mary (ferrara)

Godard meets Arcand?
The saga of Abel Ferrara's MARY, still not released in North America...

Film Comment, Nov/Dec 2004

Vincent Gallo Superstar. Yes, he of The Brown Bunny will partake in a film delving into the psyche of our Lord Jesus Christ, and yes, Abel Ferrara, our baddest cinematic lieutenant, will direct. Gallo will play two roles in Mary, one as the director of a controversial (you don't say?) film depicting the life of Christ - and the other, we assume, will give him yet another cross to bear. Sarah Polley will play the titular virgin."

Hollywood Reporter, August 2005

Modine will also be in Toronto to tout "Mary," in which he plays an independent director casting himself as Jesus Christ in his film. Abel Ferrara directs the drama that includes Juliette Binoche as an actress playing Mary Magdalene. The drama will first bow in Venice before having its North American premiere in Toronto.

Venice Festival, Summer 2005

"U.S. director Abel Ferrara won the Jury Grand Prix for "Mary," starring Juliette Binoche as an actress haunted by the figure of Mary Magdalene after having played her on screen."

But here's the reaction from Variety when MARY screens at the 2005 Toronto Fest

"Maverick helmer Abel Ferrara's Catholic angstfest "Mary" met with considerable disbelief after its first Venice screening, but the Ferrara faithful will recognize a partial return to form after several disappointments. Not quite a standout like "Bad Lieutenant," but hardly a dud like "New Rose Hotel," "Mary" reps a sincere grapple with faith and redemption in cynical times. Tricky construction, nesting a film within the film, hits plenty of duff notes. But passionate turns from Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche could be the touch of grace needed to get pic a distribution blessing after ancillary-only releases for the last few Ferrara pics.

Cocky American film director Tony Childress (Matthew Modine, amusingly channeling Ferrara's persona) finishes helming a revisionist biblical drama shot in Italy called "This Is My Blood," that stars him as Jesus and major Euro star Marie Palesi (Binoche) as Mary Magdalene. Portions show Mary not as a prostitute but rather a full fledged disciple locked in a power struggle with fellow-disciple Peter, and feature an intense perf by Binoche/Marie.

Having gone deep into the role, Marie has had some kind of spiritual epiphany. When it's time to strike the set, she refuses to go home and sets out for Jerusalem.

A year later in Gotham, Ted Younger (Whitaker) hosts a slightly implausible weeklong, primetime nightly network TV special examining the historical truth about Jesus. Various experts (played by real-life scholars such as Jean-Yves Leloup, Amos Luzzatto and Elaine Pagels) and clergy discuss alternative gospels or issues in theology on the show.

Younger goes to see a press screening of "This Is My Blood" introduced by Childress. Younger asks Childress to appear on his show to discuss the film, which looks set to reap similar controversy to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Younger would also like to book Marie on the show, but Childress claims not to know where to find her. . . ."

Summer '06, word of a potential US distributor, and PTC comments

"Jeffrey Wells says the eventual DVD release should include Rafi Pitts's Not Guilty (2003), a documentary about Ferrara, as a bonus feature. Personally, I think it would be even more appropriate to package the film with Alex Grazioli's Odyssey in Rome (2005), which chronicles the making of Mary."

Paste mag is dismissive...

Over-the-top Biblical mess intrigues as only Abel Ferrara can

Louder and more chaotic than its material seems to warrant, Abel Ferrara’s Mary seems like the condensed version of a much larger movie. It includes scenes from a religious epic, TV interviews, street fights, limo rides, infidelity, hypocrisy, apostasy and conversion, but at a mere 83 minutes it’s over before it really begins.

Forest Whitaker plays a TV host examining the historical Jesus on a nightly broadcast, and Matthew Modine is the director and star of an unconventional Biblical film. Modine agrees to appear on Whitaker’s show, boosting both their careers, but one person they can’t yoke to their PR efforts is Juliette Binoche who plays Mary Magdalene in Modine’s movie. She’s been so transformed by the experience that at the shoot’s end she drops everything and heads to Jerusalem.

Very little of this mess works in any conventional sense, but as the performances begin to redline — as Whitaker bottoms out and begs God to save his child and Binoche takes to the water like a fisher of men — the movie examines the relationship between performance and contrition. All the characters are actors; some are trying to open a channel to God while others are putting on a show intended to earn some grace. It’s a fitting topic for Ferrara, whose movies frequently embrace the same contradictions. They’re all here in Mary — the excess, the guilt and the search for truth. Intriguingly jumbled with some assembly required.

And now Matt Page tells us there's a European DVD available through Amazon (in France).

But still no sign of MARY round about these here parts...

resurrection (2007)

I'm pretty qualmy about Tim LaHaye's books ("Left Behind," "Right Behind," etc), so my enthusiasm for Upcoming Jesus Movie Project #387 is a tad muted. But I figure you all deserve to be in the know...

June 08, 2006: Paul Bond, The Hollywood Reporter

"Picking up where the biblical story of Jesus Christ's passion leaves off, Screen Gems is angling for an Eastertime release of a feature film tentatively titled "The Resurrection," people familiar with the project confirmed Wednesday. Using the Bible for its source material, RESURRECTION will tell the story of Jesus Christ beginning the day he died on the cross and ending about 40 days later with his ascension into heaven.

According to insiders, Screen Gems, headed by Clint Culpepper, commissioned a script several months ago from Lionel Chetwynd, the veteran screenwriter, producer and director whose credits include THE HANOI HILTON for the big screen and the Emmy-nominated TV movie "Ike: Countdown to D-Day." Set to produce is Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" series of books. A popular minister and frequent TV news pundit, RESURRECTION will mark LaHaye's first foray into mainstream filmmaking.

In mining biblical material, those behind the project hope to tap into the same vein that so richly rewarded Mel Gibson for his self-funded "The Passion of the Christ." The 2004 release earned $612 million in worldwide boxoffice receipts, making it one of the 30 most-popular films of all time.

"THE PASSION ends with Jesus being taken from the cross, and THE RESURRECTION opens with the empty cross," a person familiar with the script said. According to the Bible, women who visited the tomb of Jesus Christ three days after his crucifixion found it empty, and his disciples and other acquaintances, including Mary Magdalene, encountered him postresurrection on various occasions during a 40-day period. The film will focus on these dramatic encounters and their implications for the Roman garrison in Judea and the broader Roman Empire, insiders said. "This is not a fanciful rendering. It's a serious attempt to understand the Roman world in which Christ moved and the Christian era was born," a person familiar with the project said."

REQUIEM

REQUIEM (2006, Germany, Hans-Christian Schmid, Bernd Lange)

A restrained and understated treatment of the same events that inspired THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, dramatizing the tragic exorcism in 1976 of a young German university student whose "demonic" manifestations may have been supernatural in origin, or may have been some form of epilepsy. The fascination of the Derrickson film lay in the interaction between the director's Christian convictions about the reality of evil and genre expectations raised by fictionalizing the story in the guise of a commercial horror pic. Though also fictionalized, REQUIEM sticks much closer to the historical events, employing a matter-of-fact cinematic style that elicits more sorrow than terror, resulting in a sympathetic psychological study that refuses to come down on either side of the natural / supernatural debate, leaving the viewer with the same agonized perplexity one might experience in the face of such events in real life. Both films are anchored by stage actresses in breakout turns: Jennifer Carpenter delivers a body-blow physical performance in the title role of Emily Rose, while Sandra Hueller's tightly contained uber-naturalism as Michaela Klingler won her the Berlin Festival’s Silver Bear. A rigorous, heart-breaking film: if not exactly faith-affirming, still highly recommended.

THE EXORCIST

perfume (tykwer)

Limited release December 8, wide release Jan 5

I know this looks like just another horror/depravity/murder/thriller picture, and that may be all it is. Two things, though.

One.
A few years back, a theologically-inclined buddy insisted I read the source novel for its real insights into the nature of sin and salvation: it's not an amoral novel, but a moral novel that shows the reality and consequences of evil – rather like Doctor Faustus, or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Two.
Even better, it's being directed by Tom Tykwer, so it's sure to be something much more thoughtful and substantial than a typical exploitative thriller: he directed the brilliant RUN LOLA RUN, which I (and theologian Robert K Johnston, in his book on Ecclesiastes and film) consider profoundly spiritual, as well as its "follow-up" THE PRINCESS & THE WARRIOR (on similar themes). Tykwer was also chosen to direct the first of the HEAVEN/HELL/PURGATORY series of films which were to have been the next projects of European director Krystof Kieslowski, who was completely concerned with moral / spiritual issues: his THREE COLORS trilogy and his DECALOGUE series (which looked closely at each of the Ten Commandments) regularly place right near the top of the Arts & Faith Spiritually Significant Films poll.

Saw the trailer last night when I went to see THE QUEEN, and Liz and I both agreed, you can tell this is the biggest-budgeted German film ever: the money's all up there on the screen. Looked more Gothic Lush than Tykwerian, but you never know...

nina's house

Variety:

"Quietly magnificent, if classically told, tale of tentative, incremental readjustment by young Jews who survived the horrors of WWII, LA MAISON DE NINA takes place between Sept 1944 and Jan 1946 in an orphanage housed in a chateau outside Paris. ... Starting in 1944, in the wake of the Liberation, and continuing into the '60s, "houses of hope" were established to lend a semblance of continuity to the lives of youngsters orphaned by the war. Dembo, born in 1948, went to summer camp in one such establishment, where he observed some of the people who had lived there since the war – and the real-life Nina who inspired his script. ... Conflicts are keenly portrayed between the initial residents (who lean toward secular Jewish pride) versus the boys and young men from points East, including Poland and Romania, who survived the camps. Latter feel obliged to assert the faith of their exterminated fathers and revive their rituals. ...

"Jean (Alexis Pivot) still plays classical piano but is no longer comforted by the music; Sylvie (Adele Csech) and her little brother, Georges (Jeremy Sitbon), dream of their mother every night; Izik (Gaspard Ulliel) has gone mute; Gabriel (Vincent Rottiers) discovers one of his parents survived the war, yet can't rejoice; and Leiser (David Mambouch, a standout) needs to re-connect with the teachings of the Torah. ... Precise dates are superimposed to indicate such momentous events as the fall of Berlin and Hitler's suicide, the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and the founding of the United Nations. All are contrasted with the smaller but equally momentous events at the chateau."

jesus camp

Though it's only in limited release (hasn't yet reached Vancouver), that hasn't stopped this one from garnering lots of attention. For example, over at CT Movies;
Jesus Camp Sparks Controversy
Brainwashed In The Blood
On Fire At Jesus Camp
Jesus Camp Shuts Down

Some comments from Peter Chattaway:

"BOYS OF BARAKA filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady screened their latest effort, JESUS CAMP, in the International Documentary Competition, to a packed house in Lower Manhattan. The emotional doc from A&E IndieFilms profiles "Kids on Fire," a summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota devoted to inspiring children towards a deeper devotion to the evangelical Christian movement. Organizer Becky Fischer, who has dedicated her life to spread her religious beliefs to the young, is a polarizing yet affable figure who is likely viewed as a hero to some and frightening to others. Backers of the film told indieWIRE that the film can play to audiences on either side of the political spectrum, and quite frankly, it's true.

"[The Christian right] feel empowered right now and they gave us a lot of access - more than had we done [the film] some years earlier," said co-director Heidi Ewing following the film's screening Thursday. Ewing and Grady said that Ms. Fischer had seen the film and was pleased with its content, although, unfortunately, she was not present for the screening because she was attending a charismatic conference in Los Angeles. "Becky saw the film and loved it," chimed the directing duo.

One particularly inflammatory scene in the film takes place at a revival meeting at the camp lead by Fischer and her associates, in front of well over 100 children. Fischer takes a life-size standup photo of President Bush to the stage, with a large American flag in the background, and asks the crowd to raise their hands towards him as they begin to chant for him to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court. Fischer and her fellow evangelicals view Bush as their primary hope to push their right wing agenda regarding abortion rights, prayer in school, and gay rights, and the film captures the emotional devotion instilled on a new young generation of evangelicals. Many in the mostly liberal New York audience could be overheard saying that the film should be a call to arms for people on the left side of the cultural/political divide. The evangelicals, however, are reveling that their message has become an entrenched and potentially irreversible reality."

And then Peter tells us the latest news: Jesus Camp Back To Haunt Ted Haggard

(While you're waiting for this one to arrive, you could always rent HELL HOUSE.)

the virgin spring

THE VIRGIN SPRING (Jungfrukällan, Sweden 1959)
Pacific Cinematheque
Thu Dec 21 – 7:30 pm
Fri Dec 22 – 9:20 pm

Cinematheque: "Winner of the 1960 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, The Virgin Spring is one of the most powerful and important works in the Bergman canon, and the film with which the great Sven Nykvist became the director's regular cinematographer. Based on a 13th-century folk ballad, and offering (like Bergman's earlier The Seventh Seal ) an immaculate recreation of a barbarous and superstitious medieval milieu, the film stars Max von Sydow as Töre, a wealthy landowner whose beloved virgin daughter is brutally raped and murdered while on a religious pilgrimage. A twist of fate finds the three killers seeking shelter at Töre's farm; when he discovers their responsibility for his daughter's death, he exacts a vengeance of Biblical proportions. The film ends on a hauntingly hopeful note suggestive of divine forgiveness; with his "faith" trilogy of Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence , Bergman would soon forswear the existence of the divine altogether. The Virgin Spring won the International Critics Prize at Cannes, where it (and Buñuel's The Young One ) was announced as "too good to be judged" in the competition for the Palme d'Or. "One of Bergman's finest films, certainly a masterpiece" ( James Monaco). B&W, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 88 mins.

fanny and alexander

FANNY AND ALEXANDER (Sweden 1982)
Pacific Cinematheque
Saturday, December 23 – 7:30 pm
Wednesday, December 27 – 7:30 pm
Friday, December 29 – 7:30 pm

I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Ingmar Bergman. Sure he gets the obligatory name-check when people talk spiritual film, but Ingmar's world (at least, starting around 1960) is more God-haunted than God-blest, and since you only get to haunt stuff once you're dead, what's that tell you? Something about his dad, I'm thinking.

FANNY & ALEXANDER at least leaves behind the pervasive angst (though of course the baddie is a minister) and celebrates not only life but also the theatre. So I'm down with that.

Cinematheque: "An enchanting, life-affirming, celebratory evocation of childhood and the magic of theatre, Bergman's wonderful Fanny and Alexander won four Academy Awards, including the Swedish master's third Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and Sven Nykvist's second for Best Cinematography (the first was for Bergman's Cries and Whispers ). Fanny and Alexander begins during Christmas 1907, with ten-year-old Alexander and younger sister Fanny enjoying the warmth and good humour of their ebullient, eccentric, and prosperous extended family. Their lives will soon take a less happy turn, however, with the death of their actor father and the remarriage of their mother to a strict, puritanical Protestant minister. Bergman's semi-autobiographical tale is shot in glowing images by long-time collaborator Nykvist, who effectively contrasts the rich, warm hues of the children's old environment with the stark coldness of their new stepfather's home, and whose snow-bound exteriors capture the landscapes of provincial Sweden with Brueghellian expertise. Fanny and Alexander is also something of a summation and compendium of Bergman's career in the cinema, touching on many of his characteristic themes, and replete with references to many of his other works. It may also be Bergman's most opulent and optimistic film — something of a surprise, perhaps, from a director whose work has long been synonymous with Scandinavian austerity and angst. "A sustained triumph . . .For those who have kept faith with Bergman it is an inexpressible relief to find that despair has not gained the upper hand" ( Sight and Sound ). Colour, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 189 mins."

Children Of Men

Released already in UK, hasn't made its way to Vancouver yet, but I'm keeping watch. A friend said the trailer made him cry! Yikes.

Film version of a novel by P.D. James, one of the most widely-read (and literary) mystery novelists in the world, a Church Of England Christian. Children Of Men is her most explicitly Christian/spiritual work, tackling "right to life / value of human life" issues in a quasi-sci-fi, quasi-apocalyptic genre setting. Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor (remember him from DIRTY PRETTY THINGS!)

"CHILDREN OF MEN envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set against a backdrop of London torn apart by violence and warring nationalistic sects, CHILDREN OF MEN follows disillusioned bureaucrat Theo as he becomes an unlikely champion of Earth's survival. When the planet's last remaining hope is threatened, this reluctant activist is forced to face his own demons."

*

Nov 17: And now Jeffrey Overstreet's had a chance to preview it, and here are his initial comments, posted at A&F (deliberately vague: I believe he's reviewing the film for CT Movies, and there's a publication ban until a film has officially opened);

If you've seen the preview, well... you've mostly seen stuff from the first ten minutes of the film. And let me tell you... you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Greg Wright and I saw this together today, and I think I can speak for both of us in saying that we were enthralled... no, ROCKED... by this film. If you see one Christmas movie this year... this should be it.

(And I'm willing to include The Nativity Story in that rather large claim, even though I haven't seen it yet. Because, well... this IS a nativity story of sorts. And I highly doubt that Hardwicke's film will give me a clearer sense of how dark and dangerous was the world the Christ child entered, how desperate Mary and Joseph felt, how badly people needed him to come, or how much it meant to the vigilant, the humble, and the wise when he arrived.)

Stu, you're not alone. Children of Men brought tears to my eyes more than once.

The film has played in enough places, and been reviewed by enough publications, that I don't understand why the publicists are telling us not to publish reviews. I mean... it's already out there, folks! Oh well, I'll save my *review* until later, but I'm not going to box up my enthusiasm.

I'll just say a few very general things to get you curious:
- Alfonzo Cuaron is suddenly one of the best action directors on the planet. All plans for another Die Hard film should be dropped, and they should start from scratch with him. It might end up being as good or better than the original. I might even consider giving him Indiana Jones 4.
- The vision of the future is both terrifying, heartbreaking, and unnervingly plausible. I can't think of a futuristic film that has made me feel like I really am living in the last days of the world the way that this movie does.
- STUNNING, SHOCKING things happen in this film. I think I actually shouted at one point.
- It has chase scenes. Wicked chase scenes.
- Michael Caine. 'Nuff said.
- Peter Mullan. 'Nuff said.
- And Charlie Hunnam is a freaking chameleon. I didn't even know he was in the film until I saw his name in the credits, and even then it took me a moment to figure out who he had played.
- What I said about Danny Huston in The Proposition thread... I'm saying it again here (although I wanted a lot more of him).
- A classic rock song that never meant much to me suddenly means something to me.

Oh... so much more I want to tell you. I can't wait until you all see it.

Jeffrey Wells writes...

"Best Picture of the Year" means different things to different folks. For some (most, I suspect) it means being the most fundamentally "entertaining" -- the one that reaches the broadest middlebrow audience. (Which is why a lot of people are suddenly behind Dreamgirls.) For others, it's the film that's the most soul-soothing or life-capturing (Volver, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Lives of Others ). Or that seems the most complete and fully realized according to its own particular rules (The Departed, The Queen, Pan's Labyrinth, United 93).

But for me, the highest synthesis of Best Picture satisfaction means delivering on one or two of the above plus one other -- it has to be visually historic. It has to knock your socks off by way of sheer visual energy or innovation. So much so that what you're seeing becomes absolutely "real" and everything else drops away. The popcorn is put under the seat, notions of bathroom breaks are out of the question, and you almost stop blinking for fear of missing something.

Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men is that film, and is my choice so far for Best Picture of the Year.

Angel-A

ANGEL-A (France 2005. Director: Luc Besson)
Pacific Cinematheque
Sat Dec 2, 7:30pm
VANCOUVER PREMIERE

Eye candy that might also feed the soul?

Cinematheque: "A visually ravishing black-and-white valentine to Paris, shot mostly in shimmering, crack-of-dawn light, Angel-A marks the much-anticipated return to the director’s chair of French high-concept stylist Luc Besson, luminary of le cinema du look. (Besson, director of La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element, has been startlingly prolific of late as a producer and a screenwriter, but hadn’t helmed a movie himself since 1999’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc).

Playing like a chic hybrid of It’s a Wonderful Life and Wings of Desire, Angel-A pairs up André (Jamel Debbouze), a little guy in debt up to his eyeballs, and Angela (Danish model Rie Rasmussen), a long, leggy blonde in the skimpiest of black dresses. These mismatched lovers meet when their respective suicide attempts bring them to the same picturesque Paris bridge on the same night. After André pulls Angela from the Seine, she resolves to be the guardian angel who will deliver him from his myriad difficulties. Besson’s film, true to form, is drowning in style; the exquisite images are by cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, a Besson regular since Nikita. (Arbogast also shot Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale, Ms. Rasmussen’s film debut). B&W, 35mm, in French and Spanish with English subtitles. 90 mins.

amazing grace

There's already plenty of hype about this one in Christian movie circles, and that will only intensify in the coming months. Sounds like we oughta NOT let the hype prejudice us against this one - I'm guessing there'll be plenty to like. Just pretend you happened to stumble on the thing unexpectedly in some little arthouse somewhere, and you can't believe nobody's heard of the thing...

CT Movies: "Set to be released on February 23 2006, the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade. Stars Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, an outspoken Christian and political activist who played a large role in bringing about the slave trade's end. Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon also star."

First I heard of this one was early this fall. A friend phoned me from L.A., where it was showcased at a Jim Wallis / Richard Rohr / Anne Lamott conference. My buddy was ambivalent, mostly because the film felt more like propaganda than art in the context of being used to stir up political consciousness about modern day slavery. So I lost some interest in the flick. But then I checked out the TIFF listing, turns out it's directed by Michael Apted! So it's the real deal. And I've since learned that the screenplay is by Steven Knight, who penned DIRTY PRETTY THINGS - an extreme favourite of mine. Hurry February....

The Toronto International Film Festival write-up...

Festival favourite Michael Apted brings his unique cinematic finesse to Amazing Grace, a captivating historical drama that is tremendously appealing to both the heart and the mind. Skyrocketing Welsh star Ioan Gruffudd embodies William Wilberforce, the impassioned British Parliamentarian who led abolitionists in their crusade to end the slave trade, while the matchless Albert Finney is riveting as a former slave trader-turned-penitent man of the cloth. In the sure hands of these great talents, Amazing Grace materializes as a lavishly realized tribute to individual strength of will.

We first meet Wilberforce, a disillusioned shell of a man, in 1797. Not so many years before, his name had inspired reformers fighting for the future of the nation. Now, however, he is haunted by the guilt of his great failure: he had fallen just short of legislating freedom for those being shackled in the colonies of the New World.
From here, the film moves backwards, introducing us to the younger Wilberforce, a firebrand politician. Heralded early in his career for his integrity and courage, he is undaunted by the boys' club atmosphere enclosing his parliamentary fellows in a bubble of moral indifference. Attractive and charming, he becomes a prodigious idol of reformers: many a proper young woman swears off sugar when he exposes the evils of plantations. His friend - and, later, the country's Prime Minister - William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch) is an ideal foil. Pitt keeps avenues open by hewing to the straight and narrow, while Wilberforce storms through the doors, hollering for reform. They harbour great hopes, but change is slow to arrive: the spoils of the slave trade funnel into the pockets of the nation's most powerful politicians and the old guard persistently sabotage Wilberforce's campaign.

But he would not be defeated and Apted and his tremendous cast - which also features Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ciarin Hinds and Youssour N'Dour - have crafted a brilliant account of his perseverance. Culminating with Wilberforce's final, all-important showdown against his political foes, Amazing Grace is a stunning tribute to the victory of those seeking the common good over the machinations of those hiding in the dark corners of power. It is truly, deeply inspiring.

The Sacrifice

THE SACRIFICE (Offret, Sweden 1986)
Pacific Cinematheque
Thursday, December 28, 9pm
Saturday, December 30, 7pm

This one stunned me when I saw it twenty years ago at the Ridge. Don't go bored, don't go tired, don't go expecting a lot of action or story. Don't read about the film in advance: so little happens narratively, the filmmaker's great strategy is to keep us "leaning in to the film," our minds whirring with questions as the camera and the story move ever-so-slowly, ever-so-elegantly. Think of it as a moving picture more than a filmed story: there's event there, even (I found) almost unbearable dramatic tension - but it's constructed subtly, with the sparsest of materials. You're better to go in tabula rasa and let Tarkovsky have his way with you.

Even the Cintematheque blurb says too much for my liking: here's an edited bit from their blurb that shouldn't wreck anything...

"Tarkovsky is for me the greatest," Ingmar Bergman once said. Tarkovsky's devastating final film — "a Faust for the nuclear age" (David Parkinson) — was made in Sweden with several regular members of Bergman's team, including cinematographer Sven Nykvist and actor Erland Josephson. Described by Tarkovsky as a meditation on "the absence in our culture of room for spiritual experience," the film is set on an isolated island, where Alexander (Josephson), a distinguished man of letters, lives in seemingly idyllic semi-retirement. The apple of his eye is his young son Little Man, who represents for him the great hope of the future. …

Photographed in ethereal northern light, and opening and closing with two of cinema's most breathtaking single-take sequence shots, The Sacrifice is a masterful, elegant film of great formal rigour and intensity. Tarkovsky supervised its editing from his hospital bed; he died of cancer in December 1986. "No one else can approach his sense of the Apocalyptic. His death leaves a gaping hole in the cinema of spiritual quest" (Chris Peachment). Colour and B&W, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 145 mins.

Because the film is so intensely visual, and because the film is so purely cinematic, telling its story almost entirely in image, the opportunity to see this on the big screen is one to be seized. (If only it were at the VIFC, where the seats are comfier!)

Copying Beethoven

This one went into limited release yesterday, November 10. Eager for it to hit Vancouver.

There's a great interview with Ed Harris on the Sep 22 "NPR: Movies" podcast. He talks about COPYING BEETHOVEN, and something especially caught my ear;

"It's the fictional story of a young woman who lands a job copying musical scores for Beethoven near the end of his life. Beethoven is at first reluctant to have the help of a young woman, especially as he prepares his Ninth Symphony. In this scene, he is in a tavern, talking with his friend the tavern owner. He's wondering if he should send the woman away, or see her as a sign from God."
Dialogue clip:
Beethoven: This new symphony, it's my farewell.
Bartender: You're not that sick.
Beethoven: No, no, no, my farewell to music as I've always known it, as I've always written it.
Bartender: You've been talking about that for years, Louie.
Beethoven: I'm starting a new chapter in my life. New forms, a new language. And now this woman is sent to me at this very moment. What if she was sent… by Him?
Bartender: Women are usually sent by the other one.
Beethoven: Suppose it's a sign.
Bartender: A sign of what, Louie?
Beethoven: That it's time.
Bartender: Time for what?
Beethoven: Time for me to join with him.
Bartender: Well if it's true, and she was sent by Him, and she's waiting in your apartment… You shouldn't be sitting here drinking, should you?

It's directed by Agnieszka Holland, which makes me think of THE THIRD MIRACLE, which she also helmed, which is all about faith. And EUROPA EUROPA, about a Jewish boy who tries to survive WW2 by posing as a Gentile. TO KILL A PRIEST, for which she also gets a story credit: "A young priest speaks out against the Communist regime in Poland and is killed for it." And now I find out she was involved in writing scenario for THREE COLOURS WHITE and BLUE, and has a film in production called MAGNIFICAT: "A gentle music loving Irish monk - elected as a malleable interim Pope - rebels and announces that he wants to canonise a Lutheran Protestant - Johann Sebastian Bach, thus throwing the Vatican into turmoil and making a dangerous enemy of Cardinal Platoni, the ambitious, Machiavellian and ruthless pretender to the throne." (IMDb)

MAGNIFICAT, COPYING BEETHOVEN and, say, AMADEUS - great future triple feature!

The "young woman copyist/muse" thing also puts me in mind of little-seen but fascinating Euro-flick about Doestoevsky writing his novel "The Gambler" under an impossible life-or-financial-death deadline. The film, like the novel, is called THE GAMBLER (not to be confused with older flicks featuring Kenny Rogers or James Caan), and interweaves three levels of reality: the "present" story-line about the novelist and his amanuensis, the events of the novel Fyodor is writing, and flashbacks to the autobiographical events out of which the novel was shaped. Real explicit God stuff , and pretty girls too.

Container

Looks like yet another Jesus movie - Mel, what hast thou wrought? Definitely the strangest of the new batch, from Lukas Moodysson, whose LILYA 4-EVER was an overwhelmingly despairing film about a young woman who fled to the big city and ended up a prostitute: some Christians found the angel bits to be glorious light in the darkness, but most found them unconvincing, not nearly enough to counterbalance the film's bleak-beyond-bleakness.

Anyway, the director describes this work in progress as "a black and white silent movie with sound... A woman in a man's body. A man in a woman's body. Jesus in Mary's stomach. The water breaks. It floods into me. I can't close the lid. My heart is full."

Well. English is his second language.

I'll keep you posted.

*

Nov 21 update

Sight & Sound coverage gives not the slightest nod in the direction of Moodysson's "Jesus in Mary's stomach" reference, so either Lucas was being something other than literal there (not outside the realm of possibility), or they missed it (not outside the realm of possibility, either).

If Bergman's PERSONA is solid art-house 'canon fodder,' it contains passages that could easily have been clipped from the contemporary avant-garde. by abandoning narrative altogether, Moodysson has travelled still further toward the gallery film. CONTAINER's 74-minute runtime feels arbitrary: you could walk in at any point and get the gist of the thing. For all that, it shares with PERSONA the central theme of the fragmented self in a violent, godless world.

...avivion of personal misery and social and environmental breakdown that makes the hellish tenements of LILYA 4-EVER (2002) look like the salubrious Stockholm suburb in TOGETHER (2000).

...For most of the film Lorentzon acts out various poses of despair: falling over himself in his apartment, half-heartedly attending an orgy, and sticking a model foetus to his face. ... The foetus-model, various flash-montages of religious iconography, and the possibility that Lorentzon is in the hospital for a sex-change operation, together with running references to dilation on the soundtrac, add up to a slightly obscure discourse on rebirth or regression. ...

SYNOPSIS

The images and soundtrack in CONTAINER are formally separate: there is no diegetic sound, and the voiceover, which comprises the entire soundtrack until the closing minutes, when it's accompanied by an electronic drone, bears no direct relation to the action on screen. The image track follows a dejected occasional transvestite, sometimes accompanied by a young woman, through a number of locations in an unnamed city, a landfill site and a seemingly deserted hospital. The soundtrack is a continuous off-screen monologue by someone who may or may not be the American actress Jena (Donnie Darko) Malone.

Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt

Anne Rice, the vampire lady? Sting's evocative "Moon Over Bourbon Street" was inspired by her "Interview With The Vampire" novel, so I checked it out. The opening chapters struck me as fine literary writing, until the book devolved into something more generic and commercial.

Word is she's become a Christian, and all of a sudden everybody seems to be reading her fictionalized recreation of Jesus' childhood years, and declaring it worthy.

Anyhow, there's a film deal now. I'll keep you posted.

Little Miss Sunshine

The film that will not die. Big hit at Sundance, more or less the Buzz Movie of the summer. I loved the trailer, and the film measures up. Only one whiff of heaven, really, but life-affirming as all get out. And that little girl!

Hollywood Reporter: "Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of the Hoovers, one of the most endearingly fractured families ever seen on motion picture screens. Together, the motley six-member family treks from Albuquerque to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California, to fulfill the deepest wish of 7-year-old Olive, an ordinary little girl with big dreams. Along the way the family must deal with crushed dreams, heartbreaks, and a broken-down VW bus, leading up to the surreal Little Miss Sunshine competition itself. On their travels through this bizarrely funny landscape, the Hoovers learn to trust and support each other along the path of life, no matter what the challenge. Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Alan Arkin top the cast."

Solaris

SOLARIS (USSR 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky)
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday, November 17 - 9:00 pm
Saturday, November 18 - 6:30 pm

Like STALKER, SOLARIS has been featured on all three of the Arts & Faith 100 Spiritually Significant Films polls (2004, 2005, 2006). Also very deliberately paced, but (from what I hear) perhaps more accessible than STALKER? I do know that I was very taken with the Stanislaw Lem fiction I read back in the eighties - speculative metaphysics.

Cinematheque: "Based on a novel by the noted Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (who died earlier this year), Tarkovsky's Solaris is often described as the Soviet 2001 ; the late Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail once called it " Star Trek as written by Dostoevsky." The film's plot has a troubled, guilt-ridden scientist sent to investigate strange occurrences on a space station orbiting Solaris, a mysterious planet with an intelligent Ocean capable of penetrating the deepest recesses of the subconscious. Confronted on his arrival by the incarnation of a long-dead lover, the protagonist is forced to relive the greatest moral failures of his past. Solaris is magnificently mounted in widescreen and colour, and offers a fascinating, felicitous marriage between Tarkovsky's characteristic moral/metaphysical concerns and the popular format of science fiction (a genre for which the director expressed no particular affection, but to which he would return again - more obliquely, just as cerebrally - in Stalker and the Swedish-made The Sacrifice ) . Steven Soderbergh's admirable American remake, starring George Clooney, was released in 2002. "Solaris ranks with the best of Tarkovsky's work, which is to say it ranks with the best movies produced at any time" (Scott). Colour, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles. 167 mins.

Stalker

STALKER (USSR 1979 Tarkovsky)
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday, November 10 - 9:00 pm
Saturday, November 11 - 6:30 pm
Featured on all three of the Arts & Faith 100 Spiritually Significant Films polls (2004, 2005, 2006). Tarkovsky is a giant: THE SACRIFICE blew me away on first viewing, ANDREI RUBLEV took work but after my third viewing and ongoing careful watching, it's become a very important film to me. I tackled STALKER on the wrong night, and found the typically slow Tarkovsky pace increasingly galling, the film's story too eliptical. But I'll be revisiting "The Zone," knowing how Tarko rewards repeat viewings.
Cinematheque: "Brilliantly dense and breathtakingly textured, Tarkovsky's Stalker suggests a fantastical confluence of in-the-gulag Solzhenitsyn and post-apocalyptic science fiction, and could be an elaborate, allegorical, otherworldly illustration of that old maxim, "Be careful what you wish for . . . " In a devastated post-industrial police state, two men, a writer and a scientist, engage the special mystic skills of a Stalker to guide them through the forbidden Zone, a damp, fecund, overgrown wasteland where the rules of nature no longer apply. At the centre of the Zone, it is reputed, is the Room, a place where the deepest desires of one's heart are said to come true. The amazing journey there will test the limits and adequacy of the way each of the three protagonists makes sense of the world: through art, through science, and through faith. Distinguished by a remarkable sense of tactility, composed of stunning sepia images, and offering layer upon layer of meaning, Stalker is a haunting and unforgettable work from a (late) director whose (too few) films are quite unlike anything else in world cinema. "A masterpiece . . . Not an easy film, but most certainly a great one" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). "As always, Tarkovsky conjures images like you've never seen before" (Time Out). B&W and colour, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles. 163 mins."

la commune

Over at filmjourney.org, Doug Cummings has posted a detailed piece on Peter Watkins' LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871), made in 2000 but only recently released on dvd by First Run Features. Doug calls it "without a doubt one of the best and most important films of the decade. ... Not only be one of the towering achievements of cinema of the last few years, but also an electrifying examination of issues and conflicts that couldn't be more relevant today."

The aesthetic sounds fascinating: period costumes, props and set pieces are filmed inside a modern concrete building, with no attempt made to hide the artifice (I'm thinking DOGVILLE). Over the couse of the six-hour film, the actors (as themselves) regularly address the camera, commenting on the action of the story from a personal perspective.

Some details caught my eye;

The Commune implements a variety of reforms and precedents: it insists on a separation of Church and State, and a free secular education for all, particularly women, who at that time were trained in religious schools only to be housewives or homemakers. ("Jesus was an anarchist, the carpenter always on strike! You have made him the God of the bourgeoisie," one women shouts at a priest.)...

While the Church is seen as a potential tool of oppression, it provides genuine services and meals otherwise hard to come by....

As the film builds to its violent and tragic climax, its atmosphere of urgency is overwhelming. Ultimately, 20,000 to 30,000 Communards and others--men, women, and children--are executed, while many others are rounded up, arrested, and placed in exile. (Some readers may recall that the title character of Isak Dinesen's BABETTE'S FEAST was a Commune survivor whose husband and son were killed during its suppression.)...

*

PS It's just in at Videomatica
Here's their blurb...

COMMUNE (PARIS 1871), LA (Coming Nov 14/06) (2000)
----------------------------------------------------
Director : Peter Watkins
With some cameras and more than 200 little-known actors as his aids, the
ambitious director Peter Watkins set out to do his own re-creation of the
Paris Commune. The Commune was a period in French history marked by social
revolt, political chaos, and a monumental uprising by citizens against
capitalist leaders. Watkins adds a new twist to this "documentary" by
re-creating it through the lenses of TV stations that are covering the
events from different political sides. Sure it takes place in the 19th
century, but they had TV back then, right? --JA

Movie Gourmet (Nov 2006)

My first "Movie Gourmet" column is up at CT Movies! Very pleased with it: my editor Mark Moring and I worked long and hard to get it right, and it's so gratifying to see it come to fruition.

It'll be a regular column, with installments early in the New Year, late spring, end of summer and mid-fall, focusing on the kind of movies I get really excited about and want to tell everybody to go see - not-necessarily-commercial fare that's got some sort of distinctly spiritual flavour.

So this month, "Our Feature Presentation" is HAWAII, OSLO. In the DVD section we focus on the films of Whit Stillman, Eric Rohmer's MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S, and touch on THE DEVIL & DANIEL JOHNSTON, L'ENFANT and THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (which keeps growing in my esteem as the months pass: I'm guessing it may end up with SOPHIE and the Dardennes on my year-end list).

On the "Now showing" roster I recommend REQUIEM and 49 UP, with speculative nods in the direction of DELIVER US FROM EVIL, THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN and (most speculatively of all) ONLY HUMAN. "Coming Soon" heralds Agnieszka Holland's COPYING BEETHOVEN, Tom Tykwer's PERFUME and DANIELSON: A FAMILY MOVIE.

In January/February a look at Roberto Rossellini, a scan of the '07 year-end feast, DVD releases like THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and (hopefully) SOPHIE SCHOLL, and I think we might Feature a certain South African film...

21 GRAMS

21 GRAMS (2003, USA, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, wr Guillermo Arriaga)
They say we all lose 21 grams at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a chocolate bar. The weight of a hummingbird...

If only it lived up to that tagline, which is pretty much just tagged on to this grim and gripping story of a terrible accident and subsequent vengeance. The scrambled chronology may be nothing but flashy clothes to camouflage a threadbare emperor of a plot that's mostly hysteria and melodrama – but those clothes are flashy indeed, and the performances potent. Benicio Del Toro plays a messed up ex-con who clings to salvation with frightening desperation, his street-church pastor powerless to intervene when it all starts to spin out of control. Does the film bluntly say that Jesus just doesn't work? Or is it an unflinching portrait of a man who is mostly and habitually lost, clawing his way to prove himself at least a little less lost?

THE KING


Available at Videomatica

Further reflections here

NOW PLAYING: Big Screens (Feb 17)

Currently (or very soon to be currently) on screen at Vancouver-area theatres

Updated Feb 17 2007

The year-end cinecopia that filleth Soul Foodie souls with thanksgiving shriveleth and its fruit returneth to seed as the year progresseth. Now it's just leftovers, and all the crap distributors couldn't unload since last summer. (I exaggerate, as is my rhetorical wont: there's still plenty of good stuff spilling out of the horn of plenty. But little of it is new.)

What is new and exciting is at the Fifth Avenue (no surprise): THE LIVES OF OTHERS, a German drama about life in Iron Curtain days, supposed to be extremely fine.

I'm thrilled that PAN'S LABYRINTH has caught people's attention: one of the two best movies in town (see next paragraph), and one of the two best movies of 2006 (next to SON OF MAN, which was in the VIFF). Huge imagination, visually brilliant fantasy (or supernatural?) world juxtaposed against atrocities of the all-too-real Spanish civil war - and ultimately, for me, very close to the heart of the gospel: Fifth Ave, Paramount, and tons of really-big-screen multiplexes all over the place (three cheers!). (See PS below for more on PAN)

LITTLE CHILDREN continues at Tinseltown, the other best movie in town for my money. Perfect complement to director Todd Fields' earlier IN THE BEDROOM: like the predecessor, it's all about Our Human Condition (meaning sin), but this one's also all about grace, I'd say. A queasy watch (due to the pedophile character), but wow. PAINTED VEIL has been unfortunately overlooked in the year-end hoohaw, but should be drawing strong Christian interest with its redemptive story about a young woman who's confronted with her own narcissism, terrif turns from Naomi Watts and Eddy Norton, transporting cinematography (think Jungle Cruise goes to China): Fifth Ave. (See PS below on both CHILDREN and VEIL)

I've wondered a lot about PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. If you've got any compassion, you'll feel for Will Smith's can't-get-a-break eventually homeless single dad; if you've got ulcers, they'll only get worse - this guy's got stress! There's some gospel music in a church shelter that suggests some sort of transcendent Hope, yet I can't help thinking at another level that this is pretty much just Horatio Alger materialism when you come right down to it. But if you're sceptical about Will, dont be: and what chemistry between him and his (on-screen and off-screen) son! Dolphin, Tinseltown, several others.

APOCALYPTO's got legs: Mel Gibson's noble savage keeps on running through the jungle pursued by Mayans whose culture is apparently under God's judgment for being too violent (so what's that say about ours? that shows movies like Mel's?) at the Denman, 9pm nightly. BABEL has only referential connection with the book of Genesis, but places high on many Christian film folks year end lists: Empire 7, Richmond Centre and various satellite cinemas. CHILDREN OF MEN stripped out most of what made Anglican P.D. James' most distinctively Christian novel distinctively Christian, but that doesn't stop many Christians (and everybody else) from celebrating it: I loved the dystopian vision of the first third, but the more it became a chase movie, the less it stuck with me - think of it as a sci-fi APOCALYPTO: Tinseltown and the burbs. JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN is back for a one-night-stand at Cinematheque, Thursday Jan 22: looks like a Christianity Bad Inuit Stuff Good story, but I figure that's part of our story that needs to get told, right? STRANGER THAN FICTION offers another layer of meaning to us folks who believe it's not just Will Ferrell who's a characters in some Author's story (and Maggie Gyllenhaal's as cute as a counter-cultural bug's ear): Denman Place.

THE QUEEN offers what is undoubtably the most celebrated female acting performance of the year, Helen Mirren in ultra-understated mode in a smart, carefully calibrated character study: Dolphin, Tinseltown, and everywhere else. BLOOD DIAMOND's got no God stuff, but does call evil evil, and features a divine performance by Leo - following hard on THE DEPARTED (Granville 7), let's hope this silences once and for all those who figure if you're handsome you can't act: Paramount, Riverport, others. HISTORY BOYS is at the Hollywood for a week (cheap!): of course, I'm the only person in the world who liked it, but I sure as heck did - the conversation about the Holocaust is extraordinary, the central question about truth vs cleverness an essential one, the performances marvelous (though you will have to suspend your disbelief about age and such). LAST KING OF SCOTLAND continues at Tinseltown, carried on the shoulders of Forrest Whittaker's Oscar-nommed turn: Tinseltown and Coquitlam. Apparently NOTES ON A SCANDAL is nastier (or at least more despairig) than the trailer would indicate, which is fine by me - at least when it features Dench and Blanchett: Fifth, Tinseltown, Esplanade.

*

P.S. Further on PAN, LITTLE CHILDREN and PAINTED VEIL

PAN'S LABYRINTH is a stunner (Fifth Ave, Parmount, etc), shoulders L'ENFANT and SOPHIE SCHOLL aside as my #2 favourite film of 2006 (top slot reserved for SON OF MAN): a girl on the verge of womanhood experiences two interconnected worlds, the real-world horrors of the last days of the Spanish civil war and another, subterranean world that may be fantasy, or may be a deeper reality. The brutal real-world violence (and comparable below-ground terrors) are far removed from the pain-porn of HOSTEL or its ilk: this visionary film earns the right to show us the dark side of human behaviour with its commitment to showing the courage and sacrifice that counter-balance. Film-maker Guillermo del Toro identifies himself as a lapsed Catholic, but takes pains to clarify that that's "not quite the same thing as an atheist," and that distinction doesn't surprise me - this film gave me one of the most extraordinary glimpses of Eternity I can recall. It's become an annoying commonplace these days to label films (usually sentimental ones) "redemptive": which usually just means "don't worry, it ends happy." But redemption is a far more exacting, sacred, and potent word than that: PAN'S LABYRINTH is the rare film that can truly claim that descriptor. I've posted some notes from the director and several film writers here.

LITTLE CHILDREN follows SOPHIE SCHOLL on my own personal hit parade for the past year, and it's about to leave our fair city, bowing out with a one-week run at the Van East (9:30 nightly). Literate, intelligent, challenging, adult: the anatomy of an affair, an inquiry into sexual and other sin that holds an unflinching - but never cynical - mirror up to human behavior. A fit counterpoint to director Todd Field's unflinching IN THE BEDROOM.

Next to those truly extraordinary films, the new movie I'm most keen to point everybody to is THE PAINTED VEIL (Fifth Avenue), a handsome treatment of Somerset Maugham's story of a narcissistic and over-privileged young woman "taken in adultery" who is challenged to some sort of spiritual awakening when her husband volunteers to fight a cholera epidemic in a remote Chinese village. Maugham's characteristic British restraint and psychological insight tempers what might sound like melodramatic stuff into something understated and substantial.

NOW PLAYING: Small Screens

Recent and obscure Soul Foodish additions to video store shelves

Updated Feb 19 2007

49 UP
My review's up at CT Movies
Probably the most significant documentary series ever filmed. The first installment to reach the big screen was 28 UP, which has been one of my top 20 films ever since - the entire series came out in a boxed set in 2005. Extraordinary opportunity to see how human lives unfold over the decades. Some of the characters have Christian faith, some of the transformations are remarkable. (Personal angle: I'm exactly the same age as the people being profiled. Only part of the reason this series of films - especially 28 UP, which I've written up here - is among my all-time favourites.
Limited release Oct 6 2006, Pacific Cinematheque: Oct 2006.

ALL THE KING'S MEN
Corrupt Southern politics (Huey Long inspiration), from acclaimed novel by acclaimed Catholic (am I right?) novelist Robert Penn Warren. Get a load of this cast, every name here a monster actor; Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Boris Karloff. (Okay, I'm kidding about Boris K.) Oft-delayed opening did not bode well, and while it got the red carpet at TIFF, ATKM opened and closed in no time here in Vancouver and hasn't left a mark elsewhere.

CLERKS II (2006, USA, Kevin Smith)
So what's with this email Peter Chattaway cc's me on? With cryptic scraps about Kevin Smith's latest? One guy wrote, "I just noticed this weekend that, in the poster, Jay is depicted with one of those "Hello, I'm" labels on his toque, and in the blank space, he (or someone else) has written "Forgiven!" And then another guy replies, "actually, i was surprised at how much Jesus was actually in the film, though i probably shouldn't have been."
The reason he probably shouldn't have been is because foul-mouthed, nothing-is-sacred director Kevin Smith (as well as having attended Vancouver Film School) is actually a practising Catholic! DOGMA riled many Christians, but plenty of others love the irreverant (but maybe authentic) take on Christian faith. Check out this NY Times interview, where a wonderfully self-effacing Smith pays homage to his favourite film, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS! You heard it here first.
Anyhow, an online blurb: "The sequel to the 1994 independent hit picks up 10 years later. It's about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. It's time for the Dante and Randal to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex." Hmmm...
Played Vancouver: summer 2006

DELIVER US FROM EVIL
An angry indictment of sexual abuse among the Roman Catholic clergy that's being praised by reviewers and approached warily by some Christians. Director Amy Berg focuses her documentary eye on Oliver O’Grady, a confessed pedophile whose predatory behavior in several California parishes over many years is described not only by his victims but also – remarkably – by the priest himself, now living “under church protection” in Ireland. With such an emotionally charged issue, it will be difficult to discern whether the film is anti-Catholic or anti-sin: while orthodox Christians may feel uneasy with details such as an opening title card that quotes from “The Gospel Of Thomas,” it’s worth remembering that the film does reach for balance by including the stories of abuse victims who still practice their Catholic faith. Played Vancouver: November 2006.

END OF THE SPEAR
Though I found it bland and somewhat churchy, there are many fans of this mostly-marketed-to-Christians missionary pic. Says CT Movies; "One of the most compelling missionary stories of all time—the tale of the five Christian men martyred in 1956 by a savage tribe in Ecuador. END OF THE SPEAR tells the tale of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot and the other murdered men—and how the good news of the gospel ultimately got through to the Waodani tribe anyway." Played churches: early 2006.

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS
No way to tell if the whole saints thing is for real here or not, however unconventional, though Darrel Manson liked it.
"A coming-of-age drama about a boy growing up in Astoria, N.Y., during the 1980s. As his friends end up dead, on drugs or in prison, he comes to believe he has been saved from their fate by various so-called saints." Robert Downey Jr, Dianne Wiest.
Available at Videomatica

END OF THE SPEAR
I've not seen it, and though it was released mid-June it's not showing up on my local rental shelves. Word is surprisingly good about this mostly-marketed-to-Christians missionary pic. Says CT Movies; "One of the most compelling missionary stories of all time—the tale of the five Christian men martyred in 1956 by a savage tribe in Ecuador. END OF THE SPEAR tells the tale of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot and the other murdered men—and how the good news of the gospel ultimately got through to the Waodani tribe anyway." Played churches: early 2006.

JESUS CAMP
Up for an Oscar. Though it only ever had limited big screen release, that didn't stopped JC from garnering lots of attention among Christians: links and details here. Basically, a documentary on a pentecostal summer camp that aims to be even-handed but can't help gawking, and finding the "bootcamp for Jesus" ambience and way-right-of-center politics just a little problematic. You could always rent HELL HOUSE and have a swell (condescending? tendentious?) double feature - "Wouldja Just Look At Them Crazy Fundies!"

LADY IN THE WATER
M. Night Shyamalan's movies have charted a precipitous downward trajectory, from the flawless SIXTH SENSE through the interesting UNBREAKBLE to the scary-but-stupid SIGNS to the just-plain-stupid VILLAGE. So I couldn't bring myself to check out his latest when it hit the cineplex this summer. However, I had the pleasure this summer of hanging out in Cannon Beach Oregon with one of my best movie buddies, Rick Bonn (of Hollywood Jesus), and his impassioned advocacy for MNS's bedtime story has me guardedly eager for the DVD release.

SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS (2005, Marc Rothemund, screenplay Fred Breinerdorfer)
Tied with L'ENFANT for highest soul food content of anything so far this year. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, it played in the Jewish International Film Festival here in the spring, then ran a couple weeks at the Fifth Avenue, then...
The White Rose was a secret organization of Christian university students in Germany who opposed Hitler during World War Two. Based on previously unavailable interrogation and trial transcripts, as well as interviews with surviving participants and family members, this spare, unsensationalized film is a portrait of extraordinary courage and integrity.
Played Fifth Avenue: spring 2006. The official site suggests a November 2006 dvd release, but I haven't seen any confirmation.

ONE NIGHT WITH THE KING
"An epic motion picture set in an imaginative world of adventure, intrigue and romance, "One Night with the King" follows a young girl who rises from peasant to princess by going against the culture and seeking the King's heart rather than the riches of the kingdom." Yup, you guessed it - the story of Esther. Church-market, from the people who also brought us THE OMEGA CODE. CTMovies is underwhelmed by an over-plotted, over-explained screenplay, but remarks that it "may well be the best-looking movie from a Christian company to date, with sumptuous visuals that are both artistic and authentic."

REQUIEM
VIFF 2006. Oct 20 2006: Limited release
A restrained and understated treatment of the same events that inspired Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose (http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com/2006/07/exorcism-of-emily-rose.html)(2005), one of the best films I've seen this year. Dramatizes the tragic exorcism in 1976 of a young German university student whose “demonic” manifestations may have been supernatural in origin, or may have been some form of epilepsy. REQUIEM sticks much closer to the historical events, offering a sympathetic (if harrowing) psychological study that refuses to come down on either side of the natural / supernatural debate, leaving the viewer with the same agonized perplexity one might experience in the face of such events in real life. REQUIEM is a rigorous, heart-breaking film: highly recommended. Further details here. Available at Videomatica.

SHERRYBABY
Very limited big screen release in Fall 06.
With all the twelve step language in the blurb, I wonder how the good old Higher Power will come into this one? I hear it's pretty raw, and suspect Sherry's jail-cell religion is mostly something she drops like hot jewelry once she's out of The Big House. Still, as I'm wont to say, you never know. In any event, this business of living out your best intentions, following through on a change of heart, is always close to my heart - criminal that I am. (Me and T-Bone.)
"Three years after entering prison for robbery as a 19-year-old heroin addict, Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal) begins her first day of freedom, clean and sober. Concerns about Sherry's ability to care for her young daughter, and her inability to prove them wrong, threaten to destroy the already delicate relationship she has with her daughter, as well as her newfound sobriety." More here.

SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006, USA, Bryan Singer)
My ramblings on the whole darn SUPERMAN franchise
Everybody glommed on to the Christ figure stuff in the first Supe flick (1978). Everybody but me, that is: I've never been much for playing the old "Spot The Saviour" game. Still, it's pretty explicit, if not ultimately soul-nourishing (at least for this soul). Review to follow, but for now... Chattaway and Overstreet have their thumbs decidedly down, but my digit's aligned with Greydanus's on this one: check the links on the right for JO and PTC.

WORLD TRADE CENTER
Oliver Stone dials down on the politics, even weaves in some religion! Who'da thunkit? CT Movies writes... "Stone, known for his political rants both stark and subtle, tones down the politics significantly in this film, opting instead for a truly human story of selflessness and heroism. And, somewhat surprisingly, Stone is faithful to faith, so to speak, as he liberally sprinkles the movie with Christian content—especially in one subplot involving a Marine who believes God has called him to help in the search for survivors. All in all, it makes for an inspiring and important film, even as it hearkens back to a day we sometimes might wish we could forget. But it's a powerful reminder of the big event that plunged our world into chaos, terror alerts, heightened security—and now, cancelled flights and long lines at the aiport."

COMING SOON: Big Screens

Soul Food(ish) films on their way (sooner or later) to your local cine 'matheque or 'plex
Updated Feb 19 2007

Feb 23 (US release): AMAZING GRACE
Mar 2, 7: THE UNFORGIVEN (Vancity)
Mar 19: THE NUN (Cinematheque)
Mar 23 (Vancouver opening): AMAZING GRACE
Mar 30 - Apr 2, Apr 5: ADAM'S APPLES (Vancity)
Mar 31: OPAL DREAM (Cinematheque)
Apr 4: JEANNE LA PUCELLE Part 1 (Cinematheque)
Apr 5: JEANNE LA PUCELLE Part 2 (Cinematheque)
Apr 18: JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE (Cinematheque)
Apr 13-14: CACHE (Cinematheque)
Apr 14-15: CODE UNKNOWN (Cinematheque)
Apr 22-23: TIME OF THE WOLF (Cinematheque)
Note: A gorgeous restoration of BECKET is currently touring American cities: see below

Soul Food(ish) flicks that have supposedly been released but haven't (to my knowledge) shown up in Vancouver yet...
ANGEL-A, COPYING BEETHOVEN, MAN PUSH CART, NINA'S HOUSE

DETAILS AND LINKS

ADAM'S APPLES
Vancity
Fri Mar 30, 9:00
Sat Mar 31, 7:00
Sun Apr 1, 9:00
Mon Apr 2, 7:00
Thu Apr 5, 9:00
No idea what to make of this, but its got one heck of a tantalizing description!
Vancity: "Fresh from prison, middle-aged neo-Nazi atheist Adam (Ulrich Thomsen) is sent to live in a country church for a stint of community service. Ivan (Casino Royale supervillain Mads Mikkelsen), the priest charged with his reform, maintains a delusional optimism as a defense against darker truths in his past and all around him. Asked to set a goal for his stay, Adam nonchalantly sets the bar pretty low: he’ll bake an apple cake. But when the church’s beloved lone apple tree is beset, in short order, by crows, worms and lightning, and fallen bibles keep opening to “The Book of Job,” it’s clear that the thunderclouds above the parish have blown in straight from the Old Testament, and a test of faith is at hand. The pitchest of black comedies, Anders Thomas Jensen’s wickedly funny film reverberates with profane dialogue, appalling behaviour and strategic use of the Bee Gees, as Adam only somewhat maliciously sets out to dismantle Ivan’s sunny armour... Assuredly filmed in frosty blues and suitably stormy weather, Adam’s Apples is a sly religious parable by a writer/director with a bracing talent for dark, astringent humour. Steve Mockus, San Francisco Film Festival"

AMAZING GRACE
A friend phoned me from L.A., where this William Wilberforce biopic was showcased at a Jim Wallis / Richard Rohr / Anne Lamott conference in Fall 06: he was ambivalent, mostly because the film felt more like propaganda than art in the context of being used to stir up political consciousness about modern day slavery. So I lost some interest in the flick. But checking out the TIFF listing, turns out it's directed by Michael Apted! So it's the real deal. Now I can't wait. And I've since learned that the screenplay is by Steven Knight, who penned DIRTY PRETTY THINGS - an extreme favourite of mine. (I was assigned to review it for Christianity Today Movies, but when it looked like the Canadian opening might be later than the American, they assigned it to another reviewer who could cover it stateside. Dang. More here, and a special section on the film at CT Movies.

ANGEL-A (France 2005. Director: Luc Besson)
Played the 'teque in December, slated for commercial release in May.
Cinematheque: "Marks the much-anticipated return to the director’s chair of French high-concept stylist Luc Besson... hadn’t helmed a movie himself since 1999’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc). ...A chic hybrid of It’s a Wonderful Life and Wings of Desire." (More here)

BECKET
The story of Saint Thomas A Becket is one of the classic Soul Food movies, a fitting companion to A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, unavailable on DVD, the hard-to-find videotape muddy and muffled. But there's been a painstaking restoration, and some of the pristine prints are touring to American cities. Details about the restoration plus a screening schedule can be found at Steven Greydanus's Decent Films website.

CACHE
Pacific Cinematheque
Fri Apr 13 7:15
Sat Apr 14 9:30
Notes about the Michael Haneke retrospective here

CODE UNKNOWN
Pacific Cinematheque
Sat Apr 14 7:15 - CODE UNKNOWN
Sun Apr 15 9:20 - CODE UNKNOWN
Notes about the Michael Haneke retrospective here

COPYING BEETHOVEN
I'm nervous about this one. Was supposed to go into limited release November 10, but I've still heard nothing about it, and begin to suspect the worst. Remember all the delays for the promising BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY, or ALL THE KING'S MEN - neither of which ended up keeping their promises?
This one's the fictional story of a young woman who lands a job copying musical scores for Beethoven near the end of his life. Beethoven wonders if he should send the woman away, or see her as a sign from God. "I'm starting a new chapter in my life. New forms, a new language. And now this woman is sent to me at this very moment. Suppose it's a sign.That it's time for me to join with him." Directed by Agnieszka Holland; THE THIRD MIRACLE, EUROPA EUROPA, TO KILL A PRIEST, scenario for THREE COLOURS WHITE and BLUE, and MAGNIFICAT (in production). More on COPYING BEETHOVEN here

JEANNE LA PUCELLE (Joan the Maiden, 1994)
Pacific Cinematheque - Wed April 4, 7:30pm (part 1); Thu April 5, 7:30pm (part 2)
"The two great intimidating films about Joan of Arc, by Dreyer and Bresson, are purely poetic," director Jacques Rivette has said, "Whereas I was aiming for a more narrative approach - although I hope there are poetic moments."

JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
Pacific Cinematheque - Wed Apr 18 7:30pm
Peter Chattaway picked this as the most spiritually significant film of the past year, over L'ENFANT, PAN'S LABYRINTH, SOPHIE SCHOLL or SON OF MAN (for example). Remember Jim Jones? Back in the decade of the cults. The Kool-Aid mass suicide in Guyana? This is the story of the quasi-Jesus People church that started out so good - social conscience, community, all that - and came to such a bad end.

NINA'S HOUSE
Variety: "Quietly magnificent tale of readjustment by young Jews who survived the horrors of WWII... "Houses of hope" were established to lend a semblance of continuity to the lives of youngsters orphaned by the war... Conflicts are keenly portrayed between the initial residents (who lean toward secular Jewish pride) versus the boys and young men who survived the camps. Latter feel obliged to assert the faith of their exterminated fathers and revive their rituals... Momentous historical events are contrasted with the smaller but equally momentous events at the chateau."
Details here.

THE NUN (1966)
Pacific Cinematheque - Tue Mar 19, 7:30
Not precisely Soul Food, but of interest to Christians with an interest in important cinema. Jacques Rivette's "most conventional film" - though banned for a year because of its attacks on the Church. "Lurid in subject matter but austere and cloustrophobic in style... A young woman is forced by her family to enter a convent. The cruel Mother Superior abuses her; at a second convent, the lesbian Mother Superior lusts after her, until Suzanne escapes with the aid of a priest - who then tries to rape her." Hmmm. Think I may just skip that one.

OPAL DREAM (2005)
Pacific Cinematheque - Sat Mar 31, 2:00
CT Movies editor Mark Moring's a big fan of this family-friendly Aussie indie about an imaginative little girl whose family become outcasts in a rough outback mining town. I like to be more the appreciator than the critic, so I'm a bit stuck here, as I was underimpressed by the movie, but Mark's endorsement lets me know there are plenty of folks who would enjoy this uplifting tale. Certainly an alternative to the commercial fare dished up for kids in ever-mounting heaps by the American studios. By the director of THE FULL MONTY.

TIME OF THE WOLF
Pacific Cinematheque
Sun Apr 22 9:25
Mon Apr 23 7:15
Notes about the Michael Haneke retrospective here

THE UNFORGIVEN
Vancity
Fri Mar 2, 7:00
Wed Mar 7, 9:45
It's this film that leads Robert Jewett to start spelling out his thoughts on "the American monomyth" (calling it a false "other gospel," with reference to Galatians 1) in his very fine volume "Saint Paul Returns To The Movies: Triumph Over Shame." He doesn't buy the line that UNFORGIVEN undermines that super-heroic might-is-right myth, but I did, and many do. Certainly it's fascinating - and important, I think, in this day when American foreign policy seems shaped by TOMBSTONE and SHANE - to consider the arguments of the formidable Jewett. But whether you read UNFORGIVEN as a repudiation or a resurrection of that myth, there's plenty here that matters - about the weight of the past, about vengeance, about the limits of forgiveness. A fine movie. Clint's finest.

COMING SOON: Small Screens

Caught somewhere in the no-man's-land between big screen and small, or between narrow release and wide, between festival and distributor, or...
Anyhow, we're watching for them to turn up on DVD
Updated Feb 19 2007

THIS WEEK

OPEN WATER 2: ADRIFT
Played UK in fall 06, but goes straight to DVD in North America with a Feb 20 release date. Surprisingly, the usually reliable Sight & Sound gives it pretty good press, including this; "The story of spiritual rebirth is supported by various tactfully handled religious allusions, including a citation of the Lord's Prayer that manages to avoid mawkishness..."

WHO KNOWS WHEN

COLD LIGHT (Iceland)
Doug Cummings: "Submitted to the Oscars in 2005... extremely impressive."
Official site

COME INTO THE LIGHT (ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE)
Was supposed to have a spring 2006 release in North America
"Nominated for Best European Director, 2005 European Film Awards, Roberto Faenza, the producer of Life is Beautiful, directs this true story of Father Pino Pugliesi's plight to help the large number of underprivileged children in Palermo, Sicily. However, in his battle against widespread corruption and his determination to find justice, he drew attention to himself, leading ultimately to a brutal confrontation with the local Mafia."

FLANNEL PAJAMAS
Fall release, doesn't appear to have played Vancouver. A couple movie pals who saw it in the states consider it laughable, so it has to be filed in the "long shot" folder for now. "Stuart Sawyer and Nicole Reilly meet through mutual friends on a blind date and experience a magical evening in a local diner on a rainy evening in April, 2000. Stunning courtship... reversal of fortunes... Though sexually compatible, their disparate family backgrounds and the religious chasm between them inform their selfishness, their naivete, and their destiny."

INTO GREAT SILENCE
Almost silent 160 minute film documents life inside the Mother House of the Carthusian monastic order. Few films are more deserving of the "see this on a big screen" caveat. Nonetheless, since that ain't gonna happen for many people, its good news that the DVD comes available April 3 2007 in North America. You've got two options: join the monastery yourself, or make friends with someone who hasn't taken any vows of poverty and has a whopping big video screen.
Official site
Press kit

LAND OF PLENTY
Nov 2005: Limited one-week run in L.A. Fifth Avenue Vancouver: spring 2006?
Official Site: After years of living abroad with her American missionary father, Lana (Michelle Williams) returns to the United States to begin her studies. But instead of focusing on her education, Lana sets out to find her only other living relative - her uncle Paul, her deceased mother’s brother. A Vietnam veteran, Paul is a reclusive vagabond with deep emotional war wounds. A tragic event witnessed by the two unites them in a common goal to rectify a wrong, and takes them on a journey of healing, discovery, and kinship."
Doug Cummings: "Wim Wenders' latest soul-searching film captures the landscape of Los Angeles and the desert near Palm Springs with admirable polish as an idealistic young woman and her paranoid uncle express a cultural schism in post-9/11 America.... The main character is an evangelical Christian, sympathetically portrayed."
Official site

LOOK BOTH WAYS
VIFC: "The winner of virtually all of 2005's Australian Film Awards, director/animator Sarah Watt's popular debut feature has a typically Australian blend of wry humour in the face of darkness. The animated sequences of random acts of death are marvellously lovely in their morbidity, whether it's a drowning figure surrounded by sharks, or medical illustrations of malignant cancers rampaging through the body. Death is walking beside us all the time; how we choose to look at it is the question the film asks. “ Look Both Ways is always intelligent, perceptively observed and deeply felt. It's a rare film that's so unafraid to ask the biggest of big questions—and ask them so entertainingly.”—Michael Adams, Empire
Sight & Sound: "It's hard to avoid giving prospective viewers the impression that Sarah Watt's feature debut will constitute a depressing 100 minutes. It begins with Meryl, a greetings-card illustrator in her early thirties, returning home from her father's funeral. Within minutes of stepping off the train, she witnesses a fatal accident, which brings her into contact with press photographer Nick, recently diagnosed with cancer. Not the most propitious beginning for a romantic comedy... Interrupting the live-action drama with hand-drawn and computer-generated depictions of Meryl and Nick's most morbid fears... Meryl imagines scenes of destruction - earthquakes that swallow her up, trains that crash into tunnel walls - through deceptively childlike cartoons. Nick views the progress of his disease as a terrifying, accelerating montage of metastasizing cells. Yet there's a wry humour and a touching delicacy to this film that resist the pull towards gloomy melodrama. The hesitant romance that develops between Meryl and Nick and their slow attempt to overcome their fears and get on with life make for a strangely affirming movie."
Played VIFC: November 2006.

THE NATIVITY STORY
Arty-looking big screen treatment of Jesus birth. The casting of the marvelous Keisha Castle-Hughes (WHALE RIDER girl) as Mary and Shoreh Aghdashloo (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG wife) boded well, but many found it bland, and I couldn't work up the enthusiasm to go see it at Christmas. Look for a Christmas 2007 release. All the background you can stand at CT Movies.

PERFUME
Played Vancouver early January 2007. I saw it the same day as I saw CHILDREN OF MEN, made a great and intense quasi/queasy-SoulFood double bill. For my money, PERFUME was the much more interesting film, and I was disappointed to see COM hog the spotlight. Still not entirely sure whether PERFUME mightn't be just another horror/depravity/murder/thriller picture, but oh my gosh it's stunning to look at! Tom Tykwer at the helm, and the biggest-ever European budget explains that. (More here)

SHOOTING DOGS (2005, UK/Germany, Michael Caton-Jones, David Wolstencroft screenplay, Richard Alwyn & David Belton story)
Coming soon on DVD, possibly under the title BEYOND THE GATES, which is the title under which it's being big screen released south of the border. Sort of a HOTEL RWANDA with priests. Tells almost exactly the same story, and it's hard to imagine it can be as strong a film (remember Don Cheadle?), but Rwanda's are stories we dare not forget, as hard as they may be to watch, and I'm curious to know what spiritual angle this one might offer. I believe there's something about it in maybe the May Sight & Sound? If I find anything, I'll let you know. Here's the earlier blurb...
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Starring: John Hurt, Hugh Dancy, Claire-Hope Ashitey
"An emotionally gripping and powerful story from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, based on real events and filmed at the location where the actual events took place, L’École Technique Officielle, in Kigali, where more than 2,000 Tutsi men, women and children sought refuge from the killing frenzy. The film features John Hurt as a priest who finds it difficult to hold fast to his faith when confronted with the region's cycles of violence and High Dancy as a young teacher, both forced to confront the depths of their faith, the limits of their courage and, ultimately, to make a choice: to remain with their people or to run away." Played Vancouver: summer 2006

chocolat (mathewes-green & wilkinson)

When CHOCOLAT hit the theatres, my Soul Food email wasn't called Soul Food yet. It was Art Alert. Well, I alerted people to the flick, people thought I was recommending it - kind of "The Must-See Christian Film Of The Moment," which certainly wasn't what I had in mind. Nor was it true. But it ended up being one of the most interesting movie conversations I've been in on.

Anyhow, two particular responses to the film particularly shaped my eventual understanding of the film. Frederica Mathewes-Green brilliantly and forcefully made the case for what bothered me about the film, then Loren Wilkinson drew out what was right about the film - as is his way.

Why those faithful who fast aren't simply chocolate soldiers
Frederica Mathewes-Green, Beliefnet

I've got an idea for a movie script guaranteed to win an Oscar. We'll call it "Sizzle." See, there's a village in India where all the people think there's something bad about eating beef. It's part of their religion, which says they should repress their desires and hate pleasure. Then this sexy young cowboy comes to town and opens up a grill. All day long it's thick steaks frying, or maybe some tender filets, and sometimes he dishes up a few racks of barbecued ribs.

Well, pretty soon the fragrance is drifting through the town, and the people can't stand it. They try to resist, but one by one they sneak into the grill and have a little taste. Imagine the closeups as their eyes water and a little shiny trail of grease slides down their chins. Sure, they feel guilty, but they just can't help it. The village leader thinks he's real holy and rails and rants, but it's no use; that cowboy is so handsome and big-hearted and friendly, everyone can see he's really the hero. He defies authority and sets people free.

At the end there's this really funny scene where the stuck-up leader breaks into the grill late one night, intending to destroy it, but instead he eats hamburgers till he's sick. The next day, the holiest day of the year, the local guru gives a speech about how they've been misunderstanding their religion all along. All that really matters, he says, is embracing life to the fullest. The movie ends with a big party where everybody chows down on the juiciest steaks ever to kiss a grill.

You probably recognize this as the plot of the Oscar-nominated film, "Chocolat." Like "Chocolat," my imaginary film has one fatal flaw: it is stupendously ignorant of the spiritual tradition of the community it's presuming to chastise. Now, films that set out to criticize an unfamiliar faith might well tread cautiously, moving with appropriate hesitation and humility, if not respect. But not so "Chocolat." As in my blockbuster, "Sizzle," towering ignorance combines with invincible self-righteousness to form an impenetrable shield of condescension.

"Chocolat" blunders into a small French village in the spring of 1959 without a clue as to the meaning and power of Lenten sacrifice. It would not have taken exhaustive research to discover that Lent is a period of grieving for the ways humans mess up the world and hurt each other. It is a time that Christians turn inward and ask in the quiet of their hearts, "How have I been part of the problem?" In admitting these faults to God in the presence of a priest they gain profound peace and release, and the power to change their lives.

Since many of these sins are due to lack of self-control -- lashing out at someone in anger, stealing something on an impulse -- Christians do exercises to gain self-control, much as a weightlifter hoists barbells. Delicious things that might be enjoyed at any time are set aside for a few weeks, to make the willpower muscle stronger. Resisting chocolate today can help you resist an angry outburst tomorrow.

This simple concept is totally lost on the makers of "Chocolat." They're not alone; spiritual self-denial in any form is Moon Maid talk to Americans. Why is it so hard for us to understand the concept of spiritual discipline? The practice is present in some form in every world religion, yet we can fathom nothing but bigger, faster, fatter, more. Throughout the ages a universal principle has persisted that the person who seeks to enter the vast presence of God must do so by making himself smaller. Yet in America, dessert comes on a plate big enough for four. And America religion better follow suit, and promise a good time for all, all the time.

It's not just Hollywood that teaches this message. As our political leaders fret over the economy, we're told our financial well-being has come to hang on something called "consumer confidence," otherwise known as indulging our will to spend. Many of us went to see "Chocolat" at a mall, then walked out into a land of tantalizing wonderments, each begging for a chance to fondle our plastic. Spending has become a near patriotic duty. Why hold back from desire? Why practice any self-restraint? Delicious indulgence is what makes the world -- but especially the economy--go round.

Yet just about any major religion gives the opposite advice. Self-discipline is a universal, even though the details of, and rationale for, these self-limitations vary widely. The Hindu does not eat beef and the Orthodox Jew does not eat pork, but they have different reasons. The Orthodox Christian does not eat either one during Lent, with yet another rationale, then returns to both with gusto on Easter. People of various faiths practice differing disciplines with different goals, but everyone recognizes their value.

Is any spiritual force treated positively in "Chocolat"? Mayan culture provides a shadowy, seductive background for the chocolatier's magic, but this is a tourist's fuzzy, romantic view. Our tolerant, compassionate filmmakers probably wouldn't be comfortable with the demands of Mayan spirituality, which went far beyond voluntary, temporary self-denial. A person -- man, woman, or child -- would be painted blue, then laid on an altar. Four priests would restrain him while the fifth swiftly sliced open his chest and pulled out the still-beating heart, smearing the blood on an idol.

So it wasn't all chocolatey self-indulgence with the Mayans. When you have human sacrifice as the central act of worship, it's unlikely that the preceding sermon is marked by flower-power giddiness.

It's a bizarre touch that the narrator of "Chocolat" specifies at both the beginning and the end of the film that the evil thing that had to be destroyed was the town's "tranquilite." Who wants tranquility? Can't we have more noise, more flashing lights, more TVs in the checkout line, more tinny radios in the gas pumps? Why are there so few blazing tabloids and garish cereal boxes? When I click the remote around the channels, why don't I see more people shouting and arguing? What's wrong with the world? Too much darn tranquility.

Could this cinematic rejection of tranquility possibly be an intentional allusion? The height of ancient Christian mysticism is called "hesychasm," that is, "stillness" a peace laced with awe at beholding the Almighty. In the presence of that overflowing love there is a tranquility that passes all understanding.

But that's not what a hip person would want, someone who wants to be free and to defy authority. What you want, buddy, is to pack another slab of chocolate cheesecake onto those rolling hips. C'mon -- it's the American way.

*

Loren Wilkinson on "CHOCOLAT"

I think it’s time to say a good word or two for Chocolat. I saw it on a snowy night last January in Kingston Ontario (having just given a lecture” at Queens University on “Environmental Ethics and the Religious Nature of Science”, so maybe I was ready, at 10:15, for some sort of dessert). I knew nothing about the film other than it had something to do with food.

All of the bad things which have been said about the film are undoubtedly true (the silliness of the faint French accents in a French town, and the Irish accent in the male hunk, etc.) True also is the complete misunderstanding about what Lent ought to be, the characteristic negative stereotyping of Christians, the vacuous spirituality of the romanticized Mayan alternative, the glorification of self-indulgence, etc.

So what’s good to say about the film? I was pretty upset about the portrayal of the church and of Christianity till very near the end--but by the end found I was able to forgive almost all of the film’s flaws for two reasons, one pretty obvious, the other more subtle.

The obvious reason is that all too often the church DOES act this way towards outsiders who don’t fit in, and all too often DOES have a pretty gnostic view of pleasure, and of the whole material world, which has surfaced all too often throughout the church, both Catholic and Protestant versions. (Consider, for example, the way we have almost completely severed the “communion meal” from any reminder that it was part of not just a meal, but a feast.) It’s pretty obvious that the film is making the point that the chocolate shop is doing what the church and Christians ought to be doing: listening to people’s problems, meeting their needs, going out of their way to help when people are in trouble. Ask yourself: which is most like the church and Christian community in general as you have experienced it: the church as portrayed in the film, or the chocolate shop? In this context, it’s no small point--and an enormous reversal of expectations--when the person who points out that the church ought to behave with embrace rather than exclusion is the Catholic priest, the official voice of the church in the film (not the exceedingly messed up Count). And he does it not by denying the divinity of Christ (he affirms indirectly) but by drawing attention to the fact of Christ’s humanity,and his love.

The more subtle point is that the climax of the film--the Count’s attempt to destroy the chocolate display, and his resulting binge--is presented as a direct result of his prayer before the crucifix. Superficially we might conclude that Jesus is telling him to go break up the chocolate idols. In fact of course the Count’s action leads to the beginning of his transformation--not, I think we can conclude, into a chocolate binging pagan, but into a Christian who knows something of how Christ welcomes the stranger.

I fully admit that most people won’t see the film this way--and likewise won’t see the strong Christian truths expressed in films like “The Apostle”, “The Mission” and “Babette’s Feast”. Certainly part of the problem is our culture’s determination always to see Christianity in a negative light. But at least half the problem surely is the way Christians persist in proving the culture’s judgement largely right. (Witness the current “Left Behind” phenomenon).

I’m reminded of Harry Robinson’s answer to a questions about whether Christians should watch movies: he said maybe only Christians should, since they’re the only ones who at least ought to be able to understand them.

*

(Loren followed up his email to me with a little P.S. - "One nice detail in the film which I forgot to mention is the determined effort by the Count to close the doors of the church against the wind (Spirit) from the outside world, at the beginning of the film, which is, I fear, all too like the church. A lot could be made of the spirit/wind connection-- including the fact that the dust of the woman's mother, which has been a kind of driving and destructive force in the lives of the woman and her daughter, gets scattered by the wind at the end.")