AROUND THE BEND

AROUND THE BEND (2004, USA, Jordan Roberts)
Did you go on digs with him? I wanted him to leave it all in the ground. The pottery, the bones. Didn't belong up here. But... My father loved digging up old shit.

Did you ever think past the end of the parable? Now that the Prodigal is back, how are he and the Older Brother ever going to get along? I'm guessing the younger brother – we'll call him Turner – is going to want to be pals again, but he won't push it too hard because he's good and aware that he's no longer worthy to be called "brother" or "son" or anything else that's all that friendly. I'm guessing the real problems will like with old Firstborn over there – Jason, for the purposes of our story – who's spent his life (invested his life, to be more precise, instead of blowing through it like a sixteen-year-old with his first paycheck) being decent and loyal to their father – who we'll call Henry – and pretty much spending his days making up for the other brother's heartbreaking prodigality.

Don't worry, AROUND THE BEND is no modern retelling of a too-familiar parable. It goes its own way, tearing down the road in a more-than-decripit VW microbus, laughing and swearing and eating Kentucky Fried. And sometimes at night, pulled off the road to rest up a bit, dancing in the headlights.

But you get the sense that writer-director Jordan Roberts... And hey, I'm telling you, keep your eyes open for small movies like this where the guy that wrote the script also directed. Your STATION AGENTS, your PIECES OF APRIL, that's my kind of auteur – where the director is truly the filmmaker, not only the finisher but also the author. Because we're usually talking personal vision projects where story and character and heart are pretty much the whole deal, we're usually talking scripts that have been burning a hole in somebody's pocket for years and finally just have to get themselves made. Tight budgets, tight shooting schedules, open hearts. Now it happens that after a decade of rewrites and a pervasive film industry buzz that this was a fabulous little screenplay one rewrite away from amazing, Roberts decided to heck with waiting for somebody else to make the darn thing, he'd shoot it himself on digital, just get it done and out there for people to see. So he came up with one last rewrite, only wouldn't you know, that was the rewrite that did it. The light went on for somebody at Warner Independent, and the light was green, and all of a sudden there was money enough for Michael Caine and Christopher Walken and even a couple pretty nifty crane shots. Not a dime extra, not a single extra shooting day if things went wrong – like, say, if it started snowing in New Mexico – but enough money that the guy wasn't shooting the damn thing on his Mastercard.

So where was I? Right, you get the sense that writer-director Jordan Roberts has that Prodigal Son story pretty much by heart, if only in the scene where his son returns from a far country – the movie even sets us up to wonder if maybe he's come from that undiscovered country "from whose bourne no man returns," a literal not just a metaphorical resurrection – and the father runs to greet him. "God damn, boy. You came back. Get me dressed! My family's going out! To a fancy place." For a meal together, even a little dancing. Only Henry prefers chicken to fatted calf, and has a particular fondness for Colonel Sanders, but still we hear the echoes of those sacred words of reconciliation, "Get my best robe! Kill the fatted calf! For this my son, though he was dead, yet lives!"

Here, though, that's the story's point of departure, not its destination – and it is most definitely a road movie, the story of a journey. Henry was an archeologist, kind of a leftover hippy with "DIG" written on the side of his van, and he sends his boys off on sort of an interstate treasure hunt to a series of digs and Sites Of Interest from their own personal history and pre-history. Only they're putting something back into the ground, not digging it up, and any riches they uncover aren't going to be worth much to a museum. Old Henry's a savvy character: I love the way the various Route 66 stops disguise the eventual destination until it's close enough Turner might just be able to follow the trajectory of healing, get caught up in the momentum of restoration, and be in Albuquerque before he knows what's coming.

One of this film's interesting angles is that sometimes the prodigal is your father, and that's even harder to come to terms with than a brother who buggers off. I mean, that's what little brothers do, right? Head out on the road, seeking their fame and fortune? But when it's your dad who leaves, and your mom's already dead, and when he doesn't show up again until thirty-some years of thieving and drugs and prison have gone by, and you've been raised by your grandfather, and had your own little son to raise, also on your own (because who knows what lessons about marriage and relationships you didn't get the chance to learn in his absence)... There's a hell of a lot of forgiving to do. Maybe too much.

Watch for the subtleties, some real deftness in the writing. The nice reversal that follows up "Henry never asked me to do a thing in his entire life, and he asked me to do this, and I'M DOING IT! Not your way or my way, but his way." The way the musician thing is touched so lightly in the follow-up scene, then paid off in the gorgeously understated piano scene – not the last stairway we'll see, and how about that obligatory "I remember" monologue we don't get? Gorgeous.

Best of all, Turner's efforts to shape up aren't overplayed, and he's no more willing to deal with things than the next guy: he's still a man with too many decades of addiction and selfishness behind him to suddenly become the perfect son – or father. (Though he turns out to be not a bad Granddad, in a Dennis Hopper kind of way...) I love the subtlety with which his AA background is not so much brought out as woven in: after hauling Turner back to a jewelry store like a father taking a kid back to a corner store to pay for the candy bar he swiped, Jason remarks "You did have a history at places like this." But Turner won't accept the easy out offered him in that past tense, replying "I do, yes." Just like he doesn't stand up in meetings and say "My name is Turner, I was an alcoholic." It's about owning up, taking responsibility now for what you've done, or left undone, in the past.

The fact is, both prodigals and firstborns have their traps. Don't you love where the book of Ecclesiastes comes down? After this guy Solomon spent his twenties and thirties writing self-righteous and too-wise-for-his-own years Proverbs about avoiding women and doing everything in moderation and building for the future and living cautiously and responsibly, he blew off another couple decades with wine, women and song – especially women, by the dozens, but plenty of wine and feasting and every whim that ever twitched a synapse as well – he's a kind of a burnt-out prodigal himself. An "all is emptiness," mouth like an ashtray, self-loathing, morning-after kind of prodigal, no longer worthy to be called anybody's son. But you know where he finally comes down? You know where his book ends up? Not running back into the arms of self-righteousness, but here; "In this meaninless life of mine I have seen both of these; a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness. Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise— why destroy yourself? Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool-- why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other."

Truly, there is a time to mourn, and a time to dance. And sometimes it's time to do both at the same time. You can do both, you can have both: you can head out on the road, but not leave anybody behind. That's wisdom, and that's this movie's wisdom.

And you know what? This movie ain't perfect. I don't want to send you running off to the video store expecting CITIZEN KANE. Yeah this movie's got flaws, and yeah I could spell them out for you. Fine: read the critics, or do your own fault-finding, I'm not in the mood. This human-scaled story is perfectly human in its imperfections, and you know what? You want to have any friends, sometimes you gotta look past those things. Perfectionism's a fine trait in bankers, not so much when you're looking to feed your soul. Fact is, I like hanging out with this movie, with these characters. I like the kid in the back seat and the sunsets and the music they play on their 8-track. You want to criticize, you don't have to ride with us. Now let's get us some KFC!

PIECES OF APRIL, THE STATION AGENT, HAROLD & MAUDE

Available at Videomatica

THE SON

THE SON ("Le Fils", 2002, Belgium, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
The new kid. I can take him.

If you've ever sat through a movie with a child, you'll know the running commentary. "Who's that? What's he doing? Why is he running? Who's that boy? How come he told a lie? Why is he so scared? Is he mad now? Why is he hiding? Is the man going to get him?" And so on.

I happened to go through that stage with my two chatty and perspicacious daughters at exactly the time when I was becoming a playwright, trying to master the tools of the story-teller's trade. And it suddenly dawned on me one day that the out-loud questions of a three-year-old movie-watcher are no different from the unspoken dramaturgical questions that go on unconsciously in every film- or play-goer, whatever their age.

Provided the writer has done his job, that is. Provided a story is being told, a yarn is being spun. The novel has gone other directions in the past century or so, but stage and screen are still essentially narrative art forms, and when you're juggling a dramatic arc or three, you're looking always to keep all the narrative balls in the air – moving, flying, floating, rising and falling and being caught and flipped up against the sky in an apparently effortless dramatic spectacle. Whatever the nuances, complexities and subtleties of your story, if the film breaks at any moment, the whole audience should have the same question in their mind: "What happens next!" Which, being elaborated, may come out as "Will he find out?" or "Will she succeed?" or "How will he manage to..." or any one of a million other questions. But if there's ever a moment in your play (stage- or screen-) when there's nothing like that hanging in the air, you're not quite doing your job. Whether we're watching Shakespeare or Shepard or John Patrick Shanley, an intelligent and engaged watcher should have in mind – conscious or unconscious – a a constant stream of childish questions: "Who's that? What's he doing now? Why is he doing that?" And so on.

Most of the time, that inner interrogatory chatter will be inaudible. At worst, that's because the story's dramatic questions aren't important enough to us, aren't important enough in the grand scheme of things, or we've heard them before in too many other stories and already know the answers, or we feel like nothing's really at stake, nothing hangs on the outcome of the questions. At best, it's because there isn't time or breath to enunciate or notice our questions: they're drown out by the sheer volume of what's coming in, we don't dare raise our voice or listen to the chatter because things are moving too fast, there's so much coming at us we don't have time or inclination to attend to that inner monologue, much less voice it. We don't want to miss anything.

Once as an adult I sat in a theatre and saw a film so unusual, so brilliantly crafted, so dangerous, so perfectly paced – and above all, so quiet – that I could hear that stream of questions in my head so loud I wondered if the people sitting next to me could listen in. There wasn't a scrap of music in the whole film, almost no talking, and almost never a scrap of explanation, justification, exposition. Nothing except people doing things, and me fearing for their lives, their souls.

White titles. Some sort of ambient sound. Something blurred, moving at the bottom of the screen: a thumb in extreme close-up, the top of a head, what? A knocking or rapping: what was that? The camera tracks upward, this is a man's back, the blur was some sort of belt. He's wearing overalls. Back of his head. He's working on something, that's what the tapping is. A woman watches. There's a droning sound, then a cutting sound: a table saw. An urgent voice: "Olivier! Come here! Quick!" He runs to another room, alarmed. Several boys run into the room ahead of him. It's a woodworking shop. He yells over the noise of the saw, "What is this? Go back to work. I told you. Twice at 2 millimeters." Some wood is jammed in a saw. He works the machine, frees the wood, guides it through the saw. What's that in his voice? Fear? Exasperation? Relief? Impatience? He picks up a file folder. Reads something inside that stops him, troubles him, preoccupies him. Begins to walk back to the other room. The woman watches, waiting for his reply. The sound of the buzz saw continues. Hammering. "You'll take him?" He begins to shake his head, then speaks: "No, I can't. The four I got are already too many." She leaves, to see if there's a place in welding. He watches her go, then turns away from us, distracted, aimless. He's doing something we can't see. He's lit a cigarette. Why is he troubled?

A sudden cut, the first so far, we're two minutes fifty into the film. The man runs up some steps, we're close in behind him, he moves slowly around a corner, watches something. What is he looking at? Meticulously, he puts out the cigarette on the sole of his work boot, saves it in the bib pocket of his overalls. Walks slowly down the hall to a corner, approaches slowly, looks around the corner. He doesn't want to be seen.

Cut to his hands, braced against the lower frame of a window. Voices. He's looking into a room. The focus shifts, we see the woman, can't see the person on the other side of the desk. She hands a paper across, a man's hands take it, a boy's hands sign it. He has a light brown jacket. We still cannot see faces in the room. Shift to Olivier, who suddenly runs back down the hall, down the stairs, almost frantic, trying to keep his boots from making noise on the tile floor, hides around a corner, stands staring at a white wall. What is going on? What is he running from? The sound of voices, closer. He looks around the corner, catches a glimpse of the boy in the brown jacket.

Cut to machine noises, we're back in the shop, he looks out an outside window, downs a cup of coffee, resumes teaching. Says almost nothing: he does the action, the student repeats the action, he corrects or not, moves on. And we've got nothing but questions, and an odd sense of dread and foreboding.

For thirty two minutes our questions and dread only grow: nothing is explained, we only observe and try to learn. We see Olivier's belt again: a tool belt? Something to do with the shop, or with lifting? A woman comes to his spartan apartment. His walls are bare, he is living out of cardboard boxes. She is pretty on an ordinary-life, real-human scale. She smiles, she likes him, and we realize this is the first human warmth we've seen. He is awkward, contained. We don't know who she is. Awkward silence, her smile fades. "Back still hurt?" "No." He moves past her through a doorway: they are close, awkward. He moves past her into the other room. Something is wrong. She smiles again, "I'm getting married. I needed to start something again." His reaction is small, contained. "That's good." He washes out his lunch box. Her smile goes again. "And I wanted to tell you that I'm pregnant." This time he says nothing, perhaps blinks a little more rapidly, dries out the lid of his lunch box. Which looks pretty dry already.

Sudden cut to Olivier racing down some stairs. Out into the parking lot, where he stops a car pulling away. "Why did you come today? Why today and not another day?" She drives away. He looks haunted.

His back is bad. Alone in the apartment, he lies on the floor, his feet on a chair. That's what the leather belt is for.

Back at the school, he waits for an opportunity, then scrambles on top of some lockers to look through a high window. Scrambles down so as not to be seen. Eats in a different lunch room, looks about warily. Watching the boys at lunch in the next room. Turns away to clean a knife, we hear a conversation with the new boy. Olivier turns to watch as the boy leaves the room. And the stream of questions continues in our head as the dread grows, and we wait for the gathering storm to break.

Why am I describing the moment-to-moment physical detail of this film so closely? Because that's what this film is: closely observed, moment-to-moment physical detail. But what is it all about? What's going on? I'm not going to say because, most of the time, the film doesn't say. Oh, it all becomes clear eventually: in fact, uncannily, it was at the very moment when I first had the thought, "Okay, I need a little more information right about now" that Olivier walked into the gas station and the circumstances got a lot more clear – even if motivations, and intentions, and what was going to happen next never did. For this utterly engaged viewer, a perfectly timed, perfectly calibrated film.

Important that I went into it knowing absolutely nothing about the story, only that it just might be one of the great films of the new millenium. Important that I wasn't tired or impatient or looking for exploding balls of flame or just a few laughs. Important that you approach the film in just the same way: if the meticulous, bare-bones description I've given catches your attention, don't read another word about it, not even on the DVD case, don't watch it when you're tired or distractable or likely to be interrupted. Don't watch it with somebody if you're going to worry about whether they're bored or not, whether they're getting it. Just take the film on its own terms, believe me and the film-makers that the stakes are as high as they could possibly be, and there's a good chance the film will work for you as it worked for me, in all its deliberateness and commitment to cold, hard, inscrutable reality. Believe Jonathan Rosenbaum when he says "To my knowledge there's no one anywhere making films with such a sharp sense of contemporary working-class life -- but for the Dardennes it's only the starting point of a spiritual and profoundly ethical odyssey."

Luc Dardenne: "Perhaps filming gestures and very specific, material things allows the viewer to sense everything that is spiritual, unseen, and not a part of materiality. We tend to think that the closer one gets to the cup, to the hand, to the mouth whose lips are drinking, the more one will be able to feel something invisible - a dimension we want to follow and which would otherwise be less present in the film. How does one capture what happens when a gesture is taught? How can you capture that on film? Perhaps by filming the gestures as precisely as possible you can render apprehensible that which is not seen."

Perhaps. Certainly, it seems so to me. The world of the film is unarguably physical and uncompromising, and it takes skill and learning (by hard experience) to negotiate one's way through it without damage - to yourself, or to someone else. Something final and inevitable is communicated by the unarguable physics of the carpentry shop: beams have overwhelming size and weight, and once they start to fall they can break a man's back. Mishandle the power saw, you could ruin the wood or (just as suddenly and irrevocably) your own body. The filmmakers present a "man's world," not a boy's world, an environment of uncompromising consequence and mortality: the stakes are as high as life and death, physical to the point of being primal.

The film's deepest truths don't come easily, nor are they easy truths, easily expressed. But when after eighty minutes of unrelieved tension and unknowing the climax comes, it is wrenching and terrible and awkward and cathartic, explaining itself no more than Olivier explains himself to the boys who attend to his gestures to learn the truths of their craft.

This is a world of doing, not explaining, of action rather than talk, where there are no abstractions, only what can be incarnated in wood and earth and physical human bodies. A potent and profound film, stripped to absolute bare essentials.

IN THE BEDROOM, DRY SEASON

LA PROMESSE, ROSETTA

Available at Videomatica

LA PROMESSE

LA PROMESSE (1996, Belgium, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
"How can you be guiltier than anyone in the eyes of all? There are murderers and brigands. What crimes have you committed to blame yourself more than everyone else?"
The Brothers Karamazov

It comes as no surprise to learn that this inquiry into the awakening of a young man's conscience should be inspired by a passage from Dostoevsky. Where the novelist delves deep into the consciousness of his characters, the film-makers restrict themselves to irreducable physical action, but the essential impulse is the same: a commitment to portray the darkness of the human heart and the possibility of its costly redemption in stories whose uncompromising realism is informed by the Christian faith.

Igor is a likeable kid on the verge of adulthood; smart, polite, eager to please. He also steals from customers at the service station where he is apprenticing, and lies about his constant lateness and unpredicable absences. Called away from the shop one too many times, his boss gives an ultimatum, and Igor is essentially offered a choice between two apprenticeships: he can learn the mechanic's trade, or give his full attention to the "family business," trading on the powerlessness of illegal immigrants.

LA PROMESSE is a marvel of balance and ambivalence. While we recoil from the nature and consequences of the work itself – observed in meticulous detail by the film-makers, who as usual are fascinated by the learning of craft, the concrete workings of a specific trade – we are drawn to the love between father and son, and the inherent goodness of family members working together in a common cause, echoes of the Dardenne brothers' own familial bond: "one film-maker, four eyes."

There is something sacred about a father passing things along to his son – profoundly appealing, and profoundly disquieting when the skills he conveys are nothing you'd want his boy to be learning. The young man grows into adulthood, grows up into the image of his father, and while we celebrate the maturing and the connectedness, we recoil from the work itself, and increasingly question whether Igor's father is an adult at all. Roger's love for his son is evident and touching, however wrong-headed, however compromised by a preoccupation with self-interest so profound it moves beyond criminality to verge on evil.

In one extraordinary scene they sing together on a tiny stage in a smoky bar, a sort of blue-collar Belgian karaoke. The performances (here and throughout the film – Olivier Gourmet is a god!) are extraordinary: they love what they're doing, glory in being together. Igor's studied cool doesn't quite conceal the fact he is playing to the audience, possibly playing to a particular someone in the audience: Roger is euphoric, flushed, constantly looking at his boy in the fineness and abandon of this moment. Ivor strives to look like an adult, Roger beams like a kid. The song ends, they leave the stage, and as they settle into a booth with two women we realize the context for their performance without a word of explanation being given: tonight, the boy will become a man, in his father's terms.

The sequence is set up with a scene of tremendous irony and sadness. After the son has proved himself in a particularly compromising task, Roger gives his son a ring "just like mine": the son glows in the warmth of his father's praise, palpably proud of growing into his father's image, receiving his father's blessing, yet the gift is tarnished by the inescapable sense that this is a reward for a bad job well done – perhaps even a seal on his silence about their complicity in evil. When Igor calls his father "Dad," he is corrected: "No, call me Roger." At the same time as there is something undeniably generous in the gesture, offering the son a certain coming-of-age equality with his father, there's something terribly sad about a father wanting to be "just like" his son. And something fateful in the timing of this moment, when a father gives away his right to the title of "Father."

Ultimately Igor is offered another choice, when he is asked to make a promise (to another father) that will require him to become protector to some of the victims of his father's self-interested cruelty, a sort-of-father to a small boy and a quasi-husband to Assita, the child's mother. To Igor, this appealing African woman began as an object of his adolescent sexual desire, as he spied on her squalid apartment as she worked in her slip: now his true manhood is put to the test when he's called on to be her provider, something like her husband - without the sex. To relate with her, rather than to have relations with her.

While Luc Dardenne's Catholic spirituality and engagement with the Bible are apparent throughout his journal (Au dos de nos images, 2005), and the thematic preoccupations of all the brothers' films – guilt and responsibility, vengeance and mercy, parents and children, poverty and justice, truth and lies, agonizing moral choices when sheer survival is threatened – resonate with that Christian faith, it is only in LA PROMESSE (and the much more obscure FALSCH) that explicitly religious elements come into play. In the person of Assita, Igor is confronted for the first time not only with the kind of strength and nobility that come from authentic and uncompromising moral integrity, but also with spiritual mysteries that suggest there are realities beyond the venal, materialistic, opportunistic world his father has introduced him to. When he brings the couple their forged residency permit, Assita and her husband are covering their baby with ointment: "In this new house he must be protected against bad spirits." When Igor grins and informs them that there are no bad spirits here, the woman corrects him: "Yes. We don't see them, but they see us." And we recall, and perhaps Igor recalls, the moment when he peered at her through the secret peep-hole: how can she know the nature of the heart behind this innocent boyish face, as false as the immigration documents he offers?

Later the woman struggles to construct a back-alley sheep pen out of trash and a discarded bed-frame: the animal is not to provide milk for her baby, but "to celebrate the end of Ramadan" – the significance of which is no more explained to the viewer than it is to the utterly secular Igor. By reading the entrails of a chicken who has (unknown to her) walked over her husband's grave, the she knows her husband "is not far away," and when Igor witnesses an African shaman discern truths about the Assita's husband by chanting and gazing at elemental things like water and sand, he is almost physically sick – not so much with the risk that his sins will be revealed as with the fact that he is suddenly face to face with grown-up realities about which he and his "worldly" father are utterly naive.

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, THE RETURN

Available at Videomatica

ROSETTA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MOUCHETTE, THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS

Available at Videomatica

Soul Food Tidbits: Sight & Sound, June 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available at Videomatica

Links To Other Soul Food Review(er)s

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

THE CONTENTS OF THIS POST HAVE BEEN EXPANDED AND MOVED HERE

JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HAROLD & MAUDE, IKIRU, THE IDIOT, DOUBT

Available at Videomatica

THE STATION AGENT

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

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

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

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

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

PIECES OF APRIL

Available at Videomatica

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

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

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

IRON GIANT

Available at Videomatica

TIME OF THE WOLF (HANEKE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available at Videomatica

THE KING

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

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

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

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

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

21 GRAMS, MY SUMMER OF LOVE

Available at Videomatica

*

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

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available at Videomatica

SOUL FOOD REVIEWS ONLINE: Links

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

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

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

Critical Consensus: The Films Of 2005 (MCN)

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

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

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

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

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

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

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

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

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

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

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

Available at Videomatica

Originally published in longer form at Christianity Today Movies

DEAR WENDY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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