"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?

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