Everyday Life and "The Great Gatsby"

            What if my parish had a discussion group for the movies? I can see a problem right away. Last night the women in the choir got together for a potluck supper to bid one of our sopranos goodbye. She’s moving to Oregon. We sat around and Julie and Joan talked about the movies. Julie is thinking of seeing “Mud.” Joan said she didn’t like Matthew McConaughey; what did I think of him? “I didn’t use to like him either,” I said, “but then he was in ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ and he was terrific.” “Wasn’t that a Grisham book?” said Joan. She works at Barnes and Noble and spends most of her salary on books. I didn’t know the answer, but I did get sucked into the problem: moviegoers frequently identify movies by their featured actors.

            I picture the group meeting weekly to discuss a current movie. A facilitator would assign it, members would see it individually, then they would meet, three to five days later. If it were my group they would bring their Bibles, just in case. The first meeting would include a discussion of the suspension of disbelief, and the instruction to put the actors back where they belong. Actors are just one of many elements that coalesce to make a movie.

            The idea behind the discussion group would be a theological one, namely, the interaction between church and culture. Movies and television dramas are, for many people, a major part of everyday life. What do those who belong to a faith community take with them to a movie, not only from their faith but also from other life experiences? What does the movie say or do to them in return?

            I went to “The Great Gatsby” yesterday. I don’t know about other people, but I surrender to a movie from the first moment, even if it’s only a sound or a title on the screen. I am receptive but still critical, still capable of being disappointed. Then I get swept up and my critical sense retreats to the back row. Early in “The Great Gatsby” there is a panning shot across a body of water at night, which ends with a shot of the blinking green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock. Well, darn if they didn’t mess up the shot of the water, overdoing the light on the ripples in the current. It looked airbrushed. As the movie proceeded, I understood that all the cinematography was overdone, in line with the theme of excess in Gatsby’s life.

            I wonder what the imaginary members of my discussion group would make of the movie’s frequent return to a shot of an immense billboard? The billboard depicts the vague image of a man wearing a very clear set of eyeglasses. The voice of the narrator, who is Nick Carraway, says the billboard is like the eyes of God watching everything that happens. It reminded me of a similar theme in “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which had brought Ps. 139 to my mind: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (vs. 7). I’d say to the group, How did that billboard shot strike you? Are you aware of the presence of God in your life? If you are, what is that like? How would you draw it in a picture?

.

Theological Reflection and Eleven Movies

            I’ve finally gotten hold of the purpose, goal and method of this study (I think). The idea is to see a move and then “throw theology like a net over it, to capture its meaning.” Following are the movies I’ve seen in the past six weeks, along with notes on theological themes. The themes are not necessarily identical to themes found in the movies.

            “Admission.” Not all movies lend themselves to theological reflection. This one doesn’t.

            “Oblivion” is a source of reflection on four themes. Creation: an alien intelligence subverts the vision God has for the earth. The human person: the dignity of the human person, which is “rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God” (CCC 1700), is deeply damaged. God: the alien invader calls itself God, the creator of a new kind of human being. Apocalypticism: the movie presents a grim vision of the future.

            “Mud.” I first wrote about “Mud” in terms of art (the movie’s theme and genre) and literature (the Epic of Gilgamesh). The moral life is the theological theme for reflection, considering the contrast between Mud’s lawless life and the lessons Ellis’ parents teach him.

            “42” evokes thoughts on the human community, especially with respect to social justice; and virtue. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Society ensures social justice when it provides the conditions that allow associations or individuals to obtain what is their due, according to their nature and vocation” (CCC 1928). In the movie, Jackie Robinson and Branch Ricky demonstrate the virtue of courage.

            “Iron Man 3.” The actions of Iron Man to liberate the Western world from the evil intent of the Mandarin are possibly a metaphor for redemption, the saving work of Jesus Christ.

            “The Truman Show.” Clive Marsh puts this one in his chapter on God; the producer of the show plays God with Truman’s life. The movie also provokes reflection on the dignity of the human person.

            “The Place Beyond the Pines.” The sacraments (baptism and implicit references to matrimony); church (a scene occurs inside a church); and sin. Sin is a difficult concept. The Catechism discusses it as acts of the will in defiance of God; the movie invites reflection on it as something that darkens and weakens the human mind (see McGrath, 428-9).

            “Do the Right Thing.” Invites thoughts on the human community, but this time more along the lines of what it takes to live in society. “Through the exchange with others, mutual service and dialogue with his brethren, man develops his potential; he thus responds to his vocation” (CCC 179).

            “Promised Land.” Brings up the theme of the human community as well. There is also the struggle of the main character, Steve Butler, to live a moral life.

            “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” This movie directly addresses the themes of the moral life, God, and sin. Sin this time refers to specific acts of adultery and murder.

            “Minority Report.” The dignity of the human person is a significant issue in this one. Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur have been impressed since childhood into service as “precogs.” They are confined to a watery tank and treated as nothing more than oracles predicting murderous acts.

.

A Viewing Experience: "Do the Right Thing"

            I’m sitting here in my life weeding the garden and a task walks across the grass. It says, Get up. I want you to do some theology.

            Nothing if not compliant, I stand up, brush the dirt off my hands and say, Where do you want me to start?

            With that movie you watched on TV a couple of weeks ago, says The Task. “Do the Right Thing” (1989). I want you to reflect on it from a theological perspective.

            I remembered the movie well, a powerful and beautiful movie. I had said to my husband, who had come home from a golf trip while I was halfway through, It’s like watching a play. I think this was because of the setting, the framing of scenes, and the time span of the story. It was about a hot day on one block of a multicultural neighborhood in New York City. Most of the action alternated between the street and the interior of Sal’s pizzeria. There was racial tension, which built to a riot and ended in the strangling of a young black man by a white policeman. I didn’t think about these things, though, as I talked to The Task. I had come away impressed most deeply by the movie’s visual quality—it was vibrant with color—and that feeling of having attended a play. I said, I don’t know how to reflect theologically on “Do the Right Thing.”

            Did someone say theology? A man walking down the street came into the yard and stuck out his hand. Hi, he said. I’m Alister McGrath. I’m a theologian. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. You know, there are four sources of theology and your dilemma is with the fourth. Sources of theology? I said. Yes; four starting points for doing theology. He counted them off on his fingers. Scripture, reason, tradition and experience. Your task is to cast theology like a net over your experience of viewing “Do the Right Thing,” in order to capture its meaning (Christian Theology: An Introduction, 227). I looked meaningfully at The Task, as if to say, Why didn’t you tell me this? The Professor went on: Theology aims to interpret experience.

            I stood there. The Task and the Professor waited for me to say something, but I was at a loss. Another man walked across the yard. Your irises are stunning, he said. I stopped to look at them and heard you talking. Thank you. They’re divisions from a single plant I purchased twenty years ago. Say, I said, have you seen “Do the Right Thing”? As a matter of fact, he replied, I wrote about it in a book about theology and the movies. I’m Clive Marsh.

            Clive Marsh picked up the thread. “Do the Right Thing” is a marvelous film for Christian theology to work with. You have a list of theological themes in your head and you start asking questions. What does this movie, “Do the Right Thing,” show a viewer about human beings, who are made in God’s image and who live in God’s creation? With all its attention to the interaction of various ethnic groups, what does it say about how human beings form a sense of identity? How does it illustrate the barriers that people throw up—this activity is called sin—to living as creatures made in God’s image?

            Huh, I said. Would you all like a glass of lemonade or a beer or something?

.

Mystified

            A number of things puzzled me as I read Clive Marsh’s Theology Goes to the Movies. First, the subtitle: An Introduction to Critical Christian Thinking. Whatever did this have to do with the movies? Second, the term God-talk. What did this irreverence point to? Third, a preoccupation with non-believing students of theology and religion. Did they need a special invitation?

            Pieces fell into place when I read the last chapter, “Theology and God,” whose first subheading is, “Why ‘God’ Matters.” Marsh is writing from the perspective of language about God, which can be used by anyone. Believers and nonbelievers today live in a world where cultural products, including movies, evoke images of Christianity. This can be enriching for both. “It should come as no surprise,” writes Marsh, “that a longstanding religious tradition might have something to offer a person wanting to reflect on the meaning of life” (165). He offers his book as a sort of training manual in critical approaches to the meeting of theology and film.

            On the last page Marsh says of himself, “I … am a particular (Christian), critical realist who accepts a strong dose of soft agnosticism within the faith I hold and in the way I use the theological tradition I seek to inhabit” (176). These words are based on a list of “types of belief in God”:

            Atheism “denies the existence of God, and of the value of God-talk” (174). Hostile atheism asserts that such talk if harmful.

            Non-realism is the conviction that language about God reflects nothing more than human imagination. God is a human creation.

            Agnosticism is the belief that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God. Soft agnosticism sees “the value of carrying on with God-talk so long as it proves useful in human flourishing.”

            Critical realism “begins from the assumption that God is.” It acknowledges that our attempts to reflect on God are “mediated by language or imagery, and thus always [reflect] the time, place and culture within which such encounter with the reality of God occurs” (175). Particular critical realism occurs within a religious tradition, e.g., Christian or Jewish. General critical realism looks beyond specific traditions in claims about the divine.

            Naïve realism describes belief in the literal interpretation of religious statements, e.g., the prospect of the faithful being caught up in the clouds to meet Christ at the Second Coming (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

            I found Marsh’s book helpful in my movie reflections, but I am mystified by his self-description and approach to theology. What gets him out of bed in the morning? Living and writing in the UK, he seems to reflect the expanding climate of secularism there. Every book reveals something of its author, but nothing in Theology Goes to the Movies indicates Marsh’s emotions with respect to his professed faith; no talk of awe, wonder, religious experience or transcendence; no sign of attachment or affection.

.

Theological Themes in "The Silk"

            “The Silk” is a short feature film, fifteen minutes long, about a man who is dying and his wife. Paco and I saw it at a film festival in March. As the movie starts, the wife is gazing out the window of their bedroom. She turns around and says to her husband that she is going to make his laying-out pajamas from “the silk.” He objects, but she is determined. The silk is a length of Chinese silk that he brought back to New Zealand for her after the war was over, fifty years ago. It is a lustrous indigo blue with an intricate design of a Chinese pleasure garden woven into it. It is so beautiful she has never been able to bring herself to cut into it. Her husband had had to smuggle it home, wrapped around his midriff under his uniform.

            The husband dies just as the wife finishes the pajamas. She takes them to the kitchen table for work on a small finishing detail, saying sadly to the nurse, “He never said goodbye!” Something in the silk catches her eye. She puts her glasses on, leans close and sees a tiny figure on a hill in the pleasure garden, waving its hand. “I’m coming, Herb,” she cries. “I’m coming!”

            What might theology have to say, in reflecting on “The Silk”? It would be a three-way conversation, with the film filtered through my perceptions and theology filtered through my level of understanding. To locate myself: I am seventy-three, was present at the deaths of my parents and sister, and have been affected by many other deaths. Paco and I sometimes talk about our last days. When the film started my feelings were engaged right away. But I don’t think you have to be in your seventies to be tugged by the question, What will it be like when I die?

            Honestly, I don’t know whether to talk about religious belief, religious experience or theology. In everyday language I see three things happening in the movie. (1) The man and woman indicate by their behavior, “I love you and I honor our marriage.” (2) The woman indicates by her decision: “Death is about to part us. Let’s make a ceremony of the silk. You brought it to me in love; I preserved it in awe and trepidation; I will dress you in it for our goodbyes.” (3) There are no goodbyes. The man and woman will meet again in paradise.

            Setting aside theological precision, I understand that (1) the couple’s behavior points to the sacrament of matrimony. The efficacious grace of the sacrament is visible in their words, their body language, and the woman’s act of sewing. (2) Her preparation of the precious silk as the man’s final garment is reminiscent of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, which is administered at the end of life, as well as the women’s preparations for Jesus’ body at the end of the Gospel of Mark. (3) Christians believe that the finality of death is an illusion. Loved ones will be reunited in the next life, which is a place of beauty. This is a loose and partial illustration of the doctrine of eschatology.

.

A Few Notes

            Conscience.  On Saturday Paco and I watched “Minority Report” (2002). It focuses on John Anderton’s crisis when the precogs reveal that he is going to kill a man he has never met. When the moment arrives, the precog Agatha says that knowledge of the future doesn’t mean the future is inevitable. “You can choose,” she tells him insistently. She is speaking to his conscience, his consciousness of himself as a moral being.

            Religious experience.  Yesterday I read a few pages in The Significance of Religious Experience, by Howard Wettstein. It led me to reconsider Clive Marsh’s seven-theme, which is really a seven-doctrine, methodology. What would it be like in my study of religion and theology if I started with issues on which I would stake my existence, rather than with a schedule of teachings? Abraham Joshua Heschel calls this situational, as opposed to conceptual, thinking (God In Search of Man, 5).

            Beauty and Holiness.  Ever since the day thirteen years ago when I read Ps. 27:4—“This is what I seek … to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord”—I have wanted to sink into the experience of these words. But how? Robert K. Johnston quotes Gerardus van der Leeuw, who speaks of an analogy between art and religion. “The paths of beauty and holiness approach each other, growing distant, until finally … they can no longer be held apart” (in Johnston, 73).

            Creation.  Last year I plunged into gardening, with the dream of turning my yard into an English garden. There would be a dense shrub border around the perimeter, small trees and many flowers. The response of the earth is a continual marvel to me: “If you plant it, it will grow.” I wish I could find the verses in the Bible which speak of God’s delight in Wisdom at play on the earth, because that’s what it feels like.

            Story.  I also read an essay called “Religion Without God,” by Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin looks directly at an issue that Johnston and Marsh approach obliquely: it isn’t necessary to believe in God to live an ethical life. His argument made sense until I came to the sentence: “There is no direct bridge from any story about the creation, or … [etc.] … to the enduring value of friendship and family, or … [etc.]." No bridge, I thought, except the human need for story.

            Church, temple, synagogue, mosque.  Not the building but the awareness, found in indigenous religions too, of being a member of a community that stands in awe of ultimate reality. The ground-hugging foundation of tradition is part of this. I belong to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first words of the Gospel reading yesterday, on Pentecost Sunday, hearkened back to the first words of Genesis, in which the Spirit of God hovers over the waters.

            Sabbath.  Some theologians have “called attention to the need for a restructuring of theology in which praxis would … be the very foundation of theologizing” (The New Dictionary of Theology, 784). Keeping the Sabbath holy is the practice of setting aside creative activity—making things happen in the world—in order to pay homage to God the Creator. We can extend this to a practice of Sabbath-time, remembering, “Great sacrifices were offered on that day, and there was rejoicing over the great feast of the Lord in which they shared” (Neh 12:43), and “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4).

.

The Editing of "Crimes and Misdemeanors"

            Another story in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” looks at Cliff’s work as a documentary filmmaker. Because he needs money, he obliges his pompous brother-in-law Lester’s request for a biography. We see him unenthusiastically filming Lester as he talks about himself. Halley, another filmmaker, views the footage after Cliff edits it. “I didn’t know you were going to cut it this way,” she says mildly. The viewer doesn’t know what she’s alluding to until Cliff screens the film for Lester. We see Lester growing more and more agitated as Cliff, slouching in a chair, laughs silently to himself. When we’re shown parts of the film, we see that Cliff has edited it to make Lester look ridiculous. In one scene he puts Lester’s voice into the mouth of Mr. Ed, the talking horse.

            It’s taken me a few movies to appreciate Johnston’s explanations of editing and framing (pages 164-171). With “Crimes and Misdemeanors” the puzzle piece of editing falls into place. I’m no film professor, but my guess is that “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” with its seamless interweaving of disparate storylines (I count six), is a masterpiece of editing. I have a history of bias against Woody Allen movies. Watching them unreflectively, I’ve felt uncomfortable with his worldview without being able to articulate why. Recently I watched part of a TV documentary on Allen, which was kinder to him than Cliff is to Lester. It helped me to understand his methods and his madness.

Allen has a prodigious imaginative and comedic talent, and he is a comic for whom nothing is sacred, including meaning. Why did he cut “Crimes and Misdemeanors” the way he did, layering a murder story with other stories? The editing is masterful where technique is concerned, but the stories taken together do not deliver a unified insight about human problems, either from the standpoint of moral complexity (Marsh), or what an amoral universe might be like (Johnston).

            In “Crimes and Misdemeanors” Allen is just having fun. His cameraman shoots footage of Cliff shooting Lester. Wow, says Allen, let’s have Cliff shoot Lester in revenge; we’ll have him display Lester as a laughable idiot. No, it doesn’t make sense; Cliff needs money but he certainly won’t get paid for this. And yeah, we can have a real shooting; a guy has his mistress done away with. Oh, people want meaning, do they? Okay, we’ll put in a lot of references to vision. Judah is an ophthalmologist; Ben the rabbi is going blind; Cliff sees movies with his niece; he tells her not to listen to her teachers but just to “see what they look like;” Cliff makes movies, which are visual artifacts; Judah metaphorically sees the light at the end of the tunnel (Johnston, 159).

            Although “Crimes and Misdemeanors” hosts an extended discussion of morality in the story about Judah, it’s not about morality or the lack of it. The message is in the editing, especially in the last few minutes of the movie, which reprise brief scenes from all the stories. The message is this. Life is a jumble of events and situations that have meaning only in the experience of the viewer beholding them. Our job is just to get through the day.

.

Conscience in "Crimes and Misdemeanors"

            “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989) is a Woody Allen movie with overlapping storylines. The weightiest concerns Judah, a married man who has been having an affair with Dolores for two years. A crisis arises when Dolores decides Judah’s wife should know the truth. He consults Ben, a rabbi and old friend, who counsels him to confess to his wife and ask her forgiveness. Judah doesn’t see this as an option. The situation heats up when Dolores threatens to expose a shady financial dealing if he doesn’t do what she wants. He confides in his brother Jack; Jack arranges for the murder of Dolores. After the crime, Judah is wracked by guilt. Jack reminds him that he will be brought down too if Judah turns himself in. Judah comes to an uneasy peace with himself, saying that in real life people deny and form rationalizations about egregious things they have done.

            I told Paco about the movie, and he said Judah’s intense feelings of guilt reminded him of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Judah goes to the scene of the crime to retrieve love letters; Raskolnikov keeps returning to the scene of his crime. The difference arises in how the two stories end. Raskolnikov can bear his inner torment no longer and turns himself in to the authorities. In the movie, Judah meets Cliff (Woody Allen), who is a filmmaker. He tells him his story as if it has happened to someone else, thinking it would make a good movie. Cliff says that, to make the story a tragedy, Judah has to have the guy turn himself in. This is when Judah says, “But that’s not what happens in real life!”

            Both Johnston and Marsh analyze “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Johnston focusing on the movie’s underlying atmosphere of amorality and Marsh enthusing over its “portrayal of how complex moral questions are part of everyday life.” I’d like to look at its treatment of Judah’s conscience.

            As a boy, Judah was taught by his devoutly religious father that the eyes of God were always upon him and that God would surely punish him if he committed an evil deed. Judah grows up and abandons religion, but not before internalizing his father’s teachings. The movie implies that these are the source of his guilt. While his crime is still adultery, the rabbi advises him to make a mature response to his conscience; to seek the joy and peace that come with a clear conscience. Judah gives lip service to the idea but is more worried about the complex issues he is facing. Then the murder happens—he is astounded at how horribly easy it is to solve the problem of Dolores—and his conscience comes forward. There is a scene where he drives through a tunnel and comes to the light at the end. Johnston says this represents Judah’s deciding not to judge himself. Considering the later scene with Cliff, I would interpret it as the moment when his insight about real life arrives: things happen; we do things we regret; we keep moving; we don’t think too much. By the time he meets Cliff, he has suppressed his conscience.

.

Church and "The Place Beyond the Pines"

            A few posts ago I described the scene in “The Place Beyond the Pines” where Luke Glanton is sitting in the rear of a Catholic church watching the baptism of his son Jason. Since I am Catholic and have witnessed many baptisms, I watched the scene with sharp attention. Movies often take a light-fingered approach to Catholic rituals and images, appropriating them willy-nilly to serve the needs of fiction. This scene was remarkably authentic, as far as I could tell. The only liberty the filmmakers took was to place the baptismal font directly in front of the altar. Usually the font is in a fixed position to the left of the sanctuary, the raised area that contains the altar, tabernacle and podium; or it is near the door of the church, where it is a sign of welcome to the new Christian.

            The third book I’m reading for the theology-and-movies course examines the interactions that take place between church and culture where movies are concerned. It is Theology Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Critical Christian Thinking (2007), by Clive Marsh. The body of the book looks at twenty-three popular movies under seven headings. I’ve listed the headings (slightly reworded) in the sidebar, under Themes in Systematic Theology. “The Place Beyond the Pines” appears too recently to have been included in the book. My guess is that, if Professor Marsh were to comment on it, he would do so under the category of redemption. I want to look at it under the heading of church.

            In the movie, neither the baptism scene nor the idea of church has echoes later on. Romina and her mother are Hispanic and so there is a cultural expectation that they are Catholic, but we aren’t shown more scenes of how being Catholic affects their daily lives. Yet the baptism scene is crucial in the movie’s portrayal of Luke Glanton’s life. It emphasizes his status as an outsider.

            For a Catholic and probably all Christians, there are many resonances. For example, the church building and the sacrament of Baptism symbolize, among other things, the vibrant community life of practicing Christians. The sacrament welcomes the new baby into a community of faith, a community whose ideas and beliefs about the nature of God and man’s purpose on earth are, as Marsh says, embodied in practices. In the sad case of Luke, the practice that comes to mind is forgiveness. The movie depicts him as an outsider to the family that includes his baby. But, if he chose to, he could be part of a Christian community that would encourage him to forgive himself for abandoning Romina, seek her forgiveness, and be confident that God has forgiven him. A church community would teach him the value of sacrifice: he must let Jason go for the baby’s own good. It would teach him to trust God and to trust in the goodness of life. There is a good life possible for him without Romina and Jason. The community of faith would support his search for it.

.

"Promised Land" Sparks a Dream

“Promised Land” Sparks a Dream

 

            Christians believe in God, who created everything, including mankind; and God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, who was conceived of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, who is in turn the illimitable love between the Father and the Son. Christian anthropology is the study of mankind in the midst of this reality. It is a principal theme in the study of the Christian faith. It examines the question of who we are in relation to God, and to Jesus Christ, the paradigm of humanity. I’d like to open, in this post, a line of thinking on these matters by recounting the dream I had after viewing “Promised Land.”

            It was actually only the first three-quarters of the movie, since its transmission was interrupted by a thunderstorm. The uncompleted story was, I’m sure, one of the causes of the dream. Another was the inner turmoil of the character Steve Butler, who was convincingly portrayed by Matt Damon. It’s amazing, the subtle things actors can do with facial expressions and body language. The dream made me realize I’d been fully absorbed with Steve Butler’s wracking, ill-at-ease feeling as he wondered, without ever saying so, what he was supposed to do. I dreamt about Matt Damon, but in the dream I’ll call him Bill to underscore that he is playing a role:

            Bill is in a dark place. There is a small opening through which he can see to the outside. I, dreaming, think to myself, “bole of a tree.” In the dictionary this means tree trunk, but in the dream I’m thinking of a growth on a tree trunk. The growth has taken the shape of the opening, which is an irregular, vertical oval about two feet long and ten inches wide. From the outside, the growth has a gnarled look, the look of something elaborately carved by the hand of nature. Inside, the space has the dimensions and expanse of a cave, and it gives access to more internal regions.

            Standing a good distance back from the hole, Bill sees a man outside in the sunlight. The man is wearing a rumpled, long-sleeved white dress shirt. The light is bright, seen from the dark place. It almost dazzles Bill’s eyes.

            I feel the shudder of an electric shock as the man outside presses a key on his cell phone. “Hey, Ed,” he says into the phone, “I see him.” I have a feeling he is coming in after Bill.

            Inside, Bill says to an unseen companion, “He has brown hair. That’s where the brown was coming from.”

The dream ends with Bill on the cusp of a decision. He can let himself be found or he can pick up his gear, clamber over the uneven floor of the dark place and go to the interior regions.

            I don’t know what the color brown was about, but the rest of the dream makes sense to me. It shows Bill where I have often been, wishing to retreat but tired of retreat; unwilling to be discovered and at the same time longing for it.

            The conversation I’m interested in would look at four questions: What does it mean to be a woman in a media culture that focuses mainly on the experience of being a man? How do movies connect us with ourselves? Are movies like dreams? Is there room in Christian anthropology for talk about dreams?

.                                                          

Atmosphere in "Promised Land"

            Atmosphere has been one of Robert Johnston’s tougher movie concepts for me to absorb. This is what he says about it on p. 147 of Reel Spirituality:

            Atmosphere is the “unalterable given(s) against which the story is told and the characters developed…. It is the unchanging backdrop against which the story is played out…. It is that which is beyond the story’s ability to control.” It is something bigger than the characters, he says. He gives examples: the “existence of lost worlds” in “Jurassic Park” (1993); the” notion of ‘homecoming’” in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939); the “specter of anti-Semitism” in “Schindler’s List” (1993). I kept wishing he would use a different word. Did he mean context or setting, theme or worldview? I looked in the dictionary.

            Backdrop is a theater term. It came into usage in 1913 to describe the painted cloth that in those days hung across the rear of a stage. A synonym is background.

            Atmosphere has several meanings. Those that are useful in a movie discussion are: the air of a locality (if you take it in a metaphorical sense); a surrounding influence or environment (e.g., an atmosphere of mutual trust); the overall aesthetic effect of a work of art; a dominant aesthetic or emotional effect or appeal. Reading these definitions, I felt assured that Johnston had used the right word. Backdrop gave me a helpful visual clue.

So, here’s how atmosphere might be understood in the movie Paco and I watched over the weekend:

            First, the plot. “Promised Land” (2012) tells the story of Steve Butler and his partner Sue, who are employees of Global, a company that drills for natural gas. They go to a small farming community to convince residents that it is in their best interests to lease their land to Global. Global believes a rich deposit of natural gas lies beneath their stretch of countryside, which they plan to release with a process called fracking. Fracking involves blasting the shale that traps natural gas with pressurized chemicals. Global’s initiative raises an ethical dilemma for Steve: (1) Will the project be as profitable for the residents as he and Sue are promising it will? (2) Will the fracking process poison the land, not only ruining it for farming but rendering it uninhabitable?

            Second, atmosphere. The backdrop of the story is the attachment people have to a farm that has been in the family for generations. Steve understands this because he used to do chores on his grandfather’s farm in Iowa. He also knows what it’s like to live in a farming community that goes bust when it can no longer sustain itself. This is why he is, at first, a true believer for Global. In the end he goes back to his roots, emotionally speaking. In a town meeting, he tells the residents about his grandfather’s barn, which was the bane of his existence as a boy. To maintain it, they had to paint it every other summer. When he asked why, his grandfather said it was because “it is our barn.”

.

Character in "The Place Beyond the Pines"

Image.  A family group in the sanctuary of a Catholic church, standing in front of the altar. They are Romina, her baby Jason, and the baby’s stepfather Kofi, with a priest, who is baptizing the baby. Romina’s mother is nearby. The wall behind the altar is elaborate with sacred iconography, in the manner of large old Catholic churches. During the ceremony there are cuts back and forth to a man in a pew at the rear of the church. He is Luke Glanton, the biological father of the baby. He is crying.

Plot.  In the first part of “The Place Beyond the Pines,” Luke, a motorcycle rider in a carnival act, discovers he has a son, Jason, who was conceived when Luke was in town a year ago. Now Luke wants to have a life with Romina and Jason, but she has moved on. Out in the woods, he races his motorcycle among the trees to relieve his frustrations. There he meets a man who introduces him to bank robbery. He gets killed by a rookie cop, but not before he phones Ro and says not to tell the boy about himself.

In the second part, the cop struggles with guilt. He has a son the same age as Jason, whose name is A.J. An older, angry cop, whom he has accused of corruption, lures him to the woods at night. He flees. He tries to be an honest cop, but his career ambitions complicate things.

In the third part, Jason and A.J., now teenagers, meet at school. Jason discovers who A.J. is and starts a fight. He ends up in the hospital, where he calls Romina a liar because she refuses to tell him about his real father. He gets a gun and forces the cop, who is now off the force and has been elected district attorney, to drive him out to the woods. Jason threatens to shoot the cop. The cop, thinking he is about to die, says, “I’m sorry, Jason.” Jason changes his mind. He goes away, buys a motorcycle and heads west.

The question I wanted to ask today was, What does this movie say about character? But there was just too much else going on.

Title.  There’s the title, which refers to the lonely spot in the woods where (1) Luke turns to crime; (2) the cop turns around and flees; and (3) Jason turns around after the cop/district attorney says he’s sorry.

Theme.  There’s the persistent theme of how hard it is to be a father to a son. Luke didn’t have a father and now is shut out of fathering Jason. The cop had an attentive father but was never on the same page with him. The cop and his wife divorce. When A. J. wants to come live with him he’s busy running for D.A. Kofi has been with Romina since before Jason was born and tells Jason, “I am your father.” But Jason goes away.

Character.  The movie is a cry of despair. It’s as though a single composite character screams out of the middle of it, “I don’t know what to do!” As though each of the men and the boy come face to face with themselves in the woods—three times, that moment of recognition; that anagnorisis—but the truth they recognize is one of emptiness, lostness and rootlessness.

.

The Movies and Me, cont.

            In the past month I’ve seen eight movies; read books and articles including Reel Spirituality, Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide, a section of the Catechism, the article on morality in The New Dictionary of Theology, and a good many movie reviews; begun to watch TV dramas with movie eyes; and posted seventeen entries on this blog, not counting “A Plan” and the glossary I deleted because all it was doing was stirring mud. Here are a few words on what I’ve learned:

            I didn’t expect an insight that has just this week come to the front of my mind—most movies are about men and the experience of being a man. From my list, only “Admission” was about a woman and a woman’s kind of dilemma. It asked the question, What if you were unexpectedly presented with the child you gave birth to and gave away eighteen years before? Coincidentally, there’s an article in yesterday’s Washington Post about another neglected population in the movies, middle-class African Americans. The gist of the article is that the studio system makes for very cautious behavior in the financing and distribution of movies. Hollywood goes for the tried and true.

            My consciousness was raised by “Call the Midwife,” a BBC series based on the memoirs of a midwife in 1950s London. This production is rare in its presentation of a feminine perspective on the kinds of challenges women face. But it comes with a patina of distance: it’s about the 1950s and the sexual mores of that time … an occupation (midwifery) that receives no attention in today’s media … desperately poor people … a foreign country.

            Another thing that has surprised me is my new—it’s more like recovered—attitude of openness to the movies. I’m grateful to Robert K. Johnston’s book for this. It has been freeing to get past actor-worshipping and thumbs-up-thumbs-down approaches to movies. I’ve found my way back to things I enjoy. The escapism, the soul-fulfillment of good stories, the multitudinous opportunities to ask, Now how did they do that?

            Day before yesterday I went to “The Place Beyond the Pines” and in the evening wrote a reflection, which I will post next week. It marked a turn for more serious-mindedness in my thinking about the movies or, I should say, a deepening of my study. I don’t know how to explain it, I feel kind of a fool for saying it, and I fear I’m going to have to live up to it in the next couple of months. Maybe it’s just a natural outcome of immersion. Yes, immersion. I’ve immersed myself in the movies. This is my experience and my motivation.

            In most of my posts I’ve tried to focus on one aspect of storytelling, filmmaking or theology. This is working; each day I see more in a movie or TV drama than I would have before. In fact, writing frequently about a study topic is a technique I’ve wanted to try for a long time, ever since reading William Zinnser’s On Writing Well.

.

A Key Image in "Iron Man 3"

            Let me say first that “Iron Man 3” was loads of fun. I hadn’t seen the previous episodes, including “The Avengers” (although my daughter urged me to go). Reviewers said there was too much heavy metal in this one, by which they meant the iron suits (but I guess the suits would have been steel in the story? molded plastic in the special effects shop?). I went with the impression that it was going to be a very noisy film but I wouldn’t mind because Robert Downey, Jr., is so witty. Give me a break!

            My project today is to explore a key image in “Iron Man 3,” keeping in mind Johnston’s assertion that in a novel you have only words, but “movies make use of a three-fold narrative technique—telling their stories through script, music and image” (14). How might a single image “tell” the story of Iron Man?

            It appears at the very end. Tony Stark has promised his girlfriend, Pepper Potts, that he is going to step down from his intense occupation as, in my words, the savior of the free world. It gives him anxiety attacks and disrupts their relationship. Not to mention the fact that it has led to the total destruction of his palatial home on a cliff overlooking an immense body of water (the Pacific Ocean, but that’s in real life). He’s walking through the rubble—I forgot to say, he’s had his large, forever greenly glowing electromagnet surgically removed from the center of his chest, so he really is out of it. He looks happy and calm; in a voiceover he says he’s finally able to sleep through the night. Then he stoops down and picks an object up out of the rubble. It is a short-bladed screwdriver with a thick, stubby plastic handle. He smiles and thoughtfully weighs the screwdriver in the palm of his hand.

            Tony Stark is a mechanic. From the first scene in the movie, where we see him tinkering with one of the multiple iron suits he has made, through the moment of crisis when a little boy he has befriended says, “You’re a mechanic; make something”—this is the story’s anagnorisis; see my Wednesday post—the movie has underscored with colorful imagery the nature of Tony Stark’s soul. He is a mechanic. He fixes things. He solves problems by building new things out of the materials he has at hand. The voiceover continues when the screen goes black. His last words before the credits roll are, “I am Iron Man.” This is a film about identity. Can’t you just see the man in your life, there in the garage, gazing down at an engine, wiping his hands on an oily rag, and murmuring, “I am Iron Man”?

            The visual aspects of this movie had to be prominent because Marvel had the story first. “Iron Man 3” is of the comic-book superhero genre. I haven’t read the comics, but several scenes flashed before me as comic-book drawings—hey! The filmmakers didn’t insert those subliminally, did they?

.

A Cluster of Terms, Cheeping Away

            Reading Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide has only reminded me of how little I know. What is ethics? What is morality? Can the words really be used interchangeably? How significant is the difference between the Protestant Christian-ethics tradition, which emerged in the nineteenth century; and the Roman Catholic moral-theology tradition, which arose after the Council of Trent but has been revised since Vatican II? How can I keep from getting so wrapped up in the question, What is this all about? that I forget the more vital question, What should I do?

            Nevertheless, taking a graduate level course involves grappling with unfamiliar concepts and terms and digging deeper into familiar ones. I tried constructing a glossary, but the terms were incredibly slippery: I kept having to rewrite the definitions. I’m beginning to wonder, despite the heroic efforts of dictionariasts, whether any term can be understood outside of a context. So I’ll invent one, a context that will be helpful to no one but myself. Mine is the context of things-I’d-like-to-be-more-comfortable-with. It looks like a tight little cluster of baby chicks, all bright yellow and cheep-cheeping unmelodically:

            Morality; ethics; moral philosophy; moral theology and Christian ethics; metaethics and normative ethics; descriptive and constructive ethics; rights-and-duties (deontological) ethics; goal or consequentialist (teleological) ethics; virtue and character (aretological) ethics; conscience; the good life; “doing the right thing”; natural law ethics; biblical ethics; situation ethics; the moral life; the moral law; social ethics; the social gospel; context, content and motivation in the moral life; object, intention and circumstances in moral acts (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church); the human, which includes the cardinal, virtues; prudence in particular, because it leads to the discernment I wish to develop with respect to the movies; the theological virtues; the morality of art (a concept in John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction); the question of whether movies are art (see Johnston); ethos; a dialectic of ethos and ethic; the autonomy school of moral theology; the argument from morality.

            See, if I get the chicks right there in a cluster where I can see them and put a little fence around them, I won’t lose any. With all the racket they’re making, I have no idea what they’re saying; but maybe one or two will think to look at me directly, and then I can read their beaks.

.

Doing the Right Thing on "New Tricks"

            “New Tricks” is a BBC television series about a London police department that looks into old, unsolved crimes. It’s called “New Tricks” because the three detective inspectors are retired police officers, old dogs learning new tricks. Their boss is Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, whom they call Guv.

            This week’s episode was about the unexplained death of a rising young tennis star, whom I’ll call Cathy because I can’t remember her name. She fell from the balcony of her sixth-floor apartment after losing a match. Someone wants the case reopened; Cathy’s death may not have been a suicide after all.

            Reading for this course and reflecting on movies and TV dramas is opening my eyes to things I’ve never noticed. For instance, TV detective dramas, because they’re about uncovering the truth of a crime, are highly moral spectacles. They’re like medieval morality plays, which dramatize the battle between the forces of good and evil in the human soul. In the genre of detective dramas, there is a pattern: truth is uncovered one particle at a time until a complete picture of the crime emerges and the perpetrator is sent to punishment.

            In the sad case of Cathy, there was an accumulation of evils. Her father was a gambling addict. He abandoned his wife Victoria and his daughters Cathy and Jess when the girls were six and one. Victoria sent first Cathy and then Jess to Nick Hoyle for free tennis lessons when they turned seven. On Cathy’s fourteenth birthday, he initiated a sexual relationship with her. She wasn’t the only one. In Cathy’s last match she played opposite her friend Fawn. The mothers of the girls…. Well, I’ll cut to the chase. Cathy throws the match to save her father, who otherwise is in mortal danger due to gambling debts. She tells Fawn about the affair with Hoyle and says she wants to stop because it’s wrong. Then, in an argument with her mother, her mother accidentally pushes her off the balcony. What I’ve left out is the number of people who are invested in these young girls for reasons of money.

            In my post on Monday, I wondered whether every movie had a turn of dialogue that operated as a sort of fulcrum in the story. Come to find out that Aristotle thought of this first. He calls it anagnorisis, which in Greek means recognition. Cuddon writes that anagnorisis is “the moment of recognition (of truth) when ignorance gives way to knowledge. According to Aristotle, the ideal moment of anagnorisis coincides with peripeteia, or reversal of fortune.”

            Sandra Pullman and Det. Insp. Jerry Stanley descend on Fawn as she practices alone in a tennis workout room. Fawn wants the truth to come out and answers all their questions, until her mother arrives and tells her to stop talking. Her mother is afraid that the scandal will wreck Fawn’s future as a tennis star. Fawn says to the detectives, “I don’t know what to do.” She is caught between two goods, truth and obedience. Jerry, who has a grown daughter and worries—in spite of the show’s hints that over-ambitious parents can be harmful—that he didn’t push his daughter enough to develop her football (soccer) talents—says, “Do what you think is the right thing to do.” Jerry is on the side of right conduct. Fawn overrides her mother’s objections and tells them everything she knows. It isn’t the last word, but it is the turning point in the fortunes of the investigation.

.

                                                                                               

Plot and Story in "42"

            Plot, story, theme, genre, category. How does “42” fit into these slots? Category is easy. It fits into the quadrant on Johnston’s grid that encompasses realistic films with educational value. As for genre, “42” is a biopic. It tells the story of how Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player in the major leagues. I said in my last post that the movie was about Branch Rickey, and I implied that the movie’s theme had to do with America’s ongoing struggle with racial injustice. I don’t know why I said these things. The story is about Jackie Robinson and the theme is courage. I must have been asleep.

            Now, about plot. In The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, J. A Cuddon writes that plot is the “plan, design, scheme or pattern of events in a play, poem or work of fiction; and, further, the organization of incident and character in such a way as to induce curiosity and suspense in the spectator or reader.” This definition, of course, applies to movies too. Cuddon goes on: “In the space/time continuum of plot the continual question operates in three tenses: Why did that happen? Why is this happening? What is going to happen next—and why?” Story is one thing; we wouldn’t go to the movies if we didn’t think we were going to get a good story out of it. Stories tell us about life. They show us people working through problems similar to ours. Plot is another; it’s the mechanics of telling the story. It’s what makes the story work. It’s what keeps the story moving toward its finish.

            If we recognize courage as the theme of “42,” we can see how plotting organizes incident and character so as to emphasize the theme of courage.

            There are three main plot points, which coincide with Cuddon’s three-tensed question. (1) Rickey brings Robinson into his office and tells him the plan won’t work unless he, Robinson, has the guts to hold in his temper and refuse to react to racial slurs. Rickey tests him by getting in his face and yelling insults at him. Why did this happen? Robinson has a reputation for being gutsy and having a hot temper. (2) Robinson is at bat and the Giants manager steps out of his dugout and onto the field to taunt him with invective. This is, Paco tells me, the apex, the pinnacle of the film. It sums up, within the limits of a PG-13 rating, the horror that Robinson went through. Why is this happening? Because, in the beginning, nobody but Rickey and Robinson wanted the plan to succeed.

            The theme is courage in the face of racial injustice. According to Johnston, theme in a movie is relevant not only to the main character but to other characters and situations as well. “42” demonstrates the opposite of courage: the fear of change; the fear of stepping outside the established boundaries of everyday life. In our first plot point, Rickey says the time has come for baseball, and he means for America, too. He isn’t afraid for his career nor is he concerned about what the public might do or say. In our pinnacle plot point, the Giants manager displays the fear of the public.

(3) In our last plot point, a Pittsburgh pitcher taunts Robinson in another way, lobbing balls over his head and behind his back. Finally, Robinson says, “Give me something I can hit. What are you afraid of?” A suspenseful moment. The viewer wonders, What is going to happen next? The pitcher winds up and throws a screamer across the plate, thinking this will fix him—and Robinson hits the home run that wins the pennant for the Dodgers. Why did this happen? In terms of the plot, it happened to illustrate the triumph of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.

.                                                          

"42" and the Search for a Good Life

            In one scene, a ballplayer for the Giants gashes Jackie Robinson’s leg with his spikes as he rounds first base. Later, lying on a table after the team surgeon has repaired the wound, Robinson asks Branch Rickey, “Mr. Rickey, why are you doing this?” Rickey is the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the one who has taken the risk of opening baseball to African Americans. It is about 1948. Robinson has already endured physical injury, when a Pirates pitcher beaned him, and intense verbal assaults. A PG-13 rating keeps most obscenities out of hearing range, which is good, because their absence foregrounds the worst thing Robinson could have heard, and he heard it often: “You don’t belong here.”

            By this time, Rickey has indicated several reasons why he pulled Robinson onto the team. Now he starts on a new one, saying, “I love this game.” Robinson interrupts him: “No, Mr. Rickey. Why are you doing this?” To answer him, Rickey goes back to his youth, telling the story of a college team he played on that included a talented black catcher. In later years he saw that man ruined because of the color of his skin. This was the beginning of what he was trying to accomplish by drafting Robinson.

            Watching the scene, I had two thoughts. First, I wondered whether every movie has one turn of dialogue which is its center point and fulcrum. Second, I began to realize that this movie was really about Branch Rickey. It was really about white America’s nagging worry that it will never undo the wrong of slavery.

            Robin W. Lovin begins Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide (2000) with a discussion of the good life, a concept I had always related to material possessions and success. Actually, it goes back to Aristotle’s formulation of ethics, where he wrote on the first page: “It is thought that every activity, artistic or scientific, in fact every deliberate action or pursuit, has for its object the attainment of some good. We may therefore assent to the view which has been expressed that ‘the good’ is ‘that at which all things aim.’” Lovin continues: There are what “the philosophers call ‘basic goods,’ meaning that they are essential to almost every idea of a good life that we can imagine” (25). They include food, clothing, shelter and medical care when we are ill. We also need education and opportunities for employment.

            “42” demonstrates that, as the more basic goods are acquired, we can strive for loftier ones. It depicts Jackie Robinson’s capacity to meet the challenge set before him as grounded in the goods of courage and self-respect. Branch Rickey had acquired courage as well, but also power; he could afford to step into the fray of racial injustice. Now he needed the self-respect that would come with closing the moral gap that opened in his life when he was young. He must have said to himself then, “Someday I’ll do something about this.”

.

Cuts and Shots: "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim"

Curious about how much could happen in fifteen minutes of film, I took notes while watching “Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot” on television. With this, I discovered I had made a rough record of the framing of scenes (shots) and the editing of the film (cuts). Here it is. Slash marks indicate cuts. The scenes occurred toward the end of “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim.”

:01       Grainy black-and-white film with an announcer’s voice, indicating that this is newsreel footage of a car race. The year is about 1935.

:02       Return to color film. A crowd at the race track, including Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp. / Japp opens his wallet to make a wager. / A vagrant snatches the wallet and runs away. /

:03       Hastings and Japp chase the vagrant. / They capture him. / Poirot’s office. Hastings and Japp are there. /

:04       Japp in a phone booth telephoning Poirot; tells him about Mr. Davenheim’s signet ring, found in the vagrant’s possession. / The jail. /

:05       A jail cell. Japp and Hastings interview the vagrant. Japp remembers him from a recent incarceration. / Flashback to a scene in the woods: in a voiceover the vagrant is telling about sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, drinking. /

:06       The woods. An unseen person tosses the ring into the leaves next to the vagrant. / Poirot’s dining room. Poirot serves dinner to Hastings and Japp. /

:07       Japp says he plans to test the vagrant’s story. /

:08       Concerning the ring, Poirot asks two questions. / The exterior of the Davenheim house. /

:09       Poirot’s apartment. Poirot in an easy chair reading a book about magic. / Poirot’s office. Miss Lemon enters, says the fog outside is very thick. / Poirot picks up a newspaper clipping about the disappearance of Mr. Davenheim and tears it into strips.

:10       Continuing the newspaper trick, Poirot crumples the strips, stuffs them into his fist, and draws the clipping out whole. He talks about the science of deduction. / Hastings arrives. /

:11       Hastings reads from the list of Davenheim household effects that Poirot has asked him to make. After a few items, Poirot stops him. / Miss Lemon enters. Poirot tells and her and Hastings to expect the Davenheim Bank to crash soon. / Japp arrives. /

:12       Poirot explains three details to Hastings and Japp. /

:13       The jail. The vagrant is taken before a line-up of suspects in the disappearance of Mr. Davenheim. / He identifies Mr. Lowen, a business rival of Davenheim’s. /

:14       Lowen assaults the vagrant. The police take Lowen away. / Mrs. Davenheim arrives. / When the men step aside and she sees the vagrant, she gasps. /

:15       Everyone is standing except the vagrant, who is cowering on a bench before the gaze of Mrs. Davenheim. The vagrant is Davenheim in disguise.

            Davenheim has been planning his disappearance for months, meanwhile draining his bank dry. On his last day at home, he stages a break-in of his own safe and pockets its contents, including expensive jewelry he had bought for his wife. Part of his plan is to frame Lowen for his murder.