Blood Diamond

Kathryn and I saw Blood Diamond last night. It was a little depressing and quite explicitly violent, but then so it goes with the issues that it dealt with, particularly that of child soldiers. When she asked me what I thought of the movie, I said something like, "It was alright." That's probably because it was so sad, even with the possibility of change that hung over the ending. But I don't want to give the impression here that there was nothing redeeming about the movie. Far from it--a major part of the movie seemed to itself be moored in the theme of redemption.

Part of the story of the movie is of a man, Solomon, who goes on a hunt for his little boy, who was abducted by the rebels, given a gun, brainwashed, drugged, and forced to kill as a demand for respect and a show of power. Solomon knew full well what they had done to his son, but when he found him none of that mattered at all. He was his son, and he was going to love him back to normalcy. As Kathryn pointed out during the movie, it was an unconditional love, an unconditional acceptance despite all of the horrible things his son had done and of the difficult times that lay ahead for his family.

As sad and horrible as the violence was that the movie portrayed, I wonder how powerful Solomon's embrace of his son would have been without it. I could just hear Hal say, "Now that's the gospel!" And in a real sense, it is. The incomprehensible beauty of God's acceptance of us is that much more powerful and moving (and incomprehensible) because of our rancid ugliness apart from Christ. In his bosom, we are both exposed in our ugliness and embraced as beautiful in his sight. Why does he continue to embrace us, even as we are repeatedly unfaithful and ungrateful? Because we are his, we are his children, and he loves us on the basis of his faithfulness rather than ours.

The Amorality of Movie-Making

No, not the immorality of movie-making, though there is plenty of that to go around. The Federal Trade Commission is considering cracking down on the marketing and public advertising of gory thriller movies—keeping disturbing images out of the public eye, that sort of thing. Flipping around the channels the other day, I alit on an entertainment news show and caught a brief interview with one of the actors in the new thriller Disturbia. When asked what he thought of the FTC’s plan of action, the actor drew an analogy with Picasso and Warhol. Honestly, I can’t recall what his conclusion was, but he rhetorted* something like the following: “Were Picasso or Warhol censored? No.” Perhaps he said, “Should Picasso or Warhol be censored?” No matter. The reconstructed argument behind his question-and-answer might go something like this:

Picasso and Warhol weren’t/shouldn’t be censored for their artwork.
Movies are works of art.
Therefore, movies (and the marketing that goes along with them) shouldn’t be censored.

Assuming that the work of Picasso and Warhol counts as art, which I am willing to admit, I find it odd that movies would be in the same category. I don’t find it odd that movies are works of art—I think they are, though they can be well or poorly done. But I wonder whether it makes sense to say that movies are in the same league, in terms of artistic value, as Picasso and Warhol. Perhaps his point was that Picasso and Warhol were not in the mainstream and shook art up a bit, or that there were off-centered and even disturbing aspects to their artwork. Even so, there are a couple of considerations about the analogy to keep in mind.

1. The value of the art is a different issue from whether or not it ought to be publicly advertised. Even if the art is considered “good” art, it still may not be appropriate for public consumption. Typically, artistic value is the judgment of the artistic community, which doesn’t have a de facto right or obligation to put the art up on billboards.
2. The extent of just how disturbing the images are should be a consideration. Even if movie posters, as still image advertisements of movies-as-art, count as art in the same way as “Guernica” or Warhol’s soup cans, this doesn’t give advertisers carte blanche to put them up anywhere they please. Perhaps an analogy with Maplethorpe would be more appropriate.

But this wasn’t the most interesting part of the interview. He went on to say:

"We [the movie industry] can’t do anything wrong. We can do good stuff and bad stuff, but that’s opinion-based. You can’t [stop – not sure what word he used here, bnb] artwork."

Granted, this is one actor from one movie, so his view doesn’t necessarily reflect that of the industry. But it struck me that there is a lack of ethical obligation or even ethical judgment in his words. “We can’t do anything wrong.” Morality doesn’t apply. It’s not that he is saying that movie makers have a right to be immoral—the interesting thing here is that moral categories simply don’t apply to movie-making. There is no moral or immoral movie; there are only good or bad movies, where “good” and “bad” do not reflect moral judgments but instead reflect judgments of amoral opinions, whether personal or corporate.

Can movie-makers “do wrong” in their craft, in an ethical sense? If there is no area of life or culture that is outside of God’s dominion, what place does art have (whether visual art, movies, or literature)? How should God’s standards be applied? I honestly haven’t done as much thinking about answers to these questions as I’d like. I am disinclined to make application by counting the number of curse words and gratuitous acts of violence, not the least reason for which is that I enjoy (most of) Tarantino’s movies.

Why do I think his movies are good? What do I mean by “good” here? What standard am I applying? I recently finished a short article by Ross Douthat in First Things, “Lost and Saved on TV,” where he discusses religious themes and themes of redemption in TV shows. (Yes, he discussed LOST at some length.) One of the more interesting parts of the article, and one that is perhaps relevant to this post, is his discussion of The Sopranos. He had high praise for the show, even though it is filled with infidelities, corruption, and violence, for Douthat’s point was about how these things were portrayed. They are not glorified in the show but rather shown for what they are: things to avoid.

"The Sopranos dares instead to explore the terrible banality of evil, depicting ordinary people held prisoner by their habits and appetites who choose hell instead of heaven over and over again, not with a satanic flourish but with an all-American sense of entitlement. Sin is never glamorized or aestheticized: The violence is brutal rather than operatic, the fornications and adulteries are panting and gross rather than titillating. The characters’ sins breed even physical dissolution: obesity, ulcers, hemorrhoids, constipation, cancer. The show offers a vision of hell as repetition, ultimately, in which the same pattern of choices (to take drugs, to eat and drink to excess, to rob and steal and bully and murder) always reasserts itself, and the chain mail of damnation—in which no sin is an island, and gluttony is linked to violence, sloth, and greed, and so on—slowly forges itself around the characters’ souls."

Perhaps this could be a clue to how we view movies (and TV shows)—don’t count the acts of violence but rather think about what role that violence plays in the broader aesthetic context, think about what view of violence is being portrayed. But, then, this requires us to think, and these things are often hard to think about.

* I made this word up. I suggest the following definition of “rhetort”: “to reply rhetorically.”

A bit of trivia: the actor who plays King Xerxes in 300 also plays (the buried alive) Paulo in LOST.

Let's Fight

Finally got around to seeing 300. Visually stunning, as I expected, but not just in the battle scenes. There was a nice flowing feel to movement on and off of the battle field, a graphic novel come to life with slow and real-time motion, stops and starts, that added to rather than detracted from the visual experience. I suspect this was largely the point as the movie was based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name. The battle scenes reminded me of the descriptively stunning battle scenes in the Illiad where larger-than-life men are leaping through the air, lopping off heads and popping out eyes. Good stuff.

A few weeks ago Don preached on God as the Divine Warrior (Hab. 3). It really is a glorious passage of God’s authority and power over creation and the heathen nations. God in His splendor goes forth, and the earth and peoples react accordingly:

His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of His praise…. Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him. He stood and surveyed the earth; He looked and startled the nations. Yes the perpetual mountains were shattered, the ancient hills collapsed…. Thy bow was made bare, the rods of chastisement were sworn. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw Thee and quaked…. Sun and moon stood in their places; they went away at the light of Thine arrows, at the radiance of Thy gleaming spear. In indignation Thou didst march through the earth; in anger Thou didst trample the nations. (Hab. 3: 3-12)

In stories like 300 and the Illiad, too, are warriors going forth in the knowledge of their strength, fighting for glory, honor, and loved ones, refusing to either retreat from or submit to their enemies. It is a picture, both in Scripture and in ancient Greek literature, that I think is appealing to most men. We want to be warriors. We want to fight for glory and honor. We want to fight for those we love and hold dearest to our hearts. We want our enemies vanquished.

Ultimately, though, as Paul says:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. You are looking at things outwardly. (2 Cor. 3:3-7)

In the end, the battle is the LORD’s, not ours. Yet we must fight. King Leonidas in 300 refused to retreat from the powerful and more numerous Persian army. He refused to heed Xerxes’ call of wealth, pleasure, glory, and power because it came at too great a price: submission. True, Leonidas’ pride was a human one and, thus, ultimately as groundless as the things Xerxes promised him. But he recognized that those things were worthless if gained at the cost of bowing his knee, at the cost of recognizing that his enemy was greater than he. That, too, is defeat. A greater defeat than dying on the battlefield, a defeat that would taunt and burden him every second of whatever life he chose to live.

I submit that we should have the attitude of Leonidas. There is, I think, a place for battle, even with the weapons of this world. But we must remember that we do not fight in our own strength but in the strength of the LORD. We do not fight for our own glory, but for the glory of the LORD. We do not fight for our own sense of justice, but for the LORD’s justice.

Thou didst go forth for the salvation of They people, for the salvation of Thine anointed. Thou didst strike the head of the house of evil to lay him open from thigh to neck. Thou didst pierce with his own spears the head of his throngs. They stormed in to scatter us; their exultation was like those who devour the oppressed in secret. Thou didst tread on the see with Thy horses, on the surge of many waters. (Hab. 3:13-15)

With the LORD at our side, we must not retreat. We must not submit to His enemies.

Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk on my high places. (Hab. 3:18-19

Oh, and there's one more thing that 300 reminded me of: I don't have six-pack abs.

New Movies

I can't wait to see Scorsese's latest film The Departed. Another New York film from this great New York director.

I'm also looking forward to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Hopefully it will be better than that awful remake of 2003. From the previews, it looks to continue the surreal vibe of the original, which I really liked. If nothing else, we get to see R. Lee Ermey (probably best known for his portrayal of the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket) do his thing!

I haven't seen Flyboys yet, but it looks really interesting. You don't see many films made about WWI fighter pilots. I hear the special effects are excellent.

1. Saw Syriana Saturday night. It seemed to get good critical reviews, but I found it pretty boring and (as Simon Cowell would say) unmemorable. Political thriller? Well, they got the political part right. Very hard to follow. So was Memento, but at least that one kept my attention. The coolest part of Syriana was when Clooney's character got all of his fingernails ripped off with pincers. Mmmm, pincers.
   
2. Speaking of movies, I replaced my special edition copy of This Is Spinal Tap. Some sap ran away with it a while back. This one will not leave my place of residence. Period.
3. I've been listening to Death Cab For Cutie's early album (their first one, I believe). For the most part, it's very different from the bulk of their two latest albums. Less airy and ethereal both musically and vocally. More of the rough-and-tumble driving feedback guitar that I dig, some of it with a decidedly alt/punk feel. With 18 songs on the album there's definitely a mix, some songs anticipating the path they took on their latest albums, while some of their latest (I'm thinking mainly of "We Looked Like Giants" and parts of "Expo '86" from Transatlanticism) is reminiscent of this early stuff. I like it a lot. There's also a fabulous cover of The Smith's "This Charming Man" on it--alone almost worth the purchase.
   
4. Headphones just keeps getting better.
   

Movie Talk

Nope, this isn't going to be some profound interpretation. After all, it was just Wedding Crashers. Even if there is profound interpretation to be had, I'm not going to wade around to find it. Fairly common story line: Girl has overbearing Jerk Boyfriend whom everyone (but her) loves, Nice Boy meets her and falls in love with Girl, Nice Boy does something he shouldn't have, Nice Boy is exposed, Girl becomes disenchanted, Nice Boy pursues, Girl dumps Jerk Boyfriend, Nice Boy and Girl head off into the sunset, The End. For my money (which I didn't spend anyway, since I borrowed the movie), The Graduate plays out the story line much better. But I like Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn is usually a hoot to watch. Vaughn didn't disappoint, and I saw more of Luke Wilson in Owen than I had before, which was perhaps the most interesting part of the movie for me. That, and the song played at the very end of the movie was "Stay With Me" by Rod Stewart's old group, Faces, a song that is on their album I've been listening to lately. It's a dang good song, to be sure, but one thing that struck me was the difference in how the movie portrayed the relationships between the main characters and the relationship between the couple in the song. In the movie, there is a sense of commitment in the relationships. The song, however opens up with the line, "In the morning don't say you love me, 'cause I'll only kick you out of the door"--hardly signifying the presence of long-term commitment. Of course, this isn't an indictment of the movie--I mean, how much attention to that kind of detail can you really expect from the director of Shanghai Knights?

And now that the semester is over, I rented a few movies. Well, two movies and something of a video documentary of one of my favorite bands, Galaxie 500.

I watched Rob Zombie's latest attempt The Devil's Rejects last night. Not a film for Everyman, that's for sure. Not for the feint of heart. (It even made me cringe a time or three.) A cross between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original 1974 version, not the crappy remake done a couple of years ago) and Seven, with a little Tarantino-esque humor-in-the-midst-of-sadistic-violence mixed in. There are a few reasons why it reminded me of TCM: a gritty, low-budget feel; a sadistic, aggressively weird, murdering hillbilly family holed up in a dilapidated house with eerie trinkets of who-knows-what scattered about; and some classic late 1970s music (it was set in 1978). A realistically savage, brutal film. (Well, I guess it's realistic. I've never actually seen someone get smashed in the middle of the highway by a semi going 70 mph. Somehow I doubt that the body would be as mangled as the film depicted...) Much like many people took TCM to be a real story, this film was believable in an unbelievably harrowing and frightful way. I mean, what mind would make something like that up? Rob Zombie, for one.

Even so, with those necessary qualifications, I thought it was well-directed and very well-acted. (William Forsythe (of Raising Arizona fame), for instance, did a great job as the no-nonsense, Good Ol' Boy kick-ass sheriff.) The pieces fit, even if the puzzle is gruesome and demented.

Hustle & Ho

Saw Hustle & Flow last night. I really liked it. It was well written, well directed, and well acted. Now, it's about a low class pimp in Memphis trying to achieve his dream of being a rap star, so there is a lot of explicit language and situations one might expect from a pimp with his three prostitutes living in the same apartment. But, perhaps amazingly, there weren't any sex scenes and only one very brief instance of nudity, which didn't even involve sexual suggestion. The focus was obviously on the main character, DJay, played by Terrence Howard (we share the same birthday, BTW), who did a superb job. Craig Brewer, the writer/director, did a great job of giving DJay a laudable depth of character while at the same time shying away from giving his character itself an obvious stamp of approval.

Admittedly, I haven't seen many "hip hop" movies (not sure how else to characterize them). I saw 8 Mile and thought it was pretty good. But Hustle & Flow had a much more raw, earthy, realistic feel to it, which I very much appreciated. (I think that's why I like films of the early and mid 1970s that were trying to bring about a sense of realism to the cinema not only in terms of subject matter but also in terms of cinematography and direction. The French Connection, for instance, was one of the first mainstream films, if not the first, to employ a camerman running on foot with the actors to shoot a scene. The documentary A Decade Under the Influence does an outstanding job of showing how that period was an intentional benchmark in American movie-making.) Unlike 8 Mile (what I remember of it, anyway), the movie doesn't show DJay actually making it big or becoming a widely recognized star in the rap scene, which only serves to underscore its primary focus on DJay's character--his struggles, his dreams, his mid-life crisis (!), and the lengths he would go to hustle whatever he needed to hustle (whether they be his girls or those already in the rap industry) in order to avert that crisis.

Oh, and the movie is funny, too. Breast-feeding catfish and Mormons in the hood. Word.

Movies

Been watching some movies this past week. Last Wednesday I saw Wild Strawberries (director: Ingmar Bergman), a classic must-see foreign film. Basically, it is about the transformation of a scroogey old man, Isak Borg, as he looks back on his life to find some sort of meaning, resolution, and/or peace to it all. Their are several significant dream sequences in the movie, the first of which, a nightmare really, seems to "wake him up" to self-reflection. The dream occurs on the eve of his accepting an honorary doctor award--a recognition of his life of achievement. It is natural, then, that his past and the question of whether it really is worthy of recognition would arise. Time, death, and loneliness are key aspects of the dream: neither the clock on the street nor his wristwatch have hands, there is no one in the shops or on the sidewalk, a coffin falls out of a driver-less horse carriage, and the person in the coffin is none other than him! Time has slipped away and he is faced with little more than his own death.

The issue of estrangement in personal relationships is front-and-center throughout much of the film. He and his daughter-in-law, who has been staying with him because of tension between her and Borg's son, drive to the ceremony. (He was going to fly but decides after the nightmare instead to take the day-long drive. She wasn't originally planning to go at all. Incidentally, the argument between his son and daughter-in-law was that she was pregnant and wanted to have the baby but he didn't want it. Reminded me of the conversation that Morgan Freeman's character had with Paltrow's character at the diner in Seven.) On the way, she discloses that she doesn't like Borg very much. Borg is reminded of the failures of his own marriage and how much of a jerk he as been to so many people. She even tells him that Borg's son hates him for owing Borg money. Could you imagine the misery of spending a day in the car with THIS? Sheesh. Even in the dream sequences of his happy childhood he can't escape the failures of his past relationships: he spies Sara, the cousin to whom he was unofficially engaged, in the wild strawberry patch giving in to the advances of a much less kind and more arrogant man. (The "bad boy" got the nice girl even in 1957!)

With these failures in mind, he has a dream of having to go through a series of tests (perhaps in order to be shown worthy of receiving the honorary degree). He is asked to identify a specimen under a microscope and to assess the condition of a patient (both things he should be able to do, having been a doctor his entire career). He has no idea what the specimen is and the patient, who he diagnoses as dead, just laughs at him. Failure. He is judged to have been cold, indifferent, etc. to his wife. Failure. Judgment is passed and he stands guilty. He pleads, "But is there no mercy?" Not in this dream.

Indeed, there is no mercy at all that saves him. Yet he changes. At the end of the journey, his live-in housekeeper (who flew and with whom he had one of their usual heated disagreements at the beginning of the film) thought he was ill when he tried to be nice to her and apologize for his behavior earlier that day! He tries to have a heart-to-heart with his son and cancel his son's debt to him (it doesn't actually happen, but the intention is definitely there). But even after these changes, what is his consolation? After the ceremony, he is still alone--his housekeeper has gone to bed, his son and daughter-in-law (apparently working out their problems) go to a dance, he lies in bed by himself. He thinks to himself: "If I have been feeling worried or sad during the day, I have a habit of recalling scenes from childhood to calm me. So it was this evening." This is his only consolation.

Of course, I think there is much more to true, fulfilling consolation than this. But that in no way detracts from this being one of the most revered films by one of the most influential directors of all time. There is much, much more to the film than my short comments show. I've only touched on a couple of the themes (and a less-than-satisfying resolution). Yet his presentation of the themes--the symbolism, the seamless direction, the significant dream sequences, and the pace of the film--make it a must-see.

Watched Klute again the other day. I keep forgetting what a great film this is. One of those gritty realistic movies that the early-mid 1970s are so well-known for and that I like so much. Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda (before she became "Hanoi Jane") are really quite good in it. The cinematography was superb. But one thing that caught my eye in this most recent viewing was the relationship between Fonda's character, Bree, and Sutherland's character, Klute. He is this small town detective who goes to New York to investigate a friend's disappearance. Bree, a former high-class prostitute trying to get out of the "business," is caught up in the investigation, so they're spending a lot of time together. He sees her struggling to get out of prostitution, taking a trick here and a trick there while trying to get acting parts. (In the film, Bree explores some interesting parallels between the two with her therapist.) At one point, she goes back to her pimp (played by Roy Scheider--Ha!) and gets hooked on drugs again. All the while, Klute is there. He takes care of her. He never gets emotionally out of joint. He doesn't freak out. He does what needs to be done. Solid. Accepting. Discussing him with her therapist, Bree says:

It's so strange--the sensation that something is flowing from me naturally to somebody else without its being prettied up.... I mean, he's seen me horrible, he's seen me ugly, he's seen me mean, he's seen me whory, and it doesn't seem to matter. I wish that I didn't keep wanting to destroy it.

Why would you want to destroy something like that? Too good to be true? It is definitely unfamiliar territory--how often does one come across a relationship like that, where being ugly etc. does not make you any worse in the eyes of another? But why get scared of that? Why run from it? I don't know. But then I realized that I do that all the time. Without being intentionally sentimental (or sentimental at all, for that matter), this is precisely the attitude God has toward me--He's seen me horrible, He's seen me ugly, He's seen me mean, He's seen me whory, and it doesn't seem to matter. Yes, whory. Hosea 4:12. Ezekiel 16. We are constantly unfaithful and run after other things when we should be running into the bosom of Him who loves us like no other will. Essentially, we are like Bree: spiritual prostitutes who are being reformed and transformed into the likeness of Christ (who is unsurpassingly faithful) but who keep going back to our old ways and fleeing God's embrace.

Been watching Man On Fire the last few days. (Spoilers below, for those who haven't seen it!) Why do I like this movie? Justice, redemption, and some very inventive techniques for third degree questioning, I suppose. Denzel (as Creasy) and Dakota (as Pita) do a great job, of course, and I love the cinematography. (I haven't, and probably won't, read the 1980 book by A. J. Quinnell, re-published in 2004.) But I guess the way in which the redemption theme gets worked out just moves me so much more than, say, in The Matrix Trilogy (to pick a favorite redemption-movie reference for Christians). Arguably, the Matrix theme gets worked out in a way more in line with Christianity with its death-resurrection motif, but Neo seems motivated more by his fate as the One than anything else. Eventually he assumes the part of the One and his love for Trinity certainly motivates him on some level. But as the redemptive hero, it just seems a little hollow to me (particulary given that since I don't what the crap happened at the end of the Trilogy, I'm not sure what the redemption accomplished!).

For Creasy, on the other hand, his love for Pita motivated his every action after her kidnapping. Okay, so his actions amounted to a lot of death and destruction, but it was in order to bring justice to Pita's murderers. His version of vigilante justice...and then some. Then when he found out that she wasn't dead after all, the killing stopped. His only thought was her safety. Even at the expense of his own life. One of the key phrases during the negotiation for Pita's life was "a life for a life"--a substitution. Creasy, out of love for Pita, willingly gave his life for her life. It wasn't for an idea that Creasy sacrificed himself. It was because of a relationship of love toward someone. That final meeting between Creasy and Pita on the bridge was simply stirring.

But the strange thing to me, and perhaps the thing that makes it all the more remarkable, is that it didn't seem necessary. I mean, Creasy had Daniel's brother. So, why couldn't the "life for life" be the brother's life for Pita's? That would seem like an even enough trade, right? The bad guy not only got his brother back but got Creasy as well (and, presumably, got to kill him). Weird. But, in a way, if he didn't have to sacrifice himself in some ultimate sense, that makes his sacrifice all the more incredible. He didn't seem to care whether the exhange was just or not. If his death meant Pita's life, so be it.