On Sept. 4, I'm going to Philadelphia to attend the premiere of The Ordinary Radicals, a documentary directed and produced by Jamie Moffett, co-founder of The Simple Way. The trailer gives a sense of this project.
While I can't speak for the others who were interviewed for this film, I felt my role was to serve as a cheerleader for the ordinary radicals profiled in this documentary. These spiritual souls don't issue manifestos and declarations about their goals to achieve radical shalom throughout the world. But you can find their work etched into the landscape of their communities. There Christ speaks loud and clear.
Check out their Web site for theatrical screening information, updates, and online DVD orders.
In her book, Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, Becky Garrison profiles 33 church leaders who are seeking to reach those for whom church is not in their vocabulary.
The Dark Knight, unlike many summer blockbusters, is actually an astonishing movie -- a stunning fusion of craft and entertainment, which manages to be both gripping in an edge-of-your seat fashion, and philosophically interesting. It's a violent film in which none of the brutality is played for the audience's pleasure, and although it's a comic book story, it takes place in a world that feels authentic -- one of phone books, champagne glasses, and real crime happening to real people.
However, it has been difficult to find interpretations of this new Batman film that delve beneath the surface sheen of sexy black vehicles and leather tights, or the morbid fascination with the late Heath Ledger's performance (admittedly extraordinary -- and so obviously based on Tom Waits that that growly-voiced minstrel deserves the Oscar too, even though he's not in the movie) as the Joker. For most people, The Dark Knight simply tells an archetypal story of a hero who loses (or mislays) his own soul in the attempt at bringing justice to the world. Gotham City in this film feels like many Western urban capitals -- oversized, noisy, with a slightly sinister edge, and the site for a battle of wills between criminals, local government, and the police. The citizens watch in horror as the newly-anointed godfather of the most ethnically diverse Mafia in cinema history plays games with their lives, and they rely on the man in the cape with the really cool gadgets to "clean up the streets." Mix in some typical comic book stuff about good guys and bad guys being two sides of the same coin (almost literally, in the case of DA Harvey Dent), a couple of spectacular action sequences, a love interest, and there you have it: the blockbuster hit of the summer.
But The Dark Knight is much more than this. It's one of the most politically interesting (and provocative) films of recent years -- but it seems that only The Wall Street Journal has noticed. Only half-marks to the WSJ, I'm afraid, for although they recognize the fact that this film relates nothing less than the story of the "war on terror," they go on to suggest that it is a "paean of praise to President Bush." I beg to differ, for although it's impossible to tell whether or not the movie is pro-neocon without getting inside the head of co-writers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, just because Batman does something doesn't mean we're supposed to like it.
Oh Batman, Oh Batman, how shall I compare thee to a Fox News Talking Points memo? Let me count the ways.
The film takes place in a world where ordinary rules don't apply. There is an irrational evil threatening the good people of Gotham City/New York/USA, in the form of the Joker/al Qaeda (never mind the fact that those who claim to speak for al Qaeda do not generally present their political aims as anything other than rational). Mainstream methods of law enforcement (jury trials, accountable policing) have failed to prevent acts of terror, and to bring the perpetrators to justice. Early on, Batman travels to Hong Kong and kidnaps a criminal banker, carrying out a rendition so extraordinary it involves putty explosives and an airplane with a human scoop attached (he gets the idea from his mentor, Lucius Fox, who himself says he got it from an experimental CIA program from the 1960s). Questions of prisoner abuse and the use of torture are raised explicitly -- with the Joker waving a bat-mask in front of the face of a terrified captive in a manner that can only evoke the images of Abu Ghraib; Batman beating a suspect into revealing the location of -- wait for it -- not one, but two ticking bombs; and the judicious placement of dozens of men in orange jumpsuits being ferried from an island jail. Beyond the allusion to the post-9/11 icons of Iraq, waterboarding, and Guantanamo Bay, The Dark Knight also manages to take in the relationship between the U.S. and China, where, lest we forget, the political class is currently engaged in discussions about how to manage America's decline.
But ultimately this film is about society's desire for a scapegoat. "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain," say at least two of the characters, and it climaxes with Batman on the run from the authorities because people have started to blame him for what is wrong with their lives. In this regard, the film ends on a note that either satirizes or endorses the view that George W. Bush has been a shining hero, defending the free world from masked evil. I tend to think that the film comes down on the side of the angels rather than the hawks, in the way it raises the prospect that violence meeting violence produces only more violence. Indeed, the most hopeful and heroic act in the whole story comes from one of the men in an orange jumpsuit. But these things can be read a number of ways, and I could be wrong. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in spite of the film's extraordinary quality, the politics of The Dark Knight are so subtle that this movie will be a great comfort to President Bush in his retirement.
(Spoiler warning--some major plot details are revealed in this article. Stop reading now if you want to see the movie without knowing the outcome. However by the time you've read this article you may not want to see it anyway.)
"Hancock" (the current vehicle for the biggest star in the world, Will Smith) is a superhero story that, on the surface, seems to offer something different to the super-spider-xmen films of the recent past. "Hancock's" protagonist is a drink-sodden flying strongman with amnesia. So far, so not your average underwear-on-the-outside embodiment of truth, justice, etc. Sadly, beneath the surface of this blockbuster beats a hollow heart, that not only adds little or nothing to our vision of what a hero can be, but reinforces the notion that more often than not, popular cinema's vision of heroism begins and ends with whoever can overwhelm the bad guy with the most spectacular force.
The genesis of "Hancock" might have gone something like this:
• Let's do a movie about a superhero who doesn't know where he came from, or why he's here.
• Let's do a movie about a superhero who wakes up regularly drunk and depressed, and causes mayhem every time he tries to save someone, leaving a trail of metallic wreckage throughout the urban landscape.
• Let's make him unique: an unpopular superhero. Let's put him on the receiving end of anger from the public, and in need of some redemption.
• Let's mix things up a bit by making his only friend married to a beautiful woman who feels a little strange around our protagonist.
• Let's make the revelation at the centre of our story be that this superhero is the most truly tragic superhero in movie history. Let's make him a lonely amnesiac who has been suffering an identity crisis for over eighty years; and let's make the beautiful woman his wife of several thousand years, who, like him, does not age because she cannot. She has left him alone because--in a twist that is potentially up there with "The Usual Suspects", "The Crying Game" and "The Sixth Sense"--she is his superhero pair, and they have discovered that even though they love each other, when they are in physical proximity, their powers weaken, and they are vulnerable to attack.
• Let's end the story with both of them nearly dead at the hands of their enemy, and deciding to part in order to save each other.
• If all goes according to plan, it will be that rare thing: a mainstream Hollywood movie that manages to be both entertaining and artful, dramatic and intelligent; honest on its own terms.
And, to a degree, the film succeeds--it's entertaining, a bit of a laugh, and there are some plot elements that haven't been done to death in a hundred other movies of its type. There's also an attempt at presenting the central character as a caricature of US foreign policy, or a ridiculously over-the-top satirical version of President Bush. But this potentially interesting idea is buried beneath the indecision of the rest of the movie.
The potential pathos of a superhero whose actions have real consequences, for himself and the world, sadly, is set aside in favor of a tone of schoolboyish humor, including the most absurd and grotesque bodily function joke I've ever seen, and climaxes with an act of violence that would not be out of place in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." It's a pity the completed film squanders its own possibilities, with its treatment of the questions of power and responsibility, and most especially, the notion of how so-called "heroes" and other public figures are often scape-goated by the rest of us. Will Smith is a talented and often enjoyable screen presence; his director Peter Berg has some genuine cinematic flair (and made one of the best sports movies of recent years in "Friday Night Lights"); Jason Bateman is a natural comic and Charlize Theron deserved her Oscar a few years ago; but cinema, produced by industrialists, by way of focus groups, will always reduce to the lowest common denominator. Though I still think a mass audience could have coped just fine with "Hancock" being something other than "Superman III" meets "American Pie."
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com.
Following is an interview with Michael Christoffersen, director of Milosevic On Trial, a documentary I watched at the Tribeca Film Festival, which demonstrates the horrors that can happen when religion becomes intermingled with empire.
What attracted you to want to follow this entire trial?
By coincidence, I did the documentary Genocide: The Judgment (1999) for BBC and SVT about a trial at the Rwanda court. I made some friends there and found out that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic was going to happen. So, while some journalists came and went, I stayed around. Eventually, I got exclusive access to the tapes and was able to secure interviews with both Milosevic's defense lawyer and the prosecution team.
Explain how you got the trust of these players, so that they would open up and talk with you.
In the beginning, nobody wanted us there. We had to convince them that we were people to be trusted. That took a while, and it wasn't until much later that we were able to get some of the interviews. It takes a lot of stubbornness and you also have to be a little naïve to some extent. It also helped that we were just a small production company. In addition, we were not affiliated with a particular group, so we were able to be seen as not having an agenda.
How did you maintain your objectivity as a filmmaker given the brutality of these crimes?
I wanted to create a historic record that reflected to a certain extent what actually happened. At the same time, film is drama. It's not just dry historic records. So, it's not a totally neutral observation but my interpretations.
Of all the footage, what was most disturbing was the scene in which the Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions. This is followed by a montage of the brutalities committed under this elite Serbian army.
It was very disturbing. It's a well-known fact that the Serb Orthodox Church was giving their blessing to the Serbians. This proved that it was not only an ethnic war but also a religious one as well. I'm not saying the Muslims have always been innocent victims. But in this instance, the church knew about the ethnic cleansing and was giving their approval. I've had some Serbs dispute the footage, claiming that the group this priest was blessing didn't perform the shootings that followed. But it's been investigated and the Scorpions that were blessed were the ones who did those acts.
How did you obtain footage like this?
We relied on material that was used during the trial as evidence. The only time we went outside was when we interviewed some of participants.
Why do you think there was so little coverage of the trial in the United States?
Except for some Balkan journalists and my documentary crew, I seldom saw any other media covering the trial.
How did you react to the sudden death of Milosevic during the trial?
At the time, it was terrible as there was no real closure. Looking back at it, the fact that there wasn't a judgment rendered gives an opening for people to talk about the issues raised at the trial.
What are the future plans for this film?
Milosevic on Trial will be seen at the Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, held June 16-23, 2008, in Washington, D.C. Also, we only used about 1 percent of the material in the documentary. So we're in the process of making an archive where people can access all of the material. We might include information about Saddam on Trial, where I served as one of the producers. For more information, log on to our Web site (www.team-productions.com).
Becky Garrison was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of "four evangelicals with fresh views," alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Ron Sider
On Christmas Day a few years ago in Dallas, Texas, Socheata Poeuv's parents called a family meeting to tell her that her sisters weren't really her sisters, and her brother was not her full brother. After 25 years of attempting to live a "normal American life," her parents revealed a shocking family secret that would draw them all back to Cambodia, the home they fled and struggled to forget during the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. As she packs for her trip back to Cambodia, Socheata turns to the camera and confides, "I knew more about the Holocaust than the Khmer Rouge. I knew even less about my own family."
Socheata Poeuv documents the unfurling of her family mystery in a beautiful, strong film called New Year Baby. After arriving in Cambodia, Socheata narrates the film through a series of interviews with her parents, relatives, and even the former Khmer Rouge leader who supervised the labor camp where her parents were forced to work. In one exchange that filled me with both dread and loathing, Socheata asks the former KR district manager, now a poor farmer, if the thousands of dead weigh upon him. Chillingly, he explains, "No. They do not come to conscience," and "I have forgotten so much." Shocked, Socheata presses him for more but the only thing he has left to say is, "I am sorry for the mismanagement of my district." He shifts on the dirt floor as his wife fries some fish for Socheata's mournful, exhausted Pa.
Ma and Pa Poeuv emerge as heroes by the end of the film. Ma's compassion for orphaned children and Pa's courage as he leads his family through minefields, gunfire, and across borders are stories that Socheata calls "remarkable, but common." When you watch the film, you'll find yourself marveling at how simple, ordinary people can be fiercely courageous, unconditionally loving, and self-sacrificial -- and you'll wonder about your own capacity to "go and do likewise."
For Socheata, what had started as a "glorified home video" turned into a 90-minute film, which in turn led to a significant human rights effort to document and archive testimony of what it was like to live under a regime some call "the most controlling government in history." Socheata's latest project is Khmer Legacies, a nonprofit whose goal is to videotape testimonies of thousands of Cambodian survivors by having children interview their parents. Socheata knows firsthand the importance of storytelling through the generations: After New Year Baby was screened at a film festival in Dallas, Texas, Socheata brought her parents and entire extended family up to the stage. Upon seeing the 300+ audience give Ma and Pa Poeuv a standing ovation and wait in line to shake their hands, Socheata recalls, "It really was that experience of having the audience affirm their story that transformed their relationship to their past. More than anything, they had never been honored like that before in their whole life. These are broken-English immigrant people who are invisible in our society." Socheata's film and new nonprofit shed some light and heart on the Cambodian genocide and the importance of "Never Again."
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners. To learn more about Khmer Legacies, visit their Web site: www.khmerlegacies.org
My fingers have been tapping out of control for more than a month and a half now. Don't worry, though -- I am not falling to the symptoms of my own PTSD just yet. At the completion of the Winter Soldier event, all Iraq Veterans Against the War members in attendance received a copy of the movie soundtrack compiled by Body of War subject Tomas Young, a partially paralyzed veteran of the Iraq war. It is a two-disc eclectic ensemble of major artists such as Talib Kweli, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Franti, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Serj Tankian, and Tom Morello.
I nearly threw it away but instead hesitantly shoved the CD into my computer on the plane home. To my surprise, many of the lyrics are still stuck in my head, from Brendan James' therapeutic "Hero's Song" ("in the water, in the sand ... is the blood of an ancient people in whose holy war I stand") to System of a Down's fast-paced "B.Y.O.B." ("why don't princes fight the war, why do they always send the poor?").
If you are able to handle the recurrent explicit language, other notable tracks -- especially for evangelicals -- include Immortal Technique's scathing rebuke of religious bigotry in "The 4th Branch" ("The voice of racism preaching the gospel is devilish"), and Bright Eyes' inquisitive "When the President Talks to God" ("I wonder which one plays the better cop"). However, each of the 30 tracks has proven prophetic in its own right.
The deal was made even better when we were told that proceeds from sales do not line the pockets of music industry execs, but that 100% goes straight back to Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder worked directly with Tomas to secure artists' contributions for this inspiring soundtrack, and he convinced Sire Records to distribute it at-cost. He also provided his own forceful track, "No More," with Ben Harper (though Harper includes his own track, "Black Rain," about the lack of resources for New Orleans), and Pearl Jam contributed their live track "Masters of War."
Body of War is playing now in theaters throughout the country. The film follows Tomas from his enlistment in the Army through his deployment and subsequent activism to end the war through Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder teamed up with Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, whose show on MSNBC was cancelled due to his outspoken opposition to the Bush administration's decision to unilaterally initiate a war of aggression (as defined by Article 5.1, Rome Statute, of the International Criminal Court), to produce the hard-hitting documentary of one veteran's struggle post-Iraq.
Visit the Body of War Web site to find a screening near you and get your copy of the soundtrack. You can find Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq Veteran on iTunes or maybe in the CD or MP3 player of a local veteran or service member.
Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith-based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.
The following is an interview with Abigail Disney, producer of the documentaryPray the Devil Back to Hell, which recently won the award for best documentary feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.
What sparked your interest in wanting to make a documentary about Liberia?
The fact that the newly elected president of Liberia was a woman was notable, especially since the continent had had so few women in leadership, and that women had been so peculiarly and sadistically targeted during their war. I knew there had to be a backstory. She hadn't just arisen spontaneously.
How were Christian and Muslim women able to come together for a common cause?
They were all so completely fed up with war that they were willing to overcome their reluctance. There was some mistrust at first, but the longer they spent time together in prayer and fasting the more they came to understand and empathize with each other. Friendships were forged on the field that will exist for a long time—it is quite possible that the nature of the relationship between Christian and Muslim was forever changed in Liberia.
Elaborate on the role that religious leaders played in helping to bring about peace to Liberia.
While it may seem unlikely, the fact is that the warlords and even Charles Taylor were quite religious. Religious leaders therefore were among the only people who could influence them, even in the chaotic atmosphere of war. But women were dissatisfied with the limited way in which the religious leaders wielded that influence. So the campaign really began with the women bringing pressure on the leaders via their religious confidants. This pressure ultimately was one of the reasons Taylor and the rebels decided to come to peace talks in Ghana.
How did prayer inform these women's social justice actions?
All of the women in this film were deeply, deeply religious and believed with all of their hearts and minds in the power of prayer to influence events and people. This was a critical aspect of their plan, and a big part of what made them so tenacious and persistent in their protests. But more than this, prayer was a source of personal strength to each of the women. They gained strength through their individual practice of prayer, but also the communal practice of prayer was an extraordinary glue that held the group together in spite of all kinds of pressures to pull them apart.
Explain the significance of the Lutheran church that you filmed for this documentary.
St. Peter's Lutheran Church was the scene of the first organizing meeting for the Christian Women's Peace Initiative, early in the film. In 1989, however, that church was also the scene of one of the most horrific massacres in the pre-war period. Samuel Doe's army, in anticipation of Charles Taylor's assault on Monrovia, went into the church and slaughtered more than 600 members of a rival ethnic group in a single night. The candlelight vigil in the middle of the film takes place on the church compound on top of the mass grave that contains most of those bodies. The church was and still is the church that Leymah Gbowee attended, and a source of great strength and counsel to her. It was also through the Lutheran Church that WIPNET, her organization, got offices and also got its first international donations.
Why is Leymah Gboweethe focal character of your story?
Everyone acknowledged her to be the leader and the face of the peace movement. But more than this, Leymah was so clearly charismatic, articulate, and genuine that I knew that a film with her at the center could not fail to be compelling. She is one of the most gifted people I have ever met.
What can we do to enable this change to continue without imposing our Western values on this culture?
I think you are precisely right here. Why do we insist on imposing "solutions" that are always at best temporary, and at worst impractical and even disrespectful to indigenous cultures? I think at heart we are sometimes deeply mistrustful of the competence of indigenous cultures to find their own answers. And when we impose programs, very often we do so in such a manner as to set them hunting for external money that is scarce, inadequate, and hard to get. The answer is to do some better listening. As people coming in from the global North we need to arrive in places with a little less confidence in our "answers" and a little more confidence in the people we are there to serve. People aren't poor because they don't have values, don't have smarts, don't have gumption—people are poor because they don't have money. We need to recognize that most of the "resources" needed to fight the world's problems are also the victims of those problems.
What's been the response when you've shown this film?
The response has been overwhelmingly emotional, connected, and positive. And this is not just from people in the U.S. We have already shown the film in many countries to women's groups and the response has been so moving. Women in Iraq wept when they saw it, and immediately asked how many copies they could make so as to make sure that it is shown in people's homes all over the country. Women from Sudan e-mailed us to say that they felt sure that lives were being changed by the dialogues the film had sparked. In Tblisi, Georgia, women sat down immediately after the film and wrote up a Peace Agenda that is now making its way around the country for women's signatures. What is remarkable is the way that so many women were already poised to work together for peace—all the film does is remind them how powerful they are when they work together. It is a spark of faith in dark times.
What are the future plans for this documentary and how can interested churches and nonprofits arrange for showings of this film?
We hope to work with churches and other religious organizations along with youth groups, women's organizations, and other interested partners to get the film seen far and wide. At the moment we are still forming distribution plans, but churches that are interested in seeing the film should go to our Web site and give us their information so that when we are set up for distribution we can get in touch with them.
During the New York City leg of Brian McLaren's empowering Everything Must Change tour, Jay Bakker and I were asked to give a short reflection based on Brian's talk on "Which Jesus?" When I saw Brian's insightful slideshow presentation that contrasted the empire of Caesar with the kingdom of God, I had a sudden flashback to my Jan. 2007 trip to Israel.
In an ironic twist of fate, when I arrived in Jerusalem I learned that Condoleezza Rice, her entourage, and I would be staying at the same hotel. For the next three days, a slew of black SUVs headed off to the West Bank while I toured the sacred spots in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem. By now, I had gotten accustomed to armed soldiers parading around the sacred spots of Israel. Still, every time I saw guns in the hotel lobby or had to pass through a rather intense security check just so I could go to my hotel room, the clash of empires hit me in the gut.
Lest anyone think such actions are a thing of the past, several documentaries I just saw at the Tribeca Film Festival serve as visceral reminders of the ensuing carnage that still happens when the church becomes too closely aligned with the state. I sat through Milosevic on Trial, transfixed as the trial and excerpts from the graphic video and photographs that were introduced as evidence unfolded before my eyes. One montage I cannot get out of my mind involved snippets from a ceremony in which an Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions, followed by a brutal sequence of atrocities committed by this Serbian paramilitary group. Also, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris highlights the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse through interviews and gripping photographs. While I'm aware that Morris has come under some criticism for paying for his interviews, the intensity of seeing this array of photos almost brought me to tears.
However, I found a glimmer of gospel hope in Pray the Devil Back to Hell. This documentary tells a compelling story of how Christian and Muslim women of Liberia joined forces to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime. During a press conference, I learned from Leymah Gbowee, the leader of this movement, that Roman Catholic bishop and former president of the Liberian Council of Churches Michael K. Francis became her spiritual rock. The behind-the-scenes prophetic presence of Francis and other religious leaders gave these women the faith fuel they needed to walk the walk.
Armed with white T-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state and Liberia's first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, "they'll be back."
When I saw the trailer for Jamie Moffett's documentary The Ordinary Radicals, I caught other glimpses of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. I know that the radical words of Jesus can empower ordinary citizens here in the U.S. to transform their own communities because I've seen it in action. The Everything Must Change weekend with Brian made me realize the urgency of the global need for us to set aside our denominational differences and work together as the body of Christ to bring forth God's kingdom into the world. That's why I'm joining forces with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and others to support Jesus for President.
Motive Entertainment, the maverick marketers behind The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia bills Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed as" a controversial new satirical documentary [in which] author, former presidential speechwriter, economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein travels the world, looking to some of the best scientific minds of our generation for the answer to the biggest question facing all Americans today."
My interest in this flick was piqued when I learned that PZ Myers, a scientist interviewed for this flick, was denied entrance following a confrontation of sorts when he tried to attend an advance screening. The irony of naming a movie "Expelled" only to eject one of your own interviewees struck me as a rather novel albeit bizarre marketing move. The onslaught of negative publicity from outraged scientists represents a publicist's dream. You can't buy this kind of buzz prior to the movie's release on April 18.
As an unexpected PR bonus of sorts, Richard Dawkins was at the above mentioned screening. Even though he was also interviewed for this documentary, for some unexplained reason, he was not given the boot. Anyway, after viewing Expelled,Dawkins blasted the filmmakers for how he felt he was misrepresented by the filmmakers. Oh, come on. Gimme a break. As reported by John Bloom on The Wittenburg Door's web site, "How could you grant an interview to Ben Stein, longtime friend of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and others on the far religious right, and not know what you were getting into?" (Yes, I know Dawkins claims not to know who Ben Stein is but a man of his stature should have the means to hire an assistant to properly screen his interview requests.)
This film's tagline promotes Stein as the Ferris Bueller of the Intelligent Design community: "Big science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. ... What they forgot is that every generation has its Rebel." Hmmm, methinks Stein looks more like Jimmy Dean than James Dean, but perhaps the rebel tag represents a satirical twist of sorts.
This satirical slant continued with clips of a very Jewish looking Stein walking on to the campus of Biola University, as "Personal Jesus" blares in the background. Sounds like the perfect setting for a Ferris Bueller sequel with Stein reprising the role of the droning high school teacher that made him famous. For those who aren't steeped in the history of American fundamentalism, Craig Detweiler, director of the comedic documentary, Purple State of Mind, explains the humor behind this footage. "Biola University was founded upon the same oil money that commissioned, 'The Fundamentals of the Faith,' the turn of the 20th century pamphlets that sparked a Christian religious movement. Ben Stein's appearance at Biola may put the 'fun' back in, take the 'duh' out, and restore the 'mental' in 'Fundamentalism.'"
While Expelled set its sights on disarming their enemy - the "neo-Darwinists" who have ostracized scientists who dare give credence to intelligent design - more often than not they ended up shooting biblical blanks. Unfortunately, the nuances of the evolution versus intelligent design debate were left on the cutting floor in favor of more provocative soundbites that one might expect from say an NBC Dateline "Catch an Evolutionist!"-type special.
For example, juxtaposing Reagan's famous quote - "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" - against Stein's clarion call for academia to tear down its resistance to intelligent design" served only to insult my intelligence. Having been to Yale Divinity School during the height of the political correctness movement in the 1990s, I can attest that there are consequences to raising one's voice against certain tenured titans. Fortunately, in my case, over-exposure to those with differing and at times extreme ideologies forced me hone my beliefs and gave me the tools that eventually led to my becoming a religious satirist. However, I am aware that others had their careers cut short because they chose not to kow-tow to the party line promulgated by a particular academic institution. Still, unlike those who were trapped literally behind the Berlin Wall, students and faculty remain free to exercise their full rights as citizens of the U.S.
The cheesy black and white clips interspersed to simulate persecution - such as a guillotine to illustrate why a professor got fired for mentioning ID in the classroom, or playing the John Lennon classic "Imagine" over footage of Stalin overseeing his troops - struck me as crude attempts at humor that lacked the biting quality of political satires like Dr. Strangelove or Wag the Dog.
Towards the end of the movie, when Stein takes the audience on a tour of Dachau that implied Darwin would have approved of Hitler's tactics, my stomach churned. This admittedly gruesome display of Holocaust stock footage cries out for the voice of reason that could lend a much needed historical analysis into the socio-political milieu of Victorian England that informed Darwin's discoveries. At the very least, I would expect a timeline of Darwin's discoveries, noting when a few players chose to misused his theories in the name of Social Darwinism. (In the same token, the Bible has been used far too often as a proof to justify some horrendous actions that bear no resemblance whatsoever to Jesus' teachings.)
In fairness to Stein, this film wasn't as biased as The God Who Wasn't There, a pseudo-documentary that pitted Ph.D. level scientists against the webmaster for raptureletters.com. Still, the editing left me with the clear impression that practicing scientists who are people of faith subscribe wholeheartedly to intelligent design. Where were the voices of leading evolutionary biologists who are also practicing Christians, such as Francis Collins, Joan Roughgarden, and Kenneth Miller? Furthermore, leading Christian thinkers such as Alister McGrath, John Lennox, and John Polkinghome were presented in a manner that one could think they are in full agreement with Intelligent Design, when in fact, they have written material critical of this movement. (See Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue for a more nuanced discussion of this debate including essays penned by McGrath, Lennox and Polkinghome.)
At last year's Tribeca Film Festival , I attended a panel titled "Prodigies, Nobelists and Penguins: Science and Stereotypes in the Movies." Here, I found a group of filmmakers and scientists who were able to engage in a healthy and sane debate with those of differing beliefs. Here's hoping for the day when a documentary can be made with the degree of humor and intellect that was present both in that conversation, as well as my subsequent discussions with people like Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, and other like-minded souls. One can hope.
Charlton Heston died this weekend at age 84, following Roy Scheider and Richard Widmark as the latest in a series of powerful cinematic actors to pass away -- although Heston was probably best known to a younger generation as the old guy who walked out of a Michael Moore interview in Bowling for Columbine. His was an ambivalent life – living through 14 presidencies (and personally befriending several of the most recent occupants of the office), supporting civil rights when it was unfashionable, switching his political allegiances, and latterly becoming identified with right-wing causes. Not often a subtle actor (although you could do worse than watch his performance in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil as a tribute), he represented a particular kind of vanishing screen presence who, like John Wayne, represented a vision of American greatness that depended far too much on the suggestion of invulnerability.
So, now that he is gone, what do you say about Charlton Heston? Something simple: He shouldn't be judged on the basis of one interview, given after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease to a door-stopping filmmaker known for his pranks.
He should be judged on his contribution to the movies -- doing gravitas better than anyone else, standing as our image of Moses, Ben-Hur, various military captains, the head of the CIA, and ultimately a particular kind of god figure. I never saw a Heston performance that didn't entertain me on some level.
And, in the interests of full disclosure, he should also be judged on his political activity. The simplistic analysis of the relationship between personal freedom and gun ownership offered by the National Rifle Association, which Heston did so much to bolster, seems outrageous to my Northern Irish ears. In his speeches to and on behalf of the NRA, Heston also sometimes seemed to lack empathy for the victims of gun crime, in his attempts to promote his contentious understanding of the U.S. Constitution.
At the same time, he was an early supporter of the civil rights movement, and even picketed a screening of one of his own films because it was being screened in a racially segregated cinema. He also made several films, such as Soylent Green, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes, that endorsed environmental and anti-nuclear causes at a time when it wasn't as easy to engage the public mind in these matters.
When iconic film actors die, something strange happens to our cultural consciousness -- for the movies have captured so many of us like no other medium. The very fact that the projected image on a cinema screen is bigger than life makes people like Heston seem both larger than the rest of us, and somehow less human at the same time.
Heston was a man who appeared to try to live with integrity, and while many of his later political positions are troubling to me, looking back on an ambivalent life like his should not inspire judgmentalism at the expense of the recognition that my own life is subject to the very same competing poles -- between private interest and the common good. And finally, if the stories we tell each other shape our attitudes, values, and beliefs about the world, then perhaps we might respectfully recognise that an era of American cinematic myth-making dominated by the notion of never admitting the possibility of error or flaw seems to be being replaced by something more nuanced, and perhaps more capable of leading us into a real promised land: one where we are honest about our weaknesses as well as our strengths.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com. He is also one of the judges of this year's Beliefnet Film Awards, which seek to recognise the best films with spiritual themes. Find out more at http://www.beliefnet.com/bfa/
In March 2006, Sojourners editorial projects intern Celeste Kennel-Shank wrote a great feature article for us titled "Green Hair, Grey Hair" about the D.C.-based project "We Are Family" started by Mark Anderson. Now, for the first time on the independent screen, one of our articles has inspired a movie! Read the description below about the new film directed by Katrina Taylor and produced by Rachell Williams:
What do punk rockers and senior citizens have in common? As Washington D.C. rapidly gentrifies, a low income African American community is threatened. The documentary "Green Hair, Grey Hair," takes a look at the struggles of living in a city in the midst of change, and the unique relationships that can develop. Mark Anderson, a writer, activist and punk rocker, created "We Are Family" to provide an outreach network to a group of senior citizen. Through an existing group he worked with - punk rockers - he used similar DIY and punk rock ethics, to bring the two together. Through grocery deliveries, advocacy about the neighborhood, and visiting, "We Are Family" provides a unique model for changing the way we look at old age. Very punk rock.
Celeste (who is the daughter of Sojourners Senior Policy Adviser Duane Shank) is a 2004 graduate of Goshen (Ind.) College with a degree in environmental studies and completed her master's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill. She now works for the Mennonite Weekly Review and is based in Chicago.
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
When I got an invite to attend a screening of the documentary, Purple State of Mind, I went in expecting to see a blue state v. red state dialogue/debate with some quest to find political common ground.
Wrong.
Instead, I was treated to an honest and humorous dialogue between Craig Detweiler and John Marks, two former college roommates. The year 1984 wasn't only the name of a famous Orwellian book, but this year also signified Craig's first year in the faith, John's last. After this fateful year, the two men went on their separate faith paths. The film picks upon their conversation some 25 years later.
At first I struggled with the depiction of Christianity portrayed by these dudes. As a budding writer, I was far too geeky to be an Uber-high-school-athlete-turned-Christian-missionary like Craig. Nor did I have that Barbie-beautiful-Christian lifestyle that John eventually left behind. Simply put, my dogs ate my Barbies. My childhood was more Felliniesque than fairytale. Even though I was a pre-natal Episcopalian (my late father was a priest so do the ecclesiology and the science and it sort of makes sense), my relationship with the institutional church remains akin to an outsider lurking around the crevices. Except for a brief period in my mid-twenties when I experimented with a variety of religious experiences - including an adult Campus Crusade for Christ bible study, Cursillo, and the Young Republicans - my spiritual life has been anything but certain.
But as the documentary progressed, I began to see how these men's stories paralleled many of my own struggles. I too often wondered where God was in the midst of global conflicts and my own personal pain. Also, I've encountered more than my fair share of faith fakers. So I understand why someone would just give up on the God game. But I have encountered enough spiritual buds in my life that convince me to keep walking forward on this admittedly crooked spiritual path.
While neither Craig nor John compromise their beliefs, these former college buddies are able to maintain a conversation of the heart. Despite their glaring differences on matters of faith, their friendship enables them to move beyond the white noise of the Dawkins vs. Dobson extremists debates and explore where they have common ground in their shared humanity.
Unfortunately, such genuine dialogues are few and far between. Martin Marty, a church historian at the University of Chicago Divinity School, offers some sage counsel as he explores why we're in such an ideological quagmire these days:
"Fundamentalism is an expected reaction to the anomie that comes with social disorganization. When the social institutions become shaky, and uncertainty about the future becomes widespread, people look to religion to provide absolutes and a sense of security in the midst of their changing world."
Looks like both New Atheists and their Christian counterparts are grabbing onto their belief systems like Linus Van Pelt hanging onto his security blanket for dear life. With all that's going on in the world, I get the need to hold onto something safe. But who ever said the Christian journey was safe and comfy? Ever since the late, great Mike Yaconelli edited my first article, "Beavis and Butthead Are Saved," and got me started on this whole weird world of serving God through my writing, "safe" is never a word I've used to describe my faith journey. Scary, sweet, strange, sacrilegious, spiritual - yes. But safe? No way, no how. Never.
As I wrote here last week, this year's Oscars, which take place on Sunday night, seem to have caught a cultural mood in cinema that's worthy of reflection – films that take ethical themes seriously are all jockeying for position, with the highest quality slate of Best Picture nominees in years. To my mind, the Academy Awards only matter inasmuch as they provide a snapshot of a cultural moment, and that they sometimes help decent but overlooked films reach a wider audience. And it is, of course, a valuable and often beautiful thing when artists recognize the achievements of other artists – in spite of the superficial glamour and absurd over-statement that often accompanies the ceremony.
So, in the spirit of gentle reminder that there are some pretty wonderful films out there, here are my predictions for what might happen on Sunday. (All made, of course, in the knowledge that false prophets put themselves at great risk – I trust readers will treat me with compassion for the categories where I am proven wrong!)
The Iraq war film No End in Sight is likely to take the documentary award, proving that at least some pop culture mavens have not forgotten that moral disaster. Julie Christie will probably win Best Actress for her work as an Alzheimer's sufferer in the tender Away from Her, although Marion Cotillard more than deserves the award for showing - with near preternatural incarnation - the irony of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, a woman known for singing about having no regrets, but who in reality suffered torments of almost biblical proportions.
While any one of the Best Picture nominees is worthy, (Juno's delicate and witty story of unplanned pregnancy - a likely Best Original Screenplay winner; Michael Clayton's puncturing of the myth of the moral neutrality of big business economics; Atonement's suggestion that it's title is impossible; There Will Be Blood's raging portrayal of greed), the Academy is likely to reward the Coen Brothers for career achievement by giving the statuette to No Country for Old Men – a film that has divided commenters on this blog between those who see it as a cry for a change of direction in a violent world, or simply a bleak vision that suggests human nature is irredeemable. However I still consider it to be one of the most humane cinematic treatments of violence I've ever seen. It also has the potential to provoke a serious discussion about just how to end the cycle of dog-eat-dog without resorting to the same methods. The fact that this discussion has been largely ignored, having been acclaimed by most critics merely on its entertainment merits, may be something that the Coen Brothers – who will share the Best Director award - themselves consider an ironic postscript. Their film, which is so profoundly aware of the damage that violence does, has been praised for the 'beauty' of its violence, and the only performance in it that will be recognized is Javier Bardem's chilling portrayal of a psychopath when he wins Best Supporting Actor. (Although even the brilliant Bardem agrees that Hal Holbrook should be winning for his performance in Into the Wild, his exceptionally tender essay of a sage Christian who has been too committed to self-discipline to actually allow his life to breathe reminded me of the deep value of respecting your elders. The Academy should take note and give him the award.)
Daniel Day-Lewis will win Best Actor for There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's discordantly compelling near-opera of early 20th century greed; in which one man's lust for oil and another's pseudo-religious mania are shown to be two sides of a coin: the love of money as the root of all evil. There are of course echoes of our contemporary ways of expressing power, but this film is not an allegory – it's just a magnificently told story about how selfishness is at the heart of all sin; and Day-Lewis happens to be the strongest physical performer in movies today.
Meanwhile, rat-lovers and gourmands everywhere will go home happy when Ratatouille takes the Best Animated Film trophy – and while I know everybody praises this film til the sauce boils over, it really is that rare thing – a kids' film that works better for adults; and does more than bring a wry smile of delight to its audience. It actually reminds us that life could be better, and that sometimes it just takes a change of perspective to get us there. And from a - not purely ethnocentric - Irish perspective, I hope beyond hope that Once, my favourite film of last year, is recognized with a Best Song award. This film said something about modern relationships that reminded me of the possibility that, as Rowan Williams once wrote, no human face has no divine secret to reveal. Like I said, the Oscars are only important inasmuch as they indicate a cultural mood. On this evidence, the mood looks like the marriage between a Hebrew Bible prophet and a hopeful comedian. And I suppose you could do worse than to live in that particular universe...
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com. He is also one of the judges of this year's Beliefnet Film Awards, which seek to recognise the best films with spiritual themes. Find out more at http://www.beliefnet.com/bfa/
The Oscars are a little under two weeks from now - with the threat of the writer's strike leading to an unexpected interruption of one of the most surreal nights of the pop culture year now gone. Rich and famous folk slapping each other on the back, handing out gold statuettes for works of art that many of us haven't seen. It has always surprised me how the winning speeches rarely seem to mention the films that have led to their success – family members, agents, even pets get name-checked – but few awardees talk about the feelings the film may have stirred in the audience. It's as if the heady emotions that are caused at the cinema are too … human … to talk about at something so tawdry as an awards ceremony. Just imagine Jack Nicholson or Nicole Kidman or Will Ferrell discoursing on questions such as the power dynamics in The Godfather, or the sense of loss in American Beauty, or the hope exemplified in Magnolia on the Kodak Theatre stage, and you'll get the picture.
But every now and then, of course, we get the kind of standout moment exemplified by Michael Moore's none-too-subtle attempt at culturally impeaching the president by invoking both the Dixie Chicks and Pope John Paul II at the red-carpetless ceremony that took place just a few days after the war in Iraq began in 2003. In spite of its clunkiness, here at least was a sincere stab at using one of the biggest platforms on earth to make a difference for the common good.
The interesting thing this year is that the films speak for themselves as ethical statements. Each of the five Best Picture nominees represents a high quality attempt at exploring a question of morality, and each takes its purpose seriously enough to propose a response that could stand alongside the kind of ethical positions people who seek to embody progressive spirituality might take.
Michael Clayton is a David and Goliath story about one flawed individual's refusal to continue to be complicit in injustice on a massive scale – and manages to show just how much it costs to stand up for what is right - although it's always better to be poor on the outside than the other way round.
No Country for Old Men pictures a world in which kindness is not enough to defeat darkness, and where evil indulges itself relentlessly; but has an ending that, while oblique, may actually be teaching the audience something very profound about the nature of human relationships and the abuse of power.
Juno is that rare thing – a liberal pro-life comedy, in which the families are honest and loving but don't feel like stereotypes.
Atonement, a remarkably accomplished film, does not offer much hope for those who wish to make peace with the past, and bleakly presents a vision of the world where its title is impossible.
And There Will Be Blood is a unique piece of cinema – illustrating a crisis at the intersection of greed and passion, money and family, religion and oil.
Who wins doesn't much matter to me (well, except for my hope that Marion Cotillard's almost preternatural embodiment of Edith Piaf in La vie en Rose is rewarded, given that, in my book, it's one of the finest pieces of acting I've ever seen), as long as films such as these find a wider audience. Paul Tillich wrote that the church should provide an 'answering theology' – that is, it should seek to answer the questions that society is asking. This year, the movies seem to have got there before the church; and it may well be that the Oscars seem to have found the moral pulse of our society.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Last night I finally saw Juno, Roger Ebert's favorite film of 2007 and recipient of four Oscar nominations, which has as its center the story of an unplanned pregnancy and the people affected by it. The protagonist, Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen Page in one of those so-good-she's-either-brilliant-or-really-like-that-in-real-life performances, is a misfit attracted to her male mirror image. Wiser beyond her years, slightly jaded by life and negotiating the pitfalls of the high school psychological assault course, she responds to her pregnancy by initially seeking an abortion – and the nonchalance with which she is treated is the only thing sadder than the unthinking speed with which she makes the decision. She is greeted by a lone protestor – the sole representative of institutional Christianity in the movie – as young as her, who, while a welcome change from the angry fundamentalist stereotype, may know as little about adult life as Juno does about the experience of pregnancy she's about to have. But something unsettles Juno, and she is unable to go through with the termination. Instead, she plans to have the child and help a couple seeking to adopt.
And that's it – the rest of the film is a deceptively simple story, taking Juno through the following months, her relationship with family, her best friend, and Paulie Bleeker – the dude she hung out with a little too late one night. There's not much to the tale at first glance, but I found the way in which it is told (by writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman – son of Ivan, who brought us Ghostbusters and the wonderful presidential satire Dave) – so utterly beguiling that by the time the film was over I wanted to go straight back to the start to rediscover these characters all over again.
Why? Because the characters in this film not only feel like real people, they are the kind of people you would be happy to spend time with. Because the film does as good a job as the best films of its type at reminding us of what it feels like to be young and not fit in (even the prospective adoptive father is trying to find his liberation in a stifling world). Because there are no grandstanding scenes, no emotional outbursts, no melodramatic moments of "closure." The characters behave the way many of us might hope to be able to do in similar situations - Juno's parents respond to her surprising news with grace, never for a second falling into the cliché of fearing what the neighbours might think. Juno is confident enough not to join so many others of her generation by giving into the stigma of shame, and Paulie ultimately just wants to be a good guy for her.
If this sounds sentimental, that's certainly not the tone of the film. If it sounds unrealistic, however, then perhaps that is indicative of a culture in which perfectionism or arrogance are often preferred over honestly managing the frailty of being human. Diablo Cody was once a stripper and so is likely to have experienced moralistic condemnation at the hands of others. It is a triumph that she has composed a film so full of generosity and so lacking in bitterness, so full of hope for family, for children, for people being able to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again. Alongside the clear exploration of how to respond to unplanned pregnancy, this film has something to say to those of us seeking to explore what forgiveness and redemption means. More than that, in its embrace of the totality of our existence – from its acknowledgement that the promotion of values often has more to do with helping people move on from things that didn't work out than with dogmatic confrontation, to its critique of the fact that some religious voices seem incapable of communicating compassion, Juno is a truly pro-life film.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview John Sayles about his movie Honeydripper, a multilayered and complex account of the birth of rock and roll in the Deep South. Following is an excerpt from our conversation. (The full interview with John Sayles will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Wittenburg Door.)
How would you describe the politics of your films?
My films are politically conscious as opposed to being politically unconscious. Part of who we are is what we live, what we see, and how we define ourselves. And politics is how we define ourselves. As a screenwriter of hire, very often my job is to get rid of all that stuff and just concentrate on the genre because it's thought to be distracting. But when I make a movie and want to talk a bit more honestly about people, you can't leave it out. For example, you can't really talk about the U.S. in the Deep South in 1951 without talking about segregation.
What was the significance of having a revival going on the same night that rock and roll was debuting at the Honeydripper Lounge?
That was a dichotomy that was very common in those little towns, both with white and black people, which was that you had to make a choice between being a sinner and being saved. It was often presented by the preachers as a very black and white choice, whereas there were a lot of people who somehow managed to do a little bit of both. For example, Sam Cooke started as a gospel singer and he caught a lot of flack when he started singing secular music.
What outreach, if any, are you doing to the black historical churches?
We're doing quite a bit actually. I know in Atlanta we're doing a lot with Hands on Atlanta around the Martin Luther King Jr. ceremonies. Danny Glover has a cousin who is the minister of a big church in Atlanta and he's going to work with them to do something. One of the things that we're doing with Honeydripper is we're trying to make its opening in each city an event.
How can the medium of film be a vehicle for social change?
Take race relations for instance. If you look at the history of American film, movies were probably part of the problem for the first 55 years of their existence. Even the comedies had hardly any African Americans in them. Then maybe in the late '50s, there started to be a few movies where African Americans seemed a bit more human. So, I think gradually television and movies are a little bit more part of the solution than part of the problem. It's all a conversation and there are a lot of voices in the conversation. Maybe one movie will be helpful or useful to people knowing a little bit more about each other.
Any suggestions for aspiring filmmakers, who want to make a social change but the dynamics of making movies has changed so much since you got started?
Documentaries are great. You don't need a theatrical release now. Just do your stuff and can get it out on the web.
(Author's note: A book I found that really captured the ethos of the South pre-1964 was Gurdon Brewster's No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King, an account of his experiences as an intern with Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1961 where he lived with Daddy King. Also, in his book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties, Tom Brokaw offers some intriguing reflections about his encounters with civil rights leaders, including Representatives John Lewis and Julian Bond, Reverend Andrew Young, Tom Turnipseed, and Reverend Thomas Gilmore.)
Tim Burton's striking and gruesome film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical 'Sweeney Todd' made me feel alternately impressed by Johnny Depp's singing talent and wince at the violence. The story of a 19th century barber who avenges the loss of his wife and daughter by providing the closest shave ever to a litany of customers including the judge who caused his pain left me preoccupied by thoughts closer to home.
If the film is trying to make a serious point, it is that Sweeney's spiral of violence never ends. The previous night I had attended a meeting of the Consultative Group on the Past – a body established by the UK Government to examine methods of helping the people of Northern Ireland to address the legacy of our own violent recent history. Two things were clear from the comments made at this meeting by members of the public: first, that the levels of genuine sorrow in this society are unfathomable – families ripped apart, minds taken to the edge of destruction, small communities shattered. This is real, and not interpretation. Second, we often lack the ability to empathise with the pain of the 'other' community. It is all too easy to see 'our' pain as exclusive, and to become blind to the suffering of the community on the other side of a political divide.
This is as true in situations of deep horror – such as the killing and mayhem that plagued Northern Ireland for so long – as it is for more benign contexts – such as political campaigning. I was impressed by Mike Huckabee's empathetic comments when he was asked to respond to the now well-known moment when Hillary Clinton teared up in New Hampshire. He made the common sense point that politics is tough, and that it's easy to become emotional on the campaign trail. He even risked the wrath of those who appear dedicated to brutalizing politics by acknowledging, as if it needed to be said, that Hillary Clinton is a human being and needs to be treated more humanely. I seem to recall him suggesting at a previous debate that if he were to fund a NASA mission to Mars he would want Hillary to be the first person on the rocket; so his more tender response to her tears is welcome.
Joking aside, what is the connection between 'Sweeney Todd', dealing with the past in Northern Ireland, and the US Presidential campaign? I think it's simple: a cynical world breeds the opposite of empathy. And where there is no empathy with those whom we feel are different, the killing can begin. History shows us that where no attempts are made to resurrect empathy as a meaningful part of politics, the killing may never stop. Obviously, politics requires a degree of robust debate; but all too often our political discourse is reduced to mocking, dehumanizing, or in some cases, let's face it, even killing our opponents. The serious questions I want to ask are: What would it mean to restore empathy with 'the other side' to our politics? What have we got to lose? What have we got to gain?
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
When I got an invite to the premiere of the IMAX screening for I am Legend, I went to the theater expecting an evening of frothy fun and engaging eye candy - pure escapism at its best. While the sight of zombies up close and personal almost caused me to jump out of my seat a few times, I was more shocked to discover that this action-packed thriller struck an unexpected spiritual nerve.
In a nutshell, I am Legend presents the story of Robert Neville (Will Smith), a brilliant military virologist who was unable to contain a terrible man-made virus. For reasons we don't quite understand, as Neville has become immune to this deadly disease, he remains the last human survivor in New York City, and perhaps the rest of the world.
His days are spent driving around a desolate and deserted Manhattan as he tries in vain for a cure, as well as any sign that he is not alone. This search for meaning in a world destroyed my man's own hand somehow elevated this film from the other flicks that employ the latest in special effects to demonstrate in graphic detail the myriad of ways our planet could meet its final demise.
Even though Neville insists he does not believe in God, the film takes on a Judeo-Christian twist around the third act when Neville becomes faced with a decision that requires an act of sacrificial love. For me to say anymore will destroy the movie-going experience for anyone who intends to catch this flick. While die hard sci-fi fans may decry how the final act unfolds, I left the theater with hope in my heart, a sensation I seldom experience while watching zombies in action.
Even though Neville keeps his body in top physical shape, his soul starts to deteriorate under the pressures of living a solitary life where he is all alone. This demise of the self brought to mind the documentary Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton that I had seen the previous day. What struck me about Merton's journey was that even though he spent much of his time living in solitude, the Trappist monks living in the Abbey of Gethesmani provided the support that enabled him to live in community while being isolated.
Also, this week, I got the opportunity to observe Justin Fatica conduct a retreat for 7th and 8th graders at St. Gabriel's School in East Elmhurst, Queens. Yes, this self-proclaimed minister's style of full frontal evangelism in a Catholic setting does stir up some understandable controversy. The newly released HBO documentary, Hard as Nails, touches on some of the joys and pitfalls of this type of hard core street ministry to troubled teens. But what struck me by watching Fatica in action was that the core of his message comforts these abandoned adolescents by letting them know that they are not alone. They are guided by God.
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.
Becky Garrison explores ministries that reach those for whom church is not in their vocabulary in her new book, Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church (Seabury Books, 2007).
This will be my final post for the God's Politics blog in 2007, and given that it's the time of year for lists, here's my choice of the films that have struck me the most in the past 12 months. (I should acknowledge that I haven't seen There Will Be Blood as it hasn't been released in my homeland yet – but on past form, Paul Thomas Anderson's film is likely to deserve a place on this list.) In the name of the eccentricities permitted to those of us who love films almost as much as real life, and out of kindness to the fine readers of this blog, I'll list a Top 11 – lovers of This is Spinal Tap will understand why.
Joint 11: The King of Kong – the documentary about the battle to become the world Donkey Kong champion gets on the list for pure entertainment value, and the recognition that all of us have to find joy in the ordinary/La Vie en Rose – because it has at its centre a portrayal of an artist, Edith Piaf, that manages to be both a reminder of the often tragic dimensions of the creative process. And, quite simply, one of the finest performances I've ever seen on screen, from Marion Cotillard in the title role.
10: Superbad – a raucous comedy about high school pals who ultimately realize that nothing – not even beer or beautiful girls – can help you negotiate life better than friendship.
9: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – an existential Western that names the ambivalence of attributing heroic metaphors to men who kill.
8: Atonement – a dark film that asks how much we can forgive or get over our own past wrongs; its ambivalent answer requires us to think long after the credits have rolled.
7: The Lives of Others – the reflective, sculpted, seductive German movie about spying, jealousy, hope, and the possibility of change.
6: Zodiac – a serial killer film that doesn't indulge the audience's ambivalent desire to see violence that excites us.
5: Ten Canoes – an extremely funny, smart and moving film about an Australian aboriginal father teaching his son a lesson about patience while building the eponymous boats.
4: Into Great Silence – which follows the lives of Carthusian monks over the space of a year; whose appeal to massive urban audiences indicates something profound about our desire for stillness.
3: Into the Wild – Sean Penn's film, with the best male performance of the year from Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless, a young man who resisted consumerism by hitchhiking to Alaska. He was trying to find himself – and ended by realizing too late that two keys to a rich life are a commitment to naming reality and investing in community.
2: No Country for Old Men – a magnificent drama that tells us we need different ways of responding to evil, and that these ways may in fact be the very old values of bearing each other's burdens and respecting each other's lives. We need to tell each other different stories about how the world works if we are to avoid destroying each other.
Which brings me to my choice for not only the best, but the most truthful film of the year:
1: Once - the little Irish film that could. A musical that feels like real life; a love story in which the protagonists never even kiss; a drama that is funny, and a comedy that is moving; a film about healing ourselves by telling the truth to each other.
See you next year, at the movies.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Here's the good news: The Golden Compass does not promote atheism. It isn't going to steal your children. It does not signal the end of hope for religion in the West. That's the good news. Here's the bad news: it promotes the same, shallow "don't touch my stuff or I'll kill you" message that appears in so much of popular culture. But more than this, in spite of delightful visual imagery, and a couple of performances in which it's clear the actors are having fun (an icy Nicole Kidman, and the great English theatrical knight Derek Jacobi to name two), it's simply a boring film.
At its centre there is at least an attempt at exploring interesting territory – we are in a parallel universe in which everyone is accompanied by a 'daemon' – an animal representation of their personality, and a comfort in times of trouble. Meanwhile, a shadowy authoritarian body, "the Magisterium", is abducting children and performing daemon amputations. Too much daemon, too much free will, too little for the Magisterium to do.
The religious resonances are obvious, but the film doesn't make any explicit commentary on Christianity. Rather, its enemy is the misuse of power to force people to think or act against the exercise of freedom. The image of severing our connection to that which keeps us in a state of wonder is a powerful one; and The Golden Compass does a good job of reminding us just why children can sometimes understand things that confound adults.
But, as is typically the case with such large canvas "family films," the antidote proposed is nothing more than violence on a massive scale. I have not read the acclaimed Philip Pullman books on which this film – the first in a trilogy – is based, so I don't know where the story leads, or if the huge fight at the crescendo of the movie is proportionate to the text. But while the film of The Golden Compass is angry about religious and cultural imperialism, its response is strangely Nietzschean – the reassertion of individualism and the use of physical brute force appear to be the only answer it can think of.
At the same time, it's so muddled as a film - having clearly been made by a studio breathing down the talented director Chris Weitz's neck, with scenes ended before they're finished, and a script that doesn't seem to know where it's going - that it maybe shouldn't be taken anywhere near as seriously as some angry activists think.
It's surreal watching a film like this, for you feel like you're being told something over and over again that you already know: religious power can be a dangerous mix, and so needs to be handled with care and be accountable to the community. This film wants to think that religion and power can never be used for good; and yet, in its unthinking embrace of survival of the fittest/might as right philosophy, it may actually end up on the same side as the neocons and religious imperialists it seeks to condemn.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
When a film ends with the recounting of a dream in which a weather-beaten, life-weary man searches for the fire his father is building to warm them, it's impossible not to think of the love we all yearn for and can hopefully muster. It's also a welcome spiritual respite when that film has seduced its audience on a journey into a hell of the relentless violence that follows a man after he steals drug money in the naïve belief that its owners might ignore him, and the slow-moving chase that ensues when a truly psychopathic person pursues the man and the cash. No Country for Old Men, the new picture from the Coen Brothers, based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, is probably the most accomplished film released this year.
I'll do my best to avoid spoilers, as it would be unfair to assume that readers have seen it. So I must skirt around the issues that cause me to praise this film so highly. In short, No Country for Old Men is a slow, thoughtful, frightening, and beguiling film about the selfishness of people and the desperate need to restore the virtue of community bonds. Its central character – called Anton Chigurh, and played by Javier Bardem – is one of the most titanic characterizations of evil intent I've ever seen in a film. He simply kills what gets in his way, and even plays sport with some of his potential victims - inviting them to toss a coin to determine their fate. Josh Brolin is the man who finds the money belonging to Chigurh's employers, and Tommy Lee Jones the sheriff baffled by the trail of death that ensues in their wake.
We follow these characters - scared of the killer, ashamed of the thief, and hoping against hope for the sheriff. We look away from the screen when the violence occurs, but may perhaps feel a little horrified by the fact that a part of us still wants to watch. And when one character finally stands up to Chigurh, it is not with physical violence, but by simply speaking and refusing to accept his games, forcing him to face the fact that he, and he alone, is responsible for his murderous ways. This film does not suggest that – as some critics have implied – there is no way to stop evil, but rather that we live in an age where we need to find new ways of resisting the violence many of us face. It doesn't provide simplistic answers, but suggests that the path may be found in such things as renewing the bonds of community and mutual respect, refusing to accept the moral reasoning of those who resort to force at the drop of a hat, and embracing something like the vision of the 5th century BCE Chinese thinker Mozi:
'If every man were to regard the pain of others as his own person, who would inflict pain and injury on others?'
The country where violence is king may indeed be no country for old men; but, to my mind at least, the film that takes this term as its title offers nothing less than a prophetic reflection on the most important question facing humanity today: Where do we go from here?
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
In some senses Robert Redford is the father of modern independent filmmaking, not to mention the patron saint of Hollywood liberalism – his Sundance Film Festival has launched a couple of dozen major careers, and his concern for progressive environmental policies is well known. And United Artists used to be known for making the kind of movie that entertained and provoked at the same time – from 'In the Heat of the Night' to 'Being There' to 'Rain Man'.
After a decade or more in the doldrums, the studio has been resurrected by Tom Cruise, and the first film released under this banner is the Redford-helmed 'Lions for Lambs' – a tub-thumping intellectual thriller that pits brains against brawn as a liberal university professor, a neo-conservative senator, and a smart journalist duke it out for the prize of 'who gets to direct the war on terror' - which the film shows still to be fought by the poor.
Such a film could have been a thoughtful exploration of the nature of American liberalism post-9/11, a call to action, or an intelligent treatment of the questions of how to respond to injustice without repeating it (or overcoming evil with good, as the New Testament would have it). Yet sadly it ends up a wasted opportunity - with mostly old arguments being rehearsed once more in a film whose performances are flat and is without visual interest.
There is, however, some merit in 'Lions for Lambs'. There is a chilling moment where a missing soldier is confirmed to be alive when he fires his gun – suggesting that we live in an era where threatening the lives of others is what gives meaning to ours. There is a brief moment when two of the characters suggest that resurrecting the idea of a year's voluntary service between high school and college might be the key to developing a generation of socially engaged citizens who care more about the needs of the poor than the brand names on their shirts. And it does at least ask why it is that most of us do nothing in response to the grinding wheels of yet another empire's decline and fall except complain and go on the odd protest march. But in contending with the principalities and powers of this world, the film does not realize that there is more to be done than merely protest.
Sometimes, to be sure, we need to protest against the powers. And sometimes we need to work with the powers – for they are capable of good (such as, for instance, the fact that in some parts of the world whole cities are now adapted for the needs of people with physical disabilities, or that abandoning the death penalty has become a condition for membership of the European Union). Protesting the powers when they mediate evil, and affirming and renewing the powers when they are good are two sides of a coin. But deeper than this, and what 'Lions for Lambs' falls short of understanding, is that the prophetic incarnation of a creative alternative to economic injustice and war without end is the task of this generation. At one point Cruise's character is shown to assert, with Theodore Roosevelt, that he would choose 'righteousness' over 'peace'. The film is not smart enough to recognize that if you understand righteousness in its ancient Hebrew context as 'justice', then you don't actually have to make that choice. I don't know what level of activism Robert Redford is personally engaged in, and I welcome the fact that he did at least try to make a film about something meaningful; but 'Lions for Lambs' left me yearning for our popular culture to start asking us to actually do something instead of fiddling while the emperor burns Rome down.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock-and-roll martyr, born-again Christian … all of these words have been used to describe Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan. I've lost track of all the "unauthorized" books profiling this mysterious man that have crossed my desk over the years. So I was intrigued to learn that Todd Haynes had obtained the music and life rights to Bob Dylan's work from his longtime manager Jeff Rosen.
I saw Haynes' feature film I'm Not There last month at The New York Film Festival (NYFF). Suffice to say, he redefines the well-worn term "biopic." Using six actors to portray seven personifications of this larger-than-life star, Haynes weaves through the different periods of Dylan's life, beginning with a preteen African-American runaway who goes by the name Woody Guthrie, and ending with Richard Gere, aka Billy the Kid, living in self-imposed exile.
Much of the film's media buzz circulates around Cate Blanchett's transformation as Jude, the self-destructive rock star who proclaims, "I kind of like getting busted out of my skin." From the moment Jude explodes on the screen - literally - at the Newport Folk Festival to the shot of him crumbled beside his mangled motorcycle, Jude takes the audience on one helluva Felliniesque ride.
Hayes turned to another '60s cinema legend, Jean-Luc Godard, to illustrate how hot Hollywood actor Robbie (Heath Ledger) romanticized and yet condemned women. As his fame skyrockets, his marriage to his idealist sweetheart unravels against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
Haynes touches on Dylan's conversion to Christianity through the character of Jack Rollins (Christian Bale). This breakthrough singer-songwriter of early '60s protest music has now become a Pentecostal preacher. Apparently, the church seen in the film closely resembles the actual church that Dylan joined in the late '70s. However, there's no mention of Dylan's infamous trip to the wailing wall or other outward displays of the Jewish faith. Hence, his Jewishness remains a very well-kept secret.
Dylan purists will find plenty to nitpick about. For example, I can't find any credible evidence that Pete Seeger actually tried to take an axe to the electrical cords during Dylan's Newport '65 set. And I am not sure if Dylan ever danced with a drunken Allen Ginsburg (David Cross) in front of a crucifix of Jesus as Dylan slurred, "I preferred your earlier stuff."
But those who quibble over factual inconsistencies will end up missing the meaning behind the message. Clearly, some of the Dylan personas featured in I'm Not There correspond to a recognizable period and look in Dylan's life, whereas others are more metaphorical - blending influences, passions, and imagery. I left the film knowing nothing more about Dylan the man, but somehow through these characters I was able experience the ethos of the era, when "Like a Rolling Stone" replaced "Blowing in the Wind" as the song that defined my parents' generation. This film opens Nov. 21 in New York and Los Angeles, with a wider release to follow.
As I was in diapers when Dylan became heralded as a folk legend, I am grateful to the NYFF for showing Murray Lerner's musical documentary The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965. Through vintage footage sans narration, Lerner allows the viewer to experience Dylan's transformation from youthful troubadour to rebel rocker. While this film is still seeking distribution, the DVD will be released Oct. 30.
Sometimes I'm moving so fast that I find it helpful to stop and reflect on the past. I still shake my head when I hear some kid singing a Dylan song without any clue of the history that shaped this message. Thankfully, these movies afford many of us the opportunity to reflect on a world that we were too young to experience firsthand.
I narrowly missed being attacked with an axe last night on my way out of a cinema showing the disturbing film Rendition, about the practice, begun in the Clinton era, of the U.S. sending terrorism suspects to countries that allow torture as an interrogation technique. I managed to escape unharmed - mostly due to the fact that the axe was made of plastic and being wielded by a child who couldn't have been more than six years old, but whose parents had decided to fit him with a grim reaper mask for their trip to the mall. Given that I'd just been confronted with a fictionalization of the realities of rendition - which has its roots at least ostensibly in responding to violence - I was not in the mood to see the kid's Hallowe'en costume as innocuous. Our children are raised – like our forebears and ourselves – on the notion that violence is good, and that it can even be fun. At the very least, our culture does not nurture sufficient challenge to the idea that violence works. It was bleakly ironic that one of the characters in Rendition says that war is "the only way to freedom." He's an Islamic militant, but these words also find easy echo in the mouths of those who rattle sabers on behalf of Western interests in the Middle East.
Rendition is not a great film by any stretch. Its characters are mostly uncomplicated - Reese Witherspoon, for example, rarely seems more than mildly inconvenienced by the fact that her husband is being tortured in North Africa. But it would be a shame if the weaknesses of the film drowned out the wider questions it raises about the absurdity of the practice of rendition, and, wider still, the contemporary values that appear to endorse the use of horrific violence in response to perceived threat.
We know that torture does not produce results proportionate to its method. Indeed, it can simply pour fuel on the fire of ethnic conflict - never mind the fact that franchising it out to a second party because it doesn't fit our value system is morally nonsensical. Theodore Roszak may have spoken the prophecy of the age when he wrote that "people try nonviolence for a week, and when it does not work, they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries." It is obviously a key task of this generation to tell a better story than the one that narrates the current dominant paranoid paradigm - wherein, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, the only way out presented is the arrogance through which everybody tries to destroy everybody else. This idea - that being right (or being perceived to be strong) is more important than doing good - is not true, in spite of its political appeal (or effectiveness as an evangelistic tool). But what alternative story can we tell that prioritises nonviolence over its opposite? In other words, what will a reformation of our culture's values regarding violence actually require of us?
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
I saw an "on the road" film this week that blew open my understanding of travel and confirmed my imagination of what life could look like. Into the Wild, Sean Penn's cinematic recreation of the journey taken in the early 1990s by Chris McCandless - a rich young kid - across North America to the frozen wastes of Alaska is, in the first instance, a magnificent film. It relates McCandless' story with near-surgical detail - the extraordinary central performance by Emile Hirsch would be trivialized by awarding him something so cheesy as an Oscar - and it also succeeds in portraying the character as one deserving both our admiration and critique. He was a flawed hero. On the one hand, he risked social ostracism by donating his trust fund to OXFAM and refusing to obey the death-dealing dictates of upper-middle class society – the big house, the well-paying job, the "respectable" family – so that he could pursue the objective of becoming more human through meeting the goodness in strangers and entering a John the Baptist-type wilderness. On the other, he allowed his family to believe he was missing, presumed dead, for nearly two years.
The film asks the question he asked himself: What is our responsibility to ourselves? Or, better put, what is our responsibility to the image of God to which we all are called to stewardship? Is it to live within the boundaries of commerce, social status, and the monetary value of our homes? Or are we invited to participate in something that transcends the social constructs of economics and society? McCandless knew something of the old adage that making a living and making a life are two very different questions.
I saw the film on vacation, where the closeted hotel I was stuck in due to a connecting flight cancellation seemed to exist primarily to prevent guests from ever having to leave the luxury of a resort. The cultural norms that suggest we find happiness by spending exorbitant amounts of money to have an antiseptic experience of an island thousands of miles away leave me cold. I'd much rather be camping in Alaska, asking myself what it means to be human.
Toward the end of his – ultimately tragic - sojourn in the tundra, McCandless wrote in his journal of his journey's key revelation: 'Happiness is only real when shared'. He had realized that a whole life is always a conversation – with natural surroundings, values, history, traditions, and with the fellow travelers who ground us in community. And that conversation is better held in the light of understanding that making a living and making a life are not the same thing.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
If you want to find out what it means to be a hero, you could do worse than seeing two current documentaries: In the Shadow of the Moon and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Shadow consists of documentary footage of the space race, intercut with new interviews of most of the men who have been to the moon and back. Kong follows another race, and one of the strangest competitions of our time – the battle to be the world Donkey Kong video game champion. At first glance, these films may seem to have little in common – but they both reflect different dimensions of the same theme: that of American exceptionalism.
In the Shadow of the Moon brings parts of the politics and adventure of space travel to the attention of an audience for whom putting a human being on another planet is a historical fact rather than a mythical possibility. The astronauts are wholly charming and exude an integrity that we may associate with the post-war era, in which service to the community was perhaps considered a higher ideal than in our own cynical age.
The King of Kong relates the heroic narrative of Steve Wiebe, a Seattle native whose life story more resembles that of Homer Simpson than Neil Armstrong. A failure at high school sports, grunge music, and even being laid off on the day he and his wife signed their mortgage papers, Wiebe is an endearing figure – the kind of guy who seems far too nice to be the recipient of so much trouble. The one thing he knows he is good at is Donkey Kong, which he plays obsessively in his garage, hoping to beat the 25-year-old record held by Billy Mitchell, whom the film portrays (perhaps unfairly) as a hot sauce-hawking Darth Vader with a mullet. Steve's wife supports him in challenging the record, but his nemesis refuses to grant him the dignity of even turning up to participate in the competition, preferring to submit a taped entry. The tension mounts, and we are seduced into feeling the desperation perhaps as much as when the world watched Apollo 11 land on another world.
Both films are stories of people struggling against the odds; and both the astronauts and Steve Wiebe may remind us of ourselves. Regrettably, the moon documentary buries the lead. A film about human beings who can genuinely be said to be unique spends too much time looking at the technical aspects of space travel, and far too little on how the travelers were changed by their journeys. Toward the end of the movie, one of the astronauts speaks of his epiphany that all of creation comes from the same source and that we are all one. It is ironic that such a pacifist (and biblical) revelation resulted from a neo-military endeavor rooted in Cold War paranoia and suspicion.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the Steve Wiebes of this world go about their own, smaller adventures – the adventure of building a family, of living honestly, of seeing ourselves as beautiful imperfections. In the Shadow of the Moon focuses on something extraordinary, but manages to make it seem less than the sum of its parts. The King of Kong, however, takes something apparently absurd and suggests that the decision to try to do one thing right might actually be a key to becoming a better human being.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
The Kingdom opens with a striking historical montage, depicting the roots of Saudi Arabia and why this country means so much to the U.S. We're soon plunged into a horrific attack, viewing the killing of whole American families and the Saudi police who guard them in compounds where Islamic law does not apply. It's not long before Jamie Foxx and his intrepid FBI colleagues are secretly flying to the kingdom to show the Saudi police how to solve crimes.
The film constructs all the clichés of cops traveling to foreign lands – there's a local officer who our own hero at first dislikes, then grows to love, then is killed in a hail of bullets; the token "good Muslim" gets to die a martyr to the cause of keeping Foxx and the rest of us safe; while Jennifer Garner seeks to undo the trauma of violence by offering a lollipop to a child who has just witnessed their rampage. The local State Department official is ineffectual, committed only to keeping the FBI from doing anything that would annoy the Saudi hierarchy.
This film wants to be a serious exploration of U.S.-Middle East relations, and in its portrayal of Saudi street life it manages to be more accurate than many. But ultimately, The Kingdom is in love with violence. The modus operandi of the FBI characters is to look for evidence and then shoot the guilty. It's mob rule, more akin to Wild West stereotypes than even the most right-wing interpretation of due process. Near the beginning of the film, one character tells a grieving friend of one of those killed in the attack, "we're going to kill them all." The friend is relieved and stops crying. The film's implication is that so should we.
Having lived through the civil conflict in northern Ireland, I know closely what it means for people to kill each other over politics, ethnicity, and religion - for nearly 40 years. We have finally brought the violent part of the conflict to an end, not because one party achieved victory over another, but because we agreed to share political power. Some of the very people who supported the killing are now holding office in a devolved local government administration. Former sworn enemies are now responsible for such things as agriculture policy, education, and property tax rates.
Our "peace" was not won through sentimentality, nor did it come by repaying violence with violence. Peace processes are not often about traditional notions of justice – indeed peace processes often necessitate that injustices be done. For example, the release of prisoners who only a few years earlier had ripped out people's teeth or smashed open their skulls is a very painful thing for their victims to observe. But in transitional societies, it may be the only thing that allows everyone to have a new start, whether they deserve it or not.
It should go without saying that "we're going to kill them all," or dealing with guilty people simply by shooting them, does not make it easy for the contrition necessary for reconciliation to happen. It unequivocally does not reduce the tensions that produce only more violence.
The story we tell ourselves about justice in large part determines what we will stomach in the real world. In this regard, perhaps The Kingdom knows more than I want to give it credit for. A film that ends with both the American hero and the future leaders of Islamic militancy swearing, "We're going to kill them all," doesn't just understand the human tendency to seek violent revenge, but prophesies what planet earth will look like if we don't rethink our approaches to violence, justice, and how to have security without destroying our neighbors.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
It's intriguing how many current films address questions of revenge and justice. Like all cinematic epidemics, this is a mixed bag, from Quentin Tarantino's alternately boring and horrifying car-crash fest Death Proof, just released on DVD, to the slasher-style terror of Death Sentence starring Kevin Bacon, to the mature and moving reflection on justice and fatherhood in 3:10 to Yuma, to the ostensibly more thoughtful treatment of vengeance in Jodie Foster's new film The Brave One.
The Brave One begins with a murder that the filmmakers show in subtle but horrendous detail. We really feel the loss of human life that occurs when her character's boyfriend is beaten to death in front of her. Her subsequent fear and desire for revenge are presented as entirely natural responses; in this regard, the film is intelligent and humane. Far too many representations of the aftermath of violence in popular culture refuse to treat it with respect. But when she actually starts killing people, despite the fact that her victims are all portrayed as evil, the movie becomes something other than the serious exploration of how to deal with violence that it purports to be. The victim becomes a perpetrator, and the audience is made complicit.
Throughout its two-hour running time, I hoped the film would suggest that the revenge Foster's character takes does her more harm than good, and certainly does not end or even come close to challenging the spiral of violence in the world. My hope was unfounded, for the film not only presents its protagonist as doing what is normal, but ultimately endorses her violence as the only way to resist evil. In a world where finding alternatives to conflict-as-usual may be our greatest challenge, we desperately need more nuanced investigations of how to respond to violent threats and injustices than this.
What's surprising is that both Jodie Foster and her director, Neil Jordan, know better than this, having between them made smarter films such as The Accused and The Crying Game. But in producing The Brave One, a film that appears to co-opt the values of the war on terror into the domestic life of a character who works for an NPR-style radio station, they have created what The New York Times has called "a pro-lynching film that even liberals can love." Of course, doing nothing in response to injustice will not make the world a less violent place, but neither will suggesting that the only thing we can do is to use the same tactics as our opponents.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
A few weeks ago we looked at the calendar and saw that Sept. 11 is now officially titled "Patriot Day." We started thinking of what would be an appropriate way to celebrate and remember this day, especially for those of us who have caught a little of the ex-patriot spirit of a new kingdom… you know, an "in the world but not of it" sort of thing. Then we heard that the film The Camden 28 was going to debut nationally on PBS, and with suspiciously brilliant timing -- on Patriot Day.
My Sept. 11 was surreal, heart wrenching, and with a little mystical dazzle. We'll get to the film in a minute.
I had originally hoped to post this yesterday morning (Sept. 11), partly to give a little shout-out about the film, yada yada, but then came the drama. As I was writing my original little ditty, "Reflections of an Ex-patriot," from my room here in north Philly, a fight broke out among some of the kids on our block. Then their parents came out and the fight grew louder and louder, until our whole block was a chaotic brawl. It's actually been a while since we've had a fight like this one. It just kept building and building, consuming our neighborhood, reminding me of the inferno a few weeks back. Ugliness. Ugliness I can hear out my window and see in Iraq.
I thought of how quickly revenge escalates from a couple of kids to a block filled with rage. I thought of Sept. 11, of Iraq. Obviously, I couldn't just keep writing about peace while a war raged on my street. So, out I went (hence the tardiness and change of the title on this piece).
I remember hearing a definition of idolatry as "something you would sacrifice your children for." There is nothing we fight more passionately for than flag and countries, biology, and nation. And so the fire rages on. But I am thankful for days where we pause to mourn, to honor life, and to cry together. I cried with a few neighbors yesterday about how people hurt each other, and I cried with a church last night over a world that can't stop hitting back. Before the showing of The Camden 28, we celebrated Mass in Camden. We prayed that God would heal the brokenness of our world, our cities, and our hearts. The scripture for Mass was Romans 8, which describes all of creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Today is a day for groaning. And yet we were reminded that these are the pains of birth -- not death -- but birth. There is still hope, even on a day marked by death, and death after death. In the end the world is pregnant with hope, the hope of a kingdom other than Rome or America. And we were reminded that we are the midwives of that kingdom. We are to help give birth to the new world.
After Mass we viewed the film. It is an award-winning documentary about a group of 28 of our friends here in Philly/Camden who entered a federal building during the Vietnam War and destroyed the draft cards. I'm going to do my best not to give away all the best moments in the film in case you didn't get a chance to see it (if you don't want to hear any more skip this paragraph), but there is one moment in the film that is unbelievably redemptive. One of the 28 had become an informant to the FBI, but during the course of things his son was in a tragic accident and died. Our priest here in Camden, Michael Doyle (also one of the 28), was asked to do the funeral. I thought to myself, scandalous, but what is even more scandalous is that brother Michael DID IT! He tells the story of how the funeral was filled with FBI agents and peace activists, and how the little group of activists surrounded their Judas with love and friendship. At the funeral Michael's message was reconciliation and grace.
In the end, the informant ended up testifying on the side of the defense, offering instrumental testimony before a very attentive jury. But beyond the drama of the courtroom is the story of forgiveness and grace. That is what the world is hungry for, pregnant for -- especially on Sept. 11.
The evening ended last night as the filmmaker joined us in Camden. Members of the Camden 28 presented him with the clock from the courtroom here in Camden where the trial took place. It is now permanently set for 2:30 p.m., the time where these prophets heard those beautiful two words: "not guilty."
The only thing that could have made the day more perfect would have been another little trip to the federal building ... maybe next year.
I wrote here a few weeks ago about the new Die Hard film, and especially how I felt it represented a disturbing advance in the portrayal of heroes as violent men whose main purpose is to uphold materialism. Among other things, Bruce Willis' character, John McClane, kicks a woman half to death, then drops an SUV on her head for good measure, and we're supposed to applaud. Surprisingly enough, the comments on this blog were mostly critical of what I said – which is of course perfectly fine, given the freedom of discourse that exists on this site. But it was ironic to find that the very point I was making – that we have become inured to violence in the real world by its portrayal on screen – appeared to be borne out by many of the comments.
So it was with a sense of trepidation that I approached The Bourne Ultimatum, another film marketed as a violent revenge fantasy in which another American hero fights his way to freedom from the bottom up. I had enjoyed its predecessors, but not enough to be excited about this second sequel in the story of a CIA operative who is brainwashed into carrying out murder missions for his handlers, and who now wants his identity back.
On the surface, this is an exceptionally good action film – there are undeniably exciting sequences, filmed as if the camera was attached to Matt Damon's belt. The plot rattles along at a heckuva pace, and the story centers on a thoughtful question: what happens to people who realise that the secrets they keep for the sake of someone else's idea of "national security" are not worth the price of their soul?
The central character is obviously not a typical action hero. He has doubts about the meaning of what he has done for president and country; he has loved and lost; he fears that he has passed the point of redemption. Also, unlike the John McClanes of this world, he fights because he hasto, not just because the director sees yet another opportunity to titillate the audience's desire to see metal things being blown up. Jason Bourne comes to a self-understanding in this film that there are some things not worth doing even for the sake of your country. He is horrified by his past; he wants his identity back because he recognises it's the most important thing – perhaps the only realthing - he has. The philosopher Simone Weil once wrote that the most important possession we have is the ability to say 'I' – to take responsibility for acting in the world. In this, she echoed Rudyard Kipling's adage that each of us "should strive for the privilege of owning one's life." The Bourne Ultimatum provocatively reminds us that an uncritical approach to, for instance, defense, or economics, or prison, or immigration policy involves ceding ownership of one's life to "the authorities"; doing it "just because they say so." All too often, refusing to ask questions about the status quo only serves to keep injustice in its perfect equilibirum. Unthinking patriotism or ideology of the kind that allows secret sins – whether of deceit, or conspiracy, or killing - to be carried out in our name because "the country" depends on it meets its match in Jason Bourne.
The Bourne Ultimatum is directed by Paul Greengrass, the British film-maker responsible for last year's recreation of what may have happened on United 93. That film was a stirring and moving reminder of the horror of 9/11, but it managed to take a sober enough view that it tended to inspire mourning rather than feelings of vengeance. Greengrass' intelligent treatment of violence continues at the climax of The Bourne Ultimatum, when the protagonist looks into the eyes of a would-be assassin and asks, "Do you even know why you're supposed to kill me?" Even though this film still derives much of its entertainment value from violent action sequences, it is at least honest enough to affirm the fact that those who live by the sword still have a pretty good chance of dying by it. It underlines Edmund Burke's statement about the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing. I'm glad that in a summer beset by exploding robots, women with machine guns for legs, and Bruce Willis killing people with cars for our pleasure, at least one action film is attempting to tell the truth about violence. To Bourne's final question I would add, "Do we even know why we are entertained by men and women killing each other?"
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
A little film called Once has been winning the hearts of cinemagoers for a couple of months now, with even Steven Spielberg saying that it has given him "enough inspiration to last the whole year." I finally saw it earlier this week and was moved and entertained by a beautiful little story of love and music on the streets of Dublin. But beyond the pleasure of watching natural performances, hearing great songs, and feeling connected to two lonely people trying to find happiness, Once also tells a story of economic injustice. The central characters are a vacuum repairman with a profound song-writing style, and a Czech immigrant worker who sells roses to tourists on the city streets and plays the piano and sings with heartbreaking fragility. She lives in a house with other immigrants, sharing one room for recreation, cooking, and sleeping, and is used to being treated with disdain. Once is one of the first films to take seriously the condition of the people known as the "new Irish"—the immigrants (primarily from Eastern Europe and Africa) who have made their way to the land of saints and scholars in the hope of being able to send money home to their relatives, or to make a new life for themselves.
It is rare to see these people portrayed as honestly as Once does—this is a humanized vision of people who I often walk past in my own hometown of Belfast. Artists and lovers disguised as rose sellers, manual laborers, and street-magazine hawkers. My conscience was challenged by this movie—to imagine the lives of others beyond the stereotypes that the powers that be tend to reinforce. The day after seeing Once I found myself on an inter-city bus in California and was further reminded of the often-difficult situations of those whose economic circumstances make reliance on public transportation a necessity. A journey that takes three hours by car eventually took nearly four times as long. It included very uncomfortable conditions, intimidating conversations, extremely long delays, and no accurate information for customers, many who were already feeling tired and more than a little powerless. One example should suffice to illustrate this: While in transit I met a woman who had traveled from Canada to visit her ailing brother, and partly due to the chronic tardiness of the bus company, she did not arrive in time to say goodbye. Insult piled on injury on her return trip, as she had to stand in line for several hours to ensure a place on a bus that finally left Los Angeles two hours late.
I contacted the media representatives of the bus company (which I’ll not name, but let’s just say it’s a big one, and has a picture of a fast-moving canine on the side of its vehicles) to raise questions about the way their customers appeared to be treated like cattle. They told me that they train their employees to provide information and assistance as necessary, and that they inform customers when delays are to be expected. Yet neither of these things happened on Tuesday; other customers told me that this was their all-too-common experience. The fact that this company has a near-monopoly on transporting the poor in America may mean that it does not feel the need to do much to respond to complaints. There are many comments on consumer affairs Web sites by people who have never received a response to the questions they addressed to this company. It is not difficult to believe that if everyone with a complaint told the company that they were writing an article about its service they might receive a better standard, one that at least comes close to offering more than a modicum of human dignity to passengers and employees alike. I came away from this encounter thinking that to deny dialogue to disrespected customers is only one of the ways in which the poor are downtrodden in our society. The poor are easy to ignore when they are made invisible to the powerful; it’s for this reason that I recommend that everyone should both take an inter-city bus trip (and tell the company what they think about the service), and watch Once, for it is not just a beguiling love story, but a powerful reminder of how easy it is to hide from poverty if we want to ignore it.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Film buffs began this week greeting the news that two of our greatest artists had died. Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni lived to be 89 and 94, respectively, and were still making films until a couple of years ago. Their work had exerted such an influence over world cinema for over half a century that it is impossible to imagine film culture without them. Antonioni and Bergman made films about the human interior journey – the travels and travails of the soul. They were sometimes preoccupied with the fear that life had no meaning, and at times seemed desperate to produce cinema because the making of the films themselves were part of their own struggle for enlightenment.
Antonioni explored relationships and their impact on the soul – and he had an ultra-romantic view of women, who often appear as tempting goddesses in his work. His 1975 film The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson (who pronounced it the greatest adventure he has ever had in filmmaking), is an observation of what happens when a man who seems to have a successful life decides to abandon it all in search of something different.
Bergman was more consciously religious – his most famous film is probably The Seventh Seal, in which a knight of the crusades is pursued by Death; they eventually play chess together in the ultimate existential competition. Bergman had a reputation for being pessimistic, once saying that he hoped not to die on a sunny day – a comment to which his greatest fan, Woody Allen, responded on hearing the news of his passing that he hoped the weather didn’t let him down. I think, however, that the charges leveled against Bergman miss the point – it is difficult to imagine that a person so committed to the investigation of what gives life meaning actually just wants it to be over.
It’s tempting to suggest that the deaths of Bergman and Antonioni represent the end of a certain kind of art film, perhaps the end of an era. We imagine the past producing a different type of movie, a different type of politics, a different type of celebrity and power. We don’t revere our great artists or public figures in the same way today partly because it’s much easier to become famous than it used to be. The bar of quality is set so much lower because we’ve all been told that we can too can be famous. Neither Ingmar Bergman nor Michelangelo Antonioni seemed happy to be publicly known. They just wanted to follow their vocation to make films, and get on with their lives.
There’s a lesson here for those of us who want to make a difference in the world but are striving to balance activism and the spiritual search. One of Antonioni’s last films, Beyond the Clouds, was a European pilgrimage made by a filmmaker played by John Malkovich, delicately shot to a soundtrack by U2 and Van Morrison, among others. It’s clear in this film that Antonioni had come to believe, and I imagine Bergman would agree, that for him the search for meaning in life, and the process of making a truthful work of art, amounted to the same thing. In this regard, Antonioni and Bergman’s legacy may seem obvious, but it’s a deeply important lesson: It is possible to do something great at the same time as not knowing all the answers.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
I've seen two powerful documentaries over the past week: Michael Moore's new film Sicko, and the lesser-known Manufactured Landscapes. Both films are intensely political, but the contrast in their approach is striking.
Moore, as usual, is on a crusade. The healthcare system in the U.S. is broken, and we get to see many of the shattered pieces, up close and very personal. To our national shame, we also get to see what a great job the Canadians, Brits, French, and even Cubans are doing.
As with most of Moore's films, his agenda is obvious and immediate. We are presented with a mountain of evidence—some quantitative, much anecdotal—as to why some form of socialized healthcare would be better than what we have now. No dissenting views are presented, and Moore pretty much tells us what to think. And I find myself agreeing with much of what he says. (For example, when was the last time you heard anyone complain about socialized fire departments?)
However, I think he'd greatly increase his credibility if he interviewed at least one Canadian who has some complaints about their system, one Brit who fell through the cracks, one French person who thinks the taxes that pay for their system are too high. We shouldn't expect any system to be perfect—just way way better than one that creates financial incentives to deny care to those who most need it. But instead we have interviews with Che Guevara's daughter, extolling Cuba's virtues. I'm sorry, but I do not think this is an effective strategy for convincing doubtful Americans that government-funded healthcare is the way to go. But as with Moore's other films, there's plenty of entertaining red meat for his left-leaning fans.
Contrast Moore's approach with that of director Jennifer Baichwal, whose Manufactured Landscapes, takes us to scenes of intense environmental and social devastation caused by unrestrained economic development—and simply shows them to us. Monochromatic Chinese factories, grounded oil tankers being scrapped in Bangladesh, the vast scars of open mines. Enough context is provided to explain what you're seeing, but the relative lack of narration is as refreshing as the scenes are stunning. The film chronicles the work of Edward Burtynsky, whose large-format still photographs capture these transformed landscapes in all of their horrible beauty. One leaves the theater in a meditative state, contemplating the origins of one's possessions, rather than chattering about the relative merits of HMOs versus state-run healthcare.
I'm not sure it's necessary to debate which approach is better. One states its bias clearly, rather than pretending to be fair and balanced, energizing activists and alienating opponents. The more subtle approach lacks the rabble-rousing populism that Moore employs, but at the same time might be an easier film to convince your nature-loving conservative cousin to see.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
Great helicopters and explosions abound, the witticisms are barbed, and the cinematography is silver-grey in Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Free or Die Hard, depending on which empire you see it in). I was tired to start with, but the film couldn't wake me up. I vacillated between being bored and horrified, as Bruce Willis yet again stands in for the lone American male whose first resort is always violence (in the first film he was the archetype of a Vietnam War vet, assailed by terrorists on the one hand, and a frustrating civil service bureaucracy on the other; this time he clearly represents the guy who'd go to Iraq just because it's the right thing to do, even though he knows the government sending him is corrupt).
Bruce may well be caught in the middle between two kinds of bad guys—government flunkeys and monstrous villains—but this film makes it very clear where its allegiances lie: with the worship of commerce. The villain's consistent objective seems to be to destroying the U.S. financial system, partly to take some cash for himself, partly just to show the government where it is vulnerable. He's a public-service kind of terrorist, you see. One of the scenes that's clearly supposed to make us feel horrified takes place on the New York stock exchange floor, when the bad guy uses a computer virus to creating a selling frenzy. I have to say that I found it difficult to muster much sympathy for rich boys freaking out at the prospect of not being so rich any more, but given that the film was paid for by Mr. Murdoch, I imagine I'm not the movie's target demographic.
This scene, however, was not the most striking example of cynicism in Die Hard 4.0—that would be the moment where the extremely attractive Asian woman, played by Maggie Q, gets kicked and beaten by our surrogate Bruce, and eventually crushed and blown up by an SUV while Willis chuckles at having destroyed a hot chick. We're supposed to laugh along with him.
But that's not all—for the price of our ticket we get hatred of people who ask legitimate questions about government power, we get an air force pilot who does the wrong thing for the right reasons and therefore gets to escape with his body intact, we get a decent FBI chief who could pass for being Middle Eastern—you can almost hear the film-makers screaming, "Look at us! We're inclusive!" We even get a propaganda speech by the tech-geek nerd/ wacky sidekick guy confessing his realization that his previous ideas about challenging authoritarianism and supporting a more equitable distribution of wealth are the kind of beliefs that lead to America being blown up by thin cheek-boned terrorists with expensive hardware. He's an Apple geek, of course—and the computers used by the bad guys are right out of Steve Jobs' daydreams. Willis' character may be "a Timex watch in a digital world," but this film is pure Microsoft—battering down the competition with a utilitarian ethic that owes more to John Wayne's arrogant self-belief than anything resembling the beauty of being in favor of life.
Now I know I sound like a killjoy—which is, I suppose, what Bruce Willis does to a lot of people in this movie—but the question still remains:
Why is it that when we fear this kind of thing in the real world, we still want to be entertained by it?
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
Years ago my friend Gerry Straub underwent a spectacular modern-day conversion, from successful Hollywood TV producer and practicing atheist to downwardly mobile disciple of Jesus, following his hero, St. Francis of Assisi. Soon, he founded a Franciscan-based non-profit, the San Damiano Foundation, where he now makes groundbreaking films documenting the poorest of the world’s poor.
This week, his latest film premieres, touching upon a slightly different topic - of all things, me. It's about my life in the New Mexico desert, my efforts to teach gospel nonviolence, and my tales from 25 years in the Christian peace movement.
Church groups and universities everywhere have shown his films, with titles such as: Endless Exodus, Embracing the Leper, Rescue Me, When Did I See You Hungry?, The Patients of a Saint, and Where Love Is. “I fervently believe film can touch hearts and minds,” Gerry told the Los Angeles Times. To The New York Times, he said, “My message is for Christians who show an utter lack of concern or compassion for people who have nothing.”
Gerry’s new film about gospel nonviolence, The Narrow Path, developed over the course of some years. Gerry and I talk frequently (St. Francis is passion for both of us). During one conversation, when Gerry grew animated over the saint’s voluntary poverty and his great love for the poor and marginalized, I suggested that Francis embodied radical nonviolence, as well.
From there Gerry spun out his idea. “Let’s do a film about you in the New Mexico desert,” he said. “We’ll film you walking through the high desert, talking about the nonviolence of Jesus, and we’ll culminate with the annual Christian gathering at Los Alamos.” That’s where hundreds of us go each Hiroshima Day to sit in sackcloth and ashes to repent of the sin of war and nuclear weapons, just like the people of Nineveh did long ago.
Thus, a movie is born. The Narrow Path, some 90 minutes long on DVD - with cameos from Daniel Berrigan, Martin Sheen, Cindy Sheehan, Kathy Kelly, Ron Kovic and music by Jackson Browne, “Lives in the Balance,” and Joan Baez, “Let it Be” - is a movie set in the austere beauty of the desert where I live, atop a mesa some 7,000 feet in the air, overlooking miles of spectacular scenery, the land teeming with jackrabbits, ravens, horses, coyotes, scorpions, tarantulas, and rattlers (plus my cat) ... And in the distance - the nuclear hellhole of Los Alamos.
It’s awkward undertaking such a project, but the risks notwithstanding, I hope it will spur people, especially young people, toward a life of peace work and active nonviolence; to take up the gospel journey and walk forward on that "narrow path" of gospel nonviolence toward a new world without war, poverty, or nuclear weapons.
John Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, and the author of more than 20 books. He has also just released his latest book, Transfiguration (from Doubleday), and writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter, at www.ncrcafe.org. The Narrow Path DVD can be shown in short chapter segments, and is an excellent resource for church groups, classes, or family viewing. Learn more at www.sandamianofoundation.org. For further information about John, or for discount bulk orders, contact: http://www.johndear.org/.
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The Dark Knight, unlike many summer blockbusters, is actually an astonishing movie -- a stunning fusion of craft and entertainment, which manages to be both gripping in an edge-of-your seat fashion, and philosophically interesting. It's a violent film in which none of the brutality is played for the audience's pleasure, and although it's a comic book story, it takes place in a world that feels authentic -- one of phone books, champagne glasses, and real crime happening to real people.
Dr. Gareth Higgins is a writer and broadcaster from Belfast, northern Ireland, who has worked as an academic and activist. He is the author of the insightful 
(Spoiler warning--some major plot details are revealed in this article. Stop reading now if you want to see the movie without knowing the outcome. However by the time you've read this article you may not want to see it anyway.)
On Christmas Day a few years ago in Dallas, Texas, Socheata Poeuv's parents called a family meeting to tell her that her sisters weren't really her sisters, and her brother was not her full brother. After 25 years of attempting to live a "normal American life," her parents revealed a shocking family secret that would draw them all back to Cambodia, the home they fled and struggled to forget during the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. As she packs for her trip back to Cambodia, Socheata turns to the camera and confides, "I knew more about the Holocaust than the Khmer Rouge. I knew even less about my own family."
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners. To learn more about Khmer Legacies, visit their Web site: 
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Recently, I had the opportunity to interview John Sayles about his movie 
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When I got an invite to the premiere of the IMAX screening for 
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In some senses Robert Redford is the father of modern independent filmmaking, not to mention the patron saint of Hollywood liberalism – his Sundance Film Festival has launched a couple of dozen major careers, and his concern for progressive environmental policies is well known. And United Artists used to be known for making the kind of movie that entertained and provoked at the same time – from 'In the Heat of the Night' to 'Being There' to 'Rain Man'.
Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock-and-roll martyr, born-again Christian … all of these words have been used to describe Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka 
I saw an "on the road" film this week that blew open my understanding of travel and confirmed my imagination of what life could look like. Into the Wild, Sean Penn's cinematic recreation of the journey taken in the early 1990s by Chris McCandless - a rich young kid - across North America to the frozen wastes of Alaska is, in the first instance, a magnificent film. It relates McCandless' story with near-surgical detail - the extraordinary central performance by Emile Hirsch would be trivialized by awarding him something so cheesy as an Oscar - and it also succeeds in portraying the character as one deserving both our admiration and critique. He was a flawed hero. On the one hand, he risked social ostracism by donating his trust fund to OXFAM and refusing to obey the death-dealing dictates of upper-middle class society – the big house, the well-paying job, the "respectable" family – so that he could pursue the objective of becoming more human through meeting the goodness in strangers and entering a John the Baptist-type wilderness. On the other, he allowed his family to believe he was missing, presumed dead, for nearly two years.
If you want to find out what it means to be a hero, you could do worse than seeing two current documentaries: In the Shadow of the Moon and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Shadow consists of documentary footage of the space race, intercut with new interviews of most of the men who have been to the moon and back. Kong follows another race, and one of the strangest competitions of our time – the battle to be the world Donkey Kong video game champion. At first glance, these films may seem to have little in common – but they both reflect different dimensions of the same theme: that of American exceptionalism. 
The Kingdom opens with a striking historical montage, depicting the roots of Saudi Arabia and why this country means so much to the U.S. We're soon plunged into a horrific attack, viewing the killing of whole American families and the Saudi police who guard them in compounds where Islamic law does not apply. It's not long before Jamie Foxx and his intrepid FBI colleagues are secretly flying to the kingdom to show the Saudi police how to solve crimes.
It's intriguing how many current films address questions of revenge and justice. Like all cinematic epidemics, this is a mixed bag, from Quentin Tarantino's alternately boring and horrifying car-crash fest Death Proof, just released on DVD, to the slasher-style terror of Death Sentence starring Kevin Bacon, to the mature and moving reflection on justice and fatherhood in 3:10 to Yuma, to the ostensibly more thoughtful treatment of vengeance in Jodie Foster's new film The Brave One.
Shane Claiborne is a 
A little film called Once has been winning the hearts of cinemagoers for a couple of months now, with even Steven Spielberg saying that it has given him "enough inspiration to last the whole year." I finally saw it earlier this week and was moved and entertained by a beautiful little story of love and music on the streets of Dublin. But beyond the pleasure of watching natural performances, hearing great songs, and feeling connected to two lonely people trying to find happiness, Once also tells a story of economic injustice. The central characters are a vacuum repairman with a profound song-writing style, and a Czech immigrant worker who sells roses to tourists on the city streets and plays the piano and sings with heartbreaking fragility. She lives in a house with other immigrants, sharing one room for recreation, cooking, and sleeping, and is used to being treated with disdain. Once is one of the first films to take seriously the condition of the people known as the "new Irish"—the immigrants (primarily from Eastern Europe and Africa) who have made their way to the land of saints and scholars in the hope of being able to send money home to their relatives, or to make a new life for themselves.
Film buffs began this week greeting the news that two of our greatest artists had died. Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni lived to be 89 and 94, respectively, and were still making films until a couple of years ago. Their work had exerted such an influence over world cinema for over half a century that it is impossible to imagine film culture without them. Antonioni and Bergman made films about the human interior journey – the travels and travails of the soul. They were sometimes preoccupied with the fear that life had no meaning, and at times seemed desperate to produce cinema because the making of the films themselves were part of their own struggle for enlightenment. 
I've seen two powerful documentaries over the past week: Michael Moore's new film Sicko, and the lesser-known Manufactured Landscapes. Both films are intensely political, but the contrast in their approach is striking. 
Great helicopters and explosions abound, the witticisms are barbed, and the cinematography is silver-grey in Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Free or Die Hard, depending on which empire you see it in). I was tired to start with, but the film couldn't wake me up. I vacillated between being bored and horrified, as Bruce Willis yet again stands in for the lone American male whose first resort is always violence (in the first film he was the archetype of a Vietnam War vet, assailed by terrorists on the one hand, and a frustrating civil service bureaucracy on the other; this time he clearly represents the guy who'd go to Iraq just because it's the right thing to do, even though he knows the government sending him is corrupt). 
John Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, and the author of more than 20 books. He has also just released his latest book, Transfiguration (from Doubleday), and writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter, at 
