Yesterday

John Waters, being a scholar of 20th century popular music the likes of which I will never equal, has produced the thoughtful reflection on the movie Yesterday which I wish I could have written. He's kinder to John Lennon than I am, and he might well have a point. Still, as Waters notes, "Lennon’s post-Beatles music reveals itself in retrospect as weak and prone to sloganeering." I agree, and I believe the reason is that Paul McCartney grounded and strengthened him. McCartney made him a far better songwriter than Lennon could be on his own.

I disagree with Waters's example at the same time I affirm his broader point when he writes, "For example, I don’t think “Yesterday” (the song) has won the battle with time, but the movie assumes that everyone will start to scream and faint upon hearing it." When I read Elvis Costello say that "Yesterday" would cement Paul McCartney's legacy for the ages, I suddenly heard it again with fresh ears and realized that Mr. Costello is correct. At the same time, I do think the great weakness of Yesterday (the movie) is its assumption that all the Beatles's songs are equally great and each must necessarily produce the same rapturous response as the others. Some are great, some are pretty good, some are middling, and some are throw-aways (for example, "One after 909"). Were the entire Beatles catalogue to suddenly emerge for the very first time (as occurs in the movie), I seriously doubt whether "She Was Just Seventeen" would hit with the same weight as "The Long and Winding Road."

But that's not a fair standard by which to judge Yesterday. It's a feel-good summer movie, and it certainly made Mrs. Curmudgeon and me feel good. In that most important of regards, it's a great success.

Radio & redemption

I know nothing of Ben Kingsley's spiritual formation, but he made a deeply Christian observation about the nature of man while being interviewed on August 29 by Rachel Martin on NPR's Morning Edition regarding his role as Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann in the recently released film Operation Finale: 

But these people — however difficult it might be for us to swallow — were human beings. …For the years of extermination between 1933 and 1945, it was men and women who did this. It was not my duty to humanize anything because tragically, it's already human.

As Kingsley implies, we all have a tendency to distance ourselves from evildoers so that, unconsciously or elsewise, we can categorize them as something other than human. To the extent they are sufficiently distanced, they can be cut off from membership in society. 

The problem, of course, is that evildoers, sinners, are in fact fully human and on occasion try to enter human society. That problem was exposed during a discussion the previous evening on NPR's All Things Considered about the comedian and cinéaste Louis C.K., lately revealed as a serial sexual harasser, who had attempted a return to the stage on August 27. During that discussion, Ailsa Chang asked, "And what makes someone deserving of redemption?"

Unsurprisingly, a clear answer was not forthcoming.

In the May 2011 issue of First Things, Wilfred McClay asked, "But how, in a society that retains its Judeo-Christian moral reflexes but has abandoned the corresponding metaphysics, can a credible means of discharging the weight of sin be found?" In this #MeToo moment, we should be grateful that sexism and sexual harassment are being identified as the sins they are. At the same time, we are slowly beginning to realize that the sinners and evildoers are human beings just like the rest of us. If none of them can do anything to deserve redemption, then none of us, no human being, can deserve redemption.

Of course, that's the thing about redemption. "Redeem," properly understood, is not a reflexive verb but a transitive one. One cannot redeem oneself: one must be redeemed by another. If our society has rediscovered the self-evident truth that humans are sinners and evildoers, then perhaps it's ready to hear about the God who redeems sinners.

"Ready Player One" is a YA novel

The buzz around Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One was extremely positive, so I borrowed a friend's copy last year when I was in serious need of diversion. On the one hand, I stayed up late for a couple too many nights reading it. On the other hand, that was despite my impatience for its weaknesses. I found myself skimming past sentences and paragraphs because I was more interested in the plot's resolution than in how it got there.

To be fair, Ready Player One's weaknesses are baked into its premise. The Oasis, a virtual reality social media/gaming platform has become one of, if not the, primary arenas for all human interaction. Even public schools have migrated onto the Oasis's platform. Since a great deal of the action takes place in the Oasis, page upon page is taken up with exposition: the Oasis's history; its social order; its effects on the real world; its appearance; its fantastic sights; so on and so forth. However, not all the exposition is necessitated by the premise: the narrator would rather explain relationships (ex. "He is my best friend") than show them at work.

Overuse of exposition is the great weakness of young adult novels, apparently because their authors don't trust their young readers to put two and two together. (The excellent Hunger Games does not fall into this trap.) I was thinking I might recommend Ready Player One to my teenage son until I ran into some explicit, albeit clinical, discussion of masturbation. With those bits expurgated, it could easily be moved to the juvenile section of the library.

Still, the main characters are interesting and sympathetic, and the plot engages the reader almost inevitably. It centers around a game which is coded into the architecture of the Oasis; accordingly, one is drawn into the plot precisely because human beings all, always, want to know who wins.

Given that Steven Spielberg is directing, I expect the film version, for once, to be better than the novel. All those dizzying visual elements will be shown, sparing the viewer from being told too, too much.

From a former youngster to today's youngsters

I was seven years old when Star Wars (spare me this "A New Hope" nonsense) was released, and saw it overdubbed in Spanish (because my family had just moved to Madrid), a language I did not understand at all. My little brain was overwhelmed with amazement, and finally seeing it English only magnified the experience's transcendence. Naturally, I avidly anticipated and celebrated its sequels, then eventually put the whole thing behind me until George Lucas issued big-screen rereleases when I was in my late 20s. With some seminary classmates, I excitedly entered the movie theatre only to take one more inevitable step towards becoming my father when I realized something he first understood way back in 1977.

Star Wars is not a good movie.

The dialogue is hokey, "the Force" is a stupid new-agey pseudo-religion, the plot trajectory is both overwrought and obvious, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey is an over-simplifying exercise in cultural appropriation and imperialism, and every halfway decent shot is directly stolen from an immensely superior cinematic predecessor. With that, I was done, especially since Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark continues to hold up marvelously well.

But then I had my own kids, and J.J. Abrams took over the franchise for the long-promised, but never-expected, final trilogy. I took Thing One and Thing Two to The Force Awakens, and found it a pleasing diversion even though it never had a chance of reconverting me to my fanboy past. I was actually impressed by The Last Jedi, and so was surprised to learn that today's fanboys were, to some extent, wildly outraged. If I may take a moment to speak in a condescending, patronizing tone to today's youngsters, I think their youth has ill-served them to receive this installment of the Star Wars saga in the spirit in which it was offered.

One of the problems with the young people these days is that they encountered the original Star Wars trilogy only after it had been entirely released. Those of my children's generation don't even remember a time before the prequel trilogy had been completed. They encountered the saga as a whole, and therefore as a text whose ending had been written before they began its study. Thus, when they hear Darth Vader intone "I am your father, Luke" towards the end of The Empire Strikes Back, they know Luke Skywalker is learning a truth about his family and background which will permanently alter his self-understanding.

This was not how Generation X experienced that moment.

We could not simply pop The Return of the Jedi into the VCR (or, worse, the DVD player; or, still worse, stream it from the interwebs). We had to wait three years, during which we engaged in a frame-by-frame analysis of The Empire Strikes Back. Although it seems obvious in retrospect, we didn't know that the Star Wars saga was really a family history of the Skywalkers. To many of us, it seemed very possible that Darth Vader lied to Luke. After all, he was, to not put too fine a point on it, a bad guy. And bad guys lie.

Just as The Force Awakens imitated the general outline of Star Wars, The Last Jedi echoes The Empire Strikes Back. Substitute Luke Skywalker for Yoda and an agonizingly slow pursuit through outer space for the peregrinations of the Millennium Falcon, and the parallels are obvious. Within that framework, Kylo Ren's villain's journey provides the most food for thought and debate. He appears to have rejected the common dark-side-of-the-Force narrative, but he certainly doesn't seem to be embracing the light. Is he imitating his grandfather and telling Rey the truth about her family, or deceiving her for his own nefarious purposes? Rather than accuse Rian Johnson of tossing aside all the plot boxes J.J. Abrams wrapped up for him, why not imagine that he's just put another bow on them? The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have pulled off the remarkable feat of both upholding and subverting Star Wars stereotypes. This should delight fans, not outrage them.

We had to wait three years between installments of the original trilogy. You youngsters only have to wait two. Don't waste them complaining; instead, fill them up with delighted, giddy speculation. That's how you make it your Star Wars.

Nope

In "Superheroic Testimonies," Armond White argues that the recent Zack Snyder-helmed Superman films represent an exploration of spiritual (and especially Roman Catholic) themes and an attempt to unify the cinematic masses around genuine emotion. Marshaling the evidence of both imagery and plot device, he views these DC-Universe films as a serious examination and recreation of mythological tropes for our era.

Nice try, but no.

Glen Weldon gets everything wrong with the most recent Superman movies right when he writes,

Zack Snyder, the man charged with ushering the latest wave of DC heroes onto the movie screen, and thus into the wider cultural consciousness, does not believe in heroes. He's a Randian Objectivist tasked with bringing to cinematic life characters who are, at their essence, embodiments of a deep, fervent, and all-consuming altruism. That is why the moral universe he creates around them is one in which the very notion of heroism, of selflessness, is unrealistic, even laughable, and ultimately futile. 

Weldon's The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture is a masterful cultural biography of Batman by a man who understands why we read comic books and why superheroes have arisen to fulfill the mythological void left by Christendom's victory over the old gods. A few pages on, he repeats a thesis he has already set forth with some frequency:

[This fan] culture holds up moral ambiguity and ambivalence as inherently more interesting, more relevant and–crucially, as far as they are concerned–more sophisticated. This is nonsense, as the role of superheroes is to be ideals, exemplars, absolutes–the stories we tell ourselves as we strive to follow their lead.

Glen Weldon understands superheroes and why we love them. And thanks to his dutiful research and scintillating writing, I'm caught up on everything Batman's been doing for the last several decades.

I'm going to go re-read The Dark Knight Returns now. Again.

Batman vs. Emma Stone

I've been hearing the movie musical is making a comeback, especially after the recent success of La La Land. I suppose it's possible, but I have my doubts.

Stage theatre and film are both constructed on "the suspension of disbelief," the convention whereby the audience pretends it doesn't know the people they are watching are pretending to be people who don't know they're being watched. Said suspension is more easily done at the movies, where the projected image necessarily alienates the viewer from the persons viewed. It's a tad more complicated at the theatre, where the physical, embodied presence of actual persons makes the "play" part of play-acting all the more obvious.

Over the last century, this epistemological fact has resulted in popular spectacle, once a staple of the stage, moving over almost entirely into the cinema. Because we nearly automatically surrender our disbelief in front of the screen, we are willing to believe almost anything, up to and including spectacle the like of which simply cannot exist in real life. Take, for example, the truly wondrous moment in Captain America: Civil War when the Winter Soldier grabs hold of a moving motorcycle, reverses its direction in midair, mounts it and speeds back in the direction whence he came. Now, I haven't take a physics class since high school, but I'm pretty sure that scene violates all three of Newton's laws of motion. Nonetheless, I stood up and cheered because it was SPECTACULAR.

A generation ago, the spectacle of choice was the movie musical. No, ordinary people in mid-twentieth century America were no more likely to break into song and dance than those of our day, but that's not the point. The emotional experiences of film characters were such that singing and dancing were the only available means by which to express themselves. This seemed so commonsensical that every major Hollywood actor had to appear in a movie musical. (Exhibit A: Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. Oh, the humanity.)

Times have changed, and not for the better. Instead of a street crowd breaking out into a synchronized dance number, we think it far more plausible that cars chase each other through crowded Los Angeles streets and freeways at dizzying speeds while their drivers make accurate shots, one-handed, with PISTOLS. Talk about suspension of disbelief. This genre has evolved, thanks largely to Marvel Studios, into the superhero picture. Now genuinely respectable Marlon Brando-caliber actors (looking at you, Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Hopkins) are all flying into the air and doing battle with villainy and nefarious conspirators who have secretly riddled the state's security apparatus.

In other words, the niche once occupied by the movie musical now belongs to the superhero/action film. Emma Stone and Damien Chazelle don't have to win over skeptical audiences. They have to take on Batman.

I Am Not Your Negro

Mrs. Curmudgeon and I took in an early matinee showing of I Am Not Your Negro this morning, filmmaker Raoul Peck's presentation of the thought of James Baldwin. 

Content aside, it's a masterpiece the intensity of which drew me in, as a viewer, in a way which I don't remember experiencing since the much and well-deservedly praised Whiplash. For me, however, the nearest point of cinematic comparison is 2003's American Splendor. Neither film can be neatly categorized, and both, while not entirely new in style, present a model which we can only hope other filmmakers will imitate. American Splendor used actors and the real people they portrayed, along with elements of cartooning, to present something (entirely moving) between a biography and an autobiography of Harvey Pekar. I Am Not Your Negro is only nominally a documentary; in fact, it's an essay in film form.

That it comes off as a unified and incisive essay on race relations in these United States is Raoul Peck's personal triumph, since he edited it together from a number of Baldwin's published works, notes towards a never-completed book, and footage of James Baldwin in debate, lectures, and even an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. That last, in particular, made me wonder how anyone could not fall in love with Baldwin's mind. Completely off the cuff, in rejoinder to a white academic, he improvises a speech marked by symmetry and repetition of key phrases, and which crescendoes to a shattering climax. It's a feat of rhetorical jazz which I've rarely had the privilege to encounter.

James Baldwin wanted to use Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to tell the story of the Negro in America (and I wish I could figure out a way to mention his brilliant analysis of the role of Sidney Poitier in 1960s American cinema), but his true central thesis emerges most clearly in the film's final moments. To Baldwin, the Negro is a concept constructed by whites who sought to deny the reality that America is not composed of black and white people, but of one people with a literally shared and commingled blood. He posited that the challenge for whites, and implicitly for blacks as well, is to recognize that truth, that we are not other to one another, but rather are one. As Baldwin says, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed if it is not faced."

A word to the historically ignorant

Perhaps you, like I, have heard it asserted that yesterday was the first time ever a Vice-President broke a tie vote in the U.S. Senate to confirm a Cabinet nominee.

To which I can only say, balderdash and folderol! First time ever, my foot!

That is precisely the determinative plot point in Advise and Consent! (The film version, at least. I think the book had somewhat different conclusion.) What are they teaching in high school civics classes these days?

Oh, wait. There are no high school civics classes these days.

The Amazing Spider-Man

If you care a bit more than you should about these things, you've almost certainly seen the trailer for Captain America: Civil War in which Spider-Man shows up at the very end. (An aside: perhaps the actual movie will be about the Captain and his close personal allies, but the trailers make it look much more like the next Avengers installment. I go to a Captain America movie to see Captain America. And maybe the Falcon.) This has Thing 1 giddy with excitement, but me not so much.

Back when I was an avid comics reader, my favorite Spider-Man period was when Jim Owsley was editing those titles for Marvel during the 1980s. Thereafter, it seemed to me that Marvel was exploiting the character's popularity for cash value, putting him through countless wrenching changes and cross-overs for little reason other than boosting sales. That said, I thought the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies were fun, but by the third installment began suffering the same bloat which afflicted the first run of Batman movies after Tim Burton and Michael Keaton left the series. 

And then came The Amazing Spider-Man.

If you know any comic book history at all, you know the stories about how the Stan Lee-, Jack Kirby- and Steve Ditko-led Marvel Comics of the 1960s up-ended the industry. Spider-Man, we read, was revolutionary for having a secret identity which was not only as well-developed as his costumed role, but which was a nebbishy high-school student. We read about the excitement he generated among readers, offering a hero whom they could not only idolize, but to whom they could intimately relate (because you see, children, back in our day all comic book readers were irredeemable doofuses). I read about that Spider-Man, but I didn't experience him other than in the occasional anthology. The Spider-Man of my youth had aged, was in his late twenties, and even married Mary-Jane Watson. All of which was fine, but didn't exactly carry on the legendary magic of Stan Lee's 1960s Spider-Man.

I got that, finally, when Andrew Garfield took on the character in 2012. His portrayal, and the way the two films set his universe, finally landed me in the sheer joy of an adolescent climbing walls and the pathos of a teenager losing the man who had raised him while finding his first serious girlfriend. The Amazing Spider-Man movies gave me the opportunity to experience Stan Lee's original vision. Unlike any number of other recent superhero movies (looking at you, Man of Steel and the X-Men franchise), those films had an emotional heft which has stuck with me.

As much I've enjoyed the Marvel cinematic universe thus far, and the Avengers in particular, I'm not interested in seeing Spider-Man join it. To me, he's always been at his best when he is alone, struggling (and often failing) to figure out his place in the world . At the same time, I don't really object to him snatching away Captain America's shield, either. It's just too bad that moment had to come at the expense of ending Andrew Garfield's take on Spider-Man, the only one in which I've been interested for years.

What we talk about when we talk about The Terminator

I've been trying to figure out why I care so much about The Terminator and its first sequel, and have been mildly disappointed with all its subsequent iterations. Age has a great deal to do with it, I'm sure: the two films bridge my high school and college years, and like music, films often make the greatest impact in one's youth. Still, in my typical self-congratulatory manner, I like to think there's a bit more to it than that.

(I suppose I should insert a spoiler alert here, as I will be discussing points in a metanarrative kind of way. But why would you still be reading if you didn't already know these movies intimately?)

All the Terminator movies take place in a timeline in which, at some future date (called "Judgment Day"), a computer program takes over the world and very nearly wipes out humanity. Of the five films, in the last three the protagonists are attempting to either prevent Judgment Day or reverse its consequences. That's a plot point in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but as in its predecessor, is not the main conflict.

The Terminator (1984) is remarkably simple: a cyborg from the future tries to kill a young woman, who is protected by a human soldier sent back from the same future. It's one long chase sequence, one narrow escape after another, ending only when, against wildly improbably odds, said cyborg is destroyed with great difficulty, mayhem, and collateral death.

For those of us of a certain age, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was a revelation because it told THE EXACT SAME STORY, except that this time the protector is another cyborg who looks exactly like the terrifying cyborg from the first film. It was thus able to tap into all the emotional resonance of the first installment while simultaneously disorienting the audience and upending all expectations.

That disorientation was important because the first two Terminators retold one of our most primordial and universal nightmares: you are being chased by something terrifying, and wake up screaming just as it catches you. Those movies are about running away, and their conclusions provide such satisfying relief because, after all those sweaty nights, we finally, even if only vicariously through the magnificent Linda Hamilton, escape.

The next three installments are about achieving a goal, but achievement can never be as certain or absolute as escape. Moreover, the protagonists must decide to move toward their objectives, whereas one never has to decide to escape danger: it's a simple, thoughtless, and absolutely necessary instinct.

The first two Terminator films succeed so marvelously because they retell a universally shared nightmare and promise an escape from it. Until the franchise can figure out how to tell us that story again, all its installments will leave us a little bit disappointed.

Jupiter Ascending, Downton Abbey, & Leviticus

The reviews of Jupiter Ascending have not been kind, and I suppose I can see why. I am second to none in gape-jawed amazement at The Matrix, with which the Wachowskis exploded onto the film scene, not only revolutionizing the way action sequences ever after would be filmed, but creating one of the most potent allegories of Christ’s redemptive work in recent memory. Though vast in interstellar scope, Jupiter Ascending shares none of The Matrix’s metaphysical or genre-shaping ambitions. Instead, it puts me in mind most of The Fifth Element, and if that silly science-fiction romp is the standard, then Jupiter Ascending is good (and notably clean) fun.

Royalty is a major theme in Jupiter Ascending: it turns out that the earthling Jupiter, the titular character, by pure accident is a genetic duplicate of a now-deceased intergalactic matriarch and vicious capitalist empire-builder. As such, she is by nature “Entitled,” i.e., royal. There’s a rather lovely scene (although, admittedly, somewhat preposterous) in which bees engage in a bit of synchronized swarming in recognition of her majestic status. (It appears bees have something of a sense for this sort of thing.) While this scene has been widely mocked on the interwebs, I thought it hit on what most people, around the world today and throughout time, have intuitively accepted as true: there are some people who are, to borrow from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, more equal than others. Take, for example, the popularity of Downton Abbey: hordes and hordes of Americans, reared on the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, adore a story built on the odd conceit that some people are born to rule, and others to serve them. 

In God’s providence, I saw Jupiter Ascending the day before I preached Mark 1:40-45, in which Jesus heals the unclean leper. The leper’s problem was not so much that he was diseased, but that he was ceremonially unclean, and thus unable to worship in the Temple (Leviticus 13-14) and prone to being shunned by those who wished to worship in the Temple (Leviticus 5:3). Under the Old Covenant system of worship, cleanliness and uncleanliness were a symptom of man’s alienation from God: all you had to do was interact with a person with a skin disease, and your inherent sinfulness would, as it were, bubble to the surface and make you unfit to enter the presence of the LORD God to offer up a sacrifice in worship.

It seems to me that (what seems to be) the native human instinct for respecting persons of royal birth is, in some way, a reflection of the Old Testament laws of purity and cleanliness. There are some people who are more holy, more clean, closer to God than others, and such persons must be respected: even if their personal character is not respectable, their status demands our reverence and awe. 

In light of this, Mark 1:41 is shocking: “Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him….” Leviticus 5:3, if not the rest of the Old Testament Law, is extraordinarily clear: to simply touch the unclean is to become unclean oneself. To push the double negative past the breaking point, Jesus not only is unafraid of becoming unclean, but bears a holiness so intrinsic and so powerful that he obliterates the category of uncleanness: he makes all things clean. He cannot be made unclean; instead, the power of sin is so conquered by his person that the unclean has no option but to become clean. “And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean” (Mark 1:42). Herein lies the immensity of Christ’s work on the Cross: because in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, even the ways in which human societies have intuitively ordered themselves since time immemorial are shown to be mere shadows and types, overturned and abolished in the person and work of our Savior.

(Here, then, lies the peculiarly Christocentric genius of the American experiment in republican self-government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No royalist, enmeshed as she or he must be in the Old Covenant perspective on the world, could say such a thing.)

We respect royalty because we respect God: that is how we were made. Nonetheless, Christ’s work on the Cross destroys the royal conceit: there is no more clean or unclean, but in Christ all things have become new. “[T]hat is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)

The sacred, the secular, & the beautiful (2)

But if the sacred/secular distinction is eliminated from how we judge our lives, then it must also be eliminated from our worldview. All the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1); our task is to render all we find to his service. Our quiet manual labor fulfills the dominion mandate given to man in Genesis 1:28. We rule by using things: not only plants and animals, but everything. This must include culture.

How do we do this? We take hold of pagan creations and use them to glorify God. Musical instruments were invented by Jubal, from the ungodly line of Cain (Genesis 3:21). Therefore, they properly belong to paganism. But Christians are commanded to seize Jubal’s harp and flute and use them to praise the Lord (Psalm 150:3-5). All things belong to the Lord; Christians act as his repo men.

This process is fairly simple to grasp when discussing seemingly neutral technology, like musical instruments. It becomes a touch more tricky when dealing with the cultural artifacts produced by that technology, such as music itself. Can Christians really use grunge rock and jazz, or ought we to stick with classical music and hymns?

Well, as the founder of the Salvation Army asked, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” As we approach our culture and world, our question should not be “Is this (music, book, scientific theory, historical argument) safe? Will we be contaminated by it?”, but rather “Can this be used for God’s glory? If so, how?”

We can only answer that question by knowing God’s Word, the Bible. There the Lord describes for us the world in its relationship to him. The Bible is the standard by which we ought to measure all we see. When we hold the artifacts of our culture up to its light, we can discern what is true from what is false. Its framework will enable us to determine what we should flee from, and what we may render to the Lord’s service. From Scripture we learn that God is the Beginning and End, that all purpose and truth rest only in him. Anything else is false and idolatrous. 

Because of his mercy and love for his people, and his desire to provide a good world for them to live in, God has not deprived all pagans of truth and beauty. We live as foreigners in a land which rightfully belongs to us, and its occupiers would ruin all its good fruit if the Lord did not restrain them. Thus, the creations which come from their bent hearts oftentimes have in them the ring of truth and the unmistakable presence of beauty. Shakespeare could be a foul-mouthed, obscene blasphemer, as his comedies demonstrate. He was also capable of writing more eloquently than most of the love between a man and a woman, as his poem The Phoenix and the Turtle proves.

One difficulty in exercising dominion, rendering all the earth to the Lord’s service, is that there are no mechanical rules for doing so. It’s hard, dirty work. If we say all dead Greek and Latin pagans are worthy and all modern pagans funded by the NEA are fit only for the dustbin of history, we’ve missed the point. We must instead pick up the cultural artifacts of the world, examine them in the light of Scripture, discard that which is foul, and delight in that which is beautiful. In the process, we can turn the pagan’s idolatrous cultural artifact into a testimony of God’s character.

Take the film Titanic. I think we can say with a fair degree of confidence that James Cameron was not setting out to make a Christian movie: the celebration of premarital sex which is at the narrative’s center proves otherwise. However, we learn from it some very true things about both God and man. Towards the film’s beginning, a character looks at the Titanic and exclaims, “Not even God could sink this ship!” This, at least, is historically accurate: when the grand vessel set sail, many said precisely that. And grand she was. Cameron does us a great service by showing the breathtaking scale and majesty of the Titanic. The massive turbines of the engine room, creating and harnessing enormous power, are astounding. The gifted craftsmanship behind its lavishly decorated interiors is inspiring. All this was the creation of man. Man truly is great, and Titanic shows us this. But for all man’s greatness, he is powerless before God’s creation. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, she was doomed. Hubris, the fall brought on by arrogance, proved to be the Titanic’s undoing, and this magnificent testimony to mankind’s creative power sits at the bottom of the ocean.

This is a story we have heard before. As at the Tower of Babel, as at the Fall, man tried to supplant God, to take his place as rightful Lord of all. In so doing, man was destroyed. Man is great, but the Lord is far greater. But how do we find this testimony in a movie designed to reap massive profits at the mall? Because we have eyes to see. Because we know who man truly is and what his fate will be. Because we have read the Bible, we understand how all things testify to the glory of the Lord. As we see the world Biblically, we will see how all things find their meaning in their Creator. As we quietly live our lives in his service, we take dominion over the world, rendering it beautiful to the Lord, making its song of praise increasingly audible.

It's not "Pacific Rim"

But what was Pacific Rim? It was a beautiful meditation on the spiritual nature of giant robots fighting giantic monsters arising from the ocean; truth be told, however, it was a little weak on plot. Okay, really weak on plot and character, since every character was more archetype than human being. Truly amazingly depicted archetypes, granted.

Godzilla manages to root itself in plot and genuine human relationship. For the record, it's nice to see a main character suffer a major familial tragedy in childhood and go on to establish what appears to be a perfectly normal family in adulthood: cheering, and rather true to life. If I have any substantive criticism of the film, it's that we didn't get to see enough of the titular character himself. Still, I was very pleased with what I did see. From what I remember from watching all the Godzilla movies during my childhood (thanks, Washington D.C.'s Channel 20!), they got his scream just about perfect.

Having seen the new Godzilla with Things 1 and 2 this afternoon, I don't know why some reviewers saw an environmental/mankind-gets-what-he-deserves-for-messing-with-nature theme. On that count, it pales in comparison to the overt anti-nuke/pro-green emphases of the original films. Exhibit A: Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, which, in all seriousness, may have been my favorite of the Godzilla movies. And then there's its theme song, which left my 12 year-old self slack-jawed in amazement.

In sum: not Pacific Rim, but since Pacific Rim isn't out this summer, go see Godzilla instead. Its makers may have let him grow to a size too large to be possible, let alone believed, but at least they remembered that he's our hero.

AWESOME!!!

An unusual amount of drama surrounded the curmudgelings' viewing of The Lego Movie: I won tickets in a drawing for a Saturday morning sneak preview, but despite allowing an extra hour we ended up at the wrong theatre; when we finally arrived at the correct one, we discovered that only those holding "VIP" passes got in. Nonetheless, it was at last viewed at the least expensive first-run theatre in Aurora, Colorado (I'm sure a massacre having occurred there did not impact the ticket prices), much to the delight of all.

The Lego Movie is, of course, a carefully crafted piece of marketing propaganda, and I mean that in the best possible way. With a remarkable turn in the third act, the filmmakers are able to get at the heart and soul of LEGO's enduring popularity. I highly recommend Elvis Mitchell's interview with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on his always insightful The Treatment podcast. (Now that Roger Ebert has passed from the scene, Elvis Mitchell has to be America's most insightful film critic.)

If you don't have the time or cash to see the movie, you can get a good sense of what it's all about by listening to its theme, Everything Is Awesome!!! From the carefully crafted tune to the cleverly orchestrated rap breaks, it's a highly manufactured and polished pop piece which manages to be both remarkably stupid, brilliantly clever, and genuinely fun to hum endlessly. Citizen Kane it ain't, but The Lego Movie makes a compelling argument for taking pop culture just a little bit seriously.

Hamlet

No, I'm not going to complain about weaknesses in the script this time.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, receives its umpteen-millionth production at the Denver Center Theatre Company's Stage Theatre (through February 23). After I saw it two weeks ago, I thought I might be helped in sorting out my thoughts by viewing the 1990 film version of Tom Stoppard's existentialist deconstruction of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

This may not have been my best idea.

At least that's what I thought at first. However, as he demonstrated in his masterful script for the wonderful Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard understands the Bard's creative mind about as well as any other thespian out there. For all its absurdity, Rosencrantz... can be read as an actor's attempt to make sense out of a rather challenging script. So much of Hamlet's plot is utterly mystifying. Why does Hamlet play mad? Its only obvious product is to drive Ophelia herself mad, and consequently to suicide, which product serves no purpose of Hamlet's and is rather apparently at odds with his professed love for her. Moreover, as Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) asks, how is it that Claudius takes the throne after his brother's death when the prince and heir apparent is quite obviously of age to assume the crown? And those are just the beginning of the play's problems, the multitude of which in turn raises the question posed by Theatre Companion: why, exactly, does this play sit at the center of the English-speaking theatrical tradition and the Western canon itself?

Live theatre has the ability to resolve any number of apparent problems with a script simply because the spoken and performed word has an interpretive power not inherent in the printed word. During this performance, I was struck by the powerful and vivid description of depression Hamlet gives in the first act, and also by just how funny he is. Plot and extremely grim ending aside, Hamlet himself comes across as a fully realized human being, so much so that all the other characters become rather flat by comparison. Of course the ill-fated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are little more than cardboard cut-outs, but the same could be said for Polonius, Gertrude, and Claudius. Only Ophelia in her madness competes with the prince for our sympathy and empathy.

Once again, kudos to the excellent staging. Judging from the costumes, this production is set sometime in the mid-1920s, but that time period seems hardly relevant to the action. Lightly rusted scaffolding at the back of the thrust stage serves as Castle Elsinore's exteriors and interiors, and the torso of a collapsed statue of King Hamlet to stage right, along with a wall of portraits in which the faces are all obscured, visually represent the metaphorical rottenness in the state of Denmark.

Nearly every production of Hamlet is edited for length, so the difficult bits may have been removed from this one. (It's been so long since I last saw this play that I stood no chance of noticing what may have been left out.) Nonetheless, I thought the plot, as a whole, flowed rather seamlessly and logically. Even the bit with the players staging the death of Gonzago made sense, even if it is largely a waste of time. (Seriously: the circumstantial evidence for regicide is so overwhelming that even the thin reed of a ghost's testimony can bear the weight of a damning case against Claudius.) In other words, were it up to me to avenge the death of Hamlet Sr., I would likely have chosen a different strategy, but I suppose I can more or less understand why Hamlet Jr. chose his.

Having said that, Fortinbras' closing speech praising Hamlet still strikes me as entirely unwarranted, but maybe I'm missing something in the prince's character obvious to everyone else. I just can't get over the fact that a good 95% of the deaths in this play are entirely unnecessary, and most are attributable to Hamlet's miscalculations. Not to be judgey or anything.

One last note, sincerely not meant to be as snarky as it will sound: while Aubrey Deeker handed in a robust and manly performance, his actual hairline came nowhere near meeting the expectations raised by this production's promotional materials.

All Is Lost

I stopped believing in the Academy Awards in 1990, when Do the Right Thing wasn't even nominated and Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture. Even on my most bitterly cynical, race-obsessed day, I couldn't make up something that absurd.

But I digress. Point is, I can't be bothered to get bothered that Robert Redford wasn't nominated for Best Actor for his work in All Is Lost. But who else do we have who could single-handedly maintain audience interest for an entire film? Obviously, director J.C. Chandor and cinematographer Frank DeMarco deserve much of the credit for an intensely riveting adventure movie. Nonetheless, it's Redford in all his aging movie star rugged glory who evokes, as much as cinematic vocabulary can, the Hemingway spirit. If you've not yet seen it, watch for the moment when he opens the box containing the sextant and considers the card inside. I would watch Robert Redford in anything. (And since I actually saw An Indecent Proposal, I've already proven I'm serious about that contention.)

Which may be why I'm so excited by Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Superman films will always disappoint, but the first Captain America movie was fairly satisfying. The move to take the good Captain in a dark direction now that he's in the 21st century promises to work well, especially since Mr. Redford is in the cast. Check out the first trailer (second trailer is not so moving): it will get you very, very worked up.

That is, if you have a soul.

Jackie & Me (42)

Jackie & Me (playing at the Denver Center Theatre Company's Space Theatre through December 22), is an adaptation of the second novel in author Dan Gutman's series for children in which young Joey Stoshack has the power to visit baseball greats during times past by holding a baseball card. In this installment, Joey goes back in time to Jackie Robinson's rookie year with the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

According to the production notes, the adaptation of the first novel in the series was produced by a children's theatre company, and this play clearly is intended for a similar audience. As one might expect from the genre, Joey meets a baseball great, learns an important moral lesson, and goes back to his life a person changed for the better. The trope is tired and trite, but relatively harmless when applied to Honus Wagner. In this case, it has the unfortunate effect of turning Jackie Robinson into the magical negro who is significant because of the character development he inspires in the play's white protagonist. Once again, the narrative of persons of color is mediated through a white perspective. (As part of his time-traveling gift, Joey magically becomes African-American. Yes, it was painful and slightly embarrassing to watch a white actor pretend he was black.) Set alongside the premiere of Just Like Us, Jackie & Me makes one wonder whether the DCTC wouldn't do well to attend one of those consciousness-raising seminars to which major corporations subject their executives.

Once again, I question the DCTC's production choices. While this play makes for fine children's theatre, that's not what the DCTC is. What family can afford to take their children to a show which charges $50 a seat? (I suppose I can picture such a family, which, given the close relationship of race to class in this country, probably would need a white mediator in order to appreciate a facet of the black experience.) With the fine company and excellent resources available to it, the DCTC would be better advised to choose more challenging adult fare, even if it's not from a new or minor playwright. Please don't tell me there are too many professional productions of Shakespeare or Mamet these days.

A far more thoughtful examination of the same historical period is the recent film 42 (now available on DVD). It has the decency to treat Jackie Robinson with dignity, tracing his story from his own point of view and not from that of a white interpreter. It's not a great movie, but nonetheless a worthy sports film which capably sets Jackie Robinson's rookie year in its historical and cultural context. Thereby, it demonstrates his significance for both baseball and race relations in these United States.

While we're on the subject of history, Jackie & Me features a galling moment of ahistorical nonsense. Unfortunately, in order to discuss it, I may offend some of my readers, so feel free to quit your browser now. In one scene, Jackie Robinson shows Joey a stack of hate mail, which includes several death threats towards Robinson and his young family. However, they clearly feel the worst of these letters is one which calls Robinson a "nigger," a word which young Joey is barely able to make pass his lips. (This is its sole pronunciation in the play.)

Now, I happen to have a black daughter, and that's not a word I want directed at her or any other person of color. However, "nigger" has taken on its greatest power to offend only in the last decade or so. In Jackie Robinson's time, it was an unwelcome epithet, but hardly taboo or unexpected. To import today's delicate sensibilities to an earlier era is not only silly, it destroys the ability of the past to speak clearly to the present.

Here's what I mean by that: when one reads The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, one is shocked by many of the characters' racism precisely because it is commonplace, unremarkable, and, to the characters themselves, entirely invisible. A plain presentation of the past allows us to see just how alien its environment is to us. That, in turn, prompts us to reflect on the differences between our time and theirs, and perhaps even encourages us to question what atrocities are invisible to us in our day. (In all seriousness, what do you think future generations will think of the thousands of abortions perpetrated in this country each year?)

I took Thing 1, now aged 10, to this production, and he seemed unfazed by the dramatic unveiling of "the 'N' word." Believe it or not, there were warnings posted in the lobby, but he was able to accept the moment as just another element in the torrent of abuse which Jackie Robinson in particular, and all black people of his day in general, faced on a daily basis. I think my son would have been better served by an unvarnished and unsantized presentation of the full ugliness of the racism his sister's people faced in this great country not too long ago. It's a reality with which all my children will have to contend, as all our nation's people still do.

Man of Steel

I'm sure I've got the line wrong, but as I remember it, sometime after Diane Court dumped Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, he said "If you start out the day with low expectations, everything after that is sort of a pleasant surprise." Thankfully, my expectations for Superman movies have become so low that I seem to be beyond disappointment. I'm able to take enough of a bemused distance to have something like a rational response to Man of Steel.

After the hysterical 300 and the tepid Watchmen (let us not mention Legends of the Guardians: Owls of Ga'Hoole), I feared what director Zack Snyder would do to Superman. He was delivered from his worst instincts, I think, by Christopher Nolan, who shares story and producing credits. Nolan was the visionary behind the latest Batman trilogy (starring Christian Bale in the title role), and his work there demonstrated deep knowledge of how that character had developed in comic books since the mid-80s, and particularly in the hands of Frank Miller. Miller's influence on Nolan is clearly evident in Man of Steel's third act: the vivid, nearly silent sequence of an enervated Superman flying haltingly into sunlight to be recharged and re-energized is taken directly from a scene in the third volume of Miller's landmark Dark Knight series. This is so much the case that I wonder whether those unfamiliar with the Dark Knight understood what was going on.

I never read Superman comics very much, but was drawn in for a time by the John Byrne revival/renewal, also in the mid-80s. Before that kind of thing was in vogue, DC Comics handed Superman over to Byrne, who completely rewrote the character and his backstory. As part of that project, he developed a rather complex history for Superman's home planet of Krypton. The Krypton of Nolan and his co-writers was clearly influenced by Byrne's, especially in its visual elements. The notion of a genetically-engineered and -determined civilization was also first developed by Byrne.

 My Superman is heavily influenced by John Byrne, who I believe got the American heart of the character which makes him so enduring. As Frank Miller also understood, Superman operates from an absolute moral clarity. His charisma is not his god-like power, but his absolute determination to serve and protect his nation and world. That fact makes Man of Steel's plotline somewhat confusing. The first act has young Clark Kent walking the earth (like Cain or Kung Fu), seeking his purpose in life. This makes sense only because this has become a modern-day storytelling convention, particularly in big costume action movies. My Superman has never doubted his purpose, not for a moment.

[As best as I can tell, this walk-the-earth trope is rooted in an over-simplification of the quest motif  as articulated in Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Since Superman literally descends to earth, already equipped with all the powers he will ever have, sending him on a search for power and identity is particularly inappropriate.]

The confused-young-man bit is also at odds with what can be called a theme only if "theme" is defined as "a plot element with which you are hit between the eyes much after the manner of a 2x4." Superman-as-messiah has been an element in the character since at least the late 20th century, and was brought to the fore in his last film, Superman Returns. In Man of Steel, what had been implied and symbolized is made absolutely explicit by both of Superman's fathers, Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. Jor-El first tells his wife Lara, and then his adult son Kal-El (Superman's Kryptonian name) by way of Kryptonian interactive hologram, that the boy is being sent to Earth by design, and is to grow up to save the world. His adoptive father, the Kansas farmer, is equally convinced the boy has a salvific destiny.

If you ask me, better to keep messianism an implicit theme; cool as Superman is, Jesus makes him look silly by comparison. But I wasn't asked (again!), and I can live with it. However, I am nothing but aggravated by Jonathan Kent's insistence that young Clark keep his abilities secret, and even unused, lest he somehow get in trouble. This is just insane, and not just because IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT TO CAUSE SUPERMAN TROUBLE. Superman is from Kansas as much as from Krypton, and as such is the embodiment of the middle-American virtue of reflexive patriotic service. Jonathan Kent would never hold his son back from helping others, and as good a performance as Kevin Costner turns in, what Man of Steel makes him do and say is entirely unfathomable and unbelievable.

For all that, the movie moves along nicely. It's anchored by excellent acting throughout, and all the outer space and special effects are credible and never become ridiculous. If you start out with low expectations, Man of Steel is entertaining; but that's all it is.

The People vs. George Lucas

I saw Star Wars (no, not Episode IV: A New Hope; just plain Star Wars, you young wise-acre) for the first time when I was seven years old, and in Spanish. (Because my family was living in Madrid.) I didn't understand a word, and I don't think I breathed for the entire two hours. Like all boys my age, I was hooked and obsessed. But then Return of Jedi finally came out, it was okay, I was thirteen, and I moved on with my life. Then George Lucas re-released the original trilogy when I was in seminary in preparation for the prequel trilogy. With several classmates I went to see Star Wars (again, Star Wars, not Episode IV), and I was surprised to learn it was bad. I mean, bad as in not good, not bad as in "Han Solo shot first." This was my first inkling that maybe, just maybe, my seven year-old self was a tad lacking in aesthetic sophistication. Who knew?

Anyway. That's all to say that I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a Star Wars fan, but I was blown away by The People vs. George Lucas, which documents fandom's profound disappointment with what George Lucas did with the whole Star Wars franchise after 1983. It's a fascinating display of  love and obsession. Every moment is compelling, and most of it is very, very funny.

Watch and wonder at the human condition. Highly recommended.

Before it's too late

Four months after its July 12 release, Pacific Rim is still playing at the Denver-area cheap theatres, which means there's not much time left to see it on the big screen. And let us be clear: you must see this movie on as big a screen as possible. Yes, the dynamism, charisma, and sheer bravura force of Idris Elba as the most intimidating commanding officer since Patton might carry over to your television set, but this is a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. That, my friends, requires a giant screen.

To paraphrase Ralph J. Gleason's comments from the Bitches Brew liner notes (you all have read the liner notes to Miles Davis' legendary double album Bitches Brew, yes?): there may be greater giant robots fighting giant monsters movies in the future, but from here on out, any giant robots fighting giant monsters movie has to go around Pacific Rim to get in front of Pacific Rim.

Guillermo Del Toro is some kind of genius. Seriously.