Robert Duvall’s The Apostle is long. And at times it felt especially long, and my eyes grew as heavy as those of Eutychus (see Acts 20:9). Still, the movie is worth enduring for its portrait of believers. These Christians are not treated in any sentimental way—they are far from perfect; nor are they made a mockery of, in the typical Hollywood manner.
Someone might argue that they were shown to be fools. And, yes, they were. But I felt they were shown to be the kind of fools that we all are, struggling through life, longing to be better, frustrated with our failure, and ultimately, absolutely dependent on grace.
I have no idea why, but for decades I have wanted to watch My Dinner with Andre. I finally got around to it—and still I really don’t know why I wanted to watch it for so long. I have to say that I’m glad no one else watched it with me, because for (at least) the first half of it they would have been razzing me for picking such a weird flick.
Wally is an out-of-work playwright in New York City who is picking up odd jobs (including acting) in order to make ends meet. He has been avoiding the experimental director Andre for a few years because Andre has become so weird. But Wally decides he can avoid him no more, so he agrees to dinner. Besides, Wally fancies himself a gifted interviewer, able to ask questions and listen to anyone talk about anything.
As dinner begins Wally feels awkward and is not sure how to respond to Andre. Andre talks on and on about his strange, mystical experiences in various exotic locations around the world. If this had gone on through the whole film I would have almost nothing good to say about it. Fortunately, Wally gains courage and begins to interact more with Andre’s ideas, even to challenge them. And what emerges becomes more like a conversation between real friends, where each seems to contribute something to the other. Many of the ideas remain esoteric, yet some of their observations about life are thought-provoking—not only to each other, but to me.
This is an unfortunate thing to confess, but I seem to identify a little too much with a few of the more pathetic aspects of some of Paul Giamatti’s characters. And perhaps it was unfortunate that that very flaw of mine tempted me to watch Cold Souls, in which the actor Paul Giamatti plays a character named Paul Giamatti who is an actor. [Not so clever.]
Things got off to a slow but solid start—I was drawn in, interested, even intrigued by the clever setup to the story. And there were some very funny parts—at least, they were funny to me, though I recognized that most people wouldn’t have laughed much. Anyway, things were going fine for the first half of the movie. Then it was obvious that the writer couldn’t figure out how to deal with the depth of questions he had raised, so his film degenerated into a painfully long “chase scene,” in which Giamatti tried to find his misplaced soul.
Thud.
I don’t think I possess a sufficient range of social adaptability to enable me to enjoy the company of someone like Truman Capote, if the representation of him in the film Capote is close to reality. I say that not with puritanical pride, but as an admission of my limitations. Yet, as I watched this creepy character unfold and even unravel before my eyes, there was something deep inside me that admired him—or, at least, something about him. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain that.
Let me clarify that I didn’t admire his creepiness, his self-absorbtion, his deception. I didn’t even admire the pitiable aspects of his character and the events that molded his character. So it wasn’t the twisted aspects of my psyche responding to the twisted aspects of his (though that sometimes happens). Rather, I was mesmerized by the beauty in him—the creativity, the drive to take a mass of confusion and resolve it into a moving, life-changing piece of literature. In that sense he was truly God-like, but not in the idolatrous sense that he mistakenly craved. I mean that all the muck of his depravity could not snuff out the image of God in him.
And that left me not only with a ray of hope for myself; it forced me to reconsider the way I view others.
I won’t say that the new Robin Hood is a great movie, but I don’t understand why it has received a cool reception. It was certainly more medieval than previous film versions of the story that I’ve seen, and it doesn’t have much cheerfulness; but the “Brave Heart” sorts of themes are well served, not overdone so as to become self-important.
One minor detail in particular caught my eye: the allusion to the Normandy invasion, when the French bad guys are landing on the English coast. The visual “quoting” of Saving Private Ryan was obvious – and interesting. But this time the invaders didn’t prevail.
Once again on our daughter’s recommendation we found a good film. Wives and Daughters is a BBC adaptation of some obscure novel (I mean that I never heard of it before). It’s got all the nice period costumes and all that lovely English stuff, so it’s sure to please the Pride-and-Prejudice crowd. The plot is very much in keeping with that genre – all about who will marry whom, social scandal, marrying above or below your station in society, and so on. But what I found myself really enjoying was simply listening to the dialogue. The elegance of the structure, rhythm, vocabulary – the glory of the language! It was, in fact, glorified language, and I doubt that any society at any time every really spoke so well in “real life.”
Which makes me believe that there is a place for such glorified language: a glorified city. So I’m now certain that we will all learn to talk this way in the New Jerusalem – whether it is in English, some other language, or many languages….
Perhaps I would have enjoyed Crazy Heart more if I had a taste for country music. But I didn’t watch the film for the music – I like Jeff Bridges, and I wanted to see what the big deal was about his performance. And I was impressed. I never doubted for a minute that he was a drunk, a loser, or a country singer. He was painfully convincing. And, as a bonus on the acting side, I thought Robert Duvall was downright perfect in his tiny role.
But overall the movie left me unmoved. I didn’t notice any particularly new insights into life, alcoholism, or love – though Duvall’s character demonstrated real friendship.
So, there you have it: not much of a recommendation, one way or the other….
What a mess. Or, as my daughter would write if this were her blog: What. A. Mess.
It wasn’t my idea to watch Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. But Petra has been a good sport about some of my odd film choices, so I was game. And I didn’t really know much about the film before watching it. (I recommend that if you don’t know anything about it, you find out before you decide to watch it. It’s raw.) I suppose the only reason you wouldn’t classify this as a horror film is that it isn’t supernatural – in fact, it’s all too natural in its depiction of humanity that has devolved to the point that it is almost unrecognizable as human.
But shame on me if I see such inhumanity depicted, and turn my eyes away, and say something like, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—abusers, thieves, perverts—or even like these incestuous welfare addicts” [compare Luke 18:11]. “We all like sheep have gone astray” and need redemption as much as Precious, her mother, and her father. And the film tells its story of redemption – redemption through love, through a love that has to be unrelenting. As good as it is, though, there is a greater, more unrelenting love required for full redemption….
I have mixed feelings about The Stoning of Soraya M – so mixed, in fact, that they are hard to sort out.
First, but probably least important, is that I don’t think the movie was that well done. The acting was mediocre, and the ending smacked too much of Hollywood. Even if it really happened that way, they should have avoided that cheesiness.
Second, the hypocrisy of the husband and the whole village seems at first unbelievable. It’s so absurd, so egregious, so over-the-top that it’s unimaginable. And yet, we really don’t have to look far to find similar examples – some of us don’t have to look farther than our own hearts. And perhaps that’s the value of this story: to take those absurd hypocrisies of ours, take them out of the dark and shine the bright light of day on them to help us see how ridiculous they are. That’s worth some introspection. (more…)
Wow!
I wasn’t sufficiently prepared for the power of the short film Auf der Strecke. In only 30 minutes, a terrifying story unfolds before us, often without words. The protagonist works in security for a department store watching people all day long. He also has his eye (through his security cameras) on one particular employee in the book department – a young woman who catches his eye. One day after work he rides the same subway with her and – well something happens. He watches it unfold before him. As we find out in a later scene, he is certain he understands what he observes, and he acts on his understanding. Let’s just say the scene and the whole film are packed with irony.
And there I was watching him watch. And I believe I understand what I observe, and I act on it….