delusion that they will then be good in private. Sure, some cultural conventions are wrong, but NOT ALL. And besides, what absolute cultural standard are you using to critique these social conventions? Is it merely your own social conventions? If not, then you have to admit that some social conventions that are in line with moral absolutes just as much as your claim that some may not be morally acceptable. I would argue with Austen that sex outside marriage is more than a Victorian cultural prejudice, it is an absolute biblical norm given by God that Victorian society sought to emulate and support. Nothing wrong with that. Aristocratic snobbery against the poor is not biblical and therefore wrong – just like Jane also argued in this story – as well as the modern version of it in this movie.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Children’s fantasy. Five children receive lottery type tickets to tour the world’s most amazing Chocolate Factory of the elusive and oddball Willy Wonka. Tim Burton has a unique viewpoint but is not a very good storyteller to me. His visuals are fascinating, and his characters are quirky, but often very distant or alien. This story was a mediocre remake. Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka is entirely alien and unsympathetic despite the attempt to show his flaw originating in an unloving Dentist father who denied him the pleasure of candy. He is just so heartless in his reactions to the kids that I despised him. I like the morality fable nature of this story though. It shows these five kids, all products of bad parenting, who reflect their parents in their worst faults. There is the suburban competitive girl who is the overachiever. There is the fat German boy who is a symbol of conspicuous consumption. There is the spoiled little rich girl who controls her parents with her whining, getting everything she asks for. There is the selfish video-game antisocial boy. And of course, there is Charlie, who is a member of a poor but loving family who sacrifices their needs for his happiness. The theme of family as most important in life is a great one, even showing Charlie’s grandparent’s, both sets, living with them. When each of the children’s own selfishness gets them into trouble and they receive their comeuppance, the Oompa Loompas sing their song mocking their faults with moral humor. I liked the different versions of music used, but could not understand many of the lyrics. But the most selfish of all is of course, Willy Wonka, who offers Charlie the factory if he only leaves his family, because as Willy says, family only gets in the way of creativity. I found this an amazing deliberate reference to Hollywood itself. The fact that he chose to say “creativity” rather than say, “pleasure” or “fun” or some other child oriented thing, shows the storytellers were addressing the individualism of the artist or the creative type versus the interests of the community. I find this rather ironic as well, since that movie itself was no doubt made with dozens of the people on crew and cast who in fact HAVE put aside family and community for their individual creativity. Hollywood is a kind of “Pleasure Island” of this kind of lifestyle choices. But back to Wonka, this is all a very nice circle because all the kids, who are archetypes of kids today, are all selfish narcissists who have become the monsters they are because of indulgence, and yet, Wonka is the selfish antisocial type he is because of the opposite, the denial of pleasures. So we see that Charlie, who doesn’t get everything he wants, but who is also not an ascetic monk in his family, is the perfect balance. Charlie’s family may not have much but they sacrifice little things to bless each other, and make each other happy. It’s all quite communitarian in its essence and I think a mediocre tale of a good morality.
Three Extremes
Japanese horror trilogy. Two of the stories were just too esoteric for me to appreciate. One on the damages of incest that was a Kabuki like drama, and the other was a killer who traps a movie director but I wasn’t sure what it was all about. But the first one, called Dumplings was the most incredible film about abortion that I have ever seen. I am reminded of A Modest Proposal, a satire by Jonathan Swift written in 1729. Here is it’s full title: “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public.” Swift was a Christian man whose satire addressed the English attitude toward the Irish with biting sarcasm. Dumplings is a Chinese “Modest Proposal.” It is the story of a woman in China who sells a special meal of dumplings to Chinese women who are seeking to revitalize their youthfulness. The dumplings are in fact made from chopped up aborted fetuses. This film portrays abortion as the cannibalization of the young, for the benefit and convenience of older women. The woman in the story is trying to win back the love of her husband who is seeking younger women for his pleasure. At first, she has a hard time eating the dumplings, swallowing them with difficulty, but after a few times, it becomes a delicacy to her. And then she wants a more potent version of the food, so she gets a late term abortion of a little boy, to which we are shown the abortion and how the young girl dies from the secret abortion she receives from the dumpling woman. But the filmmakers are not arguing to make abortion illegal because of the “back alley” consequences, but rather they are saying that the abortion industry is cannibalistic. And finally, though the woman is past childbearing age, the unholy concoction works and she conceives a child. But in the end, she is so consumed by her selfish pursuit, that she commits her own abortion and eats her own child. It is a truly gruesome in concept, but a very poignant and biblical kind of prophecy, something Jeremiah or Isaiah might proclaim to our modern culture of death.
The Weather Man
Dramedy. Very thoughtful, at times profound, ultimately cynical worldview. Nicolas Cage is a ladder-climbing weather man on the local channel who is struggling to get his big break as a national weather man in New York. Trouble is, he is estranged from his wife and kids, and can’t seem to figure out why they always argue and fight and what he did to get to this place of misery in his life. A universal dilemma: Should he go for the big career and leave his family behind or should he stay in the small time job to reconcile and rebuild with his family. Or is this even possible? A great quandary of a story. This story is an incarnation of Ecclesiastes, but without God as the answer. It is Nietzschean existentialism in that Cage is a man who struggles with his lack of real meaning. And life in this movie is portrayed as full of pain and misery. Cage’s father (Michael Caine) is dying of inoperable lymphoma, Cage’s teen daughter is obese and entirely apathetic, as all too many teens are these days. And Cage’s son is unbeknownst to all, being hit on by a child molester who is his shrink. Caine, the father, a Pulitzer prize winner whom Cage tries desperately and unsuccessfully to win his acceptance, has come to realize that all he has accomplished in life will not help him when he is dead. He calls this a “shitty life.” The central metaphor of the film, is of course, the weather, and how unpredictable it is. The fact of the matter is, everyone wants to be able to predict it, wants to plan their lives around it, but in fact, at the end of the day, you just can’t do it. Cage gets so impatient with all the citizens who approach him on the street asking what the forecast is, and he tells them, he doesn’t know, you can’t know. And they of course get angry with him, because of their faith in his predicting ability. As one weather pro tells us, “It’s just wind. It blows all over the place. I don’t predict it.” And as Cage echos this in his realization, “things didn’t work out the way I predicted.” It’s actually quite reminiscent of Ecclesiastes, Eccl. 1:14 “I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind. Eccl. 2:17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.” And then there is the thread of how many times others throw food at him from their cars when they see him on the sidewalk. All a very bittersweet comedy that Cage does so superbly, mixing the dregs of life with it’s humorous moments. Cage’s revelation occurs when he realizes that his ontological reality is throw away cheapness without value. Or as he quips, “I’m fast food.” This is all standard existentialism and is really quite authentic and thoughtful. The problem is that it remains in death without hope or transcendence. By the end of the story, Cage notes, that “every year, the possibilities of who I could be get reduced to one, who I am.” He concludes that you must “become what you are,” as Nietzsche would put it. Rather than changing and reconciling or beginning the way toward healing, as most mainstream movies would do (indeed as Cage’s other movies often do, like Family Man), The Weather Man opts out for remaining “eternally the same,” that is, Cage accepts who he is as who he is supposed to be, or rather become, and resigns himself to his world of big city national weather, leaving his family in the dust. A rather unsatisfying decision in my mind that is trying to be “realistic,” but I consider it really just nihilistic. Ironically, his father, who is dying, retains some shred of understanding and transcendence when he mentors Cage that “nothing of value in life is gotten without sacrifice.” And in relation to whether he should take the job in NY or stay near his family, the father says, “The hardest thing to do and the right thing to do are often the same thing.” Cage doesn’t take his dad’s advice though and ends up choosing himself over his family. This was a story with great potential, indeed some actual great insights, that ultimately suffers from it’s nihilistic vision packaged in a “get real” cloak. One of the offensive elements was the cussing. The F-word was so inappropriately used in this story that one could only get the impression that this is another cynical foul-mouthed Hollywood writer’s interpretation of normal people getting real. Doesn’t work. Isn’t real. Wasn’t necessary. The storytellers would do wise to consider the words of King Solomon, Eccl. 2:24 “There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?”
Shopgirl
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.”
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.