I love sci-fi. And for all its plot holes and logical problems, one of my favorite experiences this last year was seeing the film Interstellar. You watch the movie and you initially think you have it pegged: “This is a sci-fi adventure about a man fighting to save the human race. This is just another straightforward popcorn-munching Christopher Nolan movie.” But the film also deals with deeper religious, metaphysical, and emotional themes about fatherhood and survival that makes it about more than the raw narrative itself. There is something transcendent about the film, because the filmmaker is trying to reach beyond himself and his own life.
Throughout the film Michael Caine’s character frequently quotes Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” where he writes: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I always misunderstood the poem. I guess I always thought it was a poem about living life with ferocity and strength. In either case it was a bit too melodramatic for my tastes, so I dismissed it.
I was out for a run this morning and was listening to the Interstellar Soundtrack (because I’m a truly strange person). The last track of the album is the cast of the film reading Dylan Thomas’ poem in its entirety. I don’t think I’d ever read it completely and when I heard the last line of the poem, for the first time realized this is a poem about dying. This is a poem about a man watching his father die and he’s trying to tell him that it’s right for him to fight and scrape and claw against death because death is unnatural, and what is natural is to resist the encroaching darkness. I realized that just like Thomas' poem, Interstellar is a movie about dying.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It resonates with me. I myself sat next to my own father’s hospital bed as I watched him die. I too wrote a poem (it was awful but captured my heart) because I had no other outlet for what I was feeling. I hear in this poem the cry I wanted to let out but lacked the skill to actually pull off. The film is like sitting next to a dying mankind wishing to see it fight against a similar encroaching darkness. But in the end, Dylan Thomas' father, and my own father, both died, despite their fighting and clawing. What does that say for the human race in Interstellar?
Now, because Interstellar has this unavoidably naturalistic bent and almost begs you to think that this physical world is all there is (MINOR SPOILER: everything in the film ends up having a natural explanation), thinking about the film constantly gives me this encroaching sense that the light is dying, and there is no way, in natural terms, to stop it. We really will all die. The world will eventually fail us and we will fade like lights extinguished. We will not win the battle against the dying of the light. And even if utopia happens, and even if we find other planets to live on and create new life there, each and every one of us will die. Our light will go out. We get a finite number of years to exist, and that’s it. Even though the film tries to wax optimistic, its anti-supernatural undercurrent leaves the viewer, at the end of the day, convinced that he will not escape death and the light will not win. The film quotes Thomas' poem in an optimistic and motivating way. Maybe, perhaps there is some way that we will be able to keep the darkness of non-existence at bay, even for a day longer... but because naturalism can't answer mankind's deepest need for transcendent meaning, the optimism rings hollow.
In an odd way I am thankful for this sense of doom that comes with watching Interstellar. It gives us an existential taste of what the alternative to the message of the Gospel is. Naturalism says, "We can cheer ourselves up for the moment if we try very hard, but darkness is coming, and at the end of the day it will win. In naturalistic terms, the universe will die in the cold and the darkness, and we will all fade into non-existence." As T.S. Eliot said so well in his poem The Hollow Men:
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the end of naturalism. A hopeless whimper.
In the Gospel message Christ says, “Your life will end. You won’t win this fight (in this life) against the dying of the light. Not in physical terms. But believe in me, and I’ll give you new life, and you’ll find that I raged against the dying of the light so that when you lose that battle you’ll find the completion of the new life that I’ve given you fulfilled.”
All over the Christian world, critics are rising up to discuss Darren Aronofsky’s new film Noah. Alan Kurschner says the film is straight-up blasphemy. Ken Ham complains that recommending the movie, at all, conflicts with Christian consistency in arguing against abortion. Barbara Nicolosi says that the film contains “dumb, oversimplified liberal utopia nonsense." The list of complaints goes on.
Just to show that I’m not a huge fanboy (nor a full-on hater) of the film, before proceeding further, I’ll post my response when somebody, elsewhere, wanted to know what I thought of it (especially with reference to Nicolosi’s piece linked to above):
I just saw it a couple hours ago. I loved the first 2/3 of the movie. It was a visual spectacle. We may never see the flood rendered in such artistic beauty and simultaneous horror again. There were scenes reminiscent of Gustav Dore's pictures of judgment. I also didn't mind the rock people. I look at this film as another flood story comparable to the Epoch of Gilgamesh. It isn't accurate, but it is an opportunity to think about God's wrath, about coming judgment, and about the truth that God really did wipe mankind from the face of the earth because of its evil.
Also, the complaint that Noah is a left-wing "environmentalist" in the film ignores the fact that God placed Adam in the garden not to trash it and make it uninhabitable, but to have respect for it because he respected the creator. As Beale says in his New Testament Biblical Theology, Adam was placed in the garden to be a prophet, priest, and king. Part of his priestly duty was caring for the garden as well as the animals. The original environmentalist (properly defined, of course)! Frankly, the complaint that she makes calling it "oversimplified liberal utopia nonsense" shows that the one writing is more influenced by her own political tradition than what the Bible says about man's relationship to the creation.
But the last 1/3 of the movie? A true mess. The decision to turn Noah into the film's antagonist was an interesting but horrible decision. Aronofsky must have seen it as an opportunity to explore Noah's motives or something, but it just came off all wrong.
The story was already dark. Aronofsky made it unnecessarily darker. Although I sort of like the idea of a theatre full of nominally religious people looking for something "positive and encouraging" and instead being given an existential schooling. All in all, it was amazingly made, beautiful to behold, horrific in its depiction of judgment, and not such a great story by the end.
Although I’ve been interested in seeing the movie for years (ever since I heard it was being made) I am not a fanboy. I am critical of the film, but I try to criticize in a balanced way, keeping in mind that it is a movie and taking it for what it is intended to be. The criticisms I am seeing from many conservative bloggers (whom I do love and respect as my brothers and sisters in the Lord) remind me of the person who goes into McDonalds expecting a healthy, delicious, well-balanced meal containing all four food groups and then storming out in anger when they wonder why everything is greasy and there isn’t any tofu on the menu. The desire for good food is good, but they are looking for it in the wrong place!
Anybody who goes to see a movie (any movie)…a religious movie, a secular movie, a good movie, a bad movie… should not expect a heaping helping of truth. As with all art that is produced by sinners it’s going to get some stuff right and some stuff wrong (often intentionally so). Sometimes the art is self-consciously dumb like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. Sometimes it takes itself very seriously (think of Michaelangelo’s statue of David or every movie ever made by Christopher Nolan).
Furthermore, to accuse this movie of blasphemy seems a bit confused. Perhaps somebody wants to accuse Darren Aronofsky himself, personally, of blasphemy, but does he actually believe the things being depicted in the film? I doubt it. It's fiction. It doesn't say "based on a true story" in the credits. In fact, the only things that this movie and the Bible share in common are a flood and a few characters' names. I don’t think Aronofsky actually believes there were rock giants who protected Noah while he built the ark. He is a filmmaker, not a documentarian. A visual artist, not a journalist. A storyteller, not an eyewitness. And in the case of Noah, his storytelling is—I would concede—not in top form. The director himself claimed that this is the "least Biblical biblical film ever made." Some have taken this as an opportunity to condemn the film, but in fact it shows that there is a self-awareness that this movie isn't trying to present the actual story, but a radical rewriting. In point of fact, this movie has more in common with Lord of the Rings than anything we find in the Bible.
While I’m at it, I want to just mention in passing that comparing a book to a movie is like comparing a painting to a statue. It’s two completely different mediums—both art. To make a statue of the Mona Lisa might (and that's a huge "might") be interesting, but it would also be something completely different from the original—perhaps barely worthy of comparison.
I’m not interested in defending Noah as great art, or as an accurate religious statement. I don’t have to. It’s just a movie. It is not the preaching of the Word, it is not the Sacraments, and it is not prayer. These are the means that God has given his church for her edification and upbuilding. It is in these areas that Christians should demand theological integrity and where battle-lines should be drawn. If you are taking a youth group to this movie (or any movie) because you want them to be fed spiritually, you're out of your mind. (The same goes for taking them to Newsboys concerts as well, by the way.)
I’ve written previously that Christians expect too much from their music, and the same is true of movies. When you go to the Waffle House, expect waffles. When you go to the steak house, understand that they serve steak there. And when you go to a cinemaplex, whose walls are covered with posters with giant robots, wizards, and men shooting webs out of their hands, understand that this place is meant to do one thing well: entertain.
The summer after I graduated from High School was the most carefree and memorable time of my life. It was filled with camping and driving my truck all over Kansas with friends, listening to Tom Petty, and dreaming about the future. It was also the summer that I saw the film Gladiator. I was just a teenager. I'd never seen a real film epic. I didn't know what a proper film epic was like. The closest thing to an old Hollywood epic I'd seen was The Sound of Music. I saw Gladiator, and my favorite thing about the film was the triumphalism of it all. The movie gave you a bloodlust for Commodus, and in straightforward Hollywood fashion it was satisfied by the end. There was a triumphalism and a victory and something that gave me, as a young man launching in to the world, a sense that the world was also mine for the conquering. It sounds so dumb now, but that's really what the world looked like to me back then.
A year later I had an opportunity to see Lawrence of Arabia. By this time I'd had in my mind an impression of what a grand Hollywood epic would be like. The film was a huge disappointment to me. At first it was exciting, but the film ended with Lawrence very unhappy and broken. It didn't appeal to me because I wanted victory, clashing swords, and happy endings.
Soon after, I watched Ben-Hur (the one with Charleton Heston) and basically expected to see Gladiator again. I was shocked by how liberally Gladiator borrowed from Ben-Hur, and so I thought I could predict the film's formulaic ending, but was again disturbed when I realized this was a film that dwelt on the brokenness of its protagonist and dissatisfaction with the revenge that was being sought throughout the movie. This time, I got it. This time I understood that something was wrong with me. I wanted flashy Hollywood spectacle and considered something inferior that was actually offering a mature exploration of human brokenness.
As a young man, I wanted the flash and the victory. Now I'm in my thirties, and I know that doesn't make me a wisened old man, but I have had my share of both beautiful and painful experiences in life. I've been to my father's funeral. I've failed at things I've tried to do. I've held my baby boy in my arms as his last breath left his body. Even those closest to me don't realize I've wept great tears more times than I can count. Life hasn't been the way I thought it would be when I was a fresh-faced High School graduate. It's a beautiful and painful world we live in. Tonight, I watched Lawrence of Arabia again. Peter O'Toole is such an amazing actor, I became lost in his performance.
For the second time in my life I watched the part where Lawrence has to shoot the man he went back through the desert, risking his life to rescue - Gasim was his name. I don't know about the real T.E. Lawrence, but the Lawrence in this movie never recovered from the moment he had to shoot Gasim. He was never the same man. A hardness came upon him. He could never go back to being the person he was before. Maybe it wasn't wrong what he did - he was administering justice, after all. But it changed him, regardless.
The point I'm trying to make is that now I realize that life isn't Gladiator. We get hurt, and we don't always heal. We change and grow. We don't stay the same, and yet paradoxically we don't move on, either. Part of growing up involves experiencing life as it comes and having the perspective to see how you've grown through it without resentment or bitterness, trusting God's providence in it all. This is a lesson I wasn't ready for, coming out of High School. It's one I'm still trying to get used to.
[I offer the warning that this may be spoiler-ish.]
Having just seen Cloud Atlas, I was struck by several themes in the film and wanted to write about them. I must offer a preliminary caveat that I have not read the book which the film is based on. I also want to mention that I am not some sort of self-styled expert on this film and will not pretend to be. Having said that, this film is very good. The reaction by the people in the theatre when I went was quite positive, and everyone immediately started speculating as to the film’s meaning as they were walking down the aisles to exit the theatre. Films that cause us to think about ourselves, about death, about the universe, about fate, about meaning, and about our connection to our fellow human beings seem quite rare, and so when they do happen to come around, our ears should perk up. So having left Cloud Atlas, what did we hear?
For starters, the movie strikes me as the epitome of post-modern filmmaking and worldview. I have heard similar evaluations of the novel by David Mitchell. Frequent reference is made in the movie to “your truth,” “true truth,” “your version of the truth,” etc. In fact, the movie itself is a kaleidoscope of six different stories, all knit together into a single compelling narrative with the story cutting from one to the next. It becomes clear that each of these stories are connected to the others by way of storytelling/documentary narrative devices.
Some see this movie as promoting reincarnation, picturing each character as dying and being reincarnated into the other storylines that follow it chronologically. The reincarnation idea is too overt or obvious, however. The movie is mostly about storytelling, and that is why it concludes with Tom Hanks’ future man living on another planet telling his children and grand children these fantastical tales of this world he once knew like it was a memory. His final storytelling character (he plays six different characters) gives the story narrative unity. Everything that we see in the story is filtered through his narrative (a story within a story), though we weren’t aware of it until the last scene of the movie.
In other words, Cloud Atlas is meant to give us fallible retellings of every event we are seeing. And yet I doubt the filmmakers would say that what we are seeing on the screen is not true. Rather, the movie reflects a fundamental commitment to the idea that all truth is mediated and is therefore interpreted. Van Til would rejoice at this premise. However, since no truth-teller is infallible (Christians can think of one, of course), we are bound to get various versions of the same story.
The reincarnation theme is not, I think, a reflection of an overt belief in literal reincarnation. Rather, it is a reflection of the larger commitments of the filmmakers – namely materialism, determinism, and monism. These three systems are all mutually interlocking and interdependent. The Wachowskis, who wrote the story, are committed Nietzscheans who do not believe in any traditional definition of God. Further, the materialistic universe is fatalistically determined because of the absence of variables in the universe. For the filmmakers, everything is predetermined based on impersonal laws of physical causation. Ultimately, as well, everything in such a universe is one. There is no differentiating one type of matter from another, and so one is left with a universe that is all unity and no diversity.
The reincarnation theme is actually not a reincarnation theme, ultimately. Rather, it is a reflection of a monistic universe where all is one. This can sound abstract, but it preaches well and it is a thematically fulfilling sentiment in the context of the movie. Those who see the movie will notice that it opens and closes with the same shot of the stars. As I was leaving the theatre one woman hit the nail on the head (I admit it isn’t a difficult theme to spot in this movie) when she turned to her companion and said, “So really the movie is saying that we’re all connected to each other.” This is a rhetorically powerful theme, which has great force in our own day and age. In a sense it demands a response from those dissenting from the filmmakers’ larger project.
From the monistic perspective, all is neither good or bad, it simply is – matter in motion evolving and moving from one state of being to another. However, that isn’t even right, because in the end, even the “beingness” in one state cannot, given monism, be differentiated from the “beingness” of matter in another state. Monism isn’t self-defeating. It is self-absorbing. It becomes meaningless because the questions just soak into matter like a sponge absorbing water. Is there pain right now? Just wait – it will pass and be forgotten. Is there delight or joy right now? It’s only a matter of time before it becomes less than a memory.
The Christian perspective on this reincarnation theme is to assert on the basis of received revelation that God has spoken to us, and what he has told us is that he creates each of us at a point in time and that we did not exist before that, though he did. Our lives are linear, moving from conception to birth to death to the eternal state. In this film, the implicit lesson for the here and now is that we must treat one another with love, respect, and care because we are all connected. Early on in the movie, Ewing sees a slave being whipped. The slave looks up and stares at Ewing as if he knew him even though they had never met before. The lesson (if you want to impute such intention to the filmmakers) is that this slave, Mr. Ewing, is you. Mr. Ewing ought to become an abolitionist because he and the slave are one – they are more than connected – they are one another, just like all of us.
From a Christian perspective, we agree. Of course, this agreement comes with some caveats. We are one with one another by way of our relationship to the first man – Adam. We are not to be identified with one another directly, however, though our lives are interconnected and do have an impact one another and on future generations which follow. Our motive for treating one another rightly is related to the common divine image that we all share. The writers of scripture refer to the image of God as motive for treating others as they ought to be treated (James 3:9). This leaves open the possibility of our being kind to one another without compromising our own personal identity and while avoiding the many contraditctory problems of monism.
In the end, Cloud Atlas is a beautiful, compelling, exciting movie that is bound to leave theatregoers profoundly confused. There are other issues to discuss in the movie (and in terms of content, I definitely recommend viewers check out the content advisory at the film's IMDB parental content page), but I wanted to touch on the most core metaphysical issues in this film. The movie was gripping, beautifully shot, absolutely fascinating from beginning to end (even with a near 3-hour running time!), and well-acted. My guess is there will be dissertations and books written about his film in the years to come, (but hopefully there won’t be any misguided books titled The Gospel According to Cloud Atlas). It is my hope that Christians will learn to express their own worldview in as winsome and compelling a way as the Wachowskis have done in this film.
This week I went with my wife to see The Vow. In the film, a wife (Paige) emerges from a coma forgetting who her husband (Leo) is. He spends the film trying to win her back and trying to learn how to love this new woman his wife has become. For my own part, I liked the movie. It wasn't great filmmaking, but I was partial to the soundtrack (some prominent songs by The National) and found myself somewhat absorbed by the whole concept of a man trying to get his wife, who has forgotten him, to love him again.
In reflecting on the film, I was reminded of the first chapter of Walker Percy's book Lost in the Cosmos. In the book, Percy spends time exploring man's self-alienation and desire to escape from himself. Percy appreciates that this is a somewhat modern phenomenon (Percy rightly observes that there was no word in the ancient world for 'boredom,' for example). Why is it that man so strongly desires to not be himself? Percy asks. In particular, Percy spends some time getting his reader to reflect on the usage of amnesia as a plot device in movies.
A variant of the amnesic-plot device is the inadvertent return of the amnesiac to home territory, where he is welcomed by a lovely woman, unknown to him, who is evidently his wife. The crucial scene is his being led off to bed... The source of pleasure for the moviegoer is not the amnesia but the certified and risk-free license to leave the old self behind and enter upon a new life, whether by amnesia or mistaken identity.
There is, indeed, a similar scene in The Vow whereLeo decides to take Paige out on a date and try to get her to remember him. Though they have been married for years, here they end up sleeping together and spending the night as a brand new couple who barely know one another. The viewer is, of course, tantalized to a certain degree at the newness of all of this, but then they keep reminding themselves that these two people are married. Percy should have stopped writing brilliant novels and worked on some screenplays.
The Vow has been a popular movie, and I understand that the movie was 'inspired' (loosely) by a true story. But I think Percy is on to something in his comments. People go to movies to find an escape. In many respects, there is something romantically intriguing about a tale where a woman wakes up with license to throw away the encumbrances of the decisions made for a half decade. After all, she has no choice in the matter - she has amnesia. What person does not - on some level - want to abandon their life only to experience the life she knows from a new perspective? Recall at the end of the movie 50 First Dates. Drew Barrymore wakes up in a strange bed, on a boat. She watches a video summarizing her life up to that point and being told that she has a daughter and she should come above deck to meet her family she has made anew for another day. Every day for her is new. Every day is a delight and discovering of the new.
One of the keys to living a life of joy (and I stress this is not the only or even the best key) is choosing to see each moment from Drew Barrymore's perspective in that movie - only without the amnesia. I quote Chesterton now:
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
What we need is not to lose our memory in order to reclaim the joy of life. What we need is perspective. "And he is before all things, and by him all things consist" (Col. 1:17). I turn to Jonathan Edwards:
It is plain, nothing can exert itself, or operate, when and where it is not existing [because] what is past entirely ceases when present existence begins…it does no more co-exist with it, than it does any other moment that had ceased twenty years ago.
There is a reason why God every morning cries out, "Again!" It is because the Sun cannot speak for itself. It does not have the power of self-sustenance. Every moment is anew. We have become bored of God's continuous work in creation, not because we understand it, but because we have ceased to understand it.
Take Shelter is not easily summarized. It is about a man named Curtis who continues to have nightmares which always seem to include stormy skies, lightning, and tornadoes. As the film proceeds along, the dreams become increasingly vivid. Curtis responds by building an expensive storm shelter, which becomes the center of the tale in a lot of ways.
Michael Shannon is a fantastic actor. Many of you may remember him for his role in Revolutionary Road as John Givings, the mentally troubled son of the Wheelers' neighbor. Shannon really blew me away in that movie, but in his newest film, Take Shelter, he completely unsettled me and moved me very deeply. If there is one thing Michael Shannon does well as an actor it is 'unsettled to the point of explosion'. That is most certainly his specialty.
Take Shelter is hard to categorize. Is it psychological horror? Is it family drama? Is it personal allegory? My take is, it's all of these things when viewed from different angles.
I don't wish to spoil the ending, but I was moved to tears by the climactic decision which Shannon's Curtis has to make. This surprised me since I spent most of the film a bit on-edge and - well, unsettled. I was not prepared for my own response to what was taking place in the movie. In the end, I was struck by Curtis' resolve to do whatever it took, in spite of what everyone said, to do what he could to protect his family from what he understood to be great danger. Too often, our willingness as Christians to really commit to follow Christ is shaped a great deal by how our radical decisions will be seen by others. Often we pull punches and soft-pedal because the world is watching and we want their approval. In this film, Curtis does whatever he can, even if it means being alienated from those around him, because he believes danger is approaching.
I am not saying that Christians should be as paranoid or afraid as Curtis is in this film, but I am saying that we could use a dose of Curtis' resolve and follow-through. If we (for purpose of illustration) believe that the wages of sin is death, and we really believe it, what would that really look like? Would our commitment to waging war on sin in our own lives and the life of our family look like lunacy to the watching world? Would we ultimately care whether people thought we were crazy?
One other aspect of the film which struck me was the importance of a good wife. In this movie, Curtis' wife, Samantha (wonderfully played by Jessica Chastain in her seventh movie to be released last year) is a much needed rock for Curtis. She becomes his anchor of reality in the movie and strikes me as a Proverbs 31 woman. She is a church-going woman, whereas Curtis is not. She and her family appear to frequently invite him to church, but it is evidently a sore subject which the family appears to be reticent to continuously struggle with him over. She makes things and sells them to help support the family and cares very much for their hearing-impaired daughter. When he is unable to cope with decision-making because of his own deterioration, she becomes a woman of action. In the end, she demonstrates great wisdom in understanding what Curtis needs to do if he is ever to overcome his fear of what he believes is impending doom.
Ultimately, this movie is more something that stands on its own than a lesson for Christians or a sermon-illustration in the making. It is a picture of a troubled man seeking to understand himself, of a family that hangs together through resolution and commitment rather than feeling or sentimentality, and in so many ways it is a fantastic example of what a film ought to be.
[This film is rated R for language. There is no sexual content whatsoever.]
There is no other movie out there that I have triple-dipped for before except this one. I used to own it on VHS, and I wore out my copy til it became nigh unwatchable. Then I bought it on DVD and watched it too many times to count, although it bore nary a scratch because it was beloved to me. Finally, for my birthday my wife got me the Criterion Edition Blu-Ray of it (probably the greatest looking film ever seen on Blu-Ray, it is reference quality and sets the standard for all film transfers, as far as I'm concerened), and I watch it constantly. In the last six months I've owned it, I've probably watched it five or six times. I do not tire of it. I have nearly memorized every scene and every line of this movie. I have owned both discs of the soundtrack for the film and listened to them obsessively. I have purchased and read the book by James Jones which the movie was based on. I cannot say the same of any other movie. Watching it becomes a ritual for me, where I turn out the lights, pull my chair up five feet from the TV, and just get lost in the greatest film of all time. It's been my favorite since I first saw it in 1998.
I was a junior in high school. I bought an old used copy on VHS from Blockbuster. I had never seen it, but for $3 I could ignore the fact that the case for the movie was long gone. I took it home, watched it, and was mystified. I thought this was supposed to be a war movie, but instead I found an abstract exploration of sin, death, violence, and God. Holy cow, so I watched it again. The second time, I tuned the world out and became lost in the glory. A third time. It was all coming together; I was tasting something beautiful in the universe. Progressively as I've watched this film I have always gleaned something new. It's a masterpiece. A masterpiece. I'm gushing.
As a high school junior, I was way too shut up in my little town with my little sophomoric worries. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted friends. I wanted a better truck. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to go to college and become somebody - anybody. I knew there was a world out there, but it felt so far away. All I felt when I looked around me was concrete, wheat fields, closed up storefronts - reminders of a bygone time that was good and once rang of prosperity and success. This was the town I came from, and I'll never forget it because it provided the context for my delight in The Thin Red Line.
Here was a film which did not pass by on the screen, but screamed at me that there was a larger reality and that I should not identify it with myself. I became inflamed with a desire to enjoy the world, to not pass up the delights of flowers, of clouds, of the touch of a girl's hand. After watching The Thin Red Line, I knew that these things were real in more than just a "my life is a TV show" sense. I saw the universe, I saw what I had been missing, and I resolved that whether I died today or tomorrow or 50 years from now, it could not be denied that I lived.
The film injected a poetry into everyday life which I still enjoy. I will often go on a walk and remind myself to savor this moment as though it were my last. Although I have since heard this sentiment echoed by Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, and John Piper, I learned it from all of these men in the context of a post-Thin-Red-Line world. A world after I had seen this film. It became my reference point for finding the beauty in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. The film addresses specific theological matters without ever really speaking of God. The strength of what the film does is, it denies the possibility of comprehending the world apart from God, much like director Terrence Malick would later do with his potential (I haven't decided yet and won't for a decade) magnum opus The Tree of Life.
In the end, it doesn't matter if I convince you. I probably won't. Either you're one of those people who hate this movie, or you agree with me that it's a filmmaking masterpiece. Maybe you're like Gene Siskel and think it's "the greatest contemporary war film I've ever seen." In that case, I'm with you, providing you'll remove the "contemporary war" qualifier. Or maybe you're like a group of my friends I invited over to watch it with the other evening who seemed almost completely mystified by it. In that case, you still need to see it a second or third time.
In the end, I really don't care. The film made it's mark on me, and it's still making its mark on me. Yes, it really is the greatest film ever made. I'll get in a fist-fight defending that claim.
Best dialogue from The Thin Red Line:
Witt: I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be like when I died, what it'd be like to know this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw. I just hope I can meet it the same way she did, with the same... calm. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.
Welsh: In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one.
Storm: I look at that boy dyin', I don't feel nothin'. I don't care about nothin' anymore.
Welsh: Sounds like bliss.
Witt: We were a family. How'd it break up and come apart, so that now we're turned against each other? Each standing in the other's light. How'd we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What's keepin' us from reaching out, touching the glory?
Train: Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.
Witt: Do you ever feel lonely?
Welsh: Only around people.
Welsh: There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.
Bell: Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.
Train: What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.
Bell: Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. If I go first, I'll wait for you there, on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now.
Witt: War don't ennoble men. It turns them into dogs... poisons the soul.
2. Ben-Hur It is an epic classic and perhaps a bit too obvious of a choice for anybody's list of great films, but this film does have a special place in my heart. When I was 17 years old, Christ found me out and I became a follower of Jesus. My life was totally changed, and I saw everything differently. I'll never forget the true excitement of celebrating my first Christmas after abandoning atheism and finding the true Creator. There's just nothing replacing that period of my life.
A few months into my new life, I decided to watch Ben-Hur. I knew nothing about it. Nothing. I only knew that it had a chariot race, and that many regarded it as one of the greatest films of all time. As I watched, I became slack-jawed as I realized that this beautiful film epic was actually a movie about Jesus. I really couldn't believe it.
As I watched this story of revenge unfold before me, I was thrilled by its epic quality, blown away by Charleton Heston's voice, and moved by the tale I was seeing. The scene where Ben-Hur falls to the ground because the Romans will not give him a drink, you feel true despair and empathetic thirst. But when Jesus comes and he drinks deeply from Christ's cup you not only feel the symbolism, you sense that Jesus is the only one in this crazy, cruel story who really brings any hope. I still shake tearfully when I watch that scene. But Christ seems so peripheral to the story that you almost wonder if the subtitle "A tale of the Christ" is really appropriate. But of course you'd be wrong.
You really feel that if only Judah Ben-Hur could have his revenge, everything really would be solved. And those around Ben-Hur feel it too. At one point, Ester says to Judah, "It was Judah Ben-Hur I loved. What has become of him? You seem to be now the very thing you set out to destroy, giving evil for evil! Hatred is turning you to stone. It is as though you had become Messala!"
In this sense this film really is the anti-Gladiator. Whereas revenge satisfies Maximus (not for long, of course), Judah is a bit too thoughtful to settle for spilling his enemy's blood. He tries it at first, to be sure, but it is an empty and shallow victory. Once revenge is taken and you think that a resolution has been found, the movie keeps going. We soon see that Ben-Hur has no peace. In one of my favorite lines from any movie, Judah Ben-Hur takes a drink from a river and says, "When the Romans were marching me to the galleys, thirst had almost killed me. A man gave me water to drink, and I went on living. I should have done better if I'd poured it into the sand...I'm thirsty still."
The fact that Ben-Hur only finds peace by encountering the crucified Lord felt like the most truthful conclusion of any movie I've ever seen. Many times we get a taste of the truth, but it felt like Ben-Hur gave us the whole truth. In one sense, what more could you ask for from any movie?
The movie is filled with beautiful lines. During Christ's crucifixion Balthasar says, "I have lived too long." At one point, Ben-Hur's leprous mother and sister are leaving their cave and Miriam says, "I'm afraid," to which Esther replies, "No cause. The world is more than we know." In another line which still brings tears to my eyes, Christ is passing Ben-Hur carrying the cross to which Ben-Hur says, "I know this man!" I don't know why that line gets me, but it does every time.
Ultimately, this film made a tremendous impression on me at a very important time in my life, just like the other two movies on this list. I was encouraged in my discipleship by it, I was convinced that only Jesus brought real and lasting peace to the wounded heart, and most importantly, I glorified Jesus as I watched it and whenever I remember it. I always appreciated that they never showed Jesus face as well, although it's hard to deny that their Jesus looks an awful lot like a western european non-Jew.
In the end, finding the movies that will make the most impact on us are a crap-shoot. You don't really know until a century passes what has and hasn't affected the way you think and how you process the things you encounter in life. A friend asked me if The Tree of Life was my new favorite movie and all I could say was, "I'll tell you in ten years."
Coming tomorrow: My favorite movie of all time and the one film that has had the greatest impact on my life.
I know it sounds like a bold claim - the kind of claim somebody only makes about something they're trying to sell and they know you don't want. But in the case of the three movies that we will discuss over the next few days, it's all true. You see, I watched them as a teenager, and frankly they changed the way that I saw the world and well, I still love them. What I want to do is discuss them, talk about what made them so wonderful, and maybe address what it was about the films that made such an impression on me.
3. Blade Runner I was 15 years old, shopping in the "city" away from my small town where I grew up. While going through the video store I saw Blade Runner on VHS and bought it on a whim. (Seriously, what were they doing selling an R-rated movie to a 15 year old!?) $25 was a sick price to pay, and I have no idea why I bought it, but I did. All my friends were annoyed that there was a black bar at the top and bottom of the screen - they'd never seen a movie with that before. I tried telling them that we were seeing more of the film, but they didn't care - they wanted the picture to fill the screen.
What struck me most deeply about Blade Runner was the fantastically dirty and "used" feeling that Ridley Scott's future of 2019 had. For me, the film was all about atmosphere. I still love the shot of the futuristic chinatown with the flying cars, and I could watch the opening scene with the landscape of LA, the fire rising from the refineries, and the flaming eye over and over again. I was captivated by the idea that a robot could possibly be a person and for a short while I obsessed over finding a way to "know" beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not a robot. I had inadvertently picked the director's cut of the movie and so had no idea that there was ever a "happy ending" to this movie. When I finally saw the happy ending (with the atrocious voice-over delivered maliciously by an unenthusiastic Harrison Ford) I was so glad that I hadn't seen the theatrical version first. If I had, I'd probably never have fallen in love with the dank, wet, neon landscape of noire Los Angeles, 2019.
After seeing the film, I purchased the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and read it through (twice, I think). I played the PC game through at least three times. It barely ran on my Hewlett Packard 133MHz Pentium. I bought the soundtrack at a Premium and became infatuated with the electronic music of Vangelis. His music transported me to neon cityscapes of unimaginable beauty. Never mind that they weren't real - as I sat in my basement bedroom in my boring small town, I traveled to amazing places because of Vangelis.
A few years later I got a DVD player and along with it my first DVD copy of Blade Runner. Finally, when I made the move to HD, Blade Runner: The Final Cut was the first movie I purchased on Blu-Ray. All in all, it's hard to imagine what kind of a person I would be if I hadn't seen Blade Runner. I know it's an outrageous claim, but it is a fact that my imagination has been greatly stimulated and inspired by this film. On top of all that, and most importantly, it brought me the earliest sparks of philosophical self-reflection which eventually drove me to Christ. Until I pondered my own existence because of the existential questions that I struggled over after seeing this movie, I was a fairly shallow (though I remained consistently self-absorbed) young man. It helped make me the man I am today.
A few years ago I found out that Harrison Ford hated making this movie - that he was miserable during the whole shoot and that he would never work with Ridley Scott again after his experience. I found it so unbelievable that I still refuse to accept it as truth. Frankly, how could anyone be miserable, having been in the coolest, awesomest, deepest, most imaginative movie ever made!?
So that's the third most influential movie in my life. Tomorrow, we'll talk about number two.
This is not a movie review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I'll skip past all of that typical review stuff where I recount the plot of the story, because the trailer [above] really does a pretty good job of outlining the story. I will only say that a few months ago when I saw the trailer I seriously thought this would be the worst movie of the whole summer. In my arrogant way, I thought I knew a stink bomb when I saw it; but I was wrong. Far from it, Planet of the Apes is a great, great, great movie. Not Tree of Life great, but maybe The Dark Knight great. Go see it. It's probably my favorite thing that's happened all summer - and that includes the conclusion of Harry Potter.
What I want to point out is not what this movie says about humans or monkeys, but what people will think this movie says about personhood. As you watch this movie, you relate to the main Chimpanzee, Caesar. You watch him grow, you relate to him, you empathize with him; I even shed a tear when he spoke his first word. (A moment not to be lost, I heard exclamations from people all over the theatre in the moment after it happened.) You sense the personhood coming through in the movie, because the CG and motion capture and just the technology in general is so advanced. In the end, I believe that Caesar, for all intents and purposes would be judged by your average viewer to most certainly qualify as a person. Even I, sitting there, was thinking, "That ape is a person!"
And here's where the important part comes in. What does this say about our conception of what a person is? In the film, the only thing that happens to the apes is that they become more intelligent - super intelligent. That's it, and suddenly they become persons. And so that's where the conversation needs to take place, I think. Just as in secularism, the solution is simply education and knowledge. If only those two things could occur, the secularist thinks, then the problems of the world and the ills which beset humanity could be cured. (Read G.K. Chesterton if you want to see this vision of secular salvation lampooned.) Many will come away from this movie reflecting on the notion of personhood and personality and the mistaken impression they will come away with is the idea that all it takes is intelligence and any animal can rise to the level of personhood.
I remember a few years ago hearing the story of Lucy Temerlin. Lucy grew up in a human home and was raised like any human child with one exception - she wasn't human, she was an ape. She grew to cook for herself, speak sign language, befriend her owners - she even grew to only be sexually attracted to humans. Her story reminded me a great deal of Caesar's storyline in the film - in fact, I kept thinking of Lucy almost the entire time I was watching Apes. Anyway, Lucy's story was tragic and saddening. As she grew, it became apparent that she was too strong to live with the humans, but she hadn't the slightest idea how to relate with other apes - in fact, they terrified her. She thought they were some kind of monsters. She grew to live in this intermediate state where she had the semblance of human emotions and pathos, she appeared to be a person, and yet self-reflection always seemed to be just a step beyond her. Eventually, Lucy was sent to an animal reserve where she never really belonged. Her hair fell out, she became malnourished, she didn't know how to care for herself or hunt for food. Years later, Lucy was found dead in the ape reserve.
[If you want to know more, Act Two of episode 401 of This American Life deals with the tale more in depth]
After I first heard this story, it occurred to me immediately that this was a creature who was taught to go through the externals of personhood. Shake hands. Make tea. Don't poop in the living room. Hug your owner. Communicate what you're thinking. Wear people clothes.
All of these things are wholly remarkable, if for no other reason than the fact that these behaviors are all unheard of to most of us. We hear these things and we think, "Well of course they're persons! They do all the things that we do!" Such a response shows what a shallow notion of personhood we really have. What an externalistic way of defining personhood! What is it - what is the one ingredient that Lucy was missing? Why did she always seem to be one step from finding the glory and being at peace? It's the soul. It's the one component that modern man desires to discard from the equation because even if he does like to think that man has one, he also wants to think that animals have them too. Christians often buy into this line of thinking as well. Just do a Google search for "Do animals have" and see how Google completes your entry.
In the end, even Christians are all too quick to think that if an animal shows affection or emotion or shows itself to be extremely intelligent, then it must be some sort or person. Or maybe, just maybe, if my terrier cuddles with me while I watch Mike & Molly, then nobody can tell me that my dog doesn't have a soul. Christians seem reticent to offer a direct answer to this. And maybe this is very unpastoral of me, but it's time we cease tiptoeing around animal lovers' feelings on this subject, and say point blank: your animal doesn't have a soul. It may be special, and it may be cuddly, and it may even have emotions. But just like Lucy, and just like Caesar, they will never be a "living soul" like man is, created uniquely by God Himself and endowed with God's image, no matter how intelligent any animal becomes - terrier or ape - they will always be bound to external behaviors which do not proceed from a living soul.
If there is one thing which I think Planet of the Apes will do, it is provoke debates and questions about personhood. But as Christians, lets be careful to realize that the movie teaches us nothing about men or apes - it tells us everything about what we think of men and apes.
Having spent years anticipating the day I could finally watch The Tree of Life, I was privileged a few weeks ago to be able to see it. At the time, I felt a bit shell shocked by the film. It's not that it isn't what I expected at all - I love Malick's filmmaking, and I expected the sort of movie that I saw. I guess I just felt a bit speechless. And so my "review" of the film after the fact was sort of a series of scattered thoughts. Today, I wanted to go back and paint my impressions of the film with a bit of a broader brush.
Every frame of the movie is worth talking about. Whether it is the beautiful sorrow of the opening minutes of the film as Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien discover that their son (now grown) has died, whether it is the stunning creation sequence which stretches on for at least twenty minutes, or whether it is the somewhat enigmatic closing minutes of the film - this is a movie that is absorbed and not learned or studied.
I have said before that if you want propositional content spoon-fed to you, we have theological tomes, sermons, and helpful commentaries on Scripture galore. This is not the primary purpose of art. Art is there to remind us of the value of the propositions which we have already learned and to cause us to treasure them more deeply. Many Christians will be tempted to enter the thoughtful environment of The Tree of Life expecting a certain level of propositional truth - and they will be disappointed and probably confused.
In the end, TOL is not about telling us the truth so much as it is about soaking us in the weight and beauty of the universe so that we realize that it is the big picture reality which permeates everything we do - from childhood to death. Most of society is geared towards making us forget this. We live in a loud and distracting society, and in a way, TOL is a picturesque reminder of the glory all around us that we drown out with pop music, comedy, explosions, politics, and other pursuits. What TOL reminded me of is how easily I forget the things which first drew me to the Christian faith. Meditating upon creation, eternity, the nature of God, the depth of human sin, our serious need of a savior, and the guilt which follows all of us and which mankind desperately struggles to part ways with.
When I was 17 years old, I read a book called The Fingerprint of God by Hugh Ross. At the time, I was an atheist who believed in the big bang but who had no idea just how saturated the big bang really was in theistic implications. Ross showed me in his book that my belief in the big bang necessitated a designer and a creator. In a moment, God used Ross' book to open my eyes to the God revealed in the big bang, and within a few months, I submitted my life and soul to His care and recognized Jesus as 'my Lord and my God.'
This film, in many respects, rekindled my awe and wonder at the Creator which I felt after I first read Ross' book and I first believe that God really was the Creator and Maker of all things. Sometimes, all we need is a reminder - and if there is one thing that sums up TOL it is the notion of reclaiming memories. The whole film drifts towards us like a series of recollections trying to be grasped at, but remembered somewhat inaccurately (think of the scenes where Jack remembers Mrs. O'Brien as literally floating on air as she dances in the family's front yard). Even the scenes of the Creation represent the memories of the Creator (or maybe Jack's own imagination of the creation - things are somewhat ambiguous), showing us an event which only the Godhead was present to see in the moments of first light when the universe came into existence from nothing, when God "laid the earth’s foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Memories are important because they are rooted in the truth, and they are the ground of who we are and where we came from. Even the opening chapters of Genesis are God taking His memory (if we are permitted to anthropomorphically refer to an atemporal Creator as having a memory) and telling us in words which He knew we could comprehend, how it was that He did all of this.
All of this description of the film is a grasping at straws, really. Rather than summing up the story of the film, I hoped in some measure to communicate the deeper ideas and emotions which the film communicated to me. Everyone will respond differently to the film. In fact, I'm rather enjoying reading the myriad of reviews for this film which have been popping up online, because the film is so open-ended and aesthetic that nearly every reviewer has a different take on the movie. Has it dethroned The Thin Red Line as my favorite movie of all time? We'll just have to see. The biggest test is whether I will still love it a decade from now, as I still do with The Thin Red Line.
Watch it in HD. It's probably my favorite clip taken from The Tree of Life (though the clips are in a different order than I remember). The song, by Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, is titled "Lacrimosa." I've thought long and hard about this since seeing the film, and I think that part of the reason such a mournful song (lacrimosa means "weeping" in latin) accompanyies the creation of the universe goes back to the film's theme. In The Tree of Life, the dominant theme is meaning and purpose in suffering and evil. In keeping with this, as I see it (the film's so esoteric that I keep needing to make these qualifiers), even the creation of the universe has a bittersweet "weeping" quality to it. After all, the Creator knows the end from the beginning. The creation has a beautiful purpose (to reflect God's glory), but yet even in the creation of the universe, so much sorrow and sin lies ahead for the creation that there is ultimately sorrow, joy, and beauty all bound up together in God's perfect act. Personally, I would have chosen something more explicitly joyful, but I can appreciate what Malick was doing and saying by using Preisner's hauntingly beautiful score for this part of the film.
[Upon further inspection, this video appears to be 100% shots from the movie, but rearranged and with the correct music laid over the images. I'm guessing this was made by a fan at some point. There's actually a much higher quality version of the creation clips from the film for download over at HD Trailers.]
It almost feels impossible to do anything resembling a "review" of The Tree of Life. That's what I said to my friends when I left the theater last night. I mean, I've waited so long to see it. Ever since the project was announced, I thrilled at the idea of seeing Terrence Malick tackling the creation and meaning of the universe. Years and years passed by, and finally I got to see it last night. The fulfillment of a decade's worth of anticipation.
At the theater the ticket girl warned me that they've been issuing a lot of refunds to people who, I guess, wanted a more conventional drama. As it is, I can't see most Americans having any patience for a film this meditative, esoteric, and philosophical.
The film was more thrilling and beautiful than I ever could have imagined it would be. Since I have been somewhat reticent as of late to actually do reviews of the movies I enjoy, I'm going to follow my more recent pattern of just doing a point by point discussion of the things I noticed about the film.
1. The movie was more theologically oriented than I expected. While The Thin Red Line was an asthetic experience that prompted viewers to ask themselves the big questions of life and evil and war, The Tree of Life was more upfront in its insistence that there is meaning in the universe and that there is a creator who reaches out to His creation.
2. Some reviewers seem to have taken to interpreting the film in an almost purely philosophical framework. I will admit that simply looking at the film as a piece of theology is not completely adequate, but the movie cannot be understood in strictly abstract categories. (One of the best, most detailed reviews I've seen is here. I don't agree with the reviewer's general indifference to theism, but he has not let any of the Old Testament symbolism get past him, which I greatly appreciate.) Without a theistic outlook - and especially (at the end of the day) the Christian one, where grace is ever present, then the film becomes merely a textbook on Heiddegger. The film itself has a tremendous amount of Bible in it. As I recall, the film opens with a passage from Job, and I recall after young Jack commits a sin he essentially recites Romans 7:19-20 word for word. I'm pretty sure I heard some Dostoevsky and Thomas a'Kempis in the film as well. I know there was more, but I really should have taken a notebook and pen when I was watching.
2. The film opens with Job 38:4, 7: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" So the film opens with God asking the question of where you were. The mirror question is reflected throughout the film as the characters via esoteric (that word will probably be overused) voiceovers witness the death of a boy at a swimming pool. Characters often ask God, "Where were you?" A common lament. But the core of the film remains God's insistence from Job 38:4, 7, that He laid the foundations of the earth and that it is He who owes no response to humanity but Himself.
3. After one of the boys dies, their grandmother attempts to comfort by offering all that she has - tired cliches which bring no comfort at all. "Life Goes on...the Lord gives and the Lord takes away...Time heals all wounds...Nothing stays the same...At least you have the other two boys..." The acting in the film is so skillful on the part of Jessica Chastain that I felt a tremendous desire to have answers to these questions without cliches or mantras - and also to simply know when to comfort with words and when to shut up.
4. The creation sequences of the film were among the finest and most beautiful things I have ever seen on the big screen. It's even more amazing to consider that these things happened so long ago, and only God was there at the time to see it. He created for His own pleasure - what a thought.
5. Emmanuel Lubezki deserves an Oscar for his work on this film. I'm just saying, it's amazing cinematography.
6. A very insightful friend of mine came to the film with me. He knew nothing about the director, Terrence Malick, and had never seen any of Malick's films before. When the film was done he asked if he was an Episcopalian. I said yes, that's exactly what he is (Malick attends an Episcopal church in Austin, TX). When I asked him how he knew he said he couldn't put his finger on it; it just seemed like the kind of movie that his Episcopalian friends from college would have really enjoyed.
I'm going to stop here, but I plan to see the film in theatres again in the very near future - perhaps then I will have more thoughts to share.
There are some things worth getting excited about: the return of Christ is paramount, but we do have some second tier pleasures that we can be justified in anticipating. Exhibit A: Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. December 14th, 2012 cannot get here fast enough. Entertainment Weekly has two more photos on their website.
If you haven't seen The Adjustment Bureau yet, that's okay, but don't read this. You really ought to watch the film since it's pretty good, pretty exciting, and quite thought provoking. Way too many people have written very thoughtful analyses of the film for me to attempt the same thing here, but I did have a few spoilery random thoughts about the movie:
1. I couldn't decide if The Chairman in this film was the god of Open Theism or Molinism. Maybe someone could spell it out for me. Either way he seemed quite to be completely in time, he most certainly did not possess absolutely foreknowledge, and he appeared quite adept at handling counterfactuals.
2. I couldn't help but think that the Chairman is exactly what modern Americans (and yes, many Christians today) think God is really like. They think that they are absolutely free and all that God can do is tweak things here and there and can do anything except mess with their free will.
3. I liked Thompson's statement that there is no free will, "only the appearance of free will." Depending on how you define free will, he's absolutely right. That's why you've got to get your definition of free will right from the very beginning. Within the film's framework, they were operating on the Libertarian definition of free will, as I understand it ("one is free if and only if one could have chosen otherwise"). A Compatiblist could not make Thompson's statement.
4. If I had been Thompson with my Calvinistic Compatiblism under my belt, I would have told Norris, "Who cares why you do what you do? Isn't the most important thing that you want to do it? We haven't stopped you from doing what you want to do so far, have we?"
5. I love (sarcastically speaking) how the immanence of the divine is so emphasized that we've all met the Chairman at some point as a he/she/it. The god of this movie is so immanent that there is almost no room for the deity to still be conceived of in transcendent terms. Hence, the movie ends with the Chairman completely writing a whole new plan (which will probably have to be discarded down the line...).
6. Americans will love this movie. Actually, correction: sinful human beings would love to think that the Chairman is really like he appears to be in this film. The god of this movie is in many churches around the world, and that makes me sad.
7. It's rare to see a film today tackle tricky subjects like free will and predestination, and for that, I do offer kudos to writer/director George Nolfi.
8. This doesn't have to do with the movie, but it does have to do with the trailer. I give the trailer for the movie a ten out of ten rating because it uses "Adagio in D Minor," which is my favorite musical piece in the history of the universe.
Click here to read Michael Horton's review of Terrence Malick's film The Tree of Life. The bad part about living in the middle of Kansas is that I still haven't seen this movie weeks after its going into limited release. I hope to share my thoughts on the film soon, but until then check out what Horton has to say.
“The Tree of Life” is a stunning visual experience that weaves big questions about God, evil, and the meaning of life with a family and its setting so concrete in its details that you can’t help but sympathize with all of the characters. As a Christian parent especially, it reminded me once again how powerfully our father-images shape our experience of God, for better and for worse—not just on the surface, but in the depth of things.
I haven't made it much of a secret that I'm very excited about Terrence Malick's film The Tree of Life. My curiosity was certainly piqued when I read this section of one reviewer who saw the film at the Canne film festival.
If it sounds like I'm saying that "The Tree of Life" is a puzzler, that it blends uncanny clarity and extraordinary powers of perception with what sometimes seems like murky, pretentious chaos and that it's suffused with a spiritual and even religious sensibility that will provoke an allergic response in quite a few viewers, you're on the right track....
Actually, the questions Malick is pursuing in "The Tree of Life" are simple, even purposefully naive ones that have plagued human beings since the beginning of time. It's his method of asking and answering them that is both highly aestheticized and likely to provoke controversy. (I won't discuss the end of the film, but implausible as this may sound, "The Tree of Life" may appeal to more adventurous Christian viewers.) They range from "the microscopic story of a family in a small town in Texas" to "the macroscopic story of the birth of the cosmos," as Brad Pitt put it at the press conference.
I know that my many friends who prefer the less artsy and visual films may not appreciate this, after all we Reformed are known for our delight in objective, logical, straightforward facts. However, I could probably be classified as one of those "adventurous Christian viewers" who will probably really appreciate this film. I tend to like Malick's subjective style, and since he is consistently unwilling to do interviews or offer interpretations of his films, I always feel at liberty to read my Christian worldview into his work. Plus, the fact that he does attend an Episcopal church in Texas, where he lives makes me think that there may be a sort of broadly Christian worldview being projected by this film (albeit, one that includes theistic evolution). A review will be forthcoming in a few weeks. Until then, I will wait very impatiently.
Black Death enjoyed a very limited release in theaters, and very quickly appeared on DVD and Blu-Ray. I was initially a little reticent to see Black Death. Uber-gritty, gory horror-type films just aren't up my alley, and I must admit that after reading some reviews of this film, I decided that this movie was something more than just a cheap exploitation flick. Plus, it looked a little bit like that awful Nick Cage movie Season of the Witch. I went into this film still expecting a disgusting, thoughtless movie and left having enjoyed a complex exploration of religious violence and the things that motivate people - Christian and pagan alike.
[The following trailer has what I would call "PG" language in it at the very beginning]
That's not to say that this film by Christopher Smith is interested in accurately representing the theological motivations of 14th century witch hunters, or that the film is a fair exploration of plague-era European paganism. Instead, this is a movie about the reality that every time we think we find the penultimate wickedness within another, we miss that it is really within our own hearts to at least the same degree.
In the movie, which takes place during the height of the plague, the knight Ulrich is sent by the Church to investigate a village on the edge of a swampland that has not been touched by the plague. Supposedly, the village may be using black magic to keep the disease from encroaching on their town. A monk named Osmund joins the journey, and interestingly enough, he does fit one of the five categories that Think Christian identify as the pastors that you meet in films. I would say he ends up fitting in the "lapsed" category.
[Quasi-Spoilers Follow]
The film follows the journey of this band of warrior saints as they travel to the village and as they discover exactly what they thought they would find - a village of pagans who believe that killing Christians is what has kept the plague at bay. Their leader is a woman who has made them to believe that she has the power to raise the dead as a necromancer. What follows is a torturous final half-hour where the men are taken one-by one and offered chances to renounce the Holy Trinity and be spared.
If you're the type to only watch movies where Christians behave ideally, then this isn't your movie. There are no heroes in this film. The knights are murderous, quick to kill, profane and yet dedicated fundamentalists - the bad kind. The pagans are themselves murderous, blasphemers, openly enemies of God. So in the film who do you root for - the hypocritical Christians or the pagans? Well, neither. Many Christians will disagree with my tolerance for corruption in Christian characters in this movie. However, we don't go to movies to see perfect people in action - we go to see something that reflects the world we live in, that we can relate to. If you're looking for a hero, go to the Gospels and look at Jesus. It's a fact that much of Church history, many Christians have not met his example. We ought not to deny or shy away from this fact.
In the case of Black Death, this film pits one form of fundamentalism against another and shows that if Christians fight the world using the world's weapons, they may win, but their whole cause will be shipwrecked. What is the point in a man who nobly refuses to recant if, after he survives, he lives to murder a hundred women as "witches" out of vengeance? Where is the virtue in a village that lives at peace and yet openly mocks and blasphemes the God of Heaven? In this film, everyone is a loser. I guess I'm okay with that portrayal, since I'm a Calvinist. Humanity's heart is dark and desperately wicked. No doubt the sort of atrocities we see in this film occurred in some form or another throughout history. This is not a condemnation of the Church, in my opinion, but a condemnation of mankind.
Here is my caution: the movie is grisly and gory. It's a hard "R" rating. There is some language. It isn't Pulp Fiction, but it's not The Care Bears, either. There is no sex or nudity, but once again, things get very violent. Heads get chopped off, limbs are torn off, and it is done in a brutal fashion - very much unlike the PG-13 violence in Lord of the Rings. This movie tells a thought-provoking story that will give thinking Christians plenty to chew on, but churches aren't exactly going to rent out whole theaters to watch this movie. Put another way: this film is not the next Fireproof.
