Category: movies

Movie Review: Gone with the Wind

Last night Lisa and I finally got around to watching that old classic, Gone With the Wind.

Reaction:

When the movie finished, I was angry.  What a dissatisfying ending!  It felt like the movie makers just ran out of minutes and weren’t able to tell the second half of the story.  The ending was abrupt and kind of weird.  The movie lasted through all kinds of horrible events, then stopped short when Rhett walked out.

Characters:

I really fell in love with Rhett, that roguish, good-looking, inexplicably rich leading man.  In fact, he’s probably the arch-typical leading man.  I don’t think I’ve even seen anyone stronger in that role.

Scarlett was reprehensible, inspiring true disgust.  Somehow, at the end she turned from the very definition of a bitch into a hope-possessing angel bent on following the true love she’s just discovered she always had.  This change of character was so complete as to be unbelievable.

I kept waiting for the movie to parallel Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. That never happened, at least not completely.  Scarlett, the shrew, was only tamed after Petruchio, Rhett, gave up and turned away from her.

A few technical notes:

  • It might have been our jank-tastic home theater system (or lack thereof), but we had a tough time understanding the dialogue for the first half of the movie.  Subtitles helped, but made us feel like we were watching a foreign film.
  • The special effects were pretty cool to see.  I’ve heard that a lot of the movie is actually illustrated, and that would explain the rich contrast and great coloring.

Movie Review – Amazing Grace

Lisa and I watched Amazing Grace (newer movie – it was in theaters a few months ago) last night. It was a great, truly enjoyable movie. It tells the story of William Wilberforce in England about the time of our revolutionary war. Wilberforce fought long and hard to abolish slavery within the British Empire. His pastor was John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace (the hymn). Wilberforce was a man motivated by faith and haunted by the specter of slavery.

It was nice to see Hollywood portray a man of deep and reckless faith in a true and legitimate (instead of mocking) light. It was also nice to finish watching an enjoyable movie and not have to repent of enjoying something morally objectionable. This movie is highly recommended, and may make its way into our small collection.

UPDATE – My favorite quote from the movie: “I remember two things very clearly; I’m a great sinner and Christ is a great saviour.” – John Newton

A History of Violence

Lisa and I watched this interesting, disturbing movie starring Viggo Mortensen the other evening. It’s the story of a small-town business owner with a dark past. He’s a simple, peaceful man who loves his wife and kids. When he’s robbed and threatened with the gunpoint rape of one of his waitresses, he saves the day and ends up a hesitant hero for his small town. But his fame and acclaim bring parts of his past to light, and the act of violence (see the myth of violent redemption) awakens within him dark parts he thought long dead.

This movie is interesting, not as an exploration of the effects of violence on the victims, but for the exploration of the effects of violence on the perpetrators. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more anti-violence violent movie. It clearly shows that those who aren’t willing to be peaceful will never know peace. It demonstrates with careful, subtle strokes that when someone perpetrates violence, the shalom (peace, wholeness) all around them is broken, both within and without. As a warning, though, it’s definitely an adult movie exploring adult themes. Not kid-friendly.

Is there redemption in the movie? Yes. At the end, in slow, halting steps, a very realistic redemption plays itself out through the hands of a child.

Today Show Interview about The DaVinci Code

  • Ian McKellen, on whether there should be a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie to clarify that it’s fiction: “I’ve often thought there should be a disclaimer at the beginning of the Bible. I mean, walking on water? That takes a bit of…….faith or something.”
  • My response: “Yep, Ian, that’s what makes those things supernatural. When you start by acknowledging that such things don’t naturally happen, it means they’re miracles and thus worthy of the telling.”
  • Matt Laurer: “Paul, when you got the call that you were going to be the killer albino monk, how long did it take you to say yes?” Paul Bettany: “It took about ought-point-three seconds to say yes to that. It doesn’t matter what else you have going on. You can’t turn down an offer like that.”
  • My response: “I think if I got a call asking if I want to play a killer albino monk, I’d say yes, too. Who wouldn’t? I’m looking forward to seeing the movie just to see Paul Bettany. He’s great.”

Ray? Not a Ray of hope.

Lisa and I watched Ray on Sunday. I feel like we were watching Walk the Line again. Different talented, tortured singer, different skin color, same struggles with pain, addiction, and hopelessness. The movie ended with Ray Charles’s alleged recovery from his drug addiction. Like Johnny Cash’s story in Walk the Line, the postscript claimed that they all lived happily ever after, implying that he was drug-free for the rest of his life. I don’t know Ray Charles (apart from his wonderful music), and I can’t comment on the veracity of that statement with any authority. But I have a tendency to suspect men who lie to their own families and even themselves about the depth and nature of their addiction when they claim to be clean.

Lord, may I never be famous enough to live like that. The more of these movies I see, the more I come to see fame as a curse, and not a blessing.

Enjoying relative anonymity,
Andrew

‘Walk the Line’ doesn’t

Last night Lisa and I watched Walk the Line, the movie based on Johnny Cash’s autobiography. The movie’s received rave reviews from our friends and acquaintances. I have to admit, I was really looking forward to it. I’ve been curious about Cash’s life, even though I haven’t heard most of his music.

The movie is dark and sad. Drug addiction cast a pall over the story. Joaquin Phoenix, who is no stranger to tortured characters or dark plots, carried the role of Johnny Cash believably. Reese Witherspoon, whose previous credits include such deep work as Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde, played June Carter, Cash’s main love interest. She was also very convincing.

Our friends Jeff and Kelly have gotten us in the habit of evaluating a movie by asking, “Was there redemtion?” It’s been an incredibly useful exercise. Poignant redemtion was what made me want to cry after reading A Tale of Two Cities. I went to bed last night depressed after watching Walk the Line. There was a feeble effort at redemtion, but it wasn’t convincing.

After June Carter pulled Johnny Cash from the depths of drug-induced darkness, she told him that God had given him a second chance to make a difference in the world. He realized as he read through letters from fans in prison that he had influence he needed to use for good, for God. There was a brief scene where the two lovers held hands as they walked nervously toward a church. Convincing, no? No. All those scenes weren’t enough to convincingly demonstrate redemtion.

Why do I say that? Because as a Christian, I have some tools useful for evaluating the changes inside a person. Of course, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. But Matthew recorded Jesus as saying, “By your fruits you shall know them.” He was saying that a person’s intentions and inner substance eventually work their way to the outside of that person.

Application: Johnny Cash’s continued denial of his wife and children evidence a continued denial of both God’s commands and his manly responsibility. Secondly, Cash’s portrayed use of his newfound mission doesn’t square with a desire to serve God (and good). His performance at Folsom Prison, intended to show his commitment to identification with the prisoners, saw a lack of any meaningful message toward good. As portrayed in Walk the Line, Johnny Cash appropriated God’s grace for his own inner transformation but stopped short of proclamation.

I know that the real Johnny Cash sang lots of great gospel music. I love his deep voice, driving chords, and the emotion that dripped from his silvered throat. So the disconnect between the portrayal of Cash’s faith and his proclamations must be one of several places: either

  1. the disconnect was very real,
  2. Cash failed to communicate the substance of his faith in his autobiography,
  3. those who created the movie didn’t understand the substance of Cash’s faith,
  4. or their portrayal was genuinely intended but badly executed.

Even for great actors, it’s hard to portray a life-change as a result of the grace of God without having experienced it. And as one who knows that grace firsthand, I can see the difference.

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Terrorism in Munich and New York

I’m reading the 9/11 Commission Report right now. I’ll post a book report when I’m finished, but this is intended to be a meta-report of some of my initial thoughts on reading about the events of September 11 and an effective response to terrorism.

Reading about the details of the hijackings brings home to me how evil those acts were. It arouses my ire and makes me wish for vengance. I briefly fanasized about studying to become an expert in terrorism in order to strike back and make a difference. My initial conception of striking back against terrorism involves surgical strikes and very careful elimination of terrorist cells.

Against a backdrop of these thoughts, I went to see the movie Munich by Steven Spielberg late last night. Munich follows my fantasy of assasination-type surgical strikes against terrorists involved in the terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It follows a young Jewish man recruited to carry out these attacks in what amounts to Israeli state-sponsored terrorism. The movie, though violent, doesn’t glorify violence. It takes a very close look at the very real issues surrounding terrorism. As the main character kills those terrorist and suspected terrorists, he witnesses the rise of harder targets and enemies more vile than those he was killing. He also struggles with many complex moral issues attending to the attempts to serve higher purposes with lower means.

Driving home from the theater, I was forced to reject my previous ideas about striking back at terrorism as an effective means of stopping it. I reflected on the “you-killed-my-brother, I’ll-kill-yours” mentality seen in places like Northern Ireland, the West Bank, and my own heart. I realized that the only solution ever presented to this ultra-hard problem comes in the out-of-the-box teachings of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness, however hard, is demanded as the ultimate solution to the cylce of violence and death.

I don’t pretend to make these statements from a position of understanding, as I haven’t lost loved ones to the pain of violence. But God DID lose his Son to us who declared ourselves His enemies. And the cry from the cross, the one calling for forgiveness of Jesus’s tormentors, echoes today across West Bank and Northern Ireland and through the caverns of my dark heart. It’s the first and last solution to the extreme evils of terrorism. This isn’t a call to weakness or to laying down in the face of evil; it’s a call to carry out one of the hardest acts ever imagined. It’s a call to stand up to evil in the world and in our own hearts; and it’s the only weapon ever shown to stop the cycle. God help us.

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