Friday, August 27, 2010

Inception

I like to think I have an implicit contract with certain artists whereby, if they produce a work which changes my life, I am obligated to continue partaking of any future works until such time as they descend to such mediocrity that I can no longer legitimately expect anything earth-shattering from them again. For example, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany drove me to eagerly read all of John Irving's novels, until a couple years ago. A Son of the Circus, along with a string of other lesser works, released me from any obligation, and Last Night in Twisted River isn't even on my Amazon wish list.

I have yet to be disappointed in Christopher Nolan, though. His first feature film, Memento, was astonishing not for its narrative inventiveness, but for its psychological power. In an earlier short film, Following, Nolan used dischronologized storytelling in order to leave the audience as surprised as was the protaganist by the ending. In Memento, however, Nolan did not, ultimately, tell a story about the character played by Guy Pearce, but instead called the viewer's conception of his own identity and self into question. More than any philosophy book ever has, Memento forced me to wonder whether my self-understanding was anything more than convenient, self-chosen illusion.

His two Batman movies have been entertaining thrillers, but I was very interested to see Inception, which I remember one critic describing as "Memento on a Dark Knight budget." Instead, it seemed more like "Dark Knight without Batman." It used the hypothetical architecture of dreamworlds as a setting for a taut and interesting thriller; but by the end of the movie, a thriller is all it was.

I love Memento because, in the end, it was a movie about me and every other person who saw it. Inception, on the other hand, was merely meant to entertain us.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Mr. Breyer Writes a Dissenting Opinion

Hadley Arkes offers this subtle, penetrating, and historically informed analysis of a recent dissenting opinion from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer on a 2nd Amendment case, bringing the justice's reasoning to bear on the question of federal jurisdiction over abortion law.

Friday, August 20, 2010

A Dream Deferred

I attended eighth grade at Langston Hughes Junior High, which may have been why I was particularly alert to the work of the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance whilst in college. Thus, when I read "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" in Proverbs 13:12, I inevitably think of Hughes' ominous masterpiece, "A Dream Deferred." Try as I might, I couldn't work it into my sermon on Proverbs 13:12-19 (other than the reference in the title, "What Happens to a Desire Fulfilled?"), but I can at least post it here.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Just desserts

Proverbs 13:20-21 form a thematic chiasm:

A- Wise companions make wise (13:20a)
B- Foolish companions bring harm (13:20b)
B'- Sinners suffer evil/trouble (13:21a)
A'- Righteous receive good (13:21b)

By connecting wisdom and foolishness with, respectively, sin and righteousness, the poet helps the reader see that the former categories have a strong moral and ethical dimension.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Publicizing Privacy

Joseph Bottum has some intriguing observations on the place of manners and proper English usage in this essay on the First Things website.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

The girl who I read about on vacation


(Spoiler alert: I will give away plot points.)

Whilst in Ontario, I finished the novel I had brought, and the only one in the Canadians' house in which I had any interest was East of Eden. But I was on vacation. So, I walked three feet into the nearest bookstore and got a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The books don't strike me as particularly well-written, although I'm reluctant to criticize the style of a work translated from Swedish into British English (British English, by definition, being of criticizable style). The books are very, very long, largely because they feature a Grisham-like obsession for the unnecessary detail. For example, every time anyone eats the menu is described in detail, but the two months spent by the male protaganist in prison get only a few pages. Nonetheless, the plots and characters are interesting, so I'm a couple hundred pages into the sequel during the present vacation.

Particularly of interest to me, and unmentioned by any review which I've thus far encountered, is just how astonishingly post-Christian Sweden has become. A notation for Bible verses is a major plot point in the first book, and it's one I can't imagine any Christian anywhere using (but then, I've never been Swedish). A senile Lutheran pastor recalls the formation of the canon, although he can't remember to whom he's talking. A Presbyterian congregation in Texas identifies its mission as "helping people grow closer to God through the sacrament of baptism and prayer," a phrase never used anywhere by any Presbyterian Church of any theological stripe whatsoever. A native of the heart of European Lutheranism apparently can no longer be expected to be much acquainted with Protestantism and its ways.

And I'm surprised this hasn't been remarked upon in the secular press?