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Life in the Twilight Zone

2010-03-21T21:30:00.000-07:00

“Small message of reassurance.... Don't despair. Help is on route.” These words from Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone were exactly those I needed to hear several weeks ago. On the weekend I had planned a day off from caregiving for my aging parents—the first in many months. On the Saturday I was en route to meet a friend for a long overdue get-together. The minute my SUV made the jarring sounds of “RRR-clunk” outside the community hospital where I'd just had my blood drawn. When I suddenly saw all my carefully laid plans come to an abrupt halt. I felt as if I had just entered into ... The Twilight Zone.

“Cavender is Coming” on Vol 40
Episode 101 – May 25, 1962

Agnes Grep (Carol Burnett) lived on the edge of The Twilight Zone. Yet, it didn't seem to phase her. She rented a tiny, messy apartment, kept a half-finished art project on her coffee table, and went bowling on Thursdays. She chatted with her neighbors about “babysitting and potato pancakes” while hugging sticky-fingered kids in want of candy and cookies. And she'd just lost her job—again. She simply wasn't good with details—in theater concessions or anywhere else. Still, klutzy Agnes Grep kept a genuine smile on her face, for her landlord, the plumber, her boss; and she didn't go looking for an angel. The angel found her.

This winged messenger in a patterned tie tried everything to “improve her lot.” First, he performed a few miracles to prove his abilities. It didn't seem to impress her; maybe she'd seen it before. On the other hand, it sure did disturb the bus driver. Next, the heavenly being tried a few more upgrades. Still, down-to-earth Agnes knew large bank accounts, endless parties full of strangers, and high-end clothes weren't all they were said to be. “What'd you expect?” Her answer: “Friends, maybe.” In the end, isn't that what we all need? To know someone else feels the same, or thinks similarly, or has been through difficulties as we have?

I wish I was more like Agnes. Oh, yes, I'm learning to be content with my life, and I'm finding pleasure in simple things—like twist ice cream cones, reading a book with a friend, or movie extravaganzas at the local theater. Yet, Agnes accepted herself on her bad days, too—when she was discombobulated, her plans were disrupted, or yet another boss was displeased. She not only watched for the intervention of angels—though not expecting it—she offered them a gift of her own. In so doing, the mortal Agnes taught them: “Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!” (Hebrews 13:2)

Me? I didn't ignore frustrations like Agnes Grep. When my SUV refused to start, I fretted. When the cell phone died—which my dad had assured me was freshly charged—I whined. When the sliding, glass doors of the community hospital wouldn't reopen, I was flustered. I didn't heed the immortal's familiar words: “Don't panic.” Yet, when I turned from the hospital doors, an angel found me, too. Her name? Gladys Amen. Fitting, I think. Her persistence in aiding a stranger (phone book in hand) and her willingness to be inconvenienced were angelic—saving me from self-pity and a towing-bill to the local garage!

“Nick of Time” on Vol 9
Episode 43 – November 18, 1960

After switching vehicles, I journeyed onward. Unfortunately, when I couldn't locate the oft-visited Asian restaurant where my friend and I had determined to meet, I wondered if I was once again in “one of the darker corners of The Twilight Zone.” And I was reminded of another duo. These newlyweds were just passing through Ridgeville, Ohio—or so they thought—when their car broke down. The local mechanic was friendly enough, but assured them it would take around four hours to complete repairs. What to do except explore the little town? And visit the Busy Bee Cafe for a stale sandwich, a cold coffee, ... and a penny fortune-telling machine. After all, what's the harm in a bit of speculation?

Like the superstitious Don (William Shatner), I often ponder the path of life. “Who will get that promotion?” “When will I write the script for that documentary I've been conjuring?” “What would have happened if I'd have said 'yes'?” And as Don's wife (Patricia Breslin) did, I value inquisitiveness—and optimism. Cheer, positiveness, even kindness is easy when things are going well, or when problems are only temporary. Yet too often, when life becomes monotonous, I grow stressed. Or when circumstances remain arduous, I'm far from confident. And I don't mean that I'm necessarily negative or hopeless; I'm just not expectant. I'm not soothed or enthusiastic, I'm merely ... resolved.

When life is hard (or even when we're afraid it's too easy), we all tend to flee back to the comfort of our pat answers—where habit takes us again and again. We run away to where “every answer seems to fit.” Though we may not kiss a rabbit's foot or rub a silver shamrock, we each feed our pennies somewhere. Often, it's to our subconscious fears and insecurities. To where we call random answers, facts. This is, to co-opt a fitting phrase, the devil's playground. For, as Scripture reminds us, “The thief [Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Christ Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

How do we get this full life? And how does Satan steal it from us? Here are some words I find meaningful: freedom, joy and hope. As opposed to fear, guilt and self-consciousness. I think it hinges on Whom we go to with our questions, confusion and uncertainties. Throughout Scripture, the Lord uses prophets. Obviously, He's not against telling His people parts of the future. Yet, God is very clear that He wants people to come to Him for answers, clarity and comfort—even when His responses aren't explicit. Often, “Trust in My goodness” must be enough. For now. Still, we can trust the Lord to shape our life according to His promises, because He's good. He's life-giving. And He's enough.

“A Passage for Trumpet” on Vol 4
Episode 32 – May 20, 1960

Befuddled, I turned from my jumbled thoughts—and where Little Bamboo used to be—only to run directly into my friend. While ushering me across the street into another favorite eating establishment, my cohort explained that the Asian restaurant had moved about five minutes away. “Do you want to go there?” No, for some reason I just wanted to get off the street—away from the clamor and busyness of bargain-hunters looking for “a steal” and police officers looking for a crime; men with cigarettes in need of illumination and women with compacts in need of secrets to conceal. Away from people to whom I seemed invisible. I was feeling rebuffed by the world, like my alter ego Joey Crown.

Joey (Jack Klugman) was used to hanging around backstage. A trumpet player with “a magic horn,” he was also a bedraggled alcoholic. Why, Joey? “Because I'm sad; because I'm nothin'.... I won't even have a girl.” Joey had cut off hope—he quit expecting good from himself and life. And when he pawned his silver trumpet for $8.50 and a sour swig, he just as well have been dead. Then, he stepped off the curb and in front of a truck ... into The Twilight Zone. It's there, one person—a fellow trumpet player—hears Joey. There, one person knows his name and enjoys his music. “That's a nice talent you got; don't waste it.” For the first time in what seemed an eternity, someone pauses to look and listen ... and Joey is known.

I think artists often feel as though we are unseen, misunderstood. And Evangelical artists, moreso. Unlike our Catholic and Orthodox brethren, many Protestant traditions have long ago done away with spiritual embellishments like emotion and sacrament, deeming them unnecessary—and favoring both stark reason and naked symbolism. Art undone by rhetoric; senses dulled by wit. In so doing, the rich historical tapestry made by all followers of the Triune God is being worn threadbare, and Christ-followers' cultural nuances are unraveling. This harsh kind of Evangelicalism has betrayed all believers; we are neglected, forgotten, and cold. Yet, maybe, it is artists who have lost the most.

The artist's calling—despite the media in which we each work—is to remember. Or rather, to remind. “ʽYou have eyes—can’t you see? You have ears—can’t you hear?ʼ Don’t you remember anything at all?” (Mark 8:18) We have lamented the Church's pulling away from art and mystery; we've expressed anger at Her departure from story, culture and life. And we've revived awareness where we do it best—on canvases and in manuscripts, through scores and choreography. Yet, many artists, like me, have wandered through basements and coffee houses ... and away from a local church's vestibule and pews. Thus, we've lost our best community; we've forgotten that for our art to be a reminder, we must have an audience. Art is enriching and experiential; art is wonder-inducing. Art is meant to be shared.

“A Stop at Willoughby” on Vol 34
Episode 30 – May 6, 1960

Settled into the cushions of the restaurant's corner booth, I took a moment to study my friend. Long brown hair, kind twinkling eyes—she's beautiful in a way that causes strangers to pause. Still, her greatest allure is in being ... a reminder. We all need someone who enhances our strengths. Another to know us well and recall our history. A person who alludes to our weaknesses without embarrassment, and our failures without shame. Most of all, we need someone who reminds us of God's work in our life. And in theirs. That's part of the reason I cherish time with my friends—and why I defend it so intently. Still, when she presented me with an ethereal Holy Bible: Mosaic, I was stunned.

She mentioned how this Bible had full-color artwork, both contemporary and classical; writings from a variety of Christian authors; and space for my responses to God. An orange cardboard slipcover described it's pages as containing “A living mosaic of believers, spanning the centuries and crossing the globe.” At that moment, beaming, I felt like a ray of sun was breaking through a stained-glass window; I was known. As we ate our hot, heaping plates of Mexican food—and my friend mumbled something about a train—I fell again into The Twilight Zone. I wondered if advertising exec Gart Williams (James Daly) was once pleasantly surprised by a gift from his wife or associates. If he was ever really known.

Gart's boss, Mr. Misrell, didn't seem to understand him—and didn't care to. Instead, his employer was determined to excel in a “push, push, push business.... Push, push, push all the way—all the time.” When Gart is betrayed by a younger coworker who steals his account, Misrell suspects Gart is being dishonest. This leader's lexicon didn't include words like compassion, sensitivity or rest. And Misrell was training his employees to be just like him. When Gart retreats home to his wife, Jaine, she asks only if he's wrecked his career. Her vocabulary is comprised of such words as competition, pretentiousness and appetite. Gart stammers bits of an explanation: “I'm tired. And sick.”

Each of us grow weary at times, and we all glimpse our brokenness; all of us long, at some point, to “slow down to a walk, live [our] life full measure.” For Gart, this means dreaming of a Huck Finn summer afternoon where bare-footed kids hoist fishing poles, and bicycles stand by vine-covered bandstands. For others, it translates into visions of desert sand where serene pools of water and stacks of flat skimming-stones reflect the changing light. For me and other Christ-followers, this yearning is a harbinger of Heaven. And I don't know that it couldn't look like either of the above—and endless variations—depending on the sublime aspect we're then enjoying.

Returning to my parents' home, otherworldly thoughts still flitted around my mind. After a refreshing few hours with my believing friend, I pondered why much of the day had been so difficult—why I had felt so fragmented. I questioned whether malevolent forces had been trying to kill my spirit, to keep me from joining my companion—and why that separation would be significant. One answer? My friends are a wonderful part of my society; they are my confidants, allies and “kindred spirits.” My friends draw me to God—those who follow Christ Jesus, intentionally so. Believing friends pull me into the Body of Christ and signify my role in it; they allow me a fuller vision of Heaven, where Scripture says those who follow Christ Jesus will live together for eternity.

As an orange slipcover asserts: “On our own we are little more than bits of stone and glass.... Together we are the Body of Christ.” It takes community to recall life—to engage us, encourage us, and resurrect our potential. The Church is our best community—those to be reminded of the Lord who can remind us in return. The Body of Christ is more than a symbol; it is meant to draw us in, provide a place for healing and rest, and urge us on to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24-25). The Kingdom of God is both coming and here (Luke 17:20-21). We don't have to jump from a train or step in front of a truck to discover it; we needn't find a fortune-telling machine or quibble with an angel. We simply need to be aware—to see, hear and be reminded—of the transcendent all around and within us.

Two favorites of 2009: "Away We Go" and "Where the Wild Things Are"

2010-02-06T02:47:00.000-08:00

Think for a moment of your favorite movies about love. Pick four or five that jump to mind the most easily. Now, how many of them are about the beginnings of a relationship, the process of falling in love? Chances are, most if not all of them — right? That's what love stories are so often about, the initial moments of connection and the working out of how two people might fit together. So rarely does a love story start with the couple already together, already fitting well, and explore the growth of love upon that solid foundation. That's exactly what we have on our hands with "Away We Go."

Verona and Burt (Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski) are an established couple in their early thirties, living a more or less oddball life, working in unconventional freelance jobs and enjoying one another's company more than a pursuit of stability and nice things. They've developed a repartee I haven't seen often on screen, something that feels less like comedy playing to the audience and more like comedy playing to one another — it's a glimpse at their inside jokes, and feels more like real life and real relationship. The movie begins with the discovery that the couple is pregnant, and follows their transition from two into three, most specifically asking the questions: How do we be a family? How do we make a home?

The degree to which Verona and Burt's relationship feels real and unforced is matched by the degree to which all of their family, friends, and acquaintances are outlandish caricatures. As they seek a home and a permanent place in the world, bouncing from city to city and family to family testing the waters, we see them exposed to every stereotype out there — this disinterested parents, the earth-mother parents, the bitter and spiteful parents, the adoptive parents, the split parents. At first this bothered me. When you get big stars to come in a do a cameo of a broad stereotype, you end up with something intensely funny but not exactly ... real. It seemed to me like it was spoiling the movie I wanted. But by the end, I felt like it could be no other way. What we are seeing are Verona and Burt's perception of other people's parenting styles and life choices. Anything that doesn't feel right to them, that doesn't seem like the life they want, has a tinge of repulsiveness to it. This feels completely right to me, completely real. For me at least, once I've made a decision as to where I want to live, what I want to read and watch, where or how I want to worship, how I want to be a husband and father, every other choice out there just feels weird somehow. (Until, of course, I change my mind.) I don't hold different choices against people, and neither do Verona and Burt, but the process of finding yourself is a lot of trial and error, a lot of pushing away and stripping away alternate options by process of one's gut reactions. Their journey is one of these gut reactions.

What's great and unusual about this movie is about how much Verona and Burt are on each other's side. So often a love story is about two romantic leads playing opposite one another, with the relationship between each other at stake. This is movie about two romantic leads united in opposition to a world that threatens to make them conform to something they don't want. I can't stress enough how refreshing and beautiful this is to see. I often thought that if I were ever to become a marriage counselor, my piece of advice to everyone would be this: Find something that you both agree on and believe in and then fight for it together. Be on each other's side. Believe that the roots of your life's troubles go deeper than the failures of your spouse and fight the bigger enemy, not one another. (But since that's literally the only piece of advice I have on marriage, it would be a pretty short session.) This is a movie about two people in each other's corner, and what's more — even many of the outrageous caricatures are couples who are completely on each other's side. As off-putting as they may be to Verona and Burt, they make sense to each other. We should each have an anchor, a confidante, a compatriot like that.

I discovered during the end credits that "Away We Go" was written by Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, which surprised me considering that my other favorite movie of 2009 (so far ... I'm about halfway through the list of films I want to watch) was the Eggers-co-penned "Where the Wild Things Are." I'd heard Eggers' named mentioned with reverence before this, but had never read any of his work, so I didn't realize that we apparently think on the same wavelength. "Where the Wild Things Are" is an transposition of the Maurice Sendak children's book, which is slight and simple, into a fully fleshed out and yet faithful movie. It shares with "Away We Go" the same honesty and reality about life and relationships, in this case giving us a look at childhood that feels like nothing I've ever seen on screen before.

The premise isn't exactly new: stories from "Alice in Wonderland" to "The Wizard of Oz" to "Spirited Away" have a child transition from a life of mundane events into a fantastical world filled with strange creatures and no parents around to guide the child with advice. And yet what's unusual here is that "Where the Wild Things Are" isn't a coming of age tale. Max does not exit through the other side, having made his first adult decisions, as more of a man. Rather, it's a coming-to-grips-with-his-age tale. Max doesn't really grow as much as he does try to grow and find himself facing his failures. He learns humility. He learns of his own limitations.

Every kid (actually, every adult probably, too) thinks that if only he or she were put in charge of the world, everything would be done better. It's only the pesky parents (or pesky authorities, or politicians, or church leadership, or familial expectations, or the rich, or the masses) that stand in the way of making things the way they ought to be. When Max comes into the mystical land of the Wild Things, he declares himself to be the king and the creatures agree to live by his rule. But Max, like all of us, is flawed. Max, like all of us (but especially as a child who is still struggling with his raw emotion), doesn't know how to make everything all right. He learns that being in charge is not the life of satisfaction and peace. From this, Max is able to place himself in his mother's shoes for the first time, the mother who he expects to make everything all right but who is simply doing the best she can. I suppose he sees her as a person for the first time, and she, to her credit, views him as more than an unruly burden, but also as a full person in his own right. We see a mutual love born of mutual humility.

This movie capture so viscerally and tangibly the sense of powerlessness that it is to be a child. This isn't a children's movie in an escapist sense, where the kids are smart and cool and talented and in control, the kind of kids we wish we could all be in our dreams, going on adventure after adventure. It is rather a children's movie in the sense of a great, resonant song of longing, one that puts into words everything that you actually feel and experience — the kind of song that makes you feel that you are not alone in the world. I don't personally know any children at the age of the film's protagonist to know if this is something that that can be appreciated as a child, but it certainly takes me back. It puts me in a frame of mind of what my much younger son surely experiences, having to be dragged from store to home to school to church at our convenience rather than his. Is there a way to honor and acknowledge that frustration in him rather than simply thinking of it as my right as the parent to make the schedule? How can I learn to see his outbursts not as an attack on or commentary about me but as his experiencing these raw emotions about his own lack of being in charge? I suppose "Where the Wild Things Are" is as much a parents' film as it is a children's film. It very well might have invented its own genre.

How daring of Eggers to present both of these visions of parents, children, families, and spouses in ways that defy the shorthand stereotypes of what the movies usually present. He didn't exactly get much in the way of reward, whether through the box office or through industry awards, to acknowledge his work. I certainly hope that doesn't deter him or temper him in the future from bringing forth such unique, rich, and satisfying screenplays, and hope that visionary directors like Sam Mendes and Spike Jonze will continue to fight to make his films untampered by studio execs. I find myself shrugging my shoulders in response to so many of the films I see these days, almost numb to their effects; Eggers' first two movies are exactly the sort of antidote I crave.

Caregiving—On the Edge of Myself

2010-02-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

On the brink of forty, I've had a career spanning over twenty years. Whatever the job title—Retail Clerk, Waitress, Filing Clerk, Executive Assistant, Director's Assistant—I've found I excel at being a team player and doing things well for others. Be it hosting a catered lunch, creating a marketing spreadsheet or HR presentation, or rearranging a travel itinerary, I enjoy using my skills to meet others' needs, to simplify their lives, or to make them look their best.

These same skills come in handy in the home, too. Now, as a caregiver for my aging parents, I make out the weekly grocery list, confirm doctors' appointments, and—along with other, daily concerns—make sure the laundry and dishes are done. Like many stay-at-home moms and single dads, I'm chauffeur, “go-fer” and chef, as well as pharmacist, nurse and housekeeper. It's a long list, proving that caregivers are very good at doing things well for others; still, it's made me question something.

Are those who make a life caring for others equally adept at doing good things for themselves? On the face of it, this may sound selfish. But, when I barely have the energy to do the basics for my parents, how can I meet my own needs—spiritual, physical, emotional? And if my own needs go unmet, how long will it be before I can no longer help others? There have been days when I've skipped a shower to get more sleep. Or, when the seventh load of dirty laundry or dishes has me staring at the soap suds. Or, when my dad's repeated query (duly answered, yet again) has me biting my tongue.

Sadly, this is often true even when I've spent time contemplating God's word or after several moments in prayer. Despite my best intentions, I find myself on the edge of my nerves and the brink of my spiritual reserves. I struggle to simplify my life, making room for what's truly important—loving others and myself. In this light, two passages of Scripture come to mind: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). And, “Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good” (Romans 12:9). These excerpts, and two movies.

Hancock (2008)
“There are heroes. There are superheroes. And then there's ... Hancock.”

I recorded this film because, after being “on call” 24/7, I wanted to be entertained. Nothing more, nothing less. After the first fifteen minutes, I wanted to delete it. After all, John Hancock (Will Smith) has neglected to guard his heart. He's a miserable moral example; a lonely, crude drunk who lacks social skills; a walking, and flying, PR nightmare who personifies collateral damage. But, he's also a fallible being in need of a friend. Whether or not consultant Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) can enhance this superhero's image, can Ray be his friend? This is the question that kept me from turning off the DVR.

And, in the last fifteen minutes of this film, I found that director Peter Berg had created much more than an irreverent action flick. (I even watched those final fifteen minutes again.) Ray takes on Hancock as a PR project—albeit an altruistic one; after all, those with super-powers are meant to “save the world.” But, as Ray opens his life to this poor excuse for a superhero, he discovers secrets and truths that threaten to unravel him. Still, despite his confusion, Ray doesn't let go—either of his belief that life is good, or his own sense of right and wrong. Ray, glimpsing behind Hancock's bravado, is unfailingly loyal.

In a strange way, his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), exhibits this same loyalty. And yet, to be true to herself and to her husband, she has to do the opposite of Ray; she must let go. For Mary has hidden things about herself; as Ray exhorts, “That's something you might want to bring up on the first date, Mary. I don't like to travel, I'm allergic to cats....” One could say, Mary has guarded her heart to the neglect of the truth. It's not easy to admit that someone I care about is bad for me (or vice versa)—attracting me to my own destruction. Further, how often do I willingly recognize when someone I love repels what I would choose?

Last Chance Harvey (2008)
“It's about first loves, last chances and everything in between.”

I put this film in my Netflix queue to see two actors in top form—and this not in spite of their age and experience, but because of it. I couldn't get enough, watching it multiple times. I'm always a sucker for story, and these artists from different sides of the Atlantic consistently bring deep honesty and genuineness to their characters. For Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), as for me, her friends are her lifejacket and her sounding-board; they advise her and know her well. Further, like me, the desires of Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) to both be creative and make a living are in constant tension.

Director Joel Hopkins makes it clear that American jingle-writer Harvey is no stranger to feeling bad about his disharmonious life. Harvey confesses to Kate that his daughter, Susan (Liane Balaban)—whose wedding he is in London to attend—is embarrassed by him. And he admits to his ex-wife (Kathy Baker) that she can make him feel poorly about himself quicker than anyone else. But, will Harvey allow Kate into his off-key world of job loss, step-families, and social awkwardness—at least, for more than one day? Will he let Kate ask questions and challenge him to make good choices?

And, for her part, will Heathrow Airport survey-worker Kate let Harvey listen to her ponderings and invest his time in her? After all, one day is simple—even exhilarating: the view from Waterloo Bridge, a piano serenade, a wedding dance at Somerset House, a conversation to the rising sun; a long-term romance is more complicated. Will she let Harvey see all of who she is—harried daughter and caregiver, stiff-upper-lip Londoner, committed Paddington writer's group member—and bring out her best? As Kate relates: “I think I'm more comfortable with being disappointed.” Still, can't old regrets pave the way to new beginnings?

As I strive to simplify, one step at a time, I'll hold onto good things: sugar-free chai, writing more, stressing less, breathing deeply. Of course, chocolate biscotti. I'll cling to time away from caregiving—to catch HGTV on the DVR that was my mom's Christmas gift, or to visit my friend at Frankie's Coffee House. I'll learn to guard my heart by surrounding myself with people who're creative, expressive and kind. And letting go of those who cause me to feel bad about life or my part in it. I want to be someone who invests in relationships—with God, friends, parents and family, peers.

Simply ... I'll trust (more and more) that with God as my Source, I can bring out the best in others—and in myself. And that movies will continue to show me how.

The decade in television

2010-01-03T02:44:00.000-08:00

While I was writing my decade-end movie list, three thoughts occurred to me: First, I was seriously considering adding the Emma Thompson film "Wit" to the list, but then I remembered it was actually an HBO special, not a theatrical release, and I waffled. Second, I made a comment in the article about the lack of outright comedies in my top faves, and that most of my laughter came from television over the past ten years. Third: I never really write about television out of force of habit, because back when I started writing about art, once a television program had aired, your chances of seeing an exact episode again were slim. This past decade has seen an explosion of TV shows available on DVD, so most of the stuff below I value from this decade is easily accessible. So, without further ado, 17 projects from TV and/or short-length entertainment I loved (and 4 runners-up):

Best HBO specials:
"Wit" — An adaptation of an off-Broadway play, this film follows the conversations and inner monologues of a professor of literature as battles ovarian cancer in a hospital ward. The typical sympathies aroused by this scenario are turned on their head, as the suffering patient refuses pity or kindness, but approaches death with the same level of rigor and scrutiny as she does her favorite texts. She prepares for a fight, not just with death, but with hospital staff and caregivers who well-meaningly want her to quake and blubber at death, by sharpening her skills of wit. Even as we come to see the cantankerous woman eventually as a full person who does have an emotional side, she has asked us to face the questions of death ourselves, and has shown us that fear in the face of death is hardly the only appropriate response.

"Naked States" — Artist Spencer Tunick was a nobody when this documentary was being filmed, but he had a germ of an idea for what he wanted to create with his art. His interest in photographing the human shape was hardly novel, but he added a new element of daring to it: nude photography outdoors. He decided to take nudity out of the art museum, where it was perfectly acceptable, and combine it with nudity in public, which was decidedly not acceptable, and let the sparks fly. Today he is best known for assembling thousands of people in cities across the world for nude photo shoots, where the colors and shapes of bodies filling streets and parks and waterways make for extraordinary landscapes. In this film, he mostly starts small, photographing one or two or twelve people at a time, running from cops, trying to convince people on the street one at a time to take their clothes off. What's most amazing about the film is not Tunick's story necessarily, but the comments of the models who agree to pose. It is such an act of liberation, restoration, and healing to a great number of them, especially to several women who had been through painful or humiliating experiences and become ready to accept their bodies and their selves again as valuable, worthy, beautiful beings. It ends up a portaiture of courage.

Best BBC series:
"Coupling" — I've written before about my love for this sitcom, which is so much more than just a sitcom. It's a clever foray into the use of narrative structure to sell a point. The series employs a set of gimmicks to great effect: split-screen stories, stories told backward, re-translated conversations, flashbacks and dream sequences, which seem random and confusing until it all ties together at the end in a perfect bow. The series also employs one of my favorite comedy bits: the run-on-talking-because-you're-nervous monologue, leading to a great number of unbelievably over-the-top lies or confessions, including the keeping of ears in a bucket. On top of all that it's a sweet love story of two people (and then another two people) finding out they belong together. I never get tired of re-watching it.

"The Office" — This is a comedy of embarrassments, both embarrassments on behalf of those who have no shame reflex, on behalf of those who are picked on, and on behalf of those who take a risk and get shot down. It should be extraordinarily uncomfortable to watch, and the laughs should be nothing more than mere schadenfreude, and yet the show has a big heart, big enough to bless all the characters with small moments of breaking through and moving on.

Best explore-the-world documentary shows:
"Mythbusters" — I never tire of watching Adam, Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant ask questions about how the world works, challenge everyday assumptions, and discover surprising results. Even more than the fun of watching stuff blow up is the training of the mind toward curiosity.

"30 Days" — Morgan Spurlock's follow-up to his documentary "Super-Size Me" is this show, which has Spurlock or a suitable substitute taking a walk in someone else's shoes for a full month. Spurlock goes to jail for a month, lives on minimum wage for a month, lives on a Native American reservation for a month and more in his quest to understand the lives of people so dissimilar to him. Other shows find a devout Christian living among Muslims for a month, a couple lives in an electricity-free commune for a month, a pro-choice advocate lives with pro-life activits, and an outsourced American worker goes to India to work his old job. The guinea pig nearly always comes through the experience with a better understanding of other people, and with more compassion, even if their personal opinions and beliefs remain the same. The show points to how insular we have a society has become in only talking and relating to people who make us comfortable in their similarity, and how much we miss out on.

Best short films (that I've seen, which is admittedly not many, but of the 30 or 40 these are ones I could watch forever in a loop):
"Rent-a-Person" — The conceit of this film is a young entrepreneur who starts a business renting out homeless people to drivers who want to travel in the HOV lanes. It's also a musical. And a love story about two bathroom attendants who finally meet and fall in love. And it's about picture-frame models. All in just 12 minutes — twelve funny, sweet, twisted, lyrical, and perfect minutes.

"Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death" — This one I actually have watched forever on a loop: I rented it from the library and Corin loves it to death, literally playing it 20 times in a week. And I find I'm still not bored of it. The Wallace and Gromit shorts of the '90s were some of my favorite comedy, and while I was a little disappointed with the feature film "Curse of the Were-Rabbit," in that it went on too long, and the mini-shorts "Cracking Contraptions," which went on too short, finally the two inventors are back at their proper 30-minute length after ten years. The structure, plotting, animation, jokes, whimsy, pauses, absurdity, liveliness and tenderness have never been better.

Best American sitcoms:
"My Name is Earl" — In the history of art, stories of forgiveness and reconciliation have been in short supply. It is much easier to write grittily or cynically or observationally than to write aspirationally — in particular because noble aspirations are always so sweet and treacly. "My Name is Earl" is not a sweet show by any means, amping up the bad-boy outrageousness to balance out the central tenet of the show: a ne'er-do-well visiting the people he harmed in his life to ask for their forgiveness and try to make up for the wrongs he did. It's simply stunning to me that this show made it on TV at all, let alone for four years. I wrote in more detail about my favorite episode, which centers on the theme of grace, here.

"30 Rock" — When I saw the first episode of this show, I had an impression of Tina Fey as being smart, strong, sexy, and devastatingly funny, and to see her play Liz Lemon, the exact opposite of that (mild, mothering, awkward, and unintentionally funny) initially turned me off the show. Then I began to see clips, and commercials, and a few episodes here and there, and began to get the show: absurdism at its finest. The humor builds layer upon layer, starting out merely absurd, then becomes self-referentially absurd, and then is popped by a cold dose of sensibility. This isn't setup-setup-gag of old-school comedy, it's gag-gag-did-you-see-that-gag modus operandi of the 2000s.

Runners up (only by a hair, and probably mostly because they're on everyone else's best lists): "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Arrested Development"

Best American dramas:
"House" — This show has gone through so many different phases: a procedural drama about disease and medicine, a character study about the poor social life of a genius, a reality-show-style competition between doctors to land a dream job, a buddy comedy about best friends razzing each other with pranks, stories of love and broken love, meditations of faith and lack thereof — what could have been a repetitive formula (and occasionally, I'll admit, it has dragged for a few episodes until they've switched gears) has found new life over and over again, in large part thanks to Hugh Laurie's impeccable comic timing, with covers a multitude of errors. This current season, the sixth, started with a feature-length episode titled "Broken" that just might have made my top list of the decade for movies had it been theatrical, it was that good.

"Joan of Arcadia" — This one kind of surprised me by ending up on my list, but the story of a teenage girl who hears instructions from God through a series of seeming strangers was always so full of hope and enthusiasm that it has remained strong in my mind. It's kind of "Quantum Leap"-ish (another favorite) in its approach, in that Joan will have to try to help somebody out in each episode, only she doesn't know who or how; she can only follow seemingly odd instructions from God that puts her in the right time or place or frame of mind in order to help when it's needed. It also reminds me a lot of that "wax on, wax off" stuff from "The Karate Kid," in which mundane and repetitive motions are used to train for a larger purpose. The show was just so full of the message that there is a purpose behind things that you can't understand, even if the show was a little gimmicky and not exactly reflective of ordinary religious experience, that I miss it quite a bit.

Runners up: "Nero Wolfe," "Firefly" (which partly includes the potential of what "Firefly" should have become with two or three extra seasons)

Best animated show:
"Futurama" — (This actually premiered in 1999, but 3/4 of the episodes were in this decade, plus 4 DVD full-length films, so I'm counting it.) Set in the year 3000, this show had license to comment on any trend, issue, subculture, or dramatic staple by magnifying it to the nth degree. In a world where bureaucracy, callousness, adventure, invention, and hedonism have all multiplied to complete excess, the show finds laugh after laugh in the extremism but is nevertheless grounded by the familial affections that the rag-tag spaceship crew/package delivery service has for one another. It's as if "The Twilight Zone" (another "what if" science fiction show tackling the zeitgeist of the day) had a recurring cast that you grew to know and love.

Best fake shows:
"Da Ali G Show" — Before Borat hit the big screen, he was one of three characters on "Da Ali G Show," which Sasha Baron Cohen used to prank unsuspecting authority figures. He's slightly less offensive, though, on TV, and that's the version I enjoy rewatching most, interspersed with faux-rapper Ali G and faux-fashionista Bruno in equal measures. You get a sense of just how talented Cohen is, using every angle and trick in the book to try to point out follies of the self-styled gatekeepers of propriety. It's my favorite of many of the Candid-Camera-style shows this decade, the one with the most intelligence and subversiveness.

"The Daily Show" — A show with a similar purpose, but pulling it off in real time on a day-to-day basis: pointing out all the contradictions, posturing, disingenuousness, and bravado of the country's politicians (yes, both right and left, although the right gave them a lot to work with this decade). This is such a necessary part of political discourse, the ability to call out professional liars on their lies, and the mainstream media only rarely does it, treating all spouting by politicians to be opinion to be debated even when the facts are wrong. It's been reported that watchers of "The Daily Show" are better informed about actual policy, issues, and the content of bills than watchers of most any other news show, which is kind of sad.

Best online exclusive:
"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" — Not every short-form entertainment has to hit the tube or the festival circuit anymore: it goes straight to the masses via the internet. This 43-minute wonder hit the internet for free in three installments, was then taken down, then made its way to Hulu, and now can be purchased on DVD-on-demand via Amazon. A stunningly well-executed musical about superheroes and supervillains (with virtually no effects budget) that takes the rare tack of making the hero a blowhard and the villain a lovelorn loser, it is alternately sad, funny, heartfelt and heartbreaking.

Best comedy special:
"Jim Gaffigan: King Baby" — I have to admit that I'm not all that plugged into the comedy scene anymore, so my pickings are slim, but Jim Gaffigan's stuff ranks among my favorite stand-up of all time, so it's worth mentioning. (I also first encountered Eddie Izzard this decade, but in looking up YouTube clips of some of my favorite bits I discovered they were almost all from his '90s specials.) Gaffigan celebrates the slovenly American persona with such relish and pride that you almost feel noble to be a white-bread, bacon-eating, terminally lazy, ketchup-hoarding everyman. But his real brilliance is in his high-pitched audience-member critic voice with which he comments on the stupidity of his own observations, making you laugh at yourself for ever considering his idea for a split second that all food should be wrapped in bacon. Gaffigan sums up the modern sensibility so well: He's not just a lazy slob, he's a self-aware lazy slob.

The decade in movies

2009-12-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

This was just going to be a short post, with links to a few of the film articles about what turned out to be some of my favorite movies this decade. But nothing can be that simple when it comes to movie lists, can it? Chronological listing seemed a bit dry, alphabetical listing seemed like a cop-out, and an attempt to put them in some sort of ranking just drove me batty. So, after much shuffling, rearranging, adding commentary and taking away commentary, I have ended up with a set of awards to hand out to 14 films (and 7 runners-up), along with links to full reviews:

Funniest movie of the decade:
"Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" — it didn't occur to me until I had compiled my favorites that this was the only movie that was a flat-out comedy that leaves me gasping for air after fits of laughter. I love those films! I actually have a lot of reliably gut-busting comedy in my DVD collection but most of the recent stuff turned out to be TV shows instead. Kung Pow claims the crown for inventing an entirely new form of comedy: inserting some new actors into an old cheesy stock film and dubbing over everyone else. I desperately want to see more like this.

Lightning in a bottle award:
"Rivers & Tides" — Artist Andy Goldsworthy has been making one-of-a-kind temporary art works out of found materials in nature, and documenting them with photographs for some stunning coffee table books. But the process of making those works of art is, to me, even more interesting that the final pictures. I believe he shot some video of the process before this movie was made, but this was the first time a professional-level film team had put its lens to his creations. The result is one of the best films about art, about nature, and about seeing through new eyes, and one that can never be copied.

Best adventure film, best animated film, and just maybe the best outright what-the-movies-were-made-for film on my list:
"Spirited Away" — I can't tell you how much I loved this movie. No, seriously. I haven't written boo about this movie in the seven years since it came out because the movie seems to be just perfect without my adding two cents. Eventually I will write a review, but here's my first words written on it: This is an amazing film about transitions. The heroine, young Chihiro, is being torn away from her old school and old village as her parents are making a move. On the drive, they get lost, and Chihiro ends up stranded in a world of spirits, with its own rules, customs, hierarchies, backstory, and impositions on her. Whether or not her adventures are real or merely imaginings almost doesn't matter: She is learning how to cope with being in a new situation. And the amazing thing is that she does not accept the ground rules laid down for her. She doesn't believe everything she is told about who is good and who is evil, about her place in this world or what she must be resigned to. She approaches this new world filled with unending hope, kindness, wonder, compassion, strength, and love that conquers her instincts for fear and anger. She believes in the possibility of dignity for each creature she meets, from the highest to the low, from the scariest to the cutest, and through her belief transforms her surroundings rather than let her new world define her.

Best movie about finding a person you connect with deeply, and seizing whatever time you have together:
(tie) "Once" & "Lost in Translation" — Both of these films are moody, calm, beautiful little pieces about the human soul's longing for connection, to be heard and be known, and how rare and precious it is when a person gives you that kind of attention, if only for a brief moment in time.

Best movie about a community coming together quietly to support an oddball and find connection in the process:
(tie) "Pieces of April" & "Lars and the Real Girl" — Both of these films feel more or less like fables, in that complete strangers help out the protagonist when asked, for no good reason that they are kind souls. But they both remind me, too, how little most of us self-sufficient Westerners do that asking that might result in such connectedness.

Best gimmick:
"Memento" — It's a movie told backwards! The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end! The thing is, it works. Not only that, it works on repeat viewings. What should have just been an interesting exercise in story structure is a heartbreaking story of humankind's need for time and memory to heal old wounds.

Best blend of humor, whimsy, and heart award:
"A Mighty Wind" — One of only two outright comedies that made my list, what makes this one special is that its improv-ed laughs and cynical eye are infused with and balanced by a real warmth and affection for the genre of folk music, for the aging and past-their-prime artists who push forward, and for all those who love art, the stage, show business, passion, and tenderness.

Best Paul Thomas Anderson movie that isn't "Magnolia":
"Punch-Drunk Love" — With 1999's "Magnolia" cemented firmly in my top five films ever, it was hard to see any subsequent PTA film as in the same league. While I greatly admired "Punch-Drunk Love" on my first viewing, I was hesitant to let it in with the same emotional acceptance. As time has cleared the fog, I see it for its intriguing, singular, beautiful self, the kindest possible take on the intense rawness of life just below the surface of polite formality.

Best blockbuster:
"The Dark Knight" — In a decade where comic book movies hit the mainstream, thanks to improved and cheaper special effects, this one raised the bar for the artistic integrity one can achieve, becoming not just the best comic film and best action film, but the best crime drama of the decade.

Most daring film:
"Moulin Rouge" — Outlandish and outrageous on so many levels, liberally borrowing from pop music, Bollywood, and Bohemian culture to create a perfect elixir of exhilaration, this movie could have ended up distasteful to just about everyone on the planet all at once. Instead it makes for a heightened alternate reality that extols the beauty of unmeasured and unrestrained love. It tells of a tragedy, but is the ultimate pick-me-up for a sedated psyche I know, and has enduring power unlike most of the other resurgent musicals of the decade.

Most sumptuous movie:
"Pride and Prejudice" — If you could fall into and drown inside the mood of a single movie, I would have to choose this one. It has the usual trappings of an Oscar-bait movie: gorgeous dresses, stunning cinematography, lyrical music, British accents, and classic source material, but it somehow has a soul beyond the elements of its construction. I want to visit, and often.

Worst documentary (insomuch as the filmmaker did not stay distant from her subjects, as one is supposed to, but in the process created something more indelible than she could have otherwise):
"Born Into Brothels" — The 2000s saw the popularization of the documentary, on riveting subjects ranging from "Murderball" to "Man on Wire" to "Stevie" to "My Architect" to "Spellbound" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," all of which I loved. But I never felt I needed to own any of them, because much of what I got out of them was informational or emotional in a way that had to do with the subject being brand new to me. "Born into Brothels," which is about the young children of prostitutes working in the slums of Calcutta, wasn't just about their plight, full of sadness; it was about the kids being given still cameras to document life from their own perspective, and in doing so creating a bond with the filmmakers. It was about the power of art to imbue dignity and worth to not only the children but to their surroundings, destitute as they are. It is about photography as more than images, but as process of re-learning how to see.

Honorable mentions:
"Finding Nemo," "High Fidelity," "Waking Life," "The Station Agent," "Before Sunset," "Casino Royale," "Away We Go," "Where the Wild Things Are."

(I should note for the record that I haven't seen a great number of 2009's films, and the one that I tucked in there at the end may or may not stand the test of time in my imagination. As with any list such as this, my feelings about and interactions with films are always changing as life presses on. This is just a snapshot in time of my frame of mind as the decade closes.)

Movies I own: "Batman" and "The Dark Knight"

2009-12-29T01:27:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was a kid, I loved one superhero and one superhero only: the Batman. Sure, I dabbled with reading Spider-man and Superman, and I appreciated what they were, but the Batman was the only one that reached out and grabbed me, that pulled me alongside him in his travails. He felt to me more real, not only in his not having true superpowers, but in the simplicity of his mission, summed up in 1989's "Batman" by a single line: "Because I'm the only one who can."

Batman is a hero of sacrifice. Clark Kent is nigh invulnerable, and often in the movies consumed by his own perception and acceptance as an alien among men. Peter Parker is more down on his luck, but he has MJ, and friends, and a life. The Batman is a zealot, wholly devoted to the cause. Stories of the Batman, at least the pure ones, are not about a tension between what Bruce Wayne wants and what Batman wants; they want the same thing. The Batman is a creature of single-mindedness, of devotion -- maybe an over-the-edge devotion, a borderline-crazy obsessive, but he is undeniably passionate. I usually relate more to the characters of Peter Parker and Clark Kent (especially in his "Smallville" incarnation), who are more like me in their vacillating and indecision, but the Batman is who I admire. Batman is sheer will (something I find I lack in spades).

When I first saw Burton's "Batman," I thought it would never be topped. It had all the iconic lines, the beautiful imagery, and in particular the brilliant interpretation of Keaton's Bruce Wayne, who didn't play the typical playboy role to the hilt but instead made him an absentminded cypher, his head so clearly in Batman mode that he could barely remember to play the debonaire role for more than twenty minutes. It nailed the central Batman tenet: here was a man who was going to bring every resource to bear in combating evil; every dollar, every hour, every muscle, every emotion. As the old sports adage goes, he was going to win because he wanted it more.

As a Christian, it is so easy to opt out of responsibility. Our churches are designed to make sure that all the bases are still covered even if you step away, as long as we consider the bases in question to be largely regarding a functioning church service and functioning church ministries. I have left and joined enough churches, and seen people leave and come in, to understand that we have a plug-and-play mentality: the responsibilities of one person can be filled by another. But that's not true. Each of us has a unique opportunity and responsibility to speak into the lives of the people around us, and that's not duplicatable by anyone else. The pastor and the church leaders have their part to play, but the work of Christ is the task of all of us who follow him, and we cannot assume that someone else will (or could) do our job. God has placed us in our particular context for a reason, and we must embrace its possibilities for unyielding love.

So when the Batman says he does what he does "Because I'm the only one who can," he's not asserting that his wealth or strength or knowledge makes him better than anyone else, but that he has a unique contribution to make given his opportunities. That's Batman to me.

Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" was an entertaining story I thought, exploring the previous untold story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman. It still didn't overshadow the 1989 version in my mind, but it was intriguing in its own right. It stuck with the mythos of Batman that I loved so much, the idea that he more or less has to die to self to become what he needs to become. There is nothing half-measure about this Batman, no attempt to balance a "normal" life with a devoted one. He goes into the transformation whole-heartedly, holding nothing back, risking obscurity and failure and death. Still, it didn't feel like a definitive Batman because Bruce Wayne spent barely any of the movie as the final-product Batman. I would have to wait for the sequel to see how it panned out.

"The Dark Knight" upped the ante on what constitutes a good Batman story beyond my wildest expectations. In particular, it was the vision of the Joker by Nolan and Heath Ledger that raised the bar. Unlike virtually every movie villain in history, Ledger's Joker doesn't have a revenge plot, a world-domination plot, an attention-seeking plot. or any plot at all. "Some people just want to watch the world burn," as the butler Alfred says. The steadfastness, drive, and relentlessness of Batman meets the capriciousness, chaos, and uncertainty of the Joker. The Joker is, simply put, the personification of uncertainty. And that is a foe that we all face, every day. What do we do in the face of the unknown?

The movie, wisely, makes this more than just showdown between Batman and the Joker, but between the Joker and Gotham City. The citizens of Gotham are the one on the hook to react and respond to a chaotic whirlwind of fear and uncertainty; Batman still has his zeal and tenacity, as required, but his existence does not absolve anyone else from making up their own might of how to react. Toward the beginning of the movie he says he wants to serve as an example to the citizenry, not in tactics but in spirit: in not giving up. He does not imagine he can do it all, only his part. We are each to do our own part. There are more heroes in "The Dark Knight" than just the Batman; the cast list is virtually replete with them. It's the ultimate "pick up a shovel and do your part" movie.

The Joker, in his twistedness, continually offers people the opportunity to be safe, or to make a loved one safe, if only by giving in a little to his madness. Some succumb, others don't. Safety is supposed to make the fear go away, in theory, but the illusion of safety is really just a way for fear to get a foothold. It's a psychologically astute way of addressing the frustrations that we all feel in a post-9/11 world where we of course have so little real assurance of safety (not that we ever did), but we would still rather seek illusions of safety than come to grips with raw facts. "The Dark Knight" is in that way a gut check, and I have no trouble believing that the movie was so enormously popular, beyond any other comic-book movie, for precisely that reason. It asks you to test your mettle, to question how fully you desire safety and assurances over sacrifice and right. To me, that is what the character of Batman has always been about: never an escapism, never an adventure, but a challenge to face life with a sense of deep conviction.

"Yes Man" vs. "Yes Man"

2009-12-22T10:59:00.001-08:00

SIX MONTHS AGO I saw the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man," in which he plays a man who has to say Yes to everything that comes his way. It sounded like an intriguing premise, a great "What if" scenario. "What ifs" are some of my favorite comedies: "Groundhog Day," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Mr. Destiny," and "Liar Liar" (a remarkably similarly themed Carrey movie in which he has to always tell the truth). There is something I love about bending life inside out and taking a look at who a person becomes when given different parameters than normal. How does changing the parameters or situations of one's life change the person you are becoming?

Reviews for "Yes Man" weren't great, but I pushed myself past my reluctance mostly on goodwill from "Liar Liar." (As much as I like "What if" movies, I am crushingly disappointed by ones that don't take full advantage of their scenario, because they ruin any future movie from tackling the same question.) As it turns out, it did fall short, at least for me. I didn't very much like the movie. But then at the end of the credits (and I have no idea why I was still watching the credits to the end) I saw that the film was based on a book. That struck me as odd, because the movie was such an overwhelmingly Hollywood cliche that I couldn't imagine that someone had written a book anything like the movie I had just seen. This week I finished reading Danny Wallace's "Yes Man," and am happy to report that I was right: it's nothing like the movie — it is infinitely better.

Most importantly, the "Yes Man" book is a true story. Danny Wallace wasn't sitting around trying to think of a good wacky scenario around which to write a comedy; he actually started living his life by saying Yes to every question, opportunity, and offer that came his way, and the comedy came on its own. Meaning, too, came on its own. The book is a rare feat of being devilishly comic and soul-expandingly thoughtful. And it's all true, including the too-perfect-for-words ending. I am still astonished at how something so funny, so well structured, and so unbelievably serendipitous gets turns into a mediocre gruel by Hollywood screenwriters. (I don't know why this still astonishes me, frankly; I suppose I'm an optimist at heart.) This highly original material really should have been filmed as is for a 14-episode run on the BBC if they wanted to do it properly.

So what are the differences? For starters, the Jim Carrey movie first lost me early on when his character, Carl, helps out an older lady in his building with some housework and she wants to reward him with some ... um ... afternoon delight. And he has to say yes. He has sex with a total stranger and thinks nothing of it. If the genders were reversed, and a woman agreed to sex with a person she'd just met, people would be up in arms about the scene, talking about sending the wrong message. With a guy it's just a nudge and a wink for some reason. Whereas in the book "Yes Man," an enormous plot point hinges on the question of whether or not he is going to sleep with a woman he fancies but is still in the beginning stages of a relationship with. Danny opens the book by wondering what he would have done had he been asked to murder someone, or something equally repulsive to him: would he pull the plug on the experiment? Did he really have to say yes to everything, or were there limits? Sex is one of those boundary-testing areas for him, as it would be for most people, so I became doubly mad at the movie for that scene when I found it cut against the very nature of much of what the book is saying.

Another enormous difference is the spirituality of the two pieces. In the movie, Carl is invited to attend a seminar by a spiritualist guru who tells people to say Yes to everything. This being a Hollywood movie, it eventually has to be revealed that the spiritual leader has something of a false front and in the end it doesn't really matter what path you take as long as you try hard at it. Typical mushiness. In the book, Danny is talking to a stranger on a bus about what's going on with his weekend, a party or event that he's been invited to but he thinks he'll decline, and the stranger tells him that maybe he should "say yes more." Just this simple phrase changes Danny's life. As he meets various people, including some conspiracy-theory types, a few Buddhist monks, a hypnotist, war protesters, and a fellow "Yes Man," he tries to figure out whether the words on the bus were just a happy accident or if there is a higher being taking human form who speaks into people's lives when they need it most. He wonders where wisdom comes from, whether there are really coincidences or if fate is at work, and if all we have in life is this moment or whether it is building toward something. He doesn't necessarily come to any conclusions except to admire everything amazing that life has to offer, but it's honest spiritual exploration nonetheless.

Then there is the love story. The Carrey movie has Zooey Deschanel as Allison, a woman he meets early on who pursues a Yes-centered free-spiritedness, just not in the regimented way that Carl does. He's attracted to her and pursues her, to the point that the movie is more or less about how to get the girl by saying yes. (And of course, it has the requisite: "Oh, my goodness, you've been pursuing me under false pretense, how dare you, I'll never speak to you again, no, wait, it's not that big of a deal, I guess it's OK after all" arc of every single high school movie about the cool guy taking a bet to win over the girl.) The book "Yes Man" also has a love story, but it is hidden away, tucked underneath his other adventures, and slowly gets teased out. The woman isn't even a main character in the book per se — it's more about Danny preparing himself to enter a relationship that isn't necessarily going to be easy and simple. In a way the book is like a working out his risk-taking muscles and working off his inhibition factor so that he's free to say Yes at the right time. The movie has an attitude of: Women are a puzzle to be figured out and if you find the right combination to open her heart then you can do it at will and she's yours. The book is more of a: Focus more on the person you want to be rather than on getting the person you want to have. Unlike every romantic comedy in the history of the world, Danny doesn't sit around thinking how he can get the girl to like him more and weasel his way into her affections, but just takes the opportunities as they come. It's a less manipulative and more collaborative statement on relationships.

There are a fair number of scenes that overlap: going out to a bar and having to say yes to the intimidating guy asking "Are you eyeballing my girlfriend?", saying yes to more and more projects at work and having that turn into respect and notice in the office, going to a party of someone who seems like a dweeb but then having a really good time. The movie, to its credit, does show a number of scenarios that makes you understand that saying yes only to the things that you forsee a good outcome to and saying no to the stuff you think you want to avoid is a kind of closed-off living that prevents you from opportunities to further good outcomes down the line. The movie at least doesn't kill off the main idea that saying Yes more (maybe not exclusively, like in the story) but more, is usually a good thing in living the one life you have to live. But the book has the advantage of being true. The weird coincidences that happen in the movie feel like someone just wrote them in that way so the story would come out right, but the book has just as many fortuitous meetings and odd happenstances that move Danny forward without the benefit of screenwriters. The book pushes you farther to consider the "What if" question more personally, more seriously.

The last difference I see is that in the movie, the seminar-based movement of people saying "Yes" is supposed to last into infinity. The people are just supposed to put that persona on and carry it out religiously with no end. In the book, it is clearly not a sustainable lifestyle. Danny makes himself a bet that he will continue to say "Yes" only through the end of the year. In that short time, largely thanks to pre-approved credit card applications that come in the mail that ask him if he would like to try a new kind of credit card (Yes!), Danny racks up enormous debt by buying a car, traveling the world, buying rounds of drinks, attending shows and festivals, etc. His money situation is helped by an upcoming promotion at work due to him taking on every project asked of him, but the new job starting in the new year also means that he won't be free to work on his own schedule, which is something that was essential to saying Yes to so many things. What the movie sets up as a mass movement, a permanent way of life for most participants, Danny is promoting as an experiment, a trial run of saying Yes to everything for a short time so that he won't be so scared about saying Yes more often in the future, when he gives himself back some discernment. The book is essentially saying: Your own sense discernment is very likely hamstrung by fear; what if you shook it up a little by going against your timid judgment every so often by agreeing to more opportunities, meeting people you wouldn't normally associate with, going places you wouldn't normally go, learning about subjects you assume aren't for you, to participate more? It's not Yes as a belief system, but Yes as an exercise in giving yourself more chances to exercise your belief system in greater extension in the world.

Movies I own: "Pride and Prejudice"

2009-10-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder if I've spoiled for myself the moviegoing experience. I wonder if I've just seen too many movies, am too familiar with too many character actors, have watched too many behind-the-scenes features and director's commentaries to fully enter into a movie anymore — to be swept away by it all, to lose myself in the film.

It was so easy when I was a kid, when even a goofy cheeseball movie like "Space Camp" made me feel the grandeur of outer space, rather than simply laugh at the weightless scenes and the shoddy sets and the horrific acting. When I knew nothing about Kevin Costner, nothing about story plotting, nothing about the experience of war or of love, nothing about native cultures, then "Dances with Wolves" was an enrapturing and transporting experience.

It's not like I want to go back to a place of naïveté, to a lack of understanding of the movies and of the world. Everything that has made me a worse audience member has made me a more whole and complete living person. But I still miss the magic. I miss the wonder. I miss giving myself over to a place and time where I let go of my skepticism and detachment. If a movie can still do that for me, if it can sweep away my defenses and let me feel with intensity the characters in the moment — those movies rocket to the top of my personal favorites. In some ways I watch movies still partly in hope of finding these rare treasures.

2005's "Pride and Prejudice" is one of these films for me. I wish I could explain it fully — then I might have a better handle on how to discover more such films — but the alchemy is elusive. At first I thought it was simply rookie director Joe Wright's filmic sensibilities, but his films since then have had the same visual lushness but not the same effect on me. It certainly wasn't that the story was new to me, as I'd seen the BBC version of P&P a half-dozen times, but it probably didn't hurt matters that the source material is a beautiful love story. Keira Knightley's performance certainly buoys the film, even if she is more forward than a traditional Lizzy Bennet, but I've liked her performances in plenty of other films prior without feeling the same emotional connection with the character.

If I had to nail down anything as definitely significant about the film, it would have to be the pacing. There are, in this version of "Pride and Prejudice," empty spaces to simply soak in, to process, to be. You might not expect such moments, especially when compressing a full novel to its bare bones. Nevertheless, there's this beautiful moment that Wright gives us where Lizzy spins on a tree swing, and the camera moves to her point of view, giving us this 360-degree shot that places us firmly, wholly in her world, where both she and we have an empty moment to consider all she's been through, all she's feeling, and whatå she's planning. The movie gives her space to breathe, to pause and reflect. I think I enter into it more fully in these moments. I begin to feel like her actions are not preordained but are performed on the fly.

"Immortal Beloved" was another film like that for me: there is one scene where a young Beethoven tries to get away from the world by floating out on a pond in the dark of night, lying on his back and staring up at the stars. The camera starts out tight, hovering over his body, and pulls back, back, back until Beethoven disappears among the stars reflected in the pond. I instantly felt connected to him; who hasn't lain down in a field or on a beach or a park bench and just lost himself in the enormity of the universe? In that moment he is not "Beethoven!" but simply Ludwig. (Until it gets into speculative history and leaves the person behind, but that is neither here nor there.)

"Magnolia" has a less silent but equally effective scene where each of the characters is singing the same song at the same time. They pause in the midst of their tribulations to sing a song of waking, which is what each of them, in his or her own ways, is either striving for or fearing. As heavily stylized as the scene is, when it flashes through the different settings of the film, we get a chance to feel what the characters are going through, to consider why they're singing.

These are just a few that spring to mind as the most flashy examples. Most of the times I'm simply unaware of the pauses in film when they are included deftly. But they have their effect. "Tender Mercies" is practically nothing but silences and cesuras. "Blade Runner," for an action movie, is surprisingly languid. "Rivers and Tides" is practically a meditation. All three of these are favorites of mine, although I'd never connected them in this way before.

What's jumping out as significant to me is that almost all of these films I first saw in the movie theater. In a theater, it's dark, it's immersive, and you have nowhere else to be at the moment. Pauses work. Watching on video, or on my computer, it's easy for my mind to flit around. Certainly with a two-year-old around it's easy to be distracted. At home, pauses seem to take me out of the story rather than draw me in. Maybe the problem is largely my own attention. Maybe I just need a more immersive entertainment system. And yet — with more and more directors knowing that the full life of their film will be experienced in the home environment, perhaps they are ramping up the pace of their movies because they know they'll be competing for people's eyeballs, and moments of slowness will mean a bathroom break or readjusting the couch cushions rather than a space for reflection. It seems like more and more films are trying to get the story told as efficiently and streamlined and stimulatingly as possible, making for enjoyable storytelling but, to my sensibilities, un-lived-in worlds. It's hard to assert that definitively, though, as moviegoing is only getting more and more popular.

Whatever the cause, "Pride and Prejudice" is a film that demands that I pay attention to it no matter what, to stop the cycle and flow of my brain's turbulent churn and make time for it. It is a film that I feel free to wander within, to enter into and live and breathe in. It engages my imagination, makes me participate in a way, rather than simply sit and absorb what the filmmakers want to communicate. "Pride and Prejudice," arriving late in my movie malaise, reminds me that there still will be films out there that click with me, films that will become precious to me, that make the searching worthwhile. It tells me cinema magic is still out there.

My absolute favorite movie experience I have never attempted to recreate with a TV viewing: When Amanda and I were young and first dating, we went to see "City of Angels" at a new theater that had movable armrests. We pushed up all the armrests in our row and lay down like on a super-long couch, our heads meeting in the middle. I have never watched a movie like that before or since. The film was full of sunsets and guitar strings and tears, and it just washed over us. The critical bug in the back of my mind was trying to crawl out and point out the cheesiness, but it didn't get far. I knew even in the moment it was a lightning in the bottle experience, and that watching the film again could never compare — although I do own the soundtrack, and it nearly always takes me back. "Pride and Prejudice," in the theater, conjured up the same feelings of transportation into beauty, whether it be from the lush hues or smoky ethereal landscapes. It was magical, and I was similarly worried that the small screen would diminish it. In the end I took the risk — the pull was too strong — and I found that the initial experience held up perfectly on the small screen. In fact, the experience became stronger, adding another layer of familiarity and resonance. I've even risked it a third viewing, expecting that this time the seams would start to show and I'd be disillusioned, but instead each time I have been placed firmly in the life and world of one Miss Elizabeth Bennet, a woman whose contentment with simplicity is interrupted by an invitation to grandeur, and must rediscover herself in that wake. It is a journey I relish to take.

The novel "Pride and Prejudice" seems open to continual freshness, as evidenced by the multitude of permutations ("Bride & Prejudice," "Lost in Austen," "Bridget Jones's Diary") as well as straight-up adaptations. What seems to make it so enduring, in my opinion, is the hope that a person can change. Unlike most love stories, where the hero and heroine seemed destined for each other, made for each other, but are tripped up for most of the book or film by circumstance or misinformation or false fronts that keep them apart, Fitzwilliam Darcy begins the story as an incomplete person. He doesn't seem it from the eyes of society — he has all the self-sufficiency and surety of judgment that anyone could hope for. But he is blinded, cut off from full interaction by his own propriety. Love does not come to him as a welcome guest, a long-sought fulfillment. Love bothers and disturbs him. Love confronts him. Love painfully refines him. "Pride and Prejudice" presents love not as a story of finding your ready-made match, but of being open to redefinition of oneself. Few artists, it seems, have the guts or the talent to make such an unattractive truth saleable or romantic, and that, perhaps, is why "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be (and deserves to be) told and retold and told again.

Recent rentals: "Sullivan's Travels" & "American History X"

2009-07-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

AT FIRST GLANCE, these two films appear to share nothing in common: one, a 1941 screwball classic in which the director of broad comedies decides he wants to take a shot at directing high-minded fare, and the other a violent and disturbing look into the mind and life of a young neo-Nazi, played by Edward Norton with tenacious ferocity.

Yet they they both tackle the same essential question: What is the nature of the relationship between comedy and sanity? Can comedy do more than merely distract us; might it in fact rescue us from the brink of despair?

(Warning: some spoilers follow ... nothing really plot-specific, but revealing the themes and general arc of the films.)

"Sullivan's Travels" is, at its core, a rebuff of artistic pretension. John "Sully" Sullivan is sick of wasting his life directing comedic fluff, and, in preparation to tackle something important, sets off on a road trip to experience the life of the common man in the just-recovering Depression era. What he discovers (after a series of screwball setbacks that merely run him in circles for a while) is that none of the people he meets — the people he gets to like, the people he comes to identify with — would be interested in seeing the kind of film he set out to make. They don't need to hear sad tales. They don't even need to hear tales of heroism. They are well acquainted with sadness, and they walk the path of the hero each day, simply to survive with their humanity intact. What they need is to hear tales of absurdity, of joviality and whimsy. They need to be reminded that as human beings we are more than survival machines but are fully layered creatures; to not laugh is to lose a part of ourselves. To entertain is a great gift; to lift the spirit is a rare talent, and that's what Sully can give them.

And yet — the film does a lot of telling and not much showing. We hear Sully bloviate and then retreat, we hear him theorize and then be silent. But the conclusion is a lot about him and his purpose in life: the artist's perspective, not the spectator's. Writer/director Preston Sturges is more or less defending his point of view as a creative person, rather that drawing us into the life of someone who is brought back from the brink through laughter.

Which is why, in part, I found "American History X" to be so captivating. It's well known for its grittiness and intensity, but the part I found so moving was its depiction of comedy. Edward Norton plays Derek Vinyard, a former neo-Nazi who, just released from jail, tries to pull his younger brother Danny out of the skinhead cult. The entire film is one long a moment of tension; it feels like walking into a bear's cave and hoping it doesn't notice you. The flashbacks of Derek descending into violence and hatred are especially rough viewing, as Norton is so thoroughly given over to playing this articulate bigot.

So what changes Derek? Does read a book that changes his mind? Does he learn some history about prejudice? Does he respond to lectures? To tough love? To being cut off? None of these things reach him. What reaches him is that he has to fold laundry in jail next to a black man who is not afraid of his swastika tattoo, but just goes about being himself, making jokes and cracking wise. Lamont (Guy Torry) doesn't use intellectual argument to convince Derek that he's a person too. He shows him that he's a person by chatting about life, about women, about prison, about laundry, all while waxing wry. He sticks his neck out by embracing this sort of levity. When Lamont finally cracks Derek up, the implication is clear: they are not all that different from each other. They are both human beings, fundamentally the same in their experiences.

The civil rights movement had certain factions that favored non-violence and others that favored violence, but none that I know of that favored comedy. Still, one might argue that, down the line, Bill Cosby had quite a role in helping to tear down racial stereotypes, simply by being funny and universal. In the same way, my recollection as a moviegoer in the '90s is that "My Best Friend's Wedding" was a landmark film for starring an openly gay actor in an openly gay role, and simply by Rupert Everett being funny and real, there was a breakthrough in perception of homosexuals in this country. He made us laugh — not in a minstrel way, or as a caricature — and people identified with him.

Laughter awakens our humanity — and sometimes, perhaps, that rescues us from our over-analytical minds. It can cleanse us of our frustrations and preoccupations. We experience the very grounding and physical acts of having our sides shake and wiping away tears. We are more present, more alive, more fully human. Laughter, as the Proverb says, is good medicine indeed.

Brave and broken: the James Bond of "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace"

2009-07-06T03:36:00.000-07:00

I HAVE A LONG and painful history with James Bond, stemming back to an article I wrote at my Christian-college newspaper on "Goldeneye," the first Pierce Brosnan feature. Back at that time, I was pushing the envelope in terms of what films I reviewed, making the case for including in the Christian conversation some profound or controversial films that were rated 'R', in each instance backing up my assertions with thoughtful commentary. I had a great number of conversations with faculty and the administration defending my choices. But I was surprised when one day, the conservative mother of one of my friends who subscribed to the paper challenged me on my article on James Bond, a rather lengthy piece covering all the previous incarnations of Bond as well as the first Brosnan film. I literally had no words to defend it. James Bond was and is such a part of the culture that I had never really thought to question him as a whole, and thought only to quibble with which Bond was best. It was not a fun conversation.

Let me be frank: James Bond is a reprehensible fellow. His lasciviousness, callousness, and above-the-law status are virtually the antithesis of Christian ideals of charity, empathy, and humility. There is no question why he is so popular: he is the unchecked id of the male species, free from reality and constraint. He is not a hero exactly, like our boy-scout Superman, nor an anti-hero either, like our revenge-driven vigilantes. He has no motivations, no fears, no strivings at all. He has something to do and it's going to get done, like a force of nature. He probably has more in common with the creature in "Alien" or with the Terminator: just carrying out what they were designed to do. Maybe that's why I can't exactly hate him, even if I can't defend him either.

The Brosnan pictures let me down considerably. One thing I noticed when watching the first sixteen 007 films in college was how maddening it was that James Bond never changed, never engaged emotionally whatsoever with what was happening onscreen. (The one exception was the end of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," which was promptly erased by the first few minutes of "Diamonds Are Forever.") They're pretty much the definition of roller-coaster movies: fun and exhilarating the first few times, but quickly getting dull and repetitive as you know exactly where the next twist, turn, or thrill is coming from. Pierce Brosnan promised something new: emotion. In 1995, Brosnan promoted the movie promising a Bond with more depth than had ever been shown before, and further promises that with him on board, each subsequent film would show more and more layers. "Goldeneye" did offer a few glimpses of humanity (in particular his betrayal by a close friend, and a discussion of his steely exterior with his love interest: "It's what keeps me alive," he says, to which she says "It's what keep you alone"), but the following three films went back to the old formula.

So when "Casino Royale" came along in 2006 and Daniel Craig was out promoting the film as a new, harder-edged Bond, I could only roll my eyes. Not only had I given up hope of seeing a Bond that approached a real human being, I had come to believe that such an attempt would destroy the very essence of who Bond was. Because if he were real, then all the killing and womanizing and egocentrism would no longer be remote fantasy but mere ugliness. They would have to change the character itself in order to bring him down to earth. But would they take such a risk with such an icon as Bond, particularly when the series was quite financially healthy under Brosnan?

I share my circa-2005 mindset simply to highlight what a tremendous gamble it was to write "Casino Royale" the way they did. They risked killing the character. Think about the scene where Bond sits in the shower with his arm around a woman who has broken down in tears at having been rescued via two brutal murders. That scene could have sunk the franchise. That scene couldn't possibly have worked in any of the other films. And yet somehow Bond survived, finding an audience — in fact, embraced by audiences around the world. The new Bond no longer avoids being a hero or anti-hero, but is a curious mix of the two. In many ways "Casino Royale" is about the loss of a man's soul: a man whose desire to serve his country is so strong he agrees to become its hitman, who finds out that he's still too much of a human being to follow through on it, and who then loses everything and had nothing left but country. The film is sad, heart-wrenching, and brutal, even as it is tense and thrilling. But Bond is also heroic: he's the big-hearted soldier who risks himself for the common good. We never forget watching the film that there are real soldiers and real spies out there who have given up a part of themselves, their innocence and their clean hands and maybe a clean conscience so that we don't have to. "Casino Royale" asks us to consider the life of a spy, isolated and dualistic, embracing deceit, living at the edge of death, and what that does to a soul. Bond steps into that role and takes on the ugliness of what the average person can't or won't face. He is both brave and broken.

"Casino Royale" also took the risks of jettisoning the wacky gadgets (the only "gadget" in the film was a high-tech defibrillator, which I'm guessing didn't spawn a toy-line replica) and the villainous superweapons that will destroy the world (the film opens with a decidedly low-tech foot chase that is nonetheless thrilling in its freshness, using the stunning discipline of freerunning, or 'parkour'). The film is instead set decidedly in the real world, in the context of money laundering, arms dealers, terrorism, and conspiracy — and is all the richer for it. There is an uncomfortable scene in the film where Bond is being tortured, naked and bloody, and it refuses the sugarcoat the horror. There is no pit of doom he's about to be lowered into, or slowly-moving laser beam to avoid. He has no 'deus ex machina' gadget from Q to help him escape. He is trapped, caught, and helpless, with only his wit to guard him. This is the world we live in, where, yes, on all sides, torture is practiced. Where people walk out their door one way and come back, if ever, completely different. This film is a psychologist's explication of James Bond, laying out the rationale for why Bond inevitably becomes who he does. It gives us reasonable explanation for the layers, the coldness, the brutality, as well as the romantic side, the idealism, the bravery. It gives reason for the sardonic humor (here much toned down, less reliant on puns and heavier on the ironies), and the death-wish heroics. James Bond might not be any more moral than he used to be, but he is now a fully realized person.

(I have thus far tried to avoid spoilers for "Casino Royale," but to discuss its sequel, "Quantum of Solace," I have to reveal the first film's ending. So ... SPOILERS AHEAD.)

My appreciation for "Quantum of Solace" is much more cerebral than "Royale," which I find more or less the definitive Bond movie. But again, I keep being impressed with the risks that the Craig films are taking with the franchise. When "Royale" ends with the signature line "Bond — James Bond," you might think that Bond is at last fully stepping into his new persona. One might be excused for thinking that, from that moment on, we're past the origin story and back on track with the endlessly recycled adventures of James Bond™. (Roger Ebert certainly took it this way, and was kind of pissy that they defied his expectations of what would happen next.) But keep in mind that Bond has just, in the last day, been through the roller coaster of emotions of fleeing the spying life, being betrayed by his lover, who then regrets it and she gives up her life trying to spare his. Bond is not yet so cold that this bounces off him. He's in mourning, in grief, and yet is wounded, too. The mix of emotions are strong and complex: is he mad as Vesper for betraying him? Mad at the mysterious Mr. White and whatever shadowy cabal is fronting for him? Mad at MI-6? Mad at the world? At life? Is his last act revenge, or has he detached and is just burying himself in his work?

In fact, that is what the whole of "Quantum of Solace" is about: Bond's unstable mental condition. He knows he can't turn back the clock. He knows that the dead don't care much about being avenged. So what does he do with his life? How does he go on? Does he go on? How might he find (dare I say it) some quantum of solace? Of course, there are no sessions on a therapist's couch in the film, no monologues for Bond to reveal his state of mind. Rather, we have a whole action film centered around the varying intensity of Bond's steely gaze. We are meant to read between the lines, to see the process of piecing back together a life — any life — from the mess that was left him. We are meant to feel the tearing inside as each new stage in his grief and/or anger comes popping to the forefront. At times he wants to seem to want to die in the line of duty. Other times he seems to want revenge, or at least closure. Sometimes he just wants to do his job and get a good night's sleep. Sometimes he wants to never sleep at all. There is a fascinating little scene with Bond sitting alone at a bar on a Concorde while everyone else dozes through the night; he refuses, for the second film, to order his trademark drink, not caring what he pours into himself. This is James Bond as Everyman, the Bond who bleeds.

There are very few true trilogies in the history of film. The original "Star Wars" films is a good example of one: Luke, the protagonist, is three distinctly different characters in each film. He is the naive farmboy, the headstrong prince, and the zen master. The films tell one complete story, but also three distinct ones about different iterations of a character. (As a point of comparison, the usual way sequels go is to simply rehash the same character over and over in new situations.) It remains to be seen how the third film in this Bond series will turn out, but it seems like they're going for this 'true trilogy' pattern. There is a larger, overarching story being told here, with the main villain in "Casino Royale" being revealed to be just one cog in a larger machine of conspiracy; in this film we discover the nature and name of the organization, Quantum, and the rumor for the third film is that we'll see Bond face down the head of the organization: Blofeld, his Moriarty. At the same time, we are seeing different versions of Bond: the Bond who feels deeply, the deadened Bond, and the emergent Bond, whatever that looks like.

Director Marc Forster had an incredible difficult task here, taking on the second chapter. He has the least interesting part of the overarching story (neither the breakthrough moment of discovering there's larger conspiracy nor the payoff of uncovering its full extent) and the least cool version of Bond (presumably) of the trilogy. One would expect a massive audience rejection of this chapter, but Forster was able to inject it with enough heft, enough intrigue, and enough action to actually propel the film beyond the first's domestic gross receipts, a pretty impressive feat. I have to admit that the finale of the film, which features of lot of explosions that seem improbably fortuitously set up, lost me a little. I have my quibbles with the pace in parts, and with the casting of the Dominic Greene part. I'm curious to watch it again and see how I react the second time around. But I should also admit that before the film I didn't know anything about the Cochabamba Water Revolt, the real life event that inspired the film's premise of a contractor attempting to privatize water supplies. This version of Bond, although still pulling elements from the cold-war-era Ian Fleming books, stays remarkably up-to-date about the threats the world faces today.

I think Forster did well because he knew how to engage the audience: he knew that the icier that Bond gets in the film, the more we fear for him. Audiences have never had the experience of worrying for James Bond before. This is a whole new feeling. He was always going to be OK, with some one-liner to hurl in the face of danger or some gadget to save him. But this more human Bond can be hurt; he is hurt. We hope to see him heal. Forster is able to take the remarkable step of asking us to prize Bond's tenuous holds on empathy, compassion, loyalty, and trust. And, in the seeking, asks us to prize our own.

Book Review: "Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste"

2009-06-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

I WAS WATCHING The Colbert Report a few weeks ago when a music critic came on to promote his book centered around Celine Dion, called "Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste." With the phrase "the end of taste" I assumed that he meant that Ms. Dion had more or less sailed off the edge of the world of taste, that she had somehow broken the needle off the the taste-o-meter, or that she had murdered taste in the cold of night and buried its corpse in the woods. After all, what else would a self-respecting music critic have to say about Celine Dion?

But Carl Wilson isn't a self-respecting music critic. He is an other-respecting music critic, or at least desiring to become so. He asked himself the question: Rather than just denigrate hypothetical Celine fans for having no taste — imagining them to be frumpy spinsters, preening teens, or weak-spined conformists worthy of contempt — what if he actually talked to some flesh-and-blood Celine fans? After all, she's one of the best-selling artists of all time, so there are no shortage of them, even if they are reluctant to raise their hands and identify themselves lest they be subject to a game of critical-whack-a-mole. After years of being a guardian of taste as a reviewer for the magazine 33 1/3, he asks the question: Are there other, cohesive, taste profiles out there other than the ones cool and edgy enough to make it into a music magazine, and of course the answer is yes.

This is such an amazing act of empathy that I am still flabbergasted after finishing the book. Did I really read that? Did a professional warrior just set down his tools of the trade and sit down and have lunch with his opponent? Did someone who calls himself a critic actually seek a greater understanding of humanity rather than heap praise on a singular view of the heights of humanity?

Why don't we all do that? Why is it that we find it so necessary to scoff at others' taste, whether it be their music, their movies, their food, their clothes. Do we do it to validate our own taste profiles, to set ourselves apart and above? Why are we so quick to denigrate and try to convert, instead of taking time to listen and to break bread with those of other perspectives? Why can't we see that each person's taste is a convoluted mish-mash of identity-staking anyway, one that is continually churning and evolving and being re-written as one grows and changes, meets new people, gets older, finds love. We are none of us the sum of our tastes; we know that, but how often do we read someone's Facebook profile and cringe that someone we know and respect actually likes that book or that band? Wilson's book is a good place to start for a recoil-antidote.

MY OWN EXPOSURE to Celine Dion has come mainly through her movie-soundtrack songs: "Beauty and the Beast," "When I Fall in Love" from Sleepless in Seattle, "Because You Love Me" from Up Close & Personal, and "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, as well as a smattering of other songs I heard on the radio but often didn't know they were hers until I read this book. I'm probably one of those few middle-of-the-road people on Celine, because I've never actually sought her out or bought an album, but I never really cringed at her either — potentially because I didn't cringe at the open sentimentality of the movies associated with her songs. Yes, "My Heart Will Go On" was mercilessly overplayed in 1998, but in the context of Titanic, as the song plays over the end credits, what else would you want but an openly effusive tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, the ability to move past adversity but still hold in remembrance what is lost? What would be the point of something more restrained?

Wilson writes: "In critical discourse, it's as if the only action going on when music is playing is the activity of evaluating music. The question becomes, 'Is this good music to listen to while you're making aesthetic judgments?' ... Celine Dion, on the other hand, is lousy music to make aesthetic judgments to, but might be excellent for having a first kiss, or burying your grandma, or breaking down in tears..."

The whole point of art, I think, is that is is meant to be of use to us, to be entwined with us. It is meant to intersect with our emotional life. If you don't have at least ten good stories of experiences you've had at the movies that outshine the movies themselves in your memory, but you love the films all the same for bringing back those memories — of first dates, romantic escapades, graduation parties, a family outing, a drive-in, a trip downtown, a birthday, a reunion of friends, a vacation escape — then maybe you're missing out on what film has to offer. It's the difference between enjoying a Thanksgiving feast around the family table and eating alone at the highest caliber restaurant. The emotional component is part of the appeal, not a hurdle to get past.

"When this album was first released I assumed that it was shallow, that it was beneath me. A decade later I don't see the advantage is holding yourself above things; down on the surface is where the action is, the first layer of the unfathomable depths. Down there is where your heart gets beaten up, but keeps on beating. It does go on and on. The story is true."

My emphasis has largely been on the intersection of faith and art, between Christian living and artistic experience, and even though Wilson is not a Christian, he nails in this paragraph the key intersection I have found between the two, which is that you get the most out of them when you get your hands dirty, when you go where the action is. As long as Christianity remains a certain set of beliefs and theoretical abstracts about life, it is entirely missing the point. Our experiences and failures with trying to love our neighbors brings us to a deeper understanding of the mystery of God and the grace of Christ that ten thousand sermons or hours of study cannot bring us. Analysis is important, to be sure, but moreso in reflection and contemplation after the fact, after jumping in headfirst and wading through the unknown. In the same way, an analysis of art is mostly useful to me only after I've made myself available to be swept up, and fully immersed in the art — when I am seeking to better understand my reactions, my process, and the reasons that the experience affected me a particular way.

"It's often assumed that audiences for schmaltz are somehow stunted, using sentimental art as a kind of emotional crutch. ... Isn't it equally plausible that people uncomfortable with representations of vulnerability and tenderness have emotional problems? Sentimental art can be a rehearsal, a workout to keep emotions toned and ready to use. ... Sympathy and compassion are prerequisites to charity and solidarity. So between the sentimentalist and the antisentimentalist, who is the real emotional cripple? Me, for one."

As I read the book, I was stunned by how many of his observations like this seemed to mirror my own journey as a critic. I too came to a point where I realized that my encounters with art had to lead to more than just reflection, but to action — to be propelled the exercise of sympathy and compassion. I resonate with his characterization of art as a practice ground for the deepening of charity and solidarity.

But while I got to my conclusions through instinctual wanderings and reactive lurches, Wilson lays out his reasoning with strong arguments and good theory and historical precedent, with substance and facts, with humor and humility and cordiality. He's made me so much more aware of how critical interpretations have changed in the last ten and twenty years, and the historical roots of different philosophies of critical theory. My experiences have not been in a vacuum, but have been been shaped by a context larger than what I was able to perceive on my own. I value his book deeply, as a companion piece to my own story. Like a good song, it lets me know that I'm not alone out there in the universe, that others have felt and thought as I have.

Musicals for Artists

2009-05-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I lumbered out to a faded red storage shed and began sifting through several art prints that traveled with me from my last move. The bland upstairs walls of my office and bedroom needed some color and life to inspire stories and ... living. The shift involves both resignation and hope; I'm resigned to the fact that my parents need the help I can give them only by staying with them, and I hope that the Old Testament command of God to honor my parents will, indeed, lead to “a long, full life in the land” also given by the LORD (Exodus 20:12).

At the same time, I don't know how to live this life—really live it. Most days I struggle out of bed at 9:30, do a set of practiced stretches to a few favorite CDs, eat breakfast cereal and a banana, and feed my dog. Then, amidst the drone of an oxygen machine, I avoid the haphazardly parked walkers and stray phone calls. I rinse the dishes and load the dishwasher, grab water and kibble for the barncats, and add another layer of compost to the outdoor pile. Then, either doctor's appointments constrain my parents and I to the car for a trip to town—and to the friendly, local cafe—or it's time to put together a low-sugar lunch. Some days involve a change ... of sheets, clothing and laundry loads! So, while I dump the trash, sort the bills from the junk-mail, and steamclean over the latest “accident,” I try to keep in mind Brother Lawrence peeling potatoes or Saint Julian of Norwich holding a hazelnut—or even Wonder Woman wearing neon-red boots. Give me inspiration!

I easily see time stretching out before me like an ocean of undulating wheelchairs and oxygen bottles, or a desert of wheezing snores and two-dimensional TV ads. But, where is the fullness? Where is the deepening spirituality of Henri Nouwen or Mother Teresa of Calcutta? Where is the call to adventure so popularized by self-help gurus and scriptwriting handbooks? I feel perpetually harried, tense, overwrought and underwhelmed—not like a heroine or saint, at all; I'm so busy with what has to be done that I'm only dimly aware of W/who I'm doing it for. Lately, I scribble in my journal no more than twice a month, and this is the first film article I've written since (gulp) late 2004. Yet, it's in stripping the packing tape and bubble-wrap from my gilded artwork that I hear the whisper of God, ... urging me to dust off beauty and seek art in the everyday.

The scenes of my favorite artists are most often of common places: a garden, a breakfast nook, a porch, a staircase. It's not the subject matter that mesmerizes me, but the colors, the folds of fabric, the emotions of each piece; and it's all held together by one thing. The frame. As Frederick Buechner writes, “the frame sets it [that is, art] off from everything else that distracts us. That is the nature and purpose of frames. The frame does not change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving the moment” (Beyond Words, pgs 26-27). Books, paintings, pieces of music—all art forms use frames. And the musical uses layers of these. First, there is the frame of film—itself composed of story, movement and sound; then, the frame of music. There are three musicals I can watch repeatedly, and these musicals are particularly for artists: Anything But Love, Bride & Prejudice, and Once.

Anything But Love

Robert Cary with Isabel Rose, Cameron Bancroft and Andrew McCarthy 102 minutes, 2002

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him, his own.” Benjamin Disraeli

I first discovered this movie in the local library—and renewed it time and again until I bought my own DVD. Filmed in “new” Technicolor and celebrating the style and show tunes of Old Hollywood (hence the project's title), it's just plain fun! Wide-eyed leading lady Isabel Rose, newcomer to the Big Screen, plays red-haired dreamer Billie Golden—who can't find a note-worthy piano teacher, not to mention romantic partner! Meanwhile, Andrew McCarthy, 80s heartthrob from such brat-pack standbys as St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink—himself proof that someone of my generation can age very well—fights for Billie's talents, not merely her affections. There's even a cameo from Eartha Kitt, the definitive voice behind “Santa Baby” and Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove (2000); here she performs her gritty “A Voice Full of Yes.” Though I'm a writer, not a singer, I relate to the situations in this film; the lower income from such pursuits, the incessant advice to “be realistic,” the creative job that falls through. I empathize with Billie, despite her 50s-inspired outfits, because of her artistic aspirations—and the pains she goes through to follow them.

For the namesake of singer Billie Holiday, being a waitress “beats singing on a street corner with a hat out.” (Sorry, Once.) But, only because it allows her time to headline at the Skylark Lounge, a few exits from JFK Airport! From TJ (Billie's piano player) to Marcy (a fellow singer-who-waits-tables), Billie is smack in the middle of a city bustling with activity and other wanna-bes. Fortunately, her middle-class friends understand her desire to pursue what she loves—and how she'd love to also make a living—since they're performing artists, too. On the flip side, Billie lives with her down-trodden mother who takes pains to remind her of her responsibilities. Her motherly advice ranges from Billie's latest horoscope (which Billie sees as “mumbo-jumbo”) to, “There's an opening at Joey's Salon for a receptionist.” How many artists have heard something similar from their disinterested parents? In a sharper twist, Billie's mother is a one-time singer—betrayed by her own musical ambitions. Now her daughter's harshest critic, she avoids Billie's shows, adding alcohol to her tea; life is simply too bitter.

The pivotal scene for me is when Billie asks Elliot Shephard, a sarcastic piano-player with a soft spot for dreamers, why he plays the piano. “From the second I started to play I realized that there wasn't anything I lived or thought or felt that I couldn't put into my music. You know what I mean?” And Billie, hesitantly, nods. A teenager who's suddenly without a father. A waitress who doesn't see how to pay the next month's rent. A woman faced with her mother's alcoholism. A single searching for that someone who “hears the same music.” All of life is fodder for art. As Elliot says, “That's what separates the goods from the greats.” Artistically and spiritually. Those people we resonate with, who are honest and real and substantial; those people that we trust. Those people who look at our flaws (as individuals, and as humans) and still see our best self, when even we can't see it. These are the people who know who they are—or who admit they're in the midst of learning—even if noone else recognizes them.

“Sometimes people avoid the art of the soul,” artist Joy Sawyer writes, “because they think they're going to have to clean themselves up before they come to the canvas.... Wherever you're at today, you can create—and live—right in that very space. Even if it feels empty, lonely, cramped, dark” (The Art of the Soul, pgs 76-77). Can the suffering be part of the art? The weariness? Even the boredom? I hope so; if not for my sake, then for others. I want to support people in their talents—even when I'm feeling discouraged myself. And I don't believe God is wasteful. Repetitive, yes—often extravagant. Never wasteful. Difficulty, joy, wretching pain; God shapes us through it all. We can't change the health of our loved ones. We can't make decisions for our friends. We can't simply say “I think we understand each other... ,” and make it so. But, like Billie, we can go to the doctor's appointments, send a note or make a phone call to a friend (whether they're struggling or we are), and listen—especially when we disagree with those whom we expect to know us best.

Bride and Prejudice

Gurinder Chadha with Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson 112 minutes, 2004

“Anger often reveals how you feel and think about yourself and how important you have made your own ideas and insight.” Henri Nouwen

I can't remember why I was initially drawn to this film. Perhaps because—like various Hollywood black-and-white versions, colorized BBC adaptations, a 2003 LDS rendering, and even Bridget Jones's Diary—it's a remake of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Or, maybe it's because, like chai, Tikka Masala and naan, I crave Indian culture—including films! Like Anything But Love, this production revels in elaborate musical numbers and lavish color. Also like that project, dreams highlight the heroine's emotional landscape, and both Cary and Chadha “tip their caps” to old-fashioned musicals (like Singin' in the Rain and Grease). Unlike the first movie, however, Chadha also reveals Bollywood influences. Further, the story's focus is on national cultures more than social classes, and art is explicitly a cultural expression. At the same time, this production is about family foibles, a global village of both small towns and grand cities, and how to marry well—despite a mother who “[doesn't] say anything too intelligent!” For all these reasons, each time I watch it, I savor it more.

“India's most bankable star in Hollywood”—according to Forbes and RealBollywood.com—Aishwarya Rai shines, brilliantly, as 2nd-oldest daughter Lalita Bakshi (aka Elizabeth Bennet). Having graced magazine covers from the US to the Middle East and across Eurasia, her beauty has obvious cross-cultural appeal. Her acting is disorienting, too. For his part, New Zealander Martin Henderson does a passable William Darcy—cool, privileged and unapproachable. Still, the supporting actor from The Ring and Windtalkers is rivaled here by “Lost”'s Naveen Andrews. As Balraj (aka Bingley), Will's loyal but misguided friend, Andrews is ultra-hip. His character is even referred to as “the Indian MC Hammer.” Good thing Will is such a good guy; in spite of his cultural and social faux pas, I can't help but want to see him make the right moves—and find the best dance partner! Paradoxically, it's not in the choreography but in Lalita's interactions with others where I notice the most false steps.

Lalita is a woman with high standards—for others and for herself. She consistently watches her step, in her moral convictions and in the life-choices that spring from them. Yet, whether involving her best friend, her sisters or her possible love interests, she forgets to step back for perspective on the larger situation. Independent and strong-willed, Lalita too often makes assumptions and then gives her opinion without seeking clarification. She always faces her responsibilities; however, she evades certain people, like Mr. Kohli and Darcy, because she's been too quick to judge their actions—or even their motivations. Too often, I'm like Lalita. Particularly with my parents, I'm quicker to talk than to be quiet and listen. Most of all, I get angry—not only at injustice, prejudice and slander, those circumstances at which all of us should feel fierce. But resentful of the past, of misunderstandings, of things that never change; of my parent's cankerous relationship. And soon I'm angry most of the time, with an ire that eludes my love. And that makes me out of step—with God and with myself.

In this dance called life with its demanding routine—sometimes erratic, yet often reflexive—I find it difficult to achieve balance. When I move back to follow, no one steps up to lead; and, when I maneuver to the front, someone else (humanly speaking) is already there! My parents have had to relinquish control of so many things—driving, grocery shopping, bathing independently, even breathing without aid; so, I step in. There's a lot to maneuver around, including egos and old habits. Lately, I'm repeatedly complaining to God that, while other friends and family members have a partner, I have noone to help me. Then I realize what I'm saying! Scripture speaks consistently of the Spirit as our Helper; it also speaks to self-control, which (whether we are male or female) comes from submitting to the Spirit. When old habits lull us into a “spiritual slouch,” we must become alert to a new, healthy posture. Otherwise, like Lalita, the things we criticize—being “rude, arrogant, intolerant, insensitive”—are those very things we do.

Once

John Carney with Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova 86 minutes, 2007

“Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.” Henry David Thoreau

On the recommendation of a friend, against my usual caution, I added this movie to my collection “sight unseen.” Like the other productions, it's neither afraid of color nor of introducing a distinct musical variant. Also, like the preceding films, an almost tangible role is held by dreams. On the other hand, Carney's segue into a documentary style lends to a spontaneous feel—distinctly unlike the two previous projects. Both of the leads are musicians first, not actors; and Carney and the creative team made it a point to keep the film low-budget, including (according to IMdB.com) a mere 17-day shoot. In fact, Glen Hansard's mother plays a cameo as a party singer, and “flashback” footage of Guy's old flame is actually shots of the director's girlfriend (ibid). It shows—smartly! The sense from the dialogue is that you're eves-dropping; and the music is so heart-felt that it's like a sharp intake of breath—raw and shattering.

Though also a film about art and artists, unlike Anything But Love it isn't focused on Drama; nor, as with Bride and Prejudice, is it a reshaping of a literary classic. Instead, Once delves into music—lyric and melody. This movie is about the creative process, making art in a wider community, and balancing dreams and day-to-day living. It's about a girl making time over her lunch hour to visit the local piano store, where she's convinced the owner to let her use the merchandise. It's about the demo tape a guy wants to produce, for which he still doesn't have enough funds. It's about the importance of art and family and choices and timing—and the connection between it all. It's about how different people inspire and shape varying melodies in a life; how the music shapes itself. It's about knowing what to sacrifice, and when. In a refreshing change from the other two musicals, this film isn't about finding the right person—it's about being that person.

An immigrant girl, with a mother and daughter in tow, has just been asked by a local, Irish busker to write lyrics for his melodies. As the baby falls asleep, after picking up the house, she grabs the portable CD player; she then pillages for batteries to make the drained player function. Apologetically raiding her daughter's piggy bank, with newfound energy she jogs to the corner convenience store. The batteries are slid in place; the melancholy, even dissonant music begins—using an Eastern scale, of seven notes (like a Western scale), but with more intervals between. And her words: “Are you really here, or am I dreaming? I can't tell a dream from the truth. It's been so long since I have seen you. I can hardly remember your face anymore.” The girl from Chezh sings of being estranged—but, is it from her husband ... or her soul? Her dreams have become dusty and tarnished like her employers' tables and silver; the truth she is living is regular and necessary—and incomplete.

I resonate with the practical, responsible girl—the one who advises another to pursue his dreams—who is “letting myself down, while I'm satisfying you.” The girl who pauses before the recording studio's Baby Grand, and sings, haltingly: “I wish I didn't have to make all those mistakes. But, you can't say I'm not trying.” I hear her because this is the same girl who is both losing and finding herself in the creative journey. In her struggle, she reaches out, drawing another to do the same. As with both life and music, when we hear a good composition, we know. It moves us, because it's both like and above everything else. More than talent, and deeper than heart, it has an intensity that makes us smile (or cry) to ourself. Such it is with her life; because of her challenge—to do not what is easy, but what is right—a guy finds meaning is layered like chords on staff paper, and life is arranged into something greater than itself. As he describes, “You have suffered enough and warred with yourself. It's time that you won.” Such a gift—someone who struggles with us, and rejoices when we succeed!

In my dream, it seems a long path from the faded, red storage shed to the house. Stepping over the barncats, through the kitchen, and around the walkers. Humming up the stairs as I ... trip on the landing! Clasping my bum foot, I realize there's so much to learn before I can smoothly sing and dance! Still, as I glance to the framed prints that now line the walls of my office and bedroom, I'm again reminded of Buechner's words: “Literature, painting, music—the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives...” (Beyond Words, pg 26). Perhaps this is why, for me, film is so powerful. Because, at one time or another, all of us need to be reminded how to live. How to balance everyday concerns with the stuff of imagination, and high standards with a posture toward others. How to be true to the soul God shapes in us. How to be honest and vulnerable. How to look into the lives of others—and really see them; to see myself.

Mother Teresa writes of God speaking to her: “You don't need to change to believe in my love, for it is your belief in my love that will change you. You forget me, and yet I am seeking you every moment of the day...” (I Thirst for You in Bread and Wine, pg 188). The LORD seeks me through musicals, through the lives I see there—and the tensions or harmonies I hear within my own life. As an artist, God moves me in the connection between life and art, Spirit and time: “Music both asks us and also enables us to listen to certain qualities of time—to the grandeur of time, says Bach, to the poignance of time, says Mozart, to the swing and shimmer of time, says Debussy.... We learn from music how to listen to the music of our own time—one moment of our lives following another moment the way the violin passage follows the flute...” (Buechner, Beyond Words, pg 266).

Some readers may think this article isn't widely applicable. After all, we're not all artists! Then consider these words: “Is it too much to say that to stop, look, and listen is also the most basic lesson that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us?... If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors.... Here it is love that is the frame we see them in” (ibid, pgs 26-27). In this way, all those who follow Christ are artists. At least, we can attempt to be such, and not merely art critics; even when all we can contribute is an understatement, like “Wow. That was nice.”

Movies I own: "Pieces of April" & "Moulin Rouge"

2009-04-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

As I look over my movie collection, I notice I own quite a few films heavy on romanticism. I don't mean movies heavy on romance: the intense love stories and the date-night comedies, although there are plenty of those. I mean that I am particularly drawn to romantic characters: those who embrace a quixotic spirit, who make bold and sweeping gestures, who live lives of foolish risks.

A perfect example would be "Pieces of April," a movie I've loved for years and just recently added to my shelves. There is nothing much remarkable that happens in the film: It takes place all on one Thanksgiving day, with a grown daughter inviting her family over for turkey dinner for the first time. Most people have probably experienced something similar on the holidays. But in April Burns's case, this invitation is a romantic gesture. It's an improbable stretch, a hopeful longing. She, who was such an aggravation to her parents, who rebelled and took drugs, who left them emptied and hollowed out, is inviting them back into relationship. It's the story of the prodigal son, but with the wayward youth throwing the feast, and with the abandoned parents unsure of their reception.

Watching the film requires -- well, I was going to say a suspension of disbelief, but that's not quite right -- rather, a tenacious belief that hope might find its reward. Of course it makes no sense that, if your oven were broken and you had to cook your turkey, you could knock on the doors of neighbors in your New York walkup and find people willing to help you out. It's unreasonable, it's absurd. But it's also the reason that you never try it in the first place. A low chance of success so often leads us to give up before we start. The sheer unreasonableness of hoping for kindness or grace, for help, or for reconciliation, is too powerful in our minds to let us take the risk. April Burns may live in a movie but she does not live in a fantasy world; she lives in our world, but with courage, and moxie, and perseverance.

Why am I drawn to these films? Why do I need them handy? I think it's because my natural instincts don't take me toward romanticism. I am careful, I am hesitant, I am practical. I so rarely do anything "just because." It sounds bad to admit, but I do not spontaneously volunteer to throw a party for someone, or toss out my weekend plans for a road trip, or buy a gift I happen to see without running my mind through a cost-benefit analysis. I wish I could be more free, to follow those romantic impulses when I get them -- spontaneous gestures of love for my wife, my friends, for the stranger, for God. Why look to the effect on my schedule or my budget or my energy reserves first, every time? What are we made for if not a full and unhesitant immersion into the thick of life, a cannonball into the deep end?

I've been making a few strides in this area in the last few months. It helps, maybe, that we have a little more money than we used to, and that I'm working a little bit less. I don't feel under as much pressure to portion out every ounce of energy and every dollar with caution. It also helps that I've been talking through and working on this characteristic of mine in my church small group. But more than that, I think I've broken through to a place of wanting to make that romantic gesture, to do more than offer a mere proportional response. I want to brainstorm and plot out unique and special ways to make my affection and enthusiasm tangible. I want to be inexplicably outlandish -- inexplicable even to myself, maybe especially to myself.

One of the turning points recently, I think, was when I popped in my DVD of "Moulin Rouge" again to watch with my wife. I'd seen it four or five times before, but it had been a while, and this time it hit me differently. I had embraced the film at first for its warped, unprecedented use of pop songs, its evocative design and decor, its energy and pace. It's a wild ride, sensual and exhilarating and heartbreaking in a single moment. But the actual love story I saw as something of a contrivance. The film centers on a young writer in 1899 Paris who falls in love with a star courtesan and pens for her a musical of their love story. Their improbable relationship, sparked by a simple glance across a crowded room and a few minutes alone together, seemed to me just an excuse to set the rock-circus in motion. Satine and Christian were just constructs, brought together by dramatic convention; it was the same as every Hollywood story, shallowly focused on the intensities of new love and not on the steadfastness of growing a relationship over time.

But watching it this time, I had to wonder: so what? So what if the writer feels only the emotion of giddy discovery -- at least he acts on it. Maybe he is naive and rash to put his life in danger for someone he doesn't know he can trust -- but who wants a reasonable lover? Who wants affection in measured doses, of a respectable degree? Should our passions not consume us, overrun us, at least some of the time? Would a person like Satine, broken and bruised by the men in her life, have any affection at all for a timid and respectful suitor? Would we not all wish for someone to revel in us, to be inspired by us, to throw out his or her arms and sing to the stars for us?

How do I love God? How do I love my neighbor? How do I love my wife and my son? Do I love them in reasonable measures, with adequate effort, or do I embrace the romantic gesture? Do I make myself a fool -- an impassioned, spontaneous, outlandish, holy fool? May I seek such moments in my life. May I keep hold of the authentic desire to overflow with love.

Recent rentals: "Half Nelson"

2009-04-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

"HALF NELSON" had to come across my radar screen about five times before I finally decided to watch it. I'd heard that it centered on an idealistic teacher who is also a drug addict -- my immediate thought was that the film was either about him succumbing to his vice, which could easily be gritty and depressing, or it could be about him finding redemption, which would probably be nauseatingly simplistic. To my surprise (SORT-OF-SPOILER ALERT), neither one happens. Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is simply a functioning addict, who has been for years and will probably continue to be so. The film's main theme is this dichotomy: How badly do we, as human beings, want to characterize and judge this person for what he is?

One of the characters in the film asks him if he's a communist, based on some of the books on his bookshelf. Another implies he's a deviant because he has formed a friendship with one of his students, a thirteen-year-old girl. There is no lasciviousness in his connection in her, but it doesn't stop people's suspicions. His students see him as a kind of hero, or at least as one adult who doesn't condescend to them, and awakens their interest in the wider world -- teaching history not as dates and names but about struggles between opposing systems of thought, tied together in push and counter-push.

Every character in the story wants to hang a label on Dan, and as an audience member you want to hang a label on him, but he argues the position that human beings are undoubtedly more than one thing; they can be opposite things at the same time, just as a tree trunk may be both crooked and straight. It takes time, attention, curiosity, listening, presence, and an open mind to understand the complexity of people, but for the sake of expedience we tend to simplify people to the components that we most value or most fear, and ignore the rest of them.

Christians are unfortunately very good at our rushes to judgment, which is odd considering that the Bible presents its characters unvarnished, filled with concurrent contradictions.I remember the first time that I understood that most of the "heroes" of the Bible were tremendously flawed, that they didn't walk around in glory and perfection in all that they did, that they struggled and rebelled and sinned and had conflicts. I was stunned. Were they really like me? Was I really like them? I thought that everyone around me, every Christian who looked to be cloaked in perfection, was through-and-through good. Yet here I was carrying around these secret compartments of guilt and hidden vices that I tried so hard to keep hidden.

To understand that we can be sinners and yet Christians, rebelling against God and yet being used by God at the same time, lifted such a burden off of me. To hide my inadequacies was only to perpetuate the myth that Christians were perfect, which only turns people away from God when they discover our hypocrisies. To confess my inadequacies, as I have tried to do in my friendships and in my writing, is to admit the multi-faceted nature of the human being, and the ability of God to meet us where we're at and engage us in full. I believe that our stories of surrender, not our stories of greatness, lead people to seek the God who is.

People will try to put labels on us, maybe great ones we don't deserve, or maybe hateful ones that contain only a silver of truth. Some human beings latch on to the good ones and fight against the bad; others are too bashful to accept the good and secretly cling to the bad. "Half Nelson" is about rejecting all labels, shrugging off others' definitions, and not being reduced. This is a good first step, I think, to being vulnerable and honest with others -- being honest and matter-of-fact with oneself.

Why I Left, Why I'm Back: Memoir of a Christian Movie Critic

2009-04-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

I LAST UPDATED this site four years ago; now I'm back, at least in some capacity. There are many reasons why I set it aside, not least of which is that four years ago I lost my job, and my wife and I started a business from scratch. I didn't have money to watch films in the theaters anymore, let alone the time to write about them. By the time we'd made our business work, we had a baby, and he has consumed much of my time and energy.

But beyond that, my heart just wasn't in it anymore, and hadn't been for several years.

To explain why (if you're interested), I must take you on a journey back to the beginning of my crazy dream to become a Christian movie critic, and what I had hoped to accomplish.

AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY
Movies weren't much a part of my life growing up; being raised in a Christian household and attending a Christian school in the '80s meant a good dose of paranoia about the surrounding culture, and movies were exhibit A in the depravity department. "Back to the Future" is the last movie our whole family attended together, after our pastor eviscerated it for reversing the natural order, having a child who teaches his parents.

Then, at a new church, in 10th grade, I was invited along to see the latest Oscar-winner with a few other guys in my youth group. It was the first film I saw that was intended for adults, that evoked actual emotions. I was mesmerized. The feeling of having walked in another man's shoes was absolutely visceral, the understanding of the cruelty of war was blindsiding, and to vicariously taste the power of compassion was overwhelming.

Up until that point, every story I knew, from Bible stories to kids stories to the few kids movies I had seen, had always been presented as an Aesop's fable: The moral of the story is "___". Stories to me were bloodless, non-involving, constructs of ideals to learn and absorb. The movies were my entry point into adulthood, where not everything worked out in the end, where questions remained unresolved, where experiencing empathy for fellow human beings was more important than drawing a pat conclusion about the story.

I had learned all about hope, faith, and love in my church, but only as constructs, not how people struggled with them and suffered for them and experienced them. The movies made me realize that there was more to life then knowing the ideals, that they often collided with our humanness, and we had to struggle with that. Many of my friends and teachers feared for me, worried that the movies were going to lead me away from God, but just the opposite was true: I was finally discovering how Christianity applied to life, because I was finally learning something about what life was, rather than just keeping my head down, doing my schoolwork, and trying to be a nice person. Movies let me see the possibilities, to understand what it meant to speak out, to take a stand, to actively show grace and love in real situations.

After a few years of discovery I decided I wanted to become a Christian movie critic -- someone who could recommend to other Christians films that could help them in developing their walk as I was developing in my own. Keep in mind that this was 1992, a full decade before Christianity Today would publish its first film review in its magazine. I faced a particularly uphill battle. One of my high school teachers warned me that as Christians we are to think only about what is pure, good, and lovely. But that verse in Philippians, I believe, has more to do with what we choose to dwell on, and that's what I wanted to highlight in writing about film: dwelling on what is true, honest, and virtuous.

BUILDING A MINISTRY
I spent all four years on my Christian college newspaper as a movie critic, from my first year as a freelancer through my senior year as editor-in-chief. I started out as a terrible writer, mostly rehashing the plot of the film while I tried to emphasize the powerful emotions that it evoked, thus ruining most of the viewer's emotional experience. I am quite surprised I was allowed to stay on, frankly, but I got a lot of support from my freshman friends who were simply excited to see movies acknowledged by an official college publication as something worth interacting with.

As I learned to find my voice, and actually articulate the case that movies could be used for spiritual growth, my message seemed to confuse many people. This was still the heyday of Siskel and Ebert after all, and there were a number of friends who only wanted to know if something was good or bad, thumbs up or thumbs down. There were a number of people in the drama and media studies departments who thought I should be analyzing only high art, rather than what most students were watching. There were those in the administration who wondered why the paper was covering movies at all, particularly R rated ones, and why I wasn't busy condemning them. At the time, the only prominent Christian movie publication was focused on tallying offensive content.

My approach was akin to that of a food critic, to use a metaphor, who spends much of his column promoting one idea: "Chew slowly. Take your time to eat; think about what you're eating; savor the flavors and textures; give thanks to God for it. No matter if you eat fresh organics or greasy burgers, haute cuisine or mom's cooking, if you take the time to taste and delight in what you're eating, giving it its due, the more aware you will be of God's gift of nourishment to you." The response to such a review would probably solicit just as many scratched heads as I was getting, from people who just wanted to know whether to eat at a certain restaurant or not, or those who feel strongly that a certain type of food is best, or those who question why food is spiritual.

But there were many people, not movie fans in particular but students eager to consider new perspectives, who took to my idea that there is something to find, some morsel worth considering, in every film, if you are willing to look for it. Where I think I helped most was to help feed the late-night dorm room conversations, ask big questions. When people wanted to chat with me about my articles, they usually didn't want to talk about a particular film, but about life, about something that triggered a new thought in their mind, or brought two disparate ideas together. I think I largely succeeded at doing what I intended: not to simply recommend a handful of films, but to help students who were trying to become more spiritually aware of themselves, more mature, more tuned in to the voice of God speaking to us through everyday experiences.

Looking back, I see now that what I enjoyed most was this aspect: the personal connections, the privilege of speaking to people's hearts and having permission to go deep with a new friend by simply talking over a shared film experience. I most loved being able to help people take a step forward in their spiritual lives. But at the time, I thought that movies were the method I had to use to get there. The silver screen, after all, was the place where I discovered how to walk in someone else's shoes, to find empathy, and shatter old notions. Movies were what tilled the soil of my heart so that new things could grow. It seemed to me that movies were indispensable to doing the work I wanted to do.

THE PLAN GOES AWRY
My original plan after college was to find a job as a newspaper movie critic until I could convince a Christian publication to bring me aboard. But the style of writing that I had developed in college -- reflective, personal, and open-ended -- didn't quite fit the standard newspaper review. So rather than postpone my dream, I decided to create it from scratch, launching a 12-page, black-and-white, photocopied magazine available by subscription, titled "Film Forum." (These days, of course, I would just have started a blog, but that technology wasn't available in 1997. How quaint!)

Response was enthusiastic, considering how little marketing I could afford. Several strangers wrote and volunteered to write for the magazine as well, and I began meeting other like-minded people who wanted to engage film. When producing, stapling, and mailing the magazine became too much for me to keep up with, one of these new friends designed a website for me so we could transfer operations online. The website started drawing traffic particularly when "The Matrix" came out, and everyone was discussing its theology and implications. I found more writers, more friends. Before long I was tapped to write several reviews of religious-themed films for the online version of "Christianity Today." In some sense, I was living the dream I'd set out to accomplish. But then something unexpected happened.

The stereotype of the movie critic is that they are cranky, grumpy, and mean. I swore that would never happen to me -- but it did. In college I had had the luxury of going to a movie only when it appealed to me, ignoring the vast number of releases that weren't my cup of tea. As an aspiring "professional" I started seeing more and more current releases and pushing myself to comment on them even when I had nothing to say. When the frustration of mediocrity confronts you over and over and over, and you have a forum in which to let your zingers fly, it's hard to keep up a thoughtful, tempered demeanor. I was the only one forcing me to do this, yet I could feel myself palpably wanting revenge on any film that left me wanting more.

The corollary is that any time I did find a movie I wanted to praise, it was of such importance to me that I almost outright demanded that everyone watch the film and recognize it as a masterpiece. Somewhere along the line I lost the casual, friendly tone of sharing discovery, and instead became stridently divisive over what was and wasn't worth watching -- particularly in my personal conversations with people, and in my forum posts, when I had less time to edit my feelings. More than once I was told that I'd made someone feel particularly small for liking a film that I'd trashed, or for not "getting" a film that I praised to the rafters. Categorizing the art had become more important to me than seeking a connection with people through art, more important than listening.

NEEDING SOMETHING MORE
At the same time, when I actually was connecting with God through film, my reflections started pointing me toward a particular conclusion, over and over. When I first discovered how powerful movies could be, it was because I only understood many of the aspects of the Christian faith only in theory. Movies helped me to feel more viscerally what it means to love, to lose love, to have hope, to take a risk, to understand a stranger. For a long time that was enough, simply to be acquainted with these truths in a heartfelt way. But after a while the nagging question became: What am I doing to actually embody and live out these ideals? When have I actually taken a risk? Whom have I loved? When have I taken leadership? In what way am I being selfless? Was I just going to write about Christian beliefs, or was I going to find a way to actually follow through on what I believe, to incarnate the truths I hold?

The next year was a somewhat schizophrenic time. Every time I would write it felt like I wasn't doing enough, like I was ignoring a bigger calling. But I wasn't prepared to walk away from film criticism, because watching movies, and processing those experiences through writing, was the primary way that I had to connect with God at the time. I didn't want to lose that, particularly because we had just moved and were having trouble for a long time with finding a permanent church home. I frankly didn't know what, other than art, would lead me humbly before God in the same way. It got to the point where I wondered if I even worshipped God at all, or only worshipped art itself.

When sat down and I actually wrote out that sentiment, and saw it on the screen in front of me, by the time I reached the end of that article I knew that it was time to walk away. I had pretty much dared myself to see if I could pursue God through means other than art: "I have to be able to say I'm willing to explore other forums for getting to know God, to humble myself and put myself at square one in an arena I'm unfamiliar with."

MEETING GOD IN THE MUNDANE
One of the main lessons I tried to stress when I wrote about movies is that you do not have to look far to learn something about God. God has not restricted his presence in this world only within church walls. He gave us this created world. He gave us imagination, reason, and inspiration. He gave us art. He gave us bodies, and food, and sleep, and breath, and laughter. He gave us one another. My message had always been: pay attention to your life, take time to notice where God is present, including at the movie you see with your friends on a Friday night. God is speaking; listen.

I had to return to this train of thought as I began a new quest. In what other ways was God caring for us and nourishing us in ways we easily overlook? For two years I penned a monthly column for a friend's online magazine in which I explored the ways in which God speaks to us through, say, waiting in line, or idle chatter, through our hobbies, or our work, through our choices of clothing, or taking out the garbage, or cooking, to name just a few. This was good practice -- I had many new arrows in my quiver to rely on in connecting deeply with God -- but I was still just writing. The words went out into the world, where maybe they did some good and maybe they didn't.

It was still some time before I learned to sit down with a person, to ask them about an average day, and what excites them about their everyday life, and explore together how it is that God can be present and speaking in those moments.

LIVING OUT OUR FAITH
Concurrent with writing my monthly column, I also started to lead at our new church a small group Bible study for my first time. This had been part of my plan to move on from film and engage the church more fully without the intermediary of art. But it wasn't an ordinary Bible study. Because I knew where I was struggling spiritually, I asked them to join me in my struggle to find ways of living out my faith in tangible and challenging ways. As we read the Bible together, each week I would ask them to pick one verse or phrase that convicted or inspired them, then make a goal to respond to that in a concrete way.

We had scattershot success at first, but I was excited to be actively working toward changes in my life, to be learning to express God's love rather than simply make interesting observations about it. The breakthrough came when I realized that people had the best success with their goals when the chapter of the day dealt with an issue they were already trying to deal with in their everyday life, rather than when they had to shoehorn a verse to fit their concerns. So I decided to let our inspiration for change come from the strong and present voice of God in our everyday moments, and the group transformed from one with a lot of homework and tasks to one of an authentic journey of God-led transformation. I reconnected to that excitement I had in college of being able to help people take a step forward in their spiritual lives.

Finally I felt like I was doing what I had been meant to do; at long last I had combined all three things that were important to me: helping people to find an awareness of God in their ordinary moments, investing in people rather than making proclamations, and being confronted with incarnating my faith in tangible ways. Or as a friend of mine recently put it: "You love to draw out the part of people that draws them to God."

This past summer, after two years of cultivating this group at my church, I spun off this ministry from the church to be open to anyone here in the Seattle area. My intention and prayer is that I will spend the better part of the rest of my life leading and growing these Christlikeness Groups: a small-group experience focused on hearing God in the mundane and following through on what he convicts and inspires you to do. Our website is at www.cgroups.net if you're curious to know more.

RETURNING TO FILM
This leaves us with only one question unanswered: Why am I back reviewing movies?

The answer, I suppose, is a little anti-climatic given that I have found my calling and purpose elsewhere. I'm not back with any sense of gusto, or on a crusade for any particular idea. It's just that art still is one of the key ways that I connect to and hear from God in my life, and my skills are getting a little rusty. Writing is just the way I best process a encounter with a film, clarifying my thoughts, bringing me deeper into it, and cementing it in my mind. I still watch a lot of movies, and I often have thoughts and ideas that I want to ruminate on, but over time they evaporate. I'm writing again more or less for myself, to strengthen those muscles that I let atrophy a bit when I set aside reviewing.

Secondarily, I had been thinking what a shame it was that I never got around to writing about a lot of my favorite films. My years as a critic were spent largely focusing on the current releases, since that's where the readership and the active conversations were grounded. Many films I grew to love after years of re-watching, and my initial review only scratched its surface; other favorite films I've never written about at all. I spent all those years writing hundreds of articles, and I have little to show for it in terms of a final statement on the films I value and cherish. My plan is to fill in those cracks and only rarely to comment on the current film scene.

And finally, I thought it would be fun. The dynamic has finally changed, after a long, long sabbatical, from something that I have to do to something that I get to do. Exploring movies seems like an adventure again, rather than a second job. Writing again feels like a refreshing and joyful break in routine -- one that I hope invigorates me as I step outside of my busy life for a moment and give thanks to God for the insights, beauty, joy, and inspiration that the movies have been able to impart to me.

photo courtesy of Cancia via stock.xchng

My favorite films of 2007: "Once," "Lars and the Real Girl"

2009-02-01T11:24:00.001-08:00

NOW THAT I HAVE a baby and don't get out to the movies much, I'm a year behind the rest of the world. So as Golden Globes and Oscars are being handed out for 2008, I'll revisit 2007 and share my two favorite films, two films that are at opposite ends of the spectrum in tone but united in theme.

"Once" is a musical that is not a musical. It's a movie filled with song, but with no soaring production numbers -- just two musicians whose lives intertwine as they work on their art. It's the story of a brokenhearted Irish busker who meets a kind immigrant pianist, and they talk about life, love, art, passion, creativity, sadness, desire, purpose, and striving as they tinker with songs together and form a friendship. It's wholly naturalistic, almost documentarian, and throughout he film you have no idea what the next scene will be. It feels like life: uncertain, tenuous, something that could break apart at any moment but is somehow held together with grace and hope. It's a film that shows that even in bad times, life goes on -- not in the sense that life merely continues but that you still have a shot at life. It's billed as a story of love, but it's more than that; it's a forgiveness story, self-forgiveness and otherwise. It's an anti-inertia movie. It's an anti-timidity movie. And the music is really good, too -- the soundtrack has been my companion ever since I saw the film.

"Lars and the Real Girl," on the other hand, does not feel realistic at all. It's an intensely choreographed, fable-esque take on an ideal world, one where people are patient and kind, thoughtful and respectful, giving space to a young man who is coping poorly with life and inventing an alternate reality for himself. As a viewer you can't help but think in terms of our reality: this guy needs therapy, this guy needs meds, this guy needs to be locked up. He's insane. And while I wouldn't recommend treating all mental health problems with simple love and understanding, the longer the story continues, the more that Lars is able to work through his fears and anxieties safe in the arms of a family and town that accept and embrace him without judgment, the more I long to live in that kind of world -- the more I want to create that kind of world. Wouldn't it be amazing to live in a world free of quick judgment and derisive scorn, that makes people afraid to show their real selves? Doesn't that start with me, with radical acceptance?

The theme and tone of "Lars and the Real Girl" is anchored in the town church, where the reverend delivers the simple gospel message at the opening of the film: "In all the world, there are books and books and books of laws. But in all this world, there really is only one law. We need never ask, Lord, what should I do? Because the Lord has told us what to do: Love one another. That, my friends, is the one true law. Love is God in action." Without these small reminders of the church as center of community, the film could seem like a mere Twilight-Zone exercise in studying an alien culture. But with these words, and with these intentions, the film is saying: Here's what love in action might look like. Here's how far off base our culture is from a culture of love, in that this place seems foreign and imbalanced. Why haven't we embraced the message of Jesus as we ought? If "Once" pushes you to discover grace and forgiveness in life as it is, "Lars and the Real Girl" pushes you to consider what life might be.

"My Name is Earl" and Three Stories of Grace

2009-01-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

TO EXPLAIN the difference between “mercy” and “grace,” the most common example I’ve heard preached from the pulpit is this: You appear in court before a judge, having committed a crime that should land you in jail. If the judge sentences you as he is supposed to, that would be called justice. If, for some reason, the judge decides to suspend your sentence and lets you go free, that would be mercy. But if the judge decided that the punishment needed to be paid, but still wanted to save you from it, so he ordered that he himself should be put in jail for your crimes, that would be grace.

I’m not fond of this particular example. For starters, it’s ludicrous. In this history of the world, has this ever happened (aside from the overt metaphor of Jesus taking our punishment for sin)? It just doesn’t hit me where I live. I’ve never been in the situation, nor do I hope to be. Second, the difference between receiving mercy and receiving justice in this case is exactly the same on my end: I go free. The only difference is what happens to the judge. In fact I am left thinking that I’d rather have mercy than grace, because grace would make me feel terrible.

A better story I’ve heard about mercy and grace in a sermon goes like this: A child is throwing a baseball around in the living room, even though he has been told not to, because there are many things around to break. Sure enough, he gets careless and breaks a vase with the ball. If the parent disciplined him, that would be justice. If the parent decided for whatever reason to simply let the situation go — kids will be kids — that would be merciful. But if the parent stopped what he or she was doing, and took the child out for ice cream, that would be grace. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.

I like this story better because it’s much more relatable, and it more clearly defines mercy as withholding punishment, as opposed to the undeserved kindness of grace. Still, this example is meant to make us understand what it feels like to receive grace from God through Jesus. It does not necessarily instruct us on how to be imitators of Christ and to live lives full of grace. The big flaw in this story is that breaking a vase is rarely a willful act, and was more likely a case of carelessness or just being a kid. You could even make the case, since the parent took the child out for ice cream, that the parent should have been doing a better job supervising, or providing an alternate activity, or actively playing with the boy. Ice cream might just be penance for what the parent should have done to begin with: give ample attention.

A better example might be one that involves a stranger, someone with whom I have no long-term relationship and whose well-being and well-adjustment does not necessarily benefit me as well. Fortunately, I was saved from having to think of such a story for myself, as I just saw an episode of the NBC show “My Name Is Earl” depicted exactly such a story. I would recommend watching the show first if you’re able, as my retelling does not do the story full justice (season 4, episode 12, “Orphan Earl”, available for free on Hulu.com as of this writing). However, if you’re averse to crass humor, as the show uses, you might want to just read my spoiler-filled summary:

The premise of “My Name is Earl” is that a ne’er-do-well discovers this simplified version of karma: If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you, but if you do good things, good things will happen. So he makes a list of all the bad things he’s ever done, and sets off to make amends to each person. Even though the show talks about karma a lot, the essence of the show is about the power and beauty of forgiveness and reconciliation (balancing the potential for schmaltz with ribald, outrageous humor). Week in and week out, Earl risks himself by confessing his sin to another, and asking what he can do to help make amends.

In this episode, Earl remembers a time he and his then-wife conned a $100 check out of an elderly man by pretending to work for an African relief fund. He looks up Mr. Hill three years later to return the money, only to discover that his ex-wife Joy has continued the scam by having him adopt an “orphan” and sending monthly checks. Her neighbors at the trailer park joined in, creating fake charities for wildfire victims and flood victims. Earl decides to balance the scales by conning Joy and her friends out of the $5,000 they’d taken from Mr. Hill and returning it to its rightful owner.

Now, I’ve been in Mr. Hill’s shoes before, played for a fool. It was only $20, and I was only 19 years old or so, waiting for a train at Chicago’s Union Station. I was anything but street smart, so when a woman said that she and her daughter had run out of money to catch the last train home before they closed for the night, I believed her. Being a college student at the time with a tight budget, I’d often come downtown with just about exactly the money I’d need for the trip, including food, admissions, etc. and I always worried about accidentally spending the train fare home by mistake. So I was all prepared to give her the $5 or so she’d need, but I found that I didn’t have $5 left myself, only the emergency $20 that my mom had given me that I tucked away separately.

In retrospect, really should have gone upstairs to the ticket booth and offered the by the tickets for her directly, but as I said, I was trusting, and just asked her to bring me back the change after she’d bought the tickets. I sat and waited, and waited, and waited, until I realized she wasn’t coming back, that I’d been ripped off. I’d been lied to. I’d been left with only about $3 in my pocket in downtown Chicago. I felt vulnerable, used, stupid, angry, frustrated, injured. If the cops had come into the station holding that $20 bill I would have been so happy to have it back. If they’d brought the woman along with them, I would probably have felt a sense of satisfaction that she didn’t walk away clean, even if I wouldn’t want retribution.

So when Mr. Hill not only gets his money back, but is given an opportunity to confront the three women who ripped him off, most of us would have to feel pretty happy about the situation, if not a little smug. Justice had been served. But when Mr. Hill sees the situation that these women live in, especially after losing their appliances to a loan shark who secured them the money and — in karmic fashion, suffer a food shortage, a kitchen fire, and a broken-pipe flood — Mr. Hill gives his money freely to the three women to help them fix their homes and their lives. The women are speechless. They stole from this man, made him feel a fool, and he still sees them as human beings worthy of being helped and cared for.

“When you’ve been a jerk, and someone’s still nice to you, it’s a powerful thing,” Earl says later in a voiceover. That’s a plainly put sentiment that I think we can all take into our daily lives and learn to better show grace, as well as touching on what it feels like to have received grace through Christ. Do unto others as you would never expect things to be done unto you. Repay deceit with generosity, petulance with calm, harm with forgiveness, and hardness with humanity. Grace is as simple — and immensely complicated — as that.

Profile: Tara Plog

2009-01-01T12:00:00.001-08:00

TARA IS a recuperating legalist with rebellious artistic tendencies. By dabbling in communication and English, as well as creative writing, she received her BA. She has twice traveled abroad to live with kangaroos and "convicts" in Sydney, Australia -- one of these journeys, to pursue her MA. At some point she became enamored with "moving pictures". This is now accepted -- except on bad days -- as her "life purpose".

Her artistic "mentors" range from Lucy Shaw to Frederick Buechner -- and Tommy Emmanuel. Filmmakers Ida Lupino and Gillian Armstrong offer her creative fodder, as well as Wim Wenders and Yasujiro Ozu -- and relative newcomer Tracey Moffatt. Tara hates arguing, bigotry and improper capitalization. She regularly longs for shrimp on "the barbie", snorkeling, and dancing without tripping over herself. Her passions are divine Grace and cross-cultural experiences. Oh, and intriguing science-fiction.

Most importantly, she is seeking the "abundant life" of Christ -- which meshes heart and intellect -- and trying to bridge the vast chasm between political correctness and loving honesty. Tara was most recently found in Colorado "crewing" on an Independent feature, beginning Spanish-language lessons, discovering Brazilian jazz and other Latin-American music, and looking for a paying job in which she can invest herself.

Read all of Tara's work here at Joy of Movies:

Movie Lines with MORE Meaning

Defining Savages in "Cabeza de Vaca"

Stranger than Fiction

No Typical Answers: Toward An Holistic Work in Theology and Film

Only Lupino

Lying Down with Crazy People: Divine Interruption in "The Princess and the Warrior"

Confessions of an Ignorant Anglo

Directors & Double-takes: "Sabrina" (Wilder, 1954) and "Sabrina" (Pollack, 1995)

Sin and Southern Wisdom: Didactic Tools in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

When We Don't Know What to Expect -- or When We Do: What to Watch When Life Hurts

Movie Lines with Meaning

Profile: Steve Lansingh

2009-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

STEVE IS a spiritual sojourner whose encounters with God are usually found in everyday, "mundane" moments like watching movies, preparing food, holding hands, waiting in line, and laughter. He has been writing about movies for Christian publications, and the specific ways that God has worked in his heart through art, since 1994.

He founded JoyOfMovies.com as a way to articulate the process of hearing from God when you least expect it, through an image or sentence or character in a film that causes you to rethink and reevaluate yourself. He invites everyone to join him in sharing their journeys as moviegoers.

Steve sees films as the starting point for a larger journey -- the moment of conviction or inspiration from God that one then needs to respond to in concrete, tangible ways. Toward that end, he recently created the small-group ministry Christlikeness Groups in the Seattle area, which focuses on following through on your spiritual goals.

Steve lives across from Alki Beach with his beautiful wife, his precocious toddler, and a cat that likes to jump on his keyboajslfhrd. He can be reached at: steve [at] joyofmovies.com.

Movie Lines with MORE Meaning

2005-06-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

I recall over three years ago when I first read Steve's article on film quotes that were meaningful to him. Joy of Movies continues to encourage me with creative freedom, and I find it a meaningful tradition; I hope others might, as well. So, I seize this day to revisit such reflections!

"They built these tracks [over an incredibly high, impossibly steep part of the Alps] even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew someday the train would come."
--Señor Martini / Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

I've heard scriptwriters say they sometimes pen dialogue they know will become a catch-phrase for the film: When Harry Met Sally's "I'll have what she's having"; The Terminator's "I'll be back"; or The Princess Bride's "As you wish". Some phrases even become a tag-line for a generation. What about Wayne's World's "Party Time" or "I did not know that!" The lines above, delivered by both Vincent Riotta and Diane Lane, attempt to capture that sensibility. They don't ... but they try. Regardless, I relate to them. Like Frances, it seems I repeatedly experience a gap between my hope and my perseverance. Anyone else? I find it revealing, then, that Scripture often refers to these ideas together (Hebrews 6:11, 11:1; Romans 5:4; Colossians 1:23; Psalm 130:5).

One verse God repeatedly uses in my life is along these same lines: "For still the vision awaits its appointed time.... If it seems slow, wait for it" (Habakkuk 2:3). My first film essays were written in 1997, with online articles appearing in 2001, and there's little I enjoy more than sharing my film experiences with others on this site. Yet my central passion is film production. Even with a degree, I've had to subsidize any personal film projects with jobs outside the film industry. It's not unusual. And I haven't had a lucrative creative job in over a year. Of course, considering the competition throughout the arts, that's not unusual either. The rights to my current series of shorts aren't being optioned. Not to mention, the feature script I started in 1998 is still in development. Uh, yeah. Do I lose heart? Honestly? Sometimes.

Yet, I know the works that transcend time also endure it: the paintings hanging in the Louvre; the lavender fields of Provence; the aged wines and cheeses of the finest vineyards and farms; the fading stucco walls of an ancient villa. And if our art has something of God's reflection in it, it too will endure. Sometimes an artist is unable to write, or paint, or sing--we cannot create in the way we long to. During these times, like Frances, let's cook for three bedraggled strangers in the midst of messy construction--until they become well-loved friends. (Believe me, you're a brave friend if you stomach my cooking.) Let's deem friendship the highest love to which we can aspire--until God surprises us with a love even deeper than friendship. Let's wave at the gray-bearded man who trudges down the lane with flowers for his dead wife--until he may tip his hat. Then, let's rejoice! In these ways, we may not only endure, but--by the grace of God--inspire others with hope.

"My wife said something. She said, 'failure is never quite so frightening as regret'." "Oh, that's good advice.... I wish someone'd tell me that." "God bless ya', Glenn."
--Cliff and Glenn, The Dish

The works of our hands are not the only ones to consider. For we, too, are works--works of God. Each of us is God's poeima: "what has been made" to point to the Creator (Romans 1:20). We are "His workmanship" (Ephesians 2:10), His poem. So, artistic transcendence is found in not only the works of oil or stone, metal or pen themselves, but in we who create them. And who in creating, are being (re)created by God. In our culture, we tend to long for the weekend, our planned vacation time, and sometimes even sick leave to break the monotony of our workplace--dismissing the idea that God uses every day to shape us. Yet, our God is a frugal, consistent artist who wastes no time in shaping our lives even, no especially, when we least expect it.

When Cliff Buxton packed his pipe the morning of July 14, 1969, he didn't know that his beloved radio telescope, conspicuously plopped in the middle of a sheep paddock in Parkes, Australia, would become the prime receiving station for televising the first moonwalk in history. The Director of Operations didn't expect a power outage to strike on July 18, necessitating his 3-man tech team manually reprogram all the computer data. Cliff didn't know that on July 21, wind gusts would exceed 60 mph--enough to topple the 1,000-ton satellite dish spanning nearly the size of a football field. The unassuming scientist didn't take for granted even that humans could get to the moon. Cliff, the widower, knew only what his wife, Helen, would say to him on a day such as this. And this knowing was enough to move him from what he knew through what he didn't.

Cliff's strength was contemplation: quiet, slow-moving, unobtrusive. And this humble, consistent strength moved his team along with him. A team that experienced how "one small step for man" could become "one giant leap for mankind". A team of four Australian blokes that shared this experience with the whole, wide, television-watching world. All because these few men were faithful in the "little things." And, one week in July 1969, these little things added up to something big enough for all humankind. Cliff was wise enough to listen--to daily experience, to those friends and coworkers around him, and to a wife whose words touched his life beyond her own--even when these words applied to him. Like Cliff, let's stop to listen, everyday. Let's always assume the words we hear may apply to us. And let's never take the "little things" for granted. Realizing God uses the unexpected to shape us, we can face each day with hope.

"Did it hurt?" ... "I've never really talked about it. To doctors, but not to anyone else. You're the first person who's asked."
--Janine and Conrad, Ordinary People

"I think I know why I came here. I think I came here to talk about myself." "OK, why don't we?"
--Calvin and Dr. Berger, Ordinary People

Yes, our God is an artist of the everyday. And for all of us, this encompasses not only our strengths, but our weaknesses. Into every life, like that of Calvin, comes the day when "little things" become overwhelming, or when a spurned pain, long-ago pushed aside, returns larger than life itself. Abruptly, a formidable tragedy or unspoken outrage subverts our life; or perhaps, like Conrad, we deem our lurking darkness or a long-hidden deceit inescapable. Even so, God splashes grace on our fragile lives, especially when we least desire it--when we don't want to feel, or when we can't bear it. When this fitful life spins into chaos, God's gentle hand intrudes--most often, through other, ordinary people. People who're willing to be uncomfortable, to look to the needs of others, and to ask questions. Even without having the answers. People like the world-wisened Dr. Berger or the young, self-conscious Janine. Too often, I don't find I'm one of these people.

Too often, I don't roam far from my basement office--where I currently write, watch movies, and make steaming cocoa on rainy afternoons. When I can, I leave the mail pickup to my roommate so I can have uninterrupted time punching the keys of my laptop. One day this past week, I even spent till early afternoon in my pajamas. I admit this with a certain chagrin, yet I don't believe I'm the only one. I regularly must push myself out the door to face my 10-12 member Bible study group, knowing that I need human companionship--especially when I least want it. But, how often do I realize that God may want to use me in the life of someone else? And how often do I ask Him to do exactly that? If I was following the custom of the best teachers, counselors and doctors, I would ask questions. Not to mention, if I were mirroring Christ Jesus.

"Who touched me?" "Who do you say that I am?" "Do you want to be well?" Clearly, even He who held all the answers asked questions. Christ Jesus asked questions to reveal people's needs. Or, more truly, to rouse each person to him or herself--the physician prodding the sleepwalker to wake from misbelief. Sometimes we avoid questions because we don't know the answer, instead of trusting God to work in between. And often we repress questions because we know there's pain around the answer. Recently, I've had deeper discussions about God with non-Christians than with other believers. My non-believing friends aren't afraid to step on my toes, over the boundaries of orthodoxy, or into church politics, and they have an acute awareness that questioning needn't garner suspicion. Indeed, it may even merit praise. In this same way, let's ask questions not merely to know--but to be known. Let's allow ourselves to be vulnerable, uncomfortable, and imperfect. For only then will we recognize our need--and the needs of others.

"... right now, we're gonna' sit down and talk this over." "This talk is like all the others. It gets nowhere--nowhere. And it's painful." "Alright, let it be painful."
--Big Daddy and Brick, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Seeing the needs of others may allow us to become the hands of our Creator, bringing hope to those in despair, forecasting long-term commitment where there was once an outlook on only short-term survival. But, it's never easy. Particularly among those with whom we're most familiar. Those whom we used to admire. Those whom we may assume we understand. Those whom we want to love us--or, at least, to approve of us. At least for me. I have little problem speaking the truth to my family; however, I struggle with Scripture's qualifier "in love". As the storm of a tempestuous anger, resentment and despair grows, faith, love and hope are obscured. Like Brick, the fallen athlete drowning in disappointment--with himself and with those closest to him--I can't see past my pain. And despite many useful books on the subject, no human being likes pain.

Several months ago, my dad had a farm accident that might have proved fatal. After all, when you lump together an 18-foot combine header, a slipped jack, and a sloppy mire of muddy earth once called a farmyard--with a person somewhere underneath--it's a foul arrangement. God blessed my mom (who found him there), the paramedics, and the surgical team, and my dad's recovering. At least physically; but, emotionally is altogether different. He's angry and disappointed ... with the new limits to his physical activity, with his caregivers, with the advice of others--even those who have been through similar complications. He repeatedly says, "I don't know why I didn't die," and it breaks the heart of each family member who hears it. For he says this not with a sense of awe, but resentment. We humans are in agony.

Like Brick, I'm sorry for the pain this mishap has brought my dad. Yet, I'm strangely thankful for it, too. First, it's given my parents another opportunity to slow down and "see" each other. Instead of my dad spending most of the day working around the farm while my mom is house-bound, he's had to extend his time inside to rest. Second, it's brought my brothers and I a fresh understanding of how fragile life is--and that our parents are aging more quickly than we like. I made a two-week visit to my parents' home in the spring, and my brothers have dropped in regularly. Most of all, it's offered my parents a chance to empathize with one another. My mom has extensive back trouble, and her body doesn't allow her to do many things she'd like. Now my dad's body is rebelling against him, as well. Like Brick and his mixed-up loved ones, if my parents persevere through this painful season, seizing on those things for which to be thankful, there's hope. "Reckon it did some good?" May we be able to say, "Some good."

"If you want your dream to be, take your time. Go slowly. If you want to live life free, take your time. Go slowly. Do few things, but do them well. Heart-felt joys are holy."
--the Brothers and the people singing, Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Despite a few setbacks, emotional upheaval, a tragedy or two, some people still think we have it all: a lucrative job, a solid family reputation, a bit of real estate. Like Francis of Assissi, they might envy our designer clothes, our standing in the community, or our front-row seat at church. Those close to us know better. They see the sleepless nights, the short temper, the strained conscience. When we're not following as close as we may to what God has for us, these are often the symptoms. And regret. Always regret. Yet, it's all too easy to stay here--in the familiar hometown, with the bridge drawn, where protection and comfort abound. After we've fought a bloody war, it's much more difficult to set out on pilgrimage. Because, now, we're acutely aware of what we stand to lose. We hear God calling, but there are other voices, too.

Many of these voices scoff at what we believe God has called us to: "Oh, that's Bernardone's son." "She's just a farm girl." "Isn't this the carpenter's son?" Some go further and call us crazy. Like Francis, the nay-sayers may be our parents and friends; coworkers might spread the word; or, perhaps it's our neighbors. A very few express admiration, but they refrain from adventuring along. After all, there are bills to pay, kids to support, and that great health insurance package. And self-employed artists, like 12th-century monastics, aren't known for making money or, even, for eating well. I suppose this is why--despite clarifying when I returned to my administrative post that it was only for a short time--I was asked if I'd had a "change of heart" about staying. Caught between what I haven't done lately (ie, a film project) and what I don't have (ie, my own home and business), it took a coworker's kind words to refresh my aspirations.

"You're one of the few people I know who is following her dream." I'd forgotten that I remain on a journey; I'm still moving toward something--however haltingly. By amplifying the creative restrictions of my administrative job, I diminished the skills I've maintained, the projects I've done previously, and even the friendships I've been given. When job ads, résumés, and bills become an overwhelming white noise, my emotional and mental equilibrium is distorted, detracting from the films yet to be made.... Surely, as Henri Nouwen writes, "Patience involves staying with it, living it through, listening carefully to what presents itself to us here and now" (Embraced by God's Love). What of Francis's example? Let's not note those who call us crazy. Nor those who call us saint. Perhaps we only want to follow the words of Christ Jesus. Maybe we simply hold fast to a holy dream.

All kinds of people listen for God's voice: writer, scientist, student, soldier; divorcée, widower, younger sibling, monk. Both men and women have visions. And all of us must, at some time, wait ... for the dream. May we allow that God shape us in the waiting.

Even MORE Movie Lines that Intersect the Spiritual Dimension

2005-06-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

I WISH I COULD be one of those people who effortlessly recall poetry or can quote extensively from their favorite authors. I wish I were better at memorizing Scripture or could learn more of a worship song than just the chorus. It would be wonderful to have those voices echo inside one's head and speak to the situation at hand--words of wisdom, or comfort, or the right words of despair when life goes badly.

Instead, I have lines from favorite movies that rattle around in my head. These are the resources God taps into when he wants to remind me of his dreams for me. I didn't set out to memorize these lines; I didn't write them down on notecards to refer to when I need advice. I think God chose these as refrains in my life. They usually come as a rebuke, a correction, or a push in the right direction--not necessarily what I would have chosen for myself. They aren't even the lines I would say I admire most in the movies. It's not the turn of a phrase that captures me but the emotional context of a scene, the particular mood of a character, the weight of making a big decision. These lines encapsulate moments where a person extends grace, becomes vulnerable, or challenges expectations. I tend to listen best to emotional language than verbal language, and perhaps that's why these movie lines (and these, and these) have been my companions for years and years.

"It's not a way out; it's more of a way through."
--Mitch McDeere, The Firm

I am the world's weakest person. When things get tough, you can always count on me to weasel out, back down, and move on. Maybe that's tied to the fact that I moved around a lot growing up; I know what it feels like to have a clean slate and start over again from scratch. It's easy to put the past behind you and start again with new friends. College in particular fed that mentality, as each year created whole new sets of people to interact with. If something gets difficult, there is always the next class, the next dorm, the next friendship to move on to.

Community is messy. Community isn't all about your needs. Community involves impasses, and there are always two options: find a way out and move on to the next ministry, the next small group, the next church, or work through the problem. Working through often involves pain. I don't like pain. I want to cut and run. But by God's grace there are times when I see the value in community and friendship, in enduring the scars and working toward healing, when I can see the value in finding a way through a problem. This line always pops to mind as encouragement to seek that end.

It's worth noting that this line does not appear in John Grishman's original novel The Firm. In fact, the concept of working through the problems of the young couple is absent altogether. The book is all about running away and hiding the truth, but the movie rewrites the story to tackle the problems directly. It is immensely more satisfying.

"Have I fired anyone today? No. Why would I start with you?"
--Joe Reaves, Empire Records

Empire Records is the story of a living, breathing, fully active community. No one's business is his or her own. When one of the teenage girls who works in the music store comes into work, shaves her head, and shows off her bandaged wrists, the group doesn't just shy away from her awkwardly as I'd probably do. They stage a mock funeral to confront her death wish head-on. When one of the employees uses company cash to gamble, the manager doesn't call the police; he is angry but vows to work it out in-house. Even a shoplifter who is being held for the police eventually falls into easy rapport with the crew. There are consequences to actions, but no one ever turns away from a person they don't feel like dealing with. No one is shut out or given up on. There is grace and forgiveness, confrontation and truth, opportunity and invitation to change.

Whenever I've messed up and been awful toward someone, when I feel like I've blown the umpteenth opportunity to do right, I take consolation in the fact that God's outreached hand will never close to me. I will never use up my allotment of grace. He does not revoke his love. I hear God saying: "Why would I start with you?"

"I am the drum on which God is beating out his message."
--Joan of Arc, The Messenger

Among the many film adaptations of the life of Joan of Arc, this one is perhaps most disparaged by movie critics and Christians alike. There is nothing holy, sainted, or calm about this Joan. She is half-mad, maybe delusional. She bellows and taunts. But I connect to this version of Joan. She feels God's call beating down on her, drowning out every other sound, tormenting her. She doesn't want this message; she doesn't want this gift. She's much like Jeremiah or Jonah, who felt threatened and burdened by God's call on them.

One thing I hear so rarely in the church is how terrifying the Christian faith is. When new people walk through the door, we don't tell them that if you take seriously the words that will be read, you will never be comfortable again. You might never have a moment's rest from the awesome responsibility of living like Christ. The four spiritual laws begin with the phrase "God has a plan for your life," but how often is it explained that God's plan for you likely has nothing to do with getting a good job and marrying a nice person and dressing up on Sunday? It's about emptying yourself and giving of yourself until it hurts, pouring out love even with the flow from our own veins. There is pleasure in giving oneself up to God, pleasure in doing what is right, what is sacrificial, what is loving, but it's an acquired taste. It takes some getting used to. It might even take a lifetime to get used to. Christianity is not just freeing oneself from the grip of sin but surrendering oneself to the yoke of God. We are to pick up a cross and follow. It's hard, hard, hard at times, and I like that in this film Joan can admit its pain. I like her acknowledgment that God doesn't beat us down but that the utter holiness of his message can feel like a beating to our weak and sinful flesh.

"Sanctuary!"
--Quasimodo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

here are many film versions from which I could be quoting here, but, again, I am moved most deeply by the one considered the worst of the lot, the 1996 Disney version. True, the main characters are vastly altered from the book, but the one character that the movie gets right is its most important: the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. The original novel by Victor Hugo actually bore the title Notre Dame de Paris, and was more about the church than about a misshapen bellringer. It was a story about sanctuary.

Quasimodo is a deformed youth who has spent his whole life cooped up in the belltowers of the church, and although his benefactor Claude Frollo tells him the church provides him sanctuary from the crowds of people who would taunt and fear him, it seems to him more like a prison. He understands sanctuary only as safety from pain. The church is a sanctuary for Frollo as well, but only as safety from accountability. In the original novel Frollo is an archdeacon; in the Disney story he's a public official with the church in his back pocket, but in either case he walks the tall parapets of the cathedral with an invincible air, and the cloak of the church protects him.

The true meaning of sanctuary is learned through the character of Esmerelda, a gypsy woman who would normally never set foot in a church but must claim sanctuary to escape a death sentence. Within these walls, she experiences what it means for someone to love and protect her, as Quasimodo takes up her cause. She reaches out toward God and asks him to have mercy on an outcast, as he had walked the path of an outcast himself. Here there is quiet, rest, time for reflection. There is safety from those who would seek her undoing. When Quasimodo later claims sanctuary on her behalf, he cries out with passion the full meaning of the word.

There are times when I've felt the church to be a sanctuary in its shallow senses. Growing up, I was instructed to keep myself cooped up inside the church where people are nice and moral, where I could be insulated from the world. There were times later on when I felt like the church was a cloak of righteousness I could wear without anyone checking up on me to see where I was spiritually. I used it as safety from pain and safety from accountability. It wasn't until I graduated college, moved to a new state, and took six months to find a church, that I appreciated what being without one was like. It was so refreshing to return to a community of people who loved God. It was a wellspring of life, a joyous gathering, a place of rest, a safe haven from the creeping darkness of my own unchecked mind. It was safety from death. There were many Sunday mornings then, and from time to time even now, when I would mentally shout Quasimodo's claim of sanctuary.

"As you wish."
--Westley, The Princess Bride

This line is repeated in the The Princess Bride many times, each time with a new layer of meaning or a new twist on the context. But I am thinking here of the first times he says it, before the story has begun, when Westley is just a farmboy who serves the girl Buttercup with his whole heart. She torments and teases him, yet, no matter what, he always does what she asks with a reply of truest sincerity: "As you wish." These replies are delivered without an ounce of sarcasm, cleverness, pomposity, or cheesiness. There is only love behind the words.

I so want to be God's servant, but most of the time I have a faint heart for it. I tend to grumble and complain, doing what is asked but secretly thinking what a good person I am for doing it. What I lack is love. There are certain people in my life for whom I would drop everything and drive across town to pick up something they needed and not bat an eye. I love them, and that's that. But for others in my life, including strangers, for whom it would become a chore rather than a pleasure. I would mentally make a checklist of how many favors they owed me or I owed them. Or I'd do it out of duty, or of wanting to do the right thing. But in some way I'd have to rationalize it to myself.

As I practice the art of servanthood, as I try to keep love as my focus rather than myself, Westley's response buoys me. Those times when I am tempted to complain, tempted to keep score, tempted to become prideful, I push myself to mentally respond with a guileless, sincere, loving: "As you wish."

"You have to see with better eyes than that."
--Lindsey Brigman, The Abyss

This quote has been devalued somewhat as videophiles on DVD message boards use it to razz newcomers who don't see the clarity differences between the older and remastered pressings of DVDs. But let's return it to the content of the film: An undersea drilling crew has had close encounters with a mysterious species far beneath the ocean surface. A blurry photo is all the evidence Lindsey Brigman has at this point, and a military character is convinced it's a Russian sub. He sees with eyes of fear. Lindsey sees with eyes of hope. She wants to make peaceful contact with this species. It's not the clarity of the photo she's talking about, it's an outlook on life. She asks her husband to see the possibilities.

When I was younger, I always thought that the next big event would make me happy--if I could just get that new toy, if I could just get the right grades in school, if I could just go on my first date.... I thought that circumstances dictated how I would feel and think. But the deeper I got into a relationship with God, the less my circumstances seemed to matter. I could be content no matter what was happening in my life. Lots of money, no money, lots of friends, no friends, simple food, fancy food. My outlook is one of hope, one of seeing the potential in whatever situation I find myself in.

Usually. There are times when I give in to discouragement, frustration, and fear. There are times when I wonder where I'd be in life if I had chased after the success train from one station to the next year after year. There are times when I fixate on changing one detail in a friend's life or at church, and I think it will make me happy if I can just make that one adjustment. I see things through a lens of control and surety. When I slip from my groove, I have to remind myself to worry less about my circumstances and more about regaining my better eyes.

"You haven't been paying attention. We don't get along so well."
"So?"
--Manual Jordan & Sofia Mellinger, Levity

If you haven't seen the movie, you'll have to imagine Sofia's tone of voice here. Sofia is a self-destructive youth who gives Manual, a recently released convict, a tough time. Then out of the blue she offers to cook lunch for Manual, who declines, noting their mutual dislike of each other. Her "So?" is delivered with a mixture of bewilderment and offense. She's bewildered because she probably never considered the idea of hanging out only with those who she likes and who like her in return; if she did she'd probably be alone. There's a dash of offense thrown in because she can't believe he'd think differently.

I was not at all expecting her response when he declined lunch. I thought she'd say "Suit yourself" and walk away. Instead she comes back with a one-word mindblower, roughly translated: "What do you mean you're going to keep your distance from someone just because you don't like that person?" I am still floored by this. Maybe it takes not having any real simpatico friends before you start hanging out with just anyone. But I want to strive toward this. I want to spend time with people just because they're people. Maybe it's the ones I dislike the most who will teach me the most about myself, or about the true variety in the world. Maybe I am being deluded by spending time with people who make me feel good about myself and are excited about what I do. Maybe I need the voice of criticism or a frank appraisal or a dose of humility. I have to admit I have acted on this one the least. But I still get God's nudging. I keep hearing Sofia's voice confront all of my excuses with one word: "So?"

"I'm not gonna live by their rules any more."
--Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

There is such glee in Phil's voice as he says this, driving along the railroad tracks. He has just learned that he cannot die; each morning he wakes up and it's still February 2. So he decides to break every rule in the book. On the surface it seems the height of hedonism or folly, but I think of it more in terms of absolute freedom. If you knew that you were immortal, what would you do? Would you be timid, would you pass up opportunities, would you stow away your life in a safe compartment, or would you live with reckless abandon?

Sometimes I wonder how much I truly believe that in Christ I will live forever. Don't I still act scared? Don't I worry about having a nice safe life? Don't I still worry about what others will think of me? Don't I still play by the rules of this world?

I need to risk more with my emotions. I need to risk more with my time and attention. The only area in which I've made some headway is abandoning the ball and chain of money fixation. My wife and I took a crazy risk in starting our own business together so we could prioritize time together, and we made it work. We just spend less, scouring thrift stores, diving in dumpsters, or gleaning blackberries from the roadside. It's in those more adventurous moments when I find that voice of glee in my mind, that proud declaration that, though this be my one life, "I'm not gonna live by their rules any more."

"Revenge of the Sith": the saga is now complete

2005-05-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

I HAVE KNOWN for more than 20 years that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, former master and learner, fight a duel to near death. I have known for a long time that nearly all the Jedi perish as the dark times begin. I have known since I was a kid that Luke Skywalker's mother dies a heartbroken woman, her husband having become a servant of evil. There are few surprises left in "Revenge of the Sith" that Star Wars fans don't already know, and yet I found myself crying as I watched these events unfold.

I've never cried before in a Star Wars movie -- not even as a kid when Luke lost his hand, or when Han Solo was frozen, nor when the Ewoks lay motionless on the forest floor. I've felt tense and sad and frustrated in these moments, but there was always a sense that everything was going to be OK in the end. Even in the prequels, where we know that everything is leading toward doom, I haven't welled up at Qui-Gon's death, Anakin's mother's death, or Anakin's killing of the Tuskin Raiders. I was prepared for more of the same -- a kind of detached shaking of my head as Anakin made the wrong choices, thinking "what a shame." But instead I felt a deep revulsion toward everything that unfolded. I wanted to make it not happen. I wanted to rewind time and tell the Jedi to wake up to their blindness. I cried at the slow slide into the inevitability of death and despair.

That said, I also felt let down by "Revenge of the Sith." There are questions I have been wondering about for 20 years that go unanswered in this film, threads that I'd wanted resolved but are left untied. I was generous with the previous two Episodes because I knew there was still another chapter to be told to the story, but now that the story is complete, there is no hope of deeper explanation. In particular, I wanted to know how it is that Obi-Wan and Yoda appear as "force ghosts" in the classic trilogy. Instead we are told in an off-handed manner (and from here on out I will be discussing SPOILERS) that Qui-Gon Jinn discovered the secret of immortality, and Obi-Wan should learn from him while he's holed up on Tatooine for the next 20 years. There's no discussion of how such immortality is attained, no regret that Yoda didn't teach it to the dozens of Jedi who just died, no mention that this might be the key to defeating the Dark Side. What's more, the use of the word "immortality" strikes us as odd since the Sith Lord earlier talked about the Dark Side's power to extend life.

After watching "Sith," I found on the internet a draft of the script that goes into this more deeply, but even that doesn't satisfy. It says that eternal life can only be achieved for oneself, not for others (presumably to counterpoint Anakin's desire to keep his wife alive), and that it takes "compassion, not greed" to achieve it. But how is it less greedy and more compassionate to desire your own immortality rather than someone else's? I thought Anakin wanting to save his wife was a good instinct that was taken advantage of through a bait-and-switch temptation of Darth Sidious. I am not sure I'm wholly in agreement with Yoda's advice to practice detachment or the Jedi Order's practice of forbidding marriage in general.

I've spent the last several days on the discussion boards for TheForce.net, where Star Wars fans seem to be largely pleased with "Sith" but are deeply involved in discussing these kinds of questions -- about whose actions they admire and whose advice they trust. Long threads have sprung up debating Yoda's advice, debating whether or not the Jedi are even a good institution in the prequels, debating how admirable or pathetic Padme is, debating whether or not we are supposed to feel sorry for Darth Vader. (Some people say they are finding compassion for Vader for the first time, seeing him only as a "badass" originally but now feeling sorry for how he enslaved himself to darkness. Others say they used to have compassion for him, but now are angry that he turned about to be a "no-good child-killing, Republic-destroying, wife-choking traitor.") Episode III is Lucas's "Hamlet," where we can endlessly argue whether Anakin was sane or crazy, whether he made his choices or he was manipulated into evil. Did he really love Padme or not? Did he regret his servitude to Palpatine or relish it?

If I was interested in answers, clarity, and completion, George Lucas was more interested in leaving the doors open for interpretation and contemplation. (Even this point is open for interpretation; I saw one post on the boards say that these debatable points are meant to keep us fans hungering for more Star Wars -- books, comics, TV shows, and every other derivation in the pipeline.) But the more I read the threads on these boards, the more I see that the conversation turns to real-world implications: of religion, of government, of the nature of evil, of eternal life, of predestination. The more I read, the more I see that people aren't just talking about a space saga; they are talking about their own lives, values, beliefs. If the original Star Wars trilogy was a strong lesson in what we should aspire to, the prequel trilogy is a blank slate onto which we project who we are now.

So how do I interpret the 6-volume series now that it is complete? To me, it has a lot to do with religion. My favorite episode is "The Empire Strikes Back," primarily for the Dagobah sequence where Luke receives his training. I like what it says about spiritual mentorship, about spiritual retreat, about striving to make a spiritual connection for oneself, not just hoping the Spirit will come upon you if you follow the rules. The Jedi Order in the prequel trilogy seems to me a critique of the church as institution: concerned with hierarchy and knowing one's place; forbidding certain feelings and opinions; wed to political concerns that make it open to manipulation. I see Anakin as the teenaged Christian who equates God with the Church, and since one is corrupted he throws away them both, and asserts his independence by doing everything that would anger the God he no longer believes in. Conversely, Qui-Gon Jinn makes the distinction between the Order and the Force, and he is willing to serve the Force even when it upsets the Council. His death in Episode I presumably eliminates him from the equation, but we now know that his spirit continues and instructs Yoda and Obi-Wan, presumably justifying his methods. Luke fills the role of the person new to the faith, who encounters the Spirit and its fulfillment before anything else, who is not dazzled by the power and trappings and sense of entitlement that come to many, but considers his own life expendable if it means escaping compromise. When Anakin sees the act of a true Jedi at last, he finally returns, as it were, to the faith.

This obviously reveals more about me than it does about Star Wars or George Lucas. While it's true that Lucas has abandoned his Methodist upbringing and embraced a pseudo-Buddhist Universalist personal-style faith, I don't see that he purposely positioned the Jedi as an attack against organized religion. I think he just created his own religious figures and then didn't know what to do with them except to make them vaguely dogmatic and unfeeling. Lucas was always interested more in embracing the mythic archetypes rather than making any present political or religious or social point (despite the many who have found his movies to be for or against the Bush administration, or Vietnam, or various religious doctrines). The reason I feel the church angle so strongly in my reading of the films is that I have had a relationship with the church that mirrors the mythological path that Star Wars takes from Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces." The last stage of the hero's journey is Atonement with the Father, where the "ogre aspect of the father" is revealed as a projection of the son's own ego; the hero "beholds the face of the father, understands, and the two are atoned." In other words, it's not that I reject church and embrace a spirituality of my own making, but that I've seen all the flaws in a church constructed of human beings, rebelled against it, seen the same flaws in myself, and been reconciled to it. It's not that I just accept the flaws in myself or in the church; I still find them irksome. Thus I still see Star Wars as a story of rebirth, casting off the staleness, the routine, the calcification that comes from in one's spiritual life. I am not so much anti-church as I am pro-God, pro-returning to the waters of life, pro-capturing the wind that blows from the Spirit. I am pro-rejuvenation, pro-forgiveness, pro-humility and -sacrifice.

Returning to Episode III in particular, there are many things I liked and disliked. While the overall story works well, I felt there were details that could have been better. The movie seemed too frenetic, jumping here and there very quickly. This may dissipate upon repeated viewings as everything becomes more familiar, but still, one of my favorite scenes was Anakin and Padme at windows across the city from each other, silent, feeling conflicted about the future and their place in it. It was a needed breather, punctuated by a haunting East Indian score that we've not heard before in Star Wars. General Grievous seemed to add to the chaos in a way that I didn't need, and I wasn't particularly engaged by the pursuit of him. It was exciting to see so many new planets in the film, but I really wish we had spent more than a minute on Alderaan, which is destroyed in Episode IV. I think it would have added more resonance to the classic trilogy. After reading some of the deleted script pages online, I now miss several of them, particular the Senatorial opposition to Palpatine that enlarged the roles of Padme and Bail Organa.

But there were many things about it I loved as well. Obi-Wan and Anakin come across much more as brothers-in-arms in this film, and have a warmth about them that Episode II had little of. Ian McDiarmid has several juicy scenes as he seduces Anakin to the Dark Side that are played just perfectly. I enjoyed the early scenes between Anakin and Padme, which captured the tone of a deeply loving but deeply troubled relationship; I was wondering what their early infatuation would mature into. And as I mentioned up front, the last half hour was extremely moving -- Anakin's betrayal, the murder of the Jedi, the duel of Obi-Wan and Anakin, the bitter separation from Padme, Yoda's self-imposed exile, the death of the Republic, the triumph of evil. I want to quibble about minor points -- especially the last few minutes where random decisions are made, many without explanation, to ensure that everyone ends up in the right places for Episode IV. But I think the movie delivers. I still believe that the Classic Trilogy is the best of the two -- that's where the meat of the story is -- but Episodes I through III did their job: season the palate, paint the backdrop, deepen the characters, increase the resonance. I am left primed to jump into Luke's story, to yearn for that thin sliver of new hope that he offers the galaxy.

"Rory O'Shea Was Here" and the experience of touch

2005-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

IN CHURCH THIS Sunday, a dozen of us lay hands on a woman in my small group who is going to have surgery for cancer. It was a particularly moving time as we prayed, not least of which was the power of physical touch in communicating love and affection. In our American society, it's not common to touch each other, but it becomes more acceptable when one is sick or handicapped, when we need help. How odd that strength means we release ourselves from human contact.

I was thinking all this largely because of seeing "Rory O'Shea Was Here" last week. It is a story of two young men who live life in wheelchairs. Rory is paralyzed from the neck down, excluding two fingers on his right hand. In a managed care facility, he befriends a man with cerebral palsy, Michael. Together they begin a quest to move out and live independently of the home.

Touch is explored in many facets -- as an expression of friendship, of flirting, of nursing, of anger, of love. Sometimes the meanings are confused. Sometimes they mean both at the same time. Touch is not the most clear language, which is perhaps why it is so often avoided. But for Michael, who has trouble making himself understood with words, and for Rory with his limited ability to feel, touch becomes an necessary part of interacting with the world.

As children we get a lot of touching -- not only cuddles and roughhousing but combing our hair, wiping food off our face, holding hands as we walk. Then it's gone. We are expected to take care of ourselves. But Rory and Michael can't take care of themselves, and they rely on others. When Rory arrives at the facility he sports elaborately spiked hair, which the nurses refuse to re-sculpt every morning. But Michael is willing to give it a try, cerebral palsy notwithstanding. It doesn't matter how it looks because the process, the bonding between the two, is what's important. As someone whose wife tightens his dreadlocks, I know something about the time and care involved in styling someone's hair.

At other times Rory is after only the experience of touch, hitting up a few women in a bar and trying to beg a kiss off them. At times he just wants to feel that he's there. It's not always admirable, but he has not resigned himself to a life inside his head. It is, however, nearly always funny what kinds of schemes Rory is up to. This is foremost a comedy, even if it is laced with bittersweetness. If there is one thing that works well on Rory, it is his silver tongue, which talks him into and out of all kinds of trouble. He's a quick wit and outrageously entertaining. He's a live wire, full of life, and the joy of the story is how he overflows life into everyone around him.

"Hitch": asking the bigger questions

2005-02-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

MORE OFTEN THAN not, I enjoy romantic comedies more for the comedy than the romance. Love is treated either too dreamily or too sexually depending on the target age group. While Hollywood does comedy well, it isn't the best source for trustworthy relationship patterns.

"Hitch," however, impressed me. The four main characters start off, when it comes to love, as a cynic, a realist, a dreamer, and a snob. They're all bad reactions to an idealized version of love. The dreamer worships from afar someone he barely knows. The snob dates only people who are as famous, or ideal, as she is. The cynic disbelieves in ideal love and has closed herself to love altogether, and the realist -- our main character, Alex Hitchins -- believes in love but has made a business out of breaking it down into small, identifiable, repeatable, achievable goals.

Hitchins is a "date doctor," one's own personal Dr. Phil, who can identify exactly where you're going wrong with the opposite sex. He turns helpless cases into ideal mates. It makes for great comedy watching these men fight their natural instincts, and it's an alluring concept -- someone who keeps you from putting your foot in your mouth, from coming off too needy or coming on too strong. We probably all wish we knew someone who had our back like that. But the movie is really about making one's own mistakes, about not listing to all the calculated advice. It's about creating your own happiness rather than lusting after an idealized love.

The best moments in the relationships are long talks into the night, being goofy together, being vulnerable. Unlike most romantic comedies, none of the protagonists have sex or even pine for it; they're more interested in these odd people they find themselves with and trying to see how they can find common ground together. "Hitch" seemed a refreshing and unique take on the genre, one that elevates boy-meets-girl to a more basic question of: how do we relate to other people so unlike ourselves? Do we try to find our way together, or do we search only for the ideal people in this world?

"Born Into Brothels": A Photography Story

2005-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I DON'T USUALLY write top ten lists because it seems silly to rank one piece of art against another. But it's worth mentioning that "Born into Brothels", with its power to surprise and delight, is easily the best movie I've seen from 2004 -- the only one, really, that touched me in any significant way.

All I knew going into the movie was that it was a documentary focusing on the children of prostitutes in the slums of Calcutta. It seemed worthy of my time simply for that reason, but what I did not expect was a movie about photography.

Photographer Zana Briski wanted to document life in the red light district of Calcutta, the most stigmatized section of one of the poorest cities on earth. It's a place where cameras are deeply distrusted, so Zana began to live there, to get the people used to her presence. Instead she found herself the one changed, particularly by the children who surrounded her. She began to teach them photography, because it was all she had. To a place closed off by secrecy, she brought creativity, honesty, and light.

But this is not primarily the story of a Westerner sweeping in and saving the day. This is the story of children, still unbeaten by the harsh conditions of their situation, finding a voice through the camera. As we see their photographs, we see their world through their eyes, not the eyes of a distanced documentarian like in the Calcutta sequence of this year's "Five Obstructions". We see sadness and squalor, yes, but we also see kites and animals, colors and smiles. These photographs are not intended to elicit our concern nor abate it; they have no agenda. The photos are simply a record of their world, glorious and broken -- the only one they know.

As it turns out, the photographs are so powerful that they end up being transmitted around the world, from Amnesty International calendars to gallery auctions to global newspapers. It seems like the fame of these photographs will rescue the children. After all, from our Western perspective, what parents wouldn't want their child to have an education, move out of the slums, avoid the work of prostitution? But now we encounter the uglier side of human nature -- the ego, the tight grip of selfishness. Family tradition says these children should follow in their parents' footsteps, bring in money for the clan, not think they are better than their heritage.

Just when the movie finds unexpected light and joy in these slums, the true darkness of them overwhelms us. It's not just the thugs and pimps and outside prejudice that makes life so miserable, but the people inside who seem to have rotted, screaming and beating at anything weak. Relationships are corrupted but bind strongly. Superstition runs high.

Once we understand the environment, the more amazing it is that Zana made an effort to change it. Not only in terms of economics and education, which came later on, but with the simple introduction of a photography course. She gave the kids her time, attention, devotion, love, and the gifts of art and expression. She didn't know it would lead anywhere. She just wanted to offer them her art, to inform, guide, and strengthen their inner life. Even if the children's photographs had never left the red light district, I think she still would have felt she succeeded at something. I have to believe that investing in human beings is noble no matter the return on investment. On that account, the movie has a happy ending because it had a happy beginning.