ROSETTA

ROSETTA (1999, Belgium, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta.
You found a job. I found a job.
You found a friend. I found a friend.
You have a normal life. I have a normal life.
You won't fall into the rut. I won't fall into the rut.
Good night. Good night.

Rosetta is fierce – the character, as well as the film that bears her name. At the opening a hand-held camera pursues her down hallways, around corners, under steaming equipment. Doors slam, her employer intercepts her. "Why should I go?" He won't answer, she throws herself at him and bloodies his nose as another employee tries to restrain her. The police corner her in a bathroom stall, it takes three men to drag her away. All she wants is a job.

The film-makers describe ROSETTA as "a war film," and there is rarely a lull in Rosetta's battle for survival. She scrapes and scrounges to get by on the fringes of an economy that offers her no favours, no opportunity. She's the embodiment of desperation, of an animal courage that cannot entertain the luxury of making certain moral choices: anything she wants or needs she must fight for. At times she doubles up in pain, holding her stomach. We're never told what is wrong: are these menstrual cramps, or something like an ulcer, or the result of bad food and never enough of it? All we know is that this shouldn't be happening to a seventeen year old girl.

Rosetta lives in a decrepit trailer with her alcoholic mother, who trades sexual favors for liquor or a piece of fish they can eat for dinner – except when Rosetta drives the men away, shouting "My mother is not a whore!" She wrestles the fish away from her mother, who clutchess a kitchen knife, and throws it into the bush: better to eat what she can pull from the muddy stream nearby. There's a barely-contained frenzy in this girl, some kind of danger on the brink of despair that comes out in the way she walks on the verge of a run, struggles to carry a propane tank, digs in the dirt for worms, works with her hooks and hidden fishing lines – it's a matter of survival, and there isn't enough time to do everything that must be done. It's as if she's being always pursued by something deadly, some threat. No wonder her stomach hurts: mine did, watching.

Rarely will you see such an intensely committed and physicalized performance, such an uncompromisingly raw and truthful rendering of a human soul – except in every other Dardenne brothers film. Like Bresson, these directors frequently rely on untrained actors: unlike Bresson, they draw out impassioned, emotional and utterly compelling performances from their first-time talent. (Emilie Dequenne won the Cannes actress trophy for her portrayal of Rosetta.) They also rely on equally truthful work from highly accomplished actors, like the astonishing Olivier Gourmet who appears here as a gentle-but-pragmatic minor character that's as much of a contrast to the self-indulgent, self-interested father in LA PROMESSE as he is to the constricted, clenched shop teacher in THE SON – a performance which garnered him similar Cannes kudos.

If we're talking Bresson (and we should: his influence on these film-makers is everywhere evident), we might well turn our thoughts to those menacing mopeds, whose off-camera buzzing is as threatening here as it is in AU HASARD BALTHAZAR. And if Rosetta doesn't submit to her tormentors with the donkey's resigned humility, there is still something immensely noble in her suffering. The risk and relentlessness of ROSETTA grabs us in a visceral way that the French master avoids, yet there's something distinctly Bressonian in the way the film opens up its deepest mysteries upon reflection, over the hours and days that follow the final credits. Which may have something to do with the way both Bresson and the Belgians keep their focus entirely on cold, hard, ineluctable physical realities – the doing of mundane physical tasks, inscrutable faces, unexpected occurances, unexplained sounds – in a counter-intuitive effort to evoke unseen spiritual truth.

Whether a viewer identifies anything explicitly "spiritual" in this particular film will depend mostly on the person wielding the adjective. There are no apparent gestures toward God or religion, or even much sense of any more general sort of transcendent hope. There aren't in THE SON, either, but that film is so unwaveringly focused on themes of vengeance and the near-impossibility of forgiveness, on what it might take to reclaim a human soul –themes that are absolutely central to Jesus' gospel – that it's not hard for me to see the later film as distinctly spiritual, essentially Christian.

What is clear is that ROSETTA lives very much in the same universe as the Dardennes' other major films – one of the most artistically and thematically unified bodies of work to be found in cinema. A world of parents and children, of murders and near-murders and Abraham-Isaac catastrophes. Of hatred and love co-mingled, of fierce loyalties and heart-sickening betrayals. A workplace world, where routine physical tasks are performed and money changes hands. The learning and losing of vocation. Poverty, survival, desperation: crime and law, moral decisions worked out somewhere between resourcefulness and sin. Unvarnished, unsentimental characters who draw us to themselves not by their attractivenes, but by their naked and undeniable humanity. Life-and-death stakes, story-lines that drive relentlessly toward a moment of truth, an irreversible point of confrontation. Hand-held cameras. Abrupt endings.

ROSETTA placed first on the 2005 Arts & Faith poll of Spiritually Significant Films, and while that's partly due to a quirk in the survey's methodology that favoured off-the-beaten-track movies, the fact remains that a whole batch of Christian cinephiles rank this film up there with classic religious pictures you or I could more easily name. Having mulled this story for some time now, pondering the puzzle of its hidden spirituality, I come down to this: at the core of ROSETTA are a pair of questions. What will this girl do to get – and keep – a job? And in her world of marginal survival, is there anything more important? The answers, as embodied in this tough and uncompromising story, come very close to both the bad news and the good news at the heart of the gospel.

MOUCHETTE, THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS

Available at Videomatica

Soul Food Tidbits: Sight & Sound, June 2006

Lots of tantalizing Soul Food crumbs in the most recent Sight & Sound magazine to hit these shores. (S&S is maybe the premiere movie mag in the world: for decades they've reviewed every film that reaches big screens in the UK, with expert in-depth commentary contextualizing the most interesting releases and, of course, their acclaimed once-a-decade Top Ten Poll).

IKIRU is by far my favourite Kurosawa, perhaps his greatest non-samurai flick. This month S&S profiles Shimura Takashi, whose performance is the heart and soul of the film: a partial version of their profile is available online, as is my IKIRU review for Christianity Today Movies.

There are a couple Wim Wenders films I'm waiting to see. Most eager to check out LAND OF PLENTY (see COMING SOON), but also interested in DON'T COME KNOCKING – all the more interested having read the S&S review, which is available online. Check out an appreciation of this and other Wenders films by Official Pal Of Soul Food, Jeffrey Overstreet, at his Looking Closer site.
Wenders' masterpiece was WINGS OF DESIRE. In the process of shooting it, the German auteur found his way to faith: there's a great interview with WW in IMAGE Journal, conducted during the writing of DON'T COME KNOCKING, that gives the skinny.
That IMAGE interview was conducted by Scott Derrickson, whose EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE messed with some genre expectations last fall, taking supernatural evil seriously. Not everybody loved it, but I surely appreciated a lot of what it was on about: I'll post my musings for you to check out. The June Sight & Sound brings the latest Derrickson data; "Legendary Pictures, the production company behind SUPERMAN RETURNS and BATMAN BEGINS, is reportedly developing a movie based on John Milton's PARADISE LOST, with Scott Derrickson on board to direct." Hell yeah!

Another official Friend Of Soul Food Movies gets a lovely kudo in the Sight & Sound review of a new Yasujiro Ozu DVD collection, where Brad Stevens notes "There are also intelligent sleeve notes by Doug Cummings." Doug's been immeasurable help as I work on my book, introducing me to Bresson (well, to his movies, anyhow) and loaning me copies of hard-to-find films like WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, REPENTANCE, THE GREEN RAY, ROSETTA, LA PROMESSE, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's early work THE PARSON'S WIDOW.

There's Dreyer, too, in the June S&S, with two new DVD releases in the UK;
GERTRUD: "Dreyer's late masterpiece, made when he was 75 years old, has the emotional depth and intensity of one of Henrik Ibsen's plays. Gertrud is a tragic heroine: a woman caught in a marriage to a narcissistic politician. When she tries to break free, she is betrayed by her young lover and left in limob… Contemporary Dan ish director Lars von Trier has cited Dreyer's movie as a profound influence on his onw work and is reported to be planning a documentary about it…" They also cite Henri-Georges Clouzot: "Dreyer's world is a spiritual one. Through the drama unfolding on the screen, we can detect another drama, which is the world of good and evil, the world of grace and tolerance."
DAY OF WRATH: "Made in the middle of World War II, Dreyer's tale about oppression in early 17th-century Denmark can't help but appear as an allegory about the Nazi era… Old women accused of witchcraft are tortured and burnt to death by staunch, upright Christians who don’t even begin to question their own behaviour. Almost inevitably, Anne, the young wife of the priest who oversees the burnings, soon ends up accused of witchcraft herself."
Dreyer is as hard to pin down as he is fascinating. His ORDET claimed a very high spot on the Arts & Faith "100 Spiritually Significant Films" list which I curated a couple years back, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC may be the great silent-era soul food offering, and LEAVES FROM SATAN'S BOOK "gives us the story of Satan and his involvement with the evil turning points of the world's history, culminating in a powerful look into the life and death struggles of the human race via War, condemnation, etc." (Videomatica)
Yet, as Doug wrote in an email, "Dreyer is complicated. ORDET is a very committed Kierkegaardian film but DAY OF WRATH is a very cruel picture of religious bigotry. So, you’ve got to be careful. Clearly, the views of the characters are not the views of Dreyer himself. But I think he had an extraordinary sympathy and a sense of religious story telling. I saw his LEAVES FROM SATAN’S BOOK a couple of years ago and I think he was just fascinated with stories about religion. His screenplay for the Jesus film is well worth reading. It never got made but it’s very interesting and a great loss that he never did make it. But whether he went to church, I doubt it." (Doug's website, filmjourney, is undoubtedly one of the best Soul-Food-related sites on the web: he's a genuine authority on world cinema, particularly folks like Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Bresson and the Dardennes, and frequents film festivals such as Palm Springs, Toronto and Flickerings.)

Finally, S&S writes up several brand new quasi-indie films that I want to see, THE DEVIL & DANIEL JOHNSTON (which premiered at Pacific Cinematheque, so we'll probably have to wait now for the DVD to hit Videomatica), THE KING (opening this weekend at Tinseltown: 12:20, 3:05, 5:25, 7:55, 10:30), and...

DOWN IN THE VALLY (Edward Norton co-wrote, produced and starred), which has a "freewheeling, unhurried feel reminiscent of mid-1970s New Hollywood films like FIVE EASY PIECES." Says Norton: "It's a deconstruction of the spiritual bankruptcy we live in, and in that sense I'd see it as a companion piece to FIGHT CLUB, even if its texture is very different."

BRICK, just for fun, which grafts hard-boiled film noir argot and story-line onto a contemporary high-school milieu. No apparent God Stuff, but I'm a sucker for Chandler, and once went to high school, so… The synopsis and review are online at SIGHT & SOUND BUT BE WARNED: the synopsis summarizes the entire plot. I recommend you skip straight down to the review. That's what I do, given my allergy to spoilers.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT (1992, USA, Robert Redford, Richard Friedenberg screenplay, Norman Maclean novella)
My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy.

Regrettably, Norman Maclean waited until late in life to publish his first book, an elegantly written memoir of his youth that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It’s about fly fishing, it’s about his father – a Presbyterian minister who loved the Montana rivers almost as much as he loved his boys and the gospel – but mostly it’s about Norman’s kid brother, a high flying golden boy who loved danger.

Two years after the author’s death, Robert Redford’s handsome treatment reached the screen. Viewers gloried in images of unspoiled river valleys and the portrait of a family and a time that was nostalgic without being saccharine. The film celebrates the love between the Maclean men without sentimentalizing it: there are rivalries and tensions, too little is spoken or even expressed, and ultimately these men remain opaque to one another, their actions a mystery.

Critics of the film found that absence of character revelation a deficiency. Hal Hinson rightly notes that Paul’s gambling and drinking “seem to spring from an anger deep within,” but then complains that his anger is “never fully explained…. This deficiency leaves a hole in the picture that Redford can't cover over. And it causes repercussions throughout the film, particularly in Paul's relationship with Norman, who seems as puzzled by his brother's behavior as we are.” But would it really be better if Paul’s anger were “fully explained”? No. This is a film about the inexplicableness of people, particularly those closest to us, and the choice we are offered to see their beauty along with their shadow, and to love them nonetheless.

It’s not only his brother’s behaviour that confounds Paul, it is his own as well. In one potent scene violence erupts between the two brothers, without any apparent context or provocation, and when their mother happens into the kitchen and is knocked to the floor, the film brilliantly captures the awkwardness and inexplicability of the event, and the way that none of them has the words or the means to come to terms with what has occurred. The author’s wisdom lies in refusing to explain away souls: the critic has yet to attain that wisdom.

The same commentator finds it perplexing (and ultimately a flaw, a contradiction within the film that “expresses a split within the filmmaker himself”) that Paul masters fly-fishing while failing in life. Hinson correctly reads this as a spiritual movie, but faults the director for failing to deliver the straightforward moral the critic has assigned to the film;
“In RIVER, those who excel in fly-fishing do so through the grace of God. Ultimately, this is a spiritual movie, and if a man is not in spiritual harmony with himself, his God and nature, then, well, he can pretty much count on hamburger for dinner that night. … The sympathies of the gods appear to be divided here, throwing the moral compass out of whack. While Paul is blessed with the greater artistry (not to mention the bigger fish), it is Norman and his father who are blessed in life.”

Is the film full of flaws, then, or is the universe full of mystery? It seems that Mr Hinson wants answers: he’s a Proverbs man, not an Ecclesiastes man, and if a movie is going to show the rain falling on the just and the unjust, it better explain just why that might be.

Roger Ebert also assigns to the film a pretty tidy message, and in doing so quite exactly misses the point: “Fly-fishing stands for life in this movie. If you can learn to do it correctly, to read the river and the fish and yourself, and to do what needs to be done without one wasted motion, you will have attained some of the grace and economy needed to live a good life.”

Perhaps he gives too much credence to Rev. Maclean, who also seems to believe something along these lines, at least early in the film. But the preacher (like the Preacher before him) lives long enough to see his youngest son disprove it: the universe won’t boil down that way, won’t reduce to formulas.

The elder Maclean is a fascinating character. He embodies a certain tough-minded Protestantism, transcendent yet relentlessly pragmatic: he preaches a grace that seems foreign to his own predilection for hard work, righteousness and self-controlled sobriety. Do we earn our way, or are blessings dispensed on some other basis? Surely there must be something we can do to deserve grace? Something a son can do to win the love of his father?

Perhaps that central quandary is what draws him to fly fishing: in the cathedral of a river gorge, fly rod in hand, only the most highly skilled fisherman will be rewarded – yet there are no certainties. Try as we might to master the art of fly fishing, it still remains for the river to offer up its blessing. What’s hidden, or fleetingly glimpsed, may never yield itself up: when it does, when the fish rises to the lure, there is mystery and a sense of blessing. Earned, yet not earned. He begins the film as a man of certainties who will be taught otherwise by all that he loves most.

One of the first chapters in the Movie Critic Handbook states that all voice-over narration is bad, and must be criticized, and, dutifully, the film’s detractors did so here. (Maybe they ought to add that chapter to the Movie Maker Handbook, get rid of those damn voice-overs once and for all, save all those movie critics all that time later on.) But in this story it seems right, essential, reminding us that people do tell these sorts of stories, years after the fact, tell them and re-tell them, fishing for understanding, but that explanations remain elusive. “Long ago when I was a young man, my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories. Someday when you’re ready, you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened.’” So now, obedient first-born son that he is, Norman tells the story. But perhaps the only understanding available to him – or to us – is that sometimes things can’t be understood. People can’t be explained. Only loved.

The film’s detractors were impatient with its leisurely pace, with its lack of complex and carefully structured narrative. I think of Auggie Wren’s words in SMOKE: “You’ve got to slow down, my friend, or you won’t get it,” and I wonder if these boys know how to look at a river? This story isn’t engineered, it’s not an irrigation system or a white-water theme park ride: it’s a river, it flows, it ambles, it finds its own way. The subplots aren’t carefully manipulated to create whiz-bang narrative payoffs: it’s a memoir, a contemplation of a life, of the ways men, and the ultimately insoluble mysteries that gather around what we love best; brothers, fathers, lovers, rivers, God.

Available at Videomatica

Links To Other Soul Food Review(er)s

Here's a collection of links to movie writing I like. Movies I'm interested in (usually with some sort of spiritual angle), or writers I'm interested in (usually for similar reasons, whether or not the film itself is such a big deal). I'll keep adding things that catch my eye.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS POST HAVE BEEN EXPANDED AND MOVED HERE

JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO

JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO (1990, USA, John Patrick Shanley)
Do you believe in God?
I believe in myself.
What does that mean?
I have confidence in myself.
I've been doing some soul searching lately, asking myself some pretty tough questions. You know what I found out? I have no interest in myself. I start thinking about myself, I get bored out of my mind.

You know the Tom Hanks – Meg Ryan romcom you never rented because you thought you didn't really need to see Tom and Meg do their thing again, and besides you thought it might be a little weird? Well, you thought wrong: it's a lot weird, it's like no other romantic comedy you'll ever see, and you do need to see it.

John Patrick Shanley is one of America's most widely produced playwrights, and his writing and directing for the theatre has kept his imagination alive in a way that frees him from the genre restrictions and market orientation of so much commercial screenwriting. There's a whimsical imagination at play here that goes way beyond the conventions of what's supposed to pass for realism in standard issue romantic comedy: painting with freer, broader strokes and wildly vivid colors, he gives us something that's both more romantic and more comic than any dozen SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLEs or YOU'VE GOT MAILs.

It's also more substantial, in its own whimsical, wacky sort of way. Shanley also penned MOONSTRUCK, which makes all kinds of sense, but it's even more telling that he won the Pulitzer for DOUBT, a preconception-defying investigation of possible sexual abuse in a religious school where the tough-as-nails conservative-as-all-get-out Mother Superior gets to be the good guy. (Or does she? It's too subtle and true a play to hand us such white-hat black-hat answers. Suffice it to say, the Catholic- educated Shanley dedicated the work to "the many orders of Catholic nuns who have devoted their lives to serving others… Though they have been much maligned and ridiculed, who among us has been so generous?")

Did you ever hear something called a "joe job?" Joe's got one; mindless, purposeless, and terminally tedious, he orders (or doesn't order) stationery at the whim and mercy of his whining monstrosity of a supervisor, lost in the dingiest fluorescent-lit corner of the dreariest factory industrial capitalism has to offer – the American Parascope Company, "Home Of The Rectal Probe!" Think METROPOLIS, think Kafka, think ERASERHEAD – only greyer, cheaper, and less interesting – and you'll be in the right neighborhood.

Joe is a walking dead man, so when his doctor tells him he's got only months to live, he's ecstatic. Anything, we suppose, would be an improvement. With nothing to lose, he quickly works his way up the scale of "wild and crazy," starting by asking the typist out for dinner and ending up agreeing to throw himself into an active volcano to save the mysterious and fabulously weathly Mr Graynamore's superconductor conglomerate. (Hmmm, there's something about that name…)

Obviously not your ordinary chick flick. Obviously not your ordinary any kind of flick. Roger Ebert, who arguably sees more movies than any person alive, wrote "Gradually during the opening scenes, my heart began to quicken, until finally I realized a wonderous thing: I had not seen this movie before. Most movies, I have seen before… constructed out of bits and pieces of other movies, like little engines built from cinematic Erector sets. But not JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO…"

It is truly meet, right and salutary that Rodge's heart should have started beating faster since, when it all comes down to it, that's what John Patrick Shanley's oddest, sweetest movie is really all about. Hearts beating faster. The dead coming back to life. When Joe finds himself adrift in the middle of the sea, dying of thirst and scanning for some sort of human signal on his radio, it's the Dell-Vikings he finds, and the goofy, awkward, nobody's-looking-at-me-so-I-might-as-well-dance dance that he dances alone under the moon and stars, away from the things of man, is something they'll never see back at the American Parascope Company. "Come Go With Me" indeed.

HAROLD & MAUDE, IKIRU, THE IDIOT, DOUBT

Available at Videomatica

THE STATION AGENT

THE STATION AGENT (2003, USA, Thomas McCarthy)
Bring 'em in.
What?
Grace.
Really?
Really, we got to give thanks. C'mon, bring em in. Hands around. Who wants to say it?
You.
God, thank you for letting us sit here and enjoy this meal. Please watch over everybody. Please let my dad heal, he's driving me f***ing crazy…. Anybody you guys want to mention?
No.
Amen. Let's dig in.

I love the way the Hollywood Reporter summed up STATION AGENT after the Sundance premiere. "A dwarf inherits a rural New Jersey train station and bonds with a hot-dog vendor and an artist. Gonna rush right out to see that one? Probably not, but…" It's the "but" that counts: nobody can help liking this one-of-a-kind, good natured, unsentimental beauty. No budget, small story, great performances, it's a wryly humorous portrait of two resolute loners and the ultra-gregarious extrovert who sets out to befriend them, who knows why. He's compelled, he cannot do otherwise, friendliness is hard-wired in this guy. He's a force of nature. Good nature.

This is a film about solitude and train watching, good food and casual cruelty and what ordinary community feels like. By any measure, it's a soulful film: these are richly drawn characters you just want to hang with, it's a pleasure to be in their company. Still, I'm not sure I would have pegged this one as a specifically spiritual film if it weren't for that prayer, and that from the unlikeliest of sources. Or is he?

I see that unrestrained appetite for friendship and food and everything out there, I see the comfortable place his faith has in a life that's so unapologetcally human it might get labeled hypocritical but I would call it just being alive, and I can't help thinking, "I want to be more like that guy."

Is it a certifiable God Movie? Maybe not. Is it soul food? Oh yeah.

PIECES OF APRIL

Available at Videomatica

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951, USA, Robert Wise, screenplay Edmund H. North, story Harry Bates)
It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. The decision rests with you. Gort baringa.

Fans of early science fiction consider this a tautly paced, intelligent film that distinguishes itself from others of the genre by subtle wit, a preference for characterization over sensationalism, and a laudable anti-war message with religious overtones. Viewed half a century later and miles from the nearest drive-in, it's hard to imagine that any movie not made by Andrei Tarkovsky could move this slow: thirty minutes worth of Twilight Zone concept is stretched out to a leisurely hour and a half, with dialogue (and ideas) only a cut or two above PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (for which it seems to have provided inspiration). The "give up your weapons of mass destruction or we'll destroy you en masse" argument may have sounded progressive just after World War II, but it's hard to take seriously as a pro-peace manifesto today: Mark Janovich's Rational Fear: American horror in the 1950s convincingly makes the case that the story is thoroughly pro-military – it's just a matter of whose army's got the bigger guns and the higher ideals. As for the film's noted Christological symbolism (other-worldly emissary walks among ordinary humans disguised as "Mr Carpenter:" his gospel of peace disregarded, he is killed but comes back to life, ascending to the heavens with a warning of fiery judgment), it's as contrived and thin as the film's politics. Still, your mileage may vary: this early Cold War peace parable, however muddled, ranks #162 on the IMDb popularity poll. Ultra-cool theremin soundtrack by Bernard Hermann, though. And it must be said, the film does offer practical wisdom which may well save your life: when confronted by a silver-clad (if slow-moving) robot bent on destruction, you need only remember these words to avoid certain death: "Klaatu barada nikto."

IRON GIANT

Available at Videomatica

TIME OF THE WOLF (HANEKE)

TIME OF THE WOLF ("Le Temps du loup," 2003, France/Austria/Germany, Michael Haneke)
They jump naked in the fire. Sacrificing themselves for us.

A child of the Cold War, I've long been fascinated by post-apocalyptic fiction, and this seems to me the ultimate among the "this is what it would really be like" sub-genre. Sometimes these stories are merest misanthropy, consumerist wish-fulfillment or heroic fantasies of self-reliance. Not WOLF, which is rigourous, unsettling, and prophetic in the truest sense of the word: forth-telling rather than foretelling, Haneke warns us not about what's to come, but about what already is.

In his press notes, writer/director Michael Haneke tells us the title comes from the 'Song of the Sightseer', part of the ancient Germanic Codex Regius, which describes a time before Ragnarok, the end of the world. But the Austrian bad-boy film-maker isn't interested in making science fiction: "Four-fifths of humanity live in conditions far worse than those depicted here. The only thing I did was to take those living conditions and transpose them into our geographical area. This is not a film for the third world - they don't need to see it. This is for the wealthy nations."

Very early in this dark, dark film – visually dark as well as emotionally dark – a central character is shot to death. Suddenly, awkwardly, capriciously. Haneke has served notice that, in this unvarnished apocalyptic world, anything can happen, we can never let our guard down. In one sequence a mother is separated from her child in the middle of the night in the middle of a countryside as devoid of humanity and compassion as it is electricity. Desperate, she lights clutched handfuls of straw in a complete darkness that fills the screen for panicky, unbearable stretches, and we crave light like a drowning swimmer craves air.

Fire is as important as darkness, and once we find ourselves in the midst of – well, not civilization, but at least other people – we hear snatches of conversation about "nutters" who throw themselves into fire, sacrificing themselves: the cynical response, "Well at least there is one less" – to eat the food, to drink the water, to take up space in the crowded shelters. There's also passing comment about The Just, a Talmudic notion that in each generation there are at least 36 tzaddikim in the world, righteous people for whose sake the world escapes destruction. In Haneke's world, there is no way to know if such stories might be true or not – both tales are recounted by mad people, one of whom swallows razor blades – just as there is no way of knowing what's gone wrong with the world to reduce it to such a state. But the religious, mythical context these stories evoke is intentional on the director's part, and they are clearly taken as true by at least one character in the story in a horrifying sequence that is not easily forgotten. The monologue that follows the martyrdom scene is extraordinary, richly poetic and obliquely hopeful, especially in a film so relentlessly stripped of language and optimism. It evokes biblical language in a skewed and troubling way reminiscent of the hospital "beatitudes" in SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, another strange and vaguely apocalyptic (if far funnier) European film.

TIME OF THE WOLF is a bleak and uneventful film that offers none of the narrative excitement or melodrama of the conventional end-of-the-world flick. The soul-straining tediousness edged with fear that ends up constituting most of what life's about after society collapses proves to be just one more thing to endure, and the film is as willing to expose us to that reality as it is the threat of hunger and thirst and human bestiality. Truly, here, the light shines in the darkness, but it will be up to each viewer to decide whether the darkness overcomes it, or not.

Available at Videomatica

THE KING

THE KING (2005, USA/UK, James Marsh, w/ Milo Addica)
I need to get right with God

Elvis Valderez gets his discharge from the navy and heads for Corpus Christi to connect with the father he never knew, now a family man, the pastor of Glad Tidings Ministry. Who receives his prodigal son with the words "Let me tell you something. This is my family and that is my house" – a clear warning, even a threat. Elvis isn't the sort to take no for an answer, and besides, he's interested in the preacher's sixteen-year-old daughter.

The film is dark and disturbing, and what's most disturbing isn't the strong sexual images or the violence or the constant feeling of dread, but the sense that this may very well be a cynical deconstruction not only of a particular brand of Christianity but of the deepest things of the faith, things like redemption and forgiveness.

Read most reviewers and you'll decide it's just that. But that's why you ought to scrupulously avoid the reviews, at least until you see the film and make your own mind up. Because I think this film is – or may be – much more than than a simple spit in the eye for Christianity. Indeed, it's the viewer's uncertainty about just where the film stands, and what it intends for us to think about this all-too-human family and this almost sociopathic lost son who just wants someplace he can feel home, that comprises the film's real artistry. In that, as well as some of its central themes, it begs comparison with A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, and will similarly split its audience into the unconvinced who find the story nasty and simplistic, something of a genre failure, and those who decide it's subtle, nuanced, ambivalent and, ultimately, a work of real art tackling the most essential human questions.

Whatever you decide the film concludes, there's no denying it wants to grapple with – or maybe just take aim at – the same profoundly Christian questions as the more easily digested LES MISERABLES. Can a man be born again? For what can we be forgiven? What can we forgive? What must we forgive? In a stranger, in our families, in ourselves? And what happens if we do not? Wherever you decide this film ultimately lands – exploitative attack or authentic engagement – the journey there is surely a visceral, queasy, unpredictable flight, a gut punch of a movie that provokes both anger and thought.

21 GRAMS, MY SUMMER OF LOVE

Available at Videomatica

*

Previous joggings: Don't expect a sermon on celluloid, but I for one am always interested in anything that sets its story in the context of the church subculture. Many Christians viewers would find last summer's MY SUMMER OF LOVE essentially a critique (mockery?) of the born-again brother, but a gang of Christian artisitic directors I watched it with weren't so sure, and thought it a pretty interesting (and accurate, and not altogether unsympathetic) rendering of at least one sort of Christian community. So who knows about THE KING?... "British documentary filmmaker James Marsh has collaborated for his first narrative feature with hot screenwriter Milo Addica (MONSTER'S BALL) to create a horror story that is as pretty as a candy box but contains only poison. The film is an accomplished piece of mischief making that directly confronts religious conviction, in this case Christian, with its worst nightmare: can you really forgive evil? Beautifully shot and well acted, the film might well cause controversy among fundamentalist believers as a provocative allegory challenging the power of faith. The story has biblical overtones as a young man named Elvis Sandow takes an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy and heads directly to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he seeks out Pastor David Sandow (William Hurt) and claims to be his son. The pastor, who runs a successful Christian center, immediately spurns the young man, explaining that he has a new family now, and the episode with his mother occurred before he had found Jesus. Elvis, however, encounters the Pastor's 16-year-old daughter..." Hollywood Reporter
Reviewed in Sight & Sound June 2006.

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005, USA, Scott Derrickson, screenplay with Paul Harris Boardman)
People say that God is dead, but how can they think that if I show them the Devil?

I know people have qualms about this one. I can only say I was completely caught up in it, deeply affected, and extremely proud of what Scott Derrickson has accomplished. I think EMILY ROSE is one of the most direct apologetics both for the reality of Evil and the authenticity of the Christian faith that I've seen represented on film. And I don't think it's a mere tract, the kind of Christian propaganda movie we all dread that does nothing but bully an audience with over-argued apologetics that mostly just provoke us to take up the other side.

Though marketed as a straight-up horror movie, EMILY ROSE aims to be much, much more than simply scary (though it is that): it tries – and I think it mostly succeeds – to examine the possibility that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in most of our philosophies. Oh, Scott does the scary stuff real good: I'm sure there are plenty of viewers who will feel he's at his best in the straight-ahead horror sections. But how thrilling for me to see a film – especially in a cash-cow genre that's been milked of any real significance – make the risky choice to take these these things absolutely seriously, not just as a terrific premise for scaring people and taking their money, but as authentic phenomena with real spiritual significance.

Predominantly, supernatural horror films grab anything at hand that will render maximum fright quotient, to grab maximum box office buck: there's no thought of treating the genre ingredients with respect, with authenticity, as if these stories offer anything that might relate to real human experience. Vampire hunters wield crosses, but only as weapons: scripture is magic incantation rather than spiritual truth. Characters are treated as plot puppets rather than human beings: they are on a Dangerous Adventure In Another World, but are not on any real spiritual journey of their own. They have emotions and motivations, but not souls, and certainly not eternal souls.

EMILY ROSE treats its central characters with integrity, as human beings, and it argues passionately that to dismiss the possibility of supernatural evil and the validity (indeed, the necessity) of a spiritual response, may be not only foolish but deadly dangerous. The Catholic church gets bad press these days, and I'm not sure the cross-wielding (even cross-bow-wielding), holy water sprinkling demon hunters don't do as much to trivialize and marginalize it as sex-abuse scandals and media cliches of corrupt officials, ineffectual priests and ignorant parishioners. Derrickson seeks to rescue these holy symbols from the pop cultural recycling bin, to re-invest them with the legitimacy and authority they need to protect us from the Dark. However willing this director is to use the horror movie tropes, he never lets go his central theme: these are not out-of-date superstitions and rituals indulged in by untrustworthy religion mongers, and we forget that at our own peril. Jesus took the power of the evil one quite seriously, if the gospels are to be trusted: we who put our trust in the gospels do well to do the same.

As effective as the film is in frightening us, I respect the fact that there is a line it does not cross. There is an integrity there. At times I felt assaulted, but never violated: the film horrifies, but does not offend. I may not always want to look, but I never feel I am seeing what I shouldn't see. The camera is never prurient.

Simply considered as a movie, EMILY ROSE is at its best when the devil's around. As a genre film-maker, Derrickson knows the ropes: the high-intensity direct encounters with evil are visceral, intense, extreme, without going over the top or lapsing into laughable improbability, and the director is equally strong at setting up those sequences with sustained tension, creating oppressive environments with unsettling images. For all the rain and Catholicism, he doesn't go gothic: there's a dispiriting flatness to key locales that evokes the kind of experiential deadness that has everything to do with evil. The Rose house has an abandoned, autumnal look. Things are out of joint: wasps swarm around an unseasonal grey hive, farm cats move away as if pressed down by some invisible weight. The despairing university campus haunts me hours after the film has ended, reflecting Emily's own oppressed psyche with sterile concrete architecture, noisy cafeterias, soulless cinderblock dorm rooms and poorly-lit basement classrooms. In a more superficial horror film, these settings are merely creepy, serving as nothing but tension builders, moody set-ups for the dreaded explosions of terror or violence to come. While they do function that way in EMILY ROSE, they also achieve something far more significant than that, something that humanizes this film in a remarkable way.

The humanity of Derrickson's approach is seen most powerfully in the character of Emily Rose. She is never just a plot device, a human football to be kicked around by the demons, a living football field on which God's squad and Satan's team battle for victory. Jennifer Carpenter is an exceptionally gifted and experienced stage actress, a graduate both of the Juilliard School in New York and the Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville who brings both tremendous technique and powerful personal connection to the role. She plays its outsized demands with an utter physical and emotional commitment that somehow manages to sidestep all the pitfalls inherent in so physically extended (and at times bizarre) a role. She never mis-steps into caricature or cliche: she renders Emily with the same artistry and authenticity she brought to Mary Warren in The Crucible on Broadway, and we are able to see Emily for what she is: not a horror-movie monster, but an ordinary human soul. Maybe even an extraordinary one.

Emily's university experiences root the film in a human reality that renders the supernatural sequences far more deeply affecting: this is precisely how life feels for thousands of isolated students on campuses everywhere. This is exactly how cold and alienating a university campus can look, especially in the unrelenting drizzle of a cold fall rain. The pathetic fallacy isn't just a fallacy: at least in our perceptions, the physical world can very much embody the weather of our souls. As darkness closes in on this young woman, it matters little whether the demonic faces are real or imagined: they lay seige to her soul. I was especially shaken by the resolute determination of Emily's oh-so-young, oh-so-courageous boyfriend to stand by her, though he had nothing to offer but helpless love and proximity. How many early-budding college romances end up traveling equally terrible (if less overtly supernatural) journeys? What could equip this good-hearted boy for such a long and terrifying dark night of the soul? I felt for these kids.

I also felt for Emily's family, deftly drawn with few lines and solid performances. The sister who is sent with a message to the upstairs bedroom where her depressed sister has separated herself from the family, standing outside in the hall and hearing her sister's voice mumbling away in the empty room. The mother and father who are not the rural gothic rubes we expect them to be – this is a horror movie, after all. Simple, yes, but not simple-minded. Troubled, yes, but what sane person wouldn't be? It turns out the Rose house may not conceal ugly family secrets after all. Not all evil is so easily explained.

While Derrickson succeeds in breathing unexpected humanity into the people around Emily, and in using a certain visual flatness to great effect in the university setting, he doesn't get the same payoffs with the other secondary element in the film. Once the film's truly unsettling opening has passed, we step through a series of obligatory lawyer-biz scenes that seem to come right off a not-very-inspired TV set: the characters are stock, the "rising star in the legal firm" backstory standard issue, and soon enough we can't wait to flee the limbo of that boring bar, even if it means fleeing into the welcome presence of Satan. Better evil, well-portrayed, than mundanity rendered banal.

Some viewers find the courtroom scenes similarly uninspired, and that is surely a weakness in a film that's as much courtroom drama as horror movie. The arguments move forward methodically, the setting is visually mundane, drained of any possible mystery or drama. But all that worked for me. This is where we work with facts, the very walls seem to say. This is the real world: we don't believe in ghosts here. How lurid and improbable these medieval religious images look in such a utilitarian frame. If you can prove your case here, you've really done somethingl.

The problem with genres is that they set such rigid expectations: horror flicks start scary and get scarier, and then finish up with an unbearably scary climax; courtroom stories are filled with brilliantly engineered plot reversals, unexpected revelations that change everything, and stunning rhetoric that carries the day. Fans of both genres will have their expectations thwarted. It starts out scary, and rises to some pretty horrific climaxes, but that's not the emotional territory where it plays out its final act. We watch the case progress through the court, but we witness the methodical unfolding of an argument rather than the more melodramatic twists and turns of a fictional legal suspense story. If the central dramatic (and legal, and philosophical) question grips you as it did me – if you think it is important to wonder whether such supernatural horrors might actually be something more than, or at least something other than, the psychological horrors of mental illness – and if the jury is still out for you on the matter, as it is for me – then EMILY ROSE may work as superbly well for you as it did for me. If these questions seem to you insignificant, or if your verdict is already in – or if all you really want is to watch a genre flick – this one may very disappoint.

What will not disappoint are the performances not only of relative newcomer Jennifer Carpenter, but of Tom Wilkinson as the surprisingly three-dimensional and compassionate priest, and the always extraordinary Laura Linney as his defence attorney. This story may not afford Linney the scope of something like YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, but her intelligence and humanity provide an entrance point for an audience that will share her healthy skepticism about the priest's story, and which may find itself following along on her journey away from the cut-and-dried rationalist assumptions with which she begins the story into intellectual and spiritual territory that's far more ambiguous.

We also follow her as she pursues the central line of argument not only of the court case but of the film itself. Perhaps scientific/medical models are not the only ways of viewing the world; perhaps they involve speculation, theory, subjectivity and "leaps of faith" in the same way religious models do; perhaps not all priests are monsters, perhaps not all Catholics uneducated rubes, perhaps sometimes spiritual solutions are best suited for spiritual maladies; perhaps supernatural phenomena (such as demonic possession, for example) are worthy of legitimate inquiry; perhaps there is more in heaven and in earth. The film doesn't ultimately set out to establish "proof" by irrefutable argument - that may be the strategy of late-night talk show guests, but wouldn't appeal to most folks who aren't already convinced paranormalists - but rather to establish reasonable doubt toward the empirical-rationalist scientism that insists "such things cannot happen, and people who believe such things are dangerous." Perhaps too great a reliance on the machineries of science can also be dangerous?

EMILY ROSE makes the case for the reasonableness of religious belief: more precisely, for the wisdom of seasoning our certainties about the world with a certain reasonable doubt. If my summation of the film's argument makes it sound like a mere tract, rest assured it is not: this may not be a perfect film, but it is a dramatically powerful one, well acted and bloody scary - all the moreso when one realizes the director is playing for keeps. Derrickson isn't content to slap together another midway house of horrors or freak show that so many fright flick directors are willing to be: he treats supernatural evil as something all too real and deadly powerful, and that is truly frightening. He tells us that otherworldly darkness may visit not only Rwandan killing fields or hearts of darkness in Africa or Vietnam, but even a decent prairie farmhouse or cinderblock university dorm room. "The horror, the horror...."

REQUIEM, THE EXORCIST, HELLRAISER: INFERNO, SHAKING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

Available at Videomatica

SOUL FOOD REVIEWS ONLINE: Links

Links to Soul Food Reviews here and elsewhere
Updated Sep 16 '06: recent additions in red

28 Up (soulfoodmovies, Aug 12 '06)
3 Needles (soulfoodmovies, Aug 12 '06)
The Addiction (Looking Closer '04)
Amateur: Hartley (soulfoodmovies, Aug 12 '06)
American Beauty (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
Amistad (Christianity Today Movie Bible Study, '05)
Around The Bend (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
Au Hasard Balthazar (CT Movies, Jun 21 '05)
Barcelona (soulfoodmovies, Sep 16 '06)
The Best Two Years(CT Movies, Feb 30 '04)
The Big Country (soulfoodmovies, Aug 11 '06)
Bright Leaves (CT Movies, Oct 8 '04)
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (CT Movies, Mar 9 '04)
Cat People: Schrader (Aug 2 '06)
Cat People: Tourneur (Aug 2 '06)
Close Up (Looking Closer '04)
Cool And Crazy (Looking Closer '04)
Cotton Patch Gospel (Looking Closer '04)
Curse of the Demon (soulfoodmovies, Aug 2 '06)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (soulfoodmovies, Jul 13 '06)
Dear Wendy (CT Movies, Oct 7, '05)
Divided We Fall (soulfoodmovies, Aug 18 '06)
Dreamlife of Angels (Looking Closer '04: just past Jeffrey's article)
Everything Is Illuminated (CT Movies, Oct 14 '05)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (soulfoodmovies, Jul 6 '06)
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Looking Closer)
Fight Club (Looking Closer)
Gates Of Heaven (Looking Closer)
Heaven (soulfoodmovies, Aug 27 '06)
The House Of Sand And Fog (Matthews House Project, Mar '04)
Ikiru (CT Movies, Mar 16 '04)
I Walked With A Zombie (soulfoodmovie, Aug 9 '06)
Joe Versus The Volcano (soulfoodmovies, Jul 14 '06)
The King (soulfoodmovies, Jul 8 '06)
King Arthur(CT Movies, Jul 7 '04)
The Last Days Of Disco (soulfoodmovies, Sep 16 '06)
A Man Escaped (CT Movies, Nov 23 '04)
The Manchurian Candidate (CT Movies, Jul 30 '04)
March of the Penguins (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
The Merchant Of Venice (CT Movies, Jan 14 '05)
Metropolitan (soulfoodmovies, Sep 15 '06)
Most (The Bridge) (CT Movies, Oct 25 '05)
The Neon Bible (soulfoodmovies, Aug 2 '06)
Not Of This World (Looking Closer '04)
Pale Rider (Looking Closer '04)
Personal Velocity(Looking Closer '04)
The Princess and The Warrior (soulfoodmovies, Sep 5 '06)
La Promesse (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
The Quiet American (soulfoodmovies, Sep 16 '06)
A River Runs Through It (soulfoodmovies, Jul 24 '06)
The Rookie (Looking Closer '04)
Rosetta (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
Run Lola Run (soulfoodmovies, Sep 5 '06)
The Sea Inside (CT Movies, Jan 7 '05)
See Grace Fly (CT Movies, Dec 3 '04)
Shadowlands (CT Movies, Jul 19 '05)
Shane (Looking Closer)
The Shawshank Redemption (CT Movies, Sep 24 '04)
The Son (soulfoodmovies, Jul 28 '06)
Stars In My Crown
The Station Agent (soulfoodmovies, Jul 13 '06)
Strange Cargo (soulfoodmovies, Aug 7 '06)
Superman / II / Returns (soulfoodmovies, Jul 11 '06)
Time Of The Wolf (soulfoodmovies, Jul 8 '06)
To End All Wars (CT Movies, Jun 15 '04)
Ugetsu (soulfoodmovies, Aug 15 '06)
Waking Ned Devine (soulfoodmovies, Jul 31 '06)
The Wicker Man 1973 (soulfoodmovies, Aug 29 '06)
The Wicker Man 2006 (CT Movies, Sep 1 '06)

Best Of The Bard: Top Ten Shakespeare Films" (CT Movies, Nov 9 '04)
Celluloid Christians: Faith portrayals in recent movies" (Looking Closer, '03)
Moving Pictures: 100 Spiritually Significant Films" (CT Movies, Jun 22 '04)
Take Me Out To The Movies! Top Ten Baseball Films" (CT Movies, June 8 '04)

Critical Consensus: The Films Of 2005 (MCN)

1 Brokeback Mountain 992.5
2 History of Violence 820
3 Capote 675
4 Good Night and Good Luck 455
5 Squid & The Whale, The 451.5
6 Crash 449.5
7 King Kong 442.5
8 Munich 411.5
9 Grizzly Man 365
10 2046 300

11 Constant Gardener 261.5
12 Cache 251
13 Match Point (Woody Allen) 232
14 Syriana 219.5
15 Kings & Queens 202.5
16 New World, The (Terrence Malick) 195.5
17 Pride & Prejudice 164
18 Batman Begins 162
19 Last Days 154
19 Walk The Line 154

21 Sin City 153
22 Mysterious Skin 152
23 Nobody Knows 148
24 Cinderella Man 147
25 Me & You & Everyone We Know 146.5
26 Wallace & Gromit 145
27 Best Of Youth 141.5
28 Hustle & Flow 137.5
29 World, The 137
30 Murderball 134

31 Head On 130
32 Oldboy 120.5
33 Tropical Malady 120
34 Saraband 119
35 Broken Flowers 117
36 Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada 102
37 Paradise Now 101.5
38 March of the Penguins 99
39 Junebug 95
40 40 Year Old Virgin 94

41 Holy Girl 92
42 Kung Fu Hustle 90
43 Downfall 86
44 Look at Me 81
45 Café Lumiere 79
46 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 68.5
47 Keane 64
48 My Summer Of Love 63
49 Serenity 62
50 War of the Worlds 61

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (2005, USA, Liev Schreiber, Jonathan Safran Foer novel)
Maybe sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget.

Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel had a ton of fans among readers and critics alike, telling the curiously self-referential story of a young man who travels to Ukraine in search of a woman in a photograph who helped his grandfather escape Eastern Europe just ahead of the Nazis. There was an audaciity about the author's combination of wildly inventive verbal humour, bold imaginative strokes and dark Holocaust subject matter that somehow, improbably, worked brilliantly. The film (also a debut, Liev Schreiber's first turn behind the camera) aims for the same brash blend, and if it doesn't achieve the artistic "perfect storm" of the novel, it does tell an important story in a fresh way that may perfectly fit a generation. (The GARDEN STATE of genocide flicks?)

I know a playwright whose holocaust-themed play was recently rejected by a major American theatre: they celebrated the writing, but felt the "holocaust genre" to be "supersaturated." As if this is something we should put behind us. God forbid. Jonathan's wild and crazy Ukranian tour guide, infatuated with all things new, tacky and American, begins the film with just such an attitude: "The past is past." At least that's what he always believed until he encountered The Collector, this young Jewish American (not alone in his inexplicable obsession, it turns out) who's "a compulsive rememberer," gathering the flotsam and jetsam of his life and his family's lives in the plastic bags he carries everywhere.

There is something sacramental in this reverent oblation of mundane objects that's reminiscent of the central moment in American Beauty. Ricky Fitts has filmed a plastic bag caught in a whirlwind in an urban alleyway, a sight whose strange beauty communicated to him the benevolent presence of God: "Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember."

Everything Is Illuminated is a film that doesn't want us to forget. Or perhaps it is a film that wants a new generation to remember – to re-member, if you will, to re-assemble – a past beyond its own personal memory, which nevertheless profoundly shapes its present. Whatever its possible short-comings, this may be a very important film indeed, a story for and about a generation half a century removed from the Holocaust who must come to terms with the horrors of their not-so-distant and not-so-different past – horrors which befell young men and young women not so different than themselves.

Available at Videomatica

Originally published in longer form at Christianity Today Movies

DEAR WENDY

DEAR WENDY (2005, Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier screenplay)
It's the time of the season for loving

Dick loves Wendy. Helplessly, obsessively, tragically. It's a star-crossed-lovers story that's as ancient as it is familiar. With one crucial variation: Wendy is a gun. Specifically, a 6.35mm six shooter, a sweet little double action pearl handle revolver with internal hammer who makes a new man of Dick, turns a weak and sensitive loner into a man with confidence and authority. A good woman or the right gun can do that.

Dick refuses to follow in the footsteps of the town's real men and work in the mine. He stocks shelves in the corner grocery and carts around a toy gun he found in a second-hand shop, comforting himself with smug judgements of the town's other inhabitants (as much an echo of DOGVILLE as the story's stylized small-town setting). Until he learns the true power of what he carries in his pocket, and his life begins to change. He's a natural shooter who he can plant six shots in the centre of a target without aiming or even thinking. Wendy and Dick are made for each other.

Problem is, one of Dick's strategies for moral superiority has been to call himself a pacifist. But hey, that's no problem: his firearm will be carried but not brandished. Why bother? Just packing heat makes him walk taller – of course he's never going to use his weapon. If you grew up in the MAD shadow DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, you're already sceptical: it's a naive rationalization that contains the seed of eventual tragedy.

Dick and a gun-loving "Hey, I'm a pacifist too!" pal from the grocery store form The Dandies, complete with secret passwords and symbols, rituals and pledges, even dress-up clothes and a secret clubhouse they fix up in an abandoned part of the mine. It's everything kids could want in a secret club. Big kids. Kids with guns.

Of course, as Ibsen taught us, a gun on the mantle in Act One must be used before the end of Act Three. Complications arise, as complications are wont to do, and sudden violence escalates into a bloody BUTCH CASSIDY / WILD BUNCH showdown in the town square, triggered by a tragic misunderstanding.

Well, not exactly tragic. This sad-fated tale doesn't actually aim for the emotional catharsis of tragedy. Its tongue is mostly in its cheek, and it's plenty cheeky. DEAR WENDY is to DOGVILLE as DOCTOR STRANGELOVE is to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – indeed, the "I can walk" climax is a direct nod to that other over-the-top satire of the American weapons fetish: WENDY could easily be subtitled "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Gun." Everything is played with a brash style and ironic tone that signals satire more than sentiment: Lars and Thomas don't want to break our heart, they want to poke us in the eye or slap us upside the head.

Judging by the critics, they succeed at that if nothing else. This movie makes Americans mad – which no doubt makes Vinterberg and von Trier perfectly happy. The not-so-melancholy Danes are in mischief-maker mode, court jesters whose cinematic smackdown chooses provocation over subtlety. Antagonistic reviewers find the movie glib, its characters, situations and plot developments absurd: I'm guessing the film-makers simply find America's love affair with guns equally absurd, and are quite content to match style and subject.

Whether you love or hate this bratty little movie may depend on whether you feel it's your nose that's being tweaked by the town fools. If you're pretty convinced that guns don't kill people, etc, that your country's more right than wrong and that America's latest war "is really about peace" (aren't they all?), you'll likely find this movie by a couple of Europeans facile, as condescending and self-righteous as its misguided central character. On the other hand, if you consider all this GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL stuff a poor way to run a country, DEAR WENDY may seem a perfectly appropriate response, gleefully deconstructing our love of power and the dreadful gravitational pull of violence.

I don't go looking for a gospel message in every film I see. But I do have this habit of taking everything life brings my way – film included – and holding it up against the Bible, to see what light might be refracted. And when I wonder what sort of letter Jesus might write to Wendy and her lover, I think of his words to Peter; "All who draw the sword will die by the sword." Maybe he said that because, if nothing else, weapons are power. Intoxicating power. DEAR WENDY charts the corruption wrought by that kind of power, observing the way young ideals fall by the way once easier, quicker, more decisive strategies present themselves.

Maybe what we've got here isn't exactly a love story or a tragedy, or even a satire. Maybe Dear Wendy is film noir in disguise, sans tough detectives or moody black and white cinematography. Naive, corruptible, lonely young man meets femme fatale, and it all leads, inevitably, absurdly, to destruction.

Some dames you just can't trust. Dames like Wendy.


Available at Videomatica
Originally published at Christianity Today Movies
P.S. DEAR WENDY has the best website in the world. The one for DOGVILLE was equally cool, but it has disappeared from the web.

MOST WANTED: Videos I Need For My Book

Updated Sep 17 2006: New or newly updated entries in purple

Here's a list (followed by some details) of movies I'm trying to track down for my book – to rent or borrow, or maybe even to buy for under twenty bucks Canadian. VHS, DVD, whatever. Anybody got any leads? Email me: fellowpilgrim@hotmail.com

Alice
Amen.
Angels Of The Streets (Bresson)
Bless You Prison
Blue In Green
Le Chambon
La Colline Aux Mille Enfants
The Confession (1920, USA, Bertram Bracken)
Diary Of A City Priest
The Displaced Person (1976, Glenn Jordan, TV)
Dog Nail Clipper
Elina: As If I Wasn’t Here (Finland, Klaus Haro)
Europa 51
The Eyes Of Asia (Portugal)
Faustina (Poland, 1995)
Forgiving Dr. Mengele
He Who Must Die / The Greek Passion (1957, Jules Dassin)
Heaven Over The Marshes
Hiding And Seeking
The Idiot (Kurosawa)
In Your Hands
Inside Out
Investigation Of A Flame
Jesus Christ Movie Star
The Jesus Trip
Lake Of Fire
Love In The Ruins
Machuca
Man Dancin’
The Man Who Planted Trees
Mister Moses
The Navigator
Not Of This World
A Question Of Faith (Timothy J. Disney)
Resurrection (2001, Taviani)
The Seventh Room
Sister Helen
Son Of Man
Spiral Road
Tales From The Madhouse
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine

DETAILS

BLESS YOU PRISON (2002, Romania, Nicolae Mãrgineanu)
"Based on the memoir of Nicole Valéry-Grossu, this film is a convincing testimony of how she is overcome by faith in an extremely painful and hopeless situation."

LA COLLINE AUX MILLE ENFANTS (The Hill of the Thousand Children, AKA LE CHAMBON?, 1994, France, Jean-Louis Lorenzi)
"French TV dramatization of the story of Le Chambon—the French village that saved 5,000 Jewish children by hiding them from the Nazis. Le Chambon was inhabited by Huguenots, a people who knew about religious persecution from personal experience. Their pastor, Pastor Andre Trocine, led his people to do what was morally right. He wrote, “The duty of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear upon their conscience through the weapons of the spirit.” This drama focuses on the pastor and the choices made by the people of Le Chambon during this difficult time—a time which tested their courage and morality." (see also the documentary Weapons of the Spirit, which includes interviews with the citizens and survivors of Le Chambon.)

THE CONFESSION (1920, USA, Bertram Bracken)
A priest hears a killer's confession and must protect the oath of confidentiality, even as his own brother is being convicted of the murder.

DIARY OF A CITY PRIEST
Set in one of Philadelphia's toughest neighbourhoods, Father John MacNamee is faced with gangs, poverty, drugs, and an often pervasive feeling of hopelessness. "David Morse conveys Father Mac's weary yet resolute faith, creating a moving, inspiring portrait of a spiritual man who struggles with translating his faith into action every day." From the book. Sundance Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival.

THE DISPLACED PERSON (1976, Glenn Jordan, TV, 58 min)
Horton Foote screenplay, Flannery O'Connor short story about a conscientious but driven Polish refugee who disrupts the heirarchy of power on a Georgia farm in the 1940s. John Houseman plays "an otherworldly priest."

ELINA: AS IF I WASN'T HERE (Finland, Klaus Härö)
"The film's 9-year-old protagonist, Elina, lives with her mother and sister in the countryside, withdrawn into her own private world. She only shares her emotions with her dead father, whom she believes still lives in a misty marshland. At school, Elina rebels against a taciturn teacher who tries to force the children to speak Swedish. Härö makes no "adult” distinctions between the spiritual and the secular in this visually rich film. Children's film of the year: Berlin 2003 Crystal Bear, Young People's Jury; Montreal film festival. (ET)

EUROPA 51
"Rossellini's major statement on postwar materialism and the sort of Christianity that is so radically called to social justice and renewal that it becomes a threat to middle class notions of the status quo and even sanity. Another major work, starring Ingrid Bergman." (*DC)

THE EYES OF ASIA (Portugal, Joao Mario Grilo)
"17th century Japan. The story of Julian of Nakaura, a Japanese Jesuit priest who was tortured to death for refusing to renounce his faith. Grilo mixes the historical narrative with a modern "story" in which a European (Geraldine Chaplin) visits Nagasaki and learns the story of Julian's martyrdom from the priests who keep his memory alive." PTC

FAUSTINA (Poland, 1995)
"Gorgeously photographed, hauntingly scored, beautifully directed and acted, that offers a deeply spiritual portrait of Sr. Faustina.... On first viewing, my impression is that Faustina belongs on a very short list of deeply spiritual portraits of faith and religion, alongside such films as Alain Cavalier's Therese, Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, and Cloche's Monsieur Vincent." SDG

HE WHO MUST DIE (1957, Jules Dassin)
From Nikos Kazantzakis' novel The Greek Passion.

HEAVEN OVER THE MARSHES (Augusto Genina)
"Several times in THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS Rémy thinks back and obsesses over an actress that he lusted after in one of his favorite films, Augusto Genina’s Heaven Over the Marshes.... a film in which the main character is a fourteen year-old girl who instead of enjoying "the pleasures of sin for a season" resists the sexual advances of a desirous farmhand. It's a film Bazin called "a rarity; a good Catholic film." Yet Rémy obsesses over and reflects on this spiritual film and seems to miss any of the noble themes in it, only concentrating on what he has focused on for the duration of his entire life -- hedonism." stef

HIDING AND SEEKING

INSIDE OUT (South Africa, 1998)
"South African comedian Gilda Blacher stars as Hazel Levin, a young Jewish actress from Johannesburg stranded in a small Karoo town when her car breaks down. Recognized from a TV commercial, Hazel finds herself invited to direct the town's nativity play. She must deal with some openly antagonistic townsfolk - not only because she's Jewish, but also because of her attempts to involve the black community in the production. Inside Out is a gentle, romantic tale of love, tolerance, tragedy and triumph that explores, often with hilarious results, the changing face of South Africa."
(Not the one that goes "Jimmy Morgan is a middle-aged man with expensive tastes, a fondness for call girls, an addiction to gambling... and agoraphobia." Also definitely not the porn series.)

JESUS CHRIST MOVIE STAR
Doc about Jesus movies.

LOVE IN THE RUINS
Scott Derrickson short (35 min) from Walker Percy novel. Student film, undistributed.

MAN DANCIN'
Fairly recent Norman Stone feature about an ex-con who gets involved in a Passion Play

MISTER MOSES
Robert Mitchum

NOT OF THIS WORLD
A nun and a laundromat owner find this baby... (to buy)

A QUESTION OF FAITH (Timothy J. Disney)
"In the heart of California wine country lies a monastery where centuries-old traditions of ritual, discipline and solitude create a timeless serenity--until a member of the order experiences a miraculous encounter with implications that are both stunning and uplifting. As the community struggles with the ramifications, long-buried conflicts begin to surface and the Brothers are forced to grapple with the fundamental tension between faith and reason."

RESURRECTION (Italy/France/Germany, 2001, Paolo & Vittorio Taviani)
From Tolstoy's novel. "Made for the small screen, this three-hour version is just long enough to faithfully cover the book’s events and probe its moral and spiritual dimensions, which have been constant themes of the director-brothers’ work” (Deborah Young, Variety)

THE SEVENTH ROOM
Edith Stein movie

SON OF MAN
Crazy-revolutionary Jesus. Script by Dennis Potter.

SPIRAL ROAD
Missionaries, lepers, Rock Hudson.

TALES FROM THE MADHOUSE
Got myself a PAL copy. Now I just need to find a way to play the thing: or even better, to dub it onto dvd without spending $30 for the service. Anybody?...
Eight 15-minute monologues inside a crumbling Victorian sanatorium, characters who met and missed Jesus. One script by Murray Watts, one directed by Norman Stone, one starring Clair Bloom, one Jonaythan Pryce, etc.

SHADOWLANDS

SHADOWLANDS (1985, UK, Norman Stone, William Nicholson)
SHADOWLANDS (1993, UK, Richard Attenborough, William Nicholson from his own stageplay)
The pain now is part of the happiness then.

In 1993, Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger starred in Shadowlands, the heartbreakingly personal story of C.S. Lewis's fascinating relationship with Joy Gresham. It gave many North American viewers their first glimpse of a little-known chapter in the life of this revered Christian writer, but the episode was not new to British audiences: it had been dramatized for BBC television a decade earlier, then made into a highly successful London stage play.

North American film buffs and Lewis fans alike have had to put up with a certain level of frustration ever since. You'd no sooner start to praise the Oscar-nominated film version of the story than somebody would pipe up to tell you how much better "the original" was. Which, of course, was impossible to get hold of, so you'd just have to take their word.

What you could get hold of, though, was the playscript, and when a buddy brought me a copy fresh from the West End I saw right away this was a masterful piece of writing: indeed, it gripped me even more than the film I loved so much, and I resolved that I would play that role one day. (You see, writing about movies is just my obsession: there's no money in it, so – being practical by nature – I I realized right away I'd need to support my habit with a more lucrative day job. I picked acting.)

This spring I finally got my chance not only to put William Nicholson's amazing script onstage but also (finally) to view the original BBC production, which was released on DVD as we prepared for rehearsal. It's amazing to see how substantially different the three versions are – all written by the same man, William Nicholson. To compare them is a fascinating study in the evolution of a script.

Just as thrilling is the opportunity to watch veteran British actor Joss Ackland (his IMDb entry lists 139 movie credits!) create an interpretation of "Jack" Lewis that's profoundly different from better-known, widely-acclaimed Anthony Hopkins performance which followed. We'll never get a chance to meet this man we feel we know so well through his writings – at least not this side of the wardrobe – so it's a great privilege to have two such fully-realized portrayals provide a truly three-dimensional perspective of C.S. Lewis.

The 1985 teleplay begins with an extreme close-up of an eye, blinking. Eerie underscoring distances us from the laughter and conversation we hear as the camera pulls back to show High Table at Magdalen College. Forkfuls of food are thrust into mouths, fish heads are cut off, blotchy-faced Oxford dons cough and chew. We rise from the table and flee outdoors: "Why am I so afraid? I never knew that love could hurt so much, and I love you, and all I want is to love you. Beyond every door I hear your voice saying to me, 'This is only the land of shadows. Real life hasn't begun yet.'" Walking into a darkened doorway, we find ourselves traveling down the long, empty corridor of a house, into an abandoned spare room. The doors of a wardrobe swing open, we push through coats and furs until we come to a lantern, shining in the middle of a snowy wood.

In the first a minute and a half of this made-for-TV teleplay, we already know how close we'll be to the essence of C.S. Lewis – and we know where the coming love story will be headed. We see the world through Jack's eyes, but it's a world he's alienated from. And when he turns away, with Joy preoccupying his thoughts, it's his own childhood and the world beyond the wardrobe he goes back to. The story that's to come has been framed by childhood and bereavement, and we've glimpsed its two worlds – the clubby male environs of British academic life, and the crisp, cool magical world beyond.

We also sense how much this cinematic creation will be informed by the literary creations of the central character – not only in the Narnia reference and the image of the childhood home described in his spiritual memoir Surprised By Joy, but in the voice-over which is so close to the opening of A Grief Observed; "No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear..."

Then the title credits roll and we're immersed in the day-to-day bachelor's life of Lewis in the early 1950's – but already our ears are being tuned to what's coming. We hear Lewis give a radio talk on marriage, we see him chided by his university peers for his "plain Jack" talks on thing he knows nothing about. Ackland is wonderful here: he's got the intelligence, a willingness to engage in the argument at hand, but there's a tremendous humility as well. "Shouldn't I have said that I haven't been married?" is played with a winning sincerity: for all the public attention, this is a man who isn't always sure of himself. It's a warmth and humanity that permeates the entire performance, and seems so close to the heart of the Lewis we meet, for example, in the preface to The Problem of Pain, where he acknowledges not being a "real theologian," and openly admits not living up to his own principles on the subject of pain, admitting to a personal aversion to any sort of real suffering.

Essentially, Shadowlands maps Lewis's own journey from the intellectually impressive but not-lived-through and not-quite-convincing arguments of The Problem of Pain (1940) to the agonized heart's cry that is A Grief Observed (1961), which he began writing the very hour he returned home after Joy's funeral. The earlier book strives to construct answers and explanations, the later offers few. But it's the second of the books that Christians turn to in times of bereavement, and this film takes the viewer through the experiences that bring Lewis to his deeper humanity and wisdom. (The play makes this structure even clearer, opening not with a radio talk on marriage, but with an intellectually dazzling public address on God's responsibility for suffering in the world which plays like a distillation of his 1940 book – just as it ends with a monologue very close to the spirit of the 1961 volume.)

BBC director Norman Stone identifies himself as a Christian – a recent project, Man Dancin', is about a criminal released from prison who gets involved in a parish Passion play – and Stone's affection and affinity for Lewis is palpable, not only in the winsome performance he draws out of Joss Ackland and the warmth he finds in the romance with Joy, but in his honouring of all the literary and theological elements in Nicholson's original script. This script draws on a wide range of Lewis's works, and it's willing to give tremendous screen time to Joy and Jack as they get to know each other, in a literate conversation that ranges from conversion stories to theology and politics. Most significantly, while the teleplay takes Lewis in his grief to a point where God has slammed the door in his face, with "the sound of bolting and double bolting, and after that, silence," we also see him wake in the night and wander back out into those Narnian woods, where he finally can remember Joy and sense again something of God's presence.

And what a splendid Joy Claire Bloom gives us! As Jack and Warnie plod along a path by the River Chartwell, Joy darts in and out like an excited child on a day trip, peppering the stolid brothers with a barrage of opinions and questions, all inhibition and intelligence and enthusiasm. And if her American accent never gets any closer to New York than someplace in the mid-Atlantic, there's spunk and savvy and sass enough in this performance to provide all the Yankee brashness the role calls for. This dame is smart!

If anything, the subsequent stage version even more richly explores the world of words and ideas (naturally enough, since plays tell their stories in words, movies in pictures) while sharpening the moment-to-moment dramatic thrust of the story. Where the BBC film can feel talky at times, the play shows considerable dramaturgical development: the dramatic momentum is much stronger, the story is always moving forward. The argument at the Christmas party, for example, is much more developed, and there's real crowd-pleasing energy in the back-and-forth argument between Joy and Christopher. (That's another great strength of the stage play: Christopher Riley is a far more significant character, and far more nuanced, not merely Jack's snide adversary, but also a loyal and insightful friend, a wonderfully drawn "secular priest.") The play is also less bound by the movies' need to be "realistic," and incorporates a magical and deeply moving series of images drawn from The Magician's Nephew where Douglas enters the wardrobe and ultimately brings back a magic apple which he presents to his mother just after her marriage to Jack, just before her recovery, deftly suggesting the possibility that her remission is as much miracle as it is medicine, brought about by a child's faith.

The Attenborough version benefits from the stronger narrative craftsmanship of the stage play, and it also looks a lot better. Stone's Oxford is dreary as hell – specifically, that peculiarly British vision of hell Lewis describes in The Great Divorce – dismal, dingy, and always raining. (I guess if you think of that as a choice, it's a plus: I think it's mostly just a small budget and a shoddy DVD transfer.) But the bigger-budget version goes too far in the name of narrative drive, stripping out too much conversation, too much theology, too many ideas, almost all the literature – does Hollywood really believe people only know The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe? More seriously, it also truncates the ending of the story in a way that almost suggests Lewis abandoned his faith by the end of his life. (I've long believed the Lewis estate has fallen into the hands of Screwtape himself – maybe this was their doing?)

Hopkins' portrayal of Lewis also raises qualms. This actor, one of the greatest of our time, was at the top of his game – think Silence Of The Lambs (1991) and Remains Of The Day (1993). His Lewis is a brilliant portrayal of a brilliant mind, but there is also a brittle unconcern that seems at odds with the Jack of history – or of the preceding two versions. Which is not just Hopkins' doing: the 1993 screenplay adds a sub-plot about a personality clash between Jack and an inattentive student, and focuses Joy's relationship to Jack on some pretty abrasive conflict over Jack's insistence on winning every argument, surrounding himself with people who are either worshipful or weak. How do these elements strengthen the essential thrust of the story? They feel more like the knee-jerk iconoclasm of the times, when it's assumed audiences won't believe characters who are too "good," too nice. A shame.

Maybe it sounds like I want hagiography, and maybe I do. But to miss Jack's warmth and generosity is to miss something essential in the man: biography after biography shows us a man who, while he certainly loved a no-hold-barred debate and may have alienated some, was also much beloved. Indeed, if there is a missing element in these two cinematic interpretations of C.S. Lewis, it may be his largeness of spirit. As Douglas Gresham himself writes, "even within the first hours of meeting him, the enormous vibrancy and vitality and charm and humor of his personality completely expunged any physical deficiencies that I might have seen in him. He was a very humorous man... If Jack was in a room, there was laughter. If he was sitting by the bedside of someone dying of cancer, there was laughter. If he was talking to his colleagues, his peers, there was laughter.”

I suppose these performances may have been crafted the way they were to leave room for dramatic contrast and character development: if Joy was to be the spark that lit Jack's world ablaze, perhaps they felt she ought to be the one that brought the laughter and life. But I'm convinced that Jack's vitality and heart can be shown right from the outset without losing a bit of the story's shape: the contrast is between Jack and the world around him, and when Joy comes into his life, we recognize two people who are profoundly right for each other. There's still plenty of emotional terrain to be covered as the bachelor becomes a friend then a lover and a husband, as the two of them ride the waves of hope and despair that marked their years together. But a bigger Jack is a truer Jack, and makes for a greater and truer story.

That said, each film is in its own way a gift, and I wouldn't do with out either of them. I suspect that the real Jack Lewis was somewhere between the warm and self-effacing man Joss Ackland brings to the screen – much preferred by Christians and Inkling-o-philes – and the brittle, brilliant mind Anthony Hopkins has etched in our memory. And if the latter Lewis is too disconnected, too detached, too domineering in the early going, it certainly sets us up for a powerful reversal when his world falls to the ground late in the film. Who will ever forget the raw vulnerability of that attic scene with Douglas? That one moment places this film, and this performance, very close to my heart indeed.

And without Shadowlands – in any of its incarnations – how many of us would ever have met Joy Davidman? What a gift she is! Films rarely present us with such characters, yet we all have them in our lives and count ourselves blessed – these opinionated, forceful, courageous woman who don't give a damn about being ladylike, whose breathtaking femininity is all in their wit and their passion and their uncompromising authenticity. No guile, no quarter, just heart and mind and fiery commitment. When I first saw Debra Winger in the role, I had my qualms: she seemed too young for Lewis, too brashly American, a shade too cantankerous. Now I realize how perfectly this actress fulfilled the role: mine were exactly the reactions of Lewis's crusty and protective friends when the real Joy showed up in his life! (Winger and Hopkins couldn't have been more suitably cast with respect to age. During shooting, he was 54 and she 37, precisely the ages Jack and Joy would have been when they met in the fall of 1952.)

And whatever with think about the nuances of these interpretations, the fact is both films offer the magnificent gift of making Lewis and his time real to us. We journey to Oxford – the Attenborough film in particular makes this place into a central character in its story, which is as it should be – we get to know Warnie and Douglas and Joy, we experience the difficulties all of us face eventually when our faith in a loving God comes up against the reality of suffering in our world. And if we don't come away with answers, we come away larger, having passed through some very dark shadows indeed, but reminded that even the brightest things in our pale world are nothing but a shadow of the life to come.

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE, THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW, TOM AND VIV

The 1993 version is available at Videomatica

Originally published at Christianity Today Movies