Incpetion *****

There is a long-standing relationship between dreams and change for mankind. Dreaming is portentous in Judeo-Christian culture, Native American culture, ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures, the Aboriginals…the list goes on. Our relationship with dreaming and the search for meaning within our dreams is older than civilization itself.

What if technology could enable us to manipulate dreams? Would even the future then be within our control? This is the question that “Inception” dares to ask. But like all good questions, this question leads to an explosion of other questions not the least of which is - As we can control reality through technology does technology itself have us more and more under its control?

We learned from McCluhan that with every new medium of communication there is change in the possibility of the messages sent; what would happen to dreaming itself if we could control it? Is there a point in which a dream could have no more personal significance then a text message?

Because "Inception" is a movie about dreaming it poses questions tacitly. By being a medium for the depiction of both reality and dreams, the movie itself begs comparison to a shared dream. Because its depiction places dreams and reality on different levels it can depict levels of dreaming, the way we can wake from a dream only to find ourselves still dreaming. But if we can share the dream with other people, how is it not a reality and further perhaps a more preferable one (see Accidental Critic Classic The Purple Rose of Cairo)?

But in reality we are asleep when we dream. And in reality technology makes dreams come true. “Inception” asks as we live the dreams of technology might we be asleep on our feet?

At one point in the movie, our hero (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) draws a diagram to show that what makes dreaming so alluring to a creator is that you can make a reality as fast as its enjoyment. There is no gap between idea, design and production.

For the creator the temptation is to never stop dreaming. It begs the question - In what sense is reality ever preferable? Indeed the end of the movie leaves you wondering (in more ways than one).

But ask yourself - Should you watch a movie where the hero’s job is to manipulate someone’s dreams and thereby their thoughts and perhaps their destiny?

Yes, you should. Moral ambiguity always seems to come with developments in technology. Wake up.

Unthinkable, Legion, and The Book of Eli

In June these three religious movies became available to rent. We watched them separately, but found that it was interesting to think about the three of them together. We should preface this with the fact that (being Christians) we thought about these movies from a Christian perspective.

All of them keep Jesus out of it, even though two of them think biblically. In Unthinkable the government confronts radical Islam but thanks to its secular mindset, it is unable to successfully understand its opponent. Both Legion and The Book of Eli are capable of imagining angels and prophets as the proper subject of movies, provided these holy beings operate as if the son of God did not and will not be present on the earth. The movies are entertaining and worth thinking about, although The Book of Eli is decidedly better.

Legion proposes the preposterous notion that God has changed his mind: In lieu of sending Christ down to bring an end to the age and usher in a far better one, he is sending his angels to destroy mankind. The field general of angels, Michael, thinks God has erred and rebels. He does his darnedest to keep a specific, single, expectant mother alive because her child can supposedly lead mankind back into God's good graces.

We are reminded of Moses' efforts to bargain with God to keep him from destroying all of the Hebrews wandering the desert. Moses argues that keeping the woebegone Hebrews alive and getting them to the promised land is far better public relations than choosing yet another people to be His. God 'relents'. Of course, it is not clear whether God is only zooming Moses when he threatens the eradication of the Hebrews. If that were the case, than the threat of extermination would have been a test to see whether Moses truly loved his thoroughly lost people.

If God is testing Michael in Legion, it is rather a more expensive test in lives than the test of Job. And it would seem that after such a long time God would already know what he had in Michael... But it is a good tale, so long as you forget about Jesus - which does seem to be the basic agenda of this century.

In the Book of Eli the apocalyptic scenario does not seem to be anything out of Revelations either. A man who has no business finding the last remaining copy of the Bible protects it against all odds in a decades long trek across the country teaching people to pray and look out for one another while dispensing God's judgment on evildoers. Take Elijah and set him in a samurai movie and you will have the idea. It is spellbinding and captures the spirit of the old Testament well (particularly with its twist at the end).

Both Legion and The Book of Eli work out the implications of the New Testament. Both Michael and Eli, each in their own way, emulate Christ, which is the task of all Christians. But acting like a Christ in an apocalyptic future is one thing, how about emulating Christ now?

Nobody in Unthinkable is capable of such emulation. The radical Islamist is capable of sacrificing himself for his holy cause (to bring US troops out of the Middle East), but he is also content with the destruction of millions of his former citizens, i.e., Americans. As one would guess, agents of the government are willing to do the 'unthinkable' in order to thwart his plans (but he outwits them in the end).

When the most humane of his captors reminds him of freedom, our terrorist, a former special forces man, tells her that freedom is a false god. No one has a response for this. And it is an assertion that should give us pause. It is Islamist to find the advocacy of freedom to be a form of idolatry, a violation of the first commandment. This is not the case for Christians. Jesus, is often asking people who they think he is, and makes it clear that their deciding that he is the son of God is pivotal to their salvation. They have to be free to make such a decision. Indeed, in Christian doctrine our being cast from the Garden insures us of the freedom we demonstrated when we ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But in the face of radical Islam how should Christians be emulating Christ? By doing the unthinkable or by being willing to ask the pivotal question Christ asked..."And who do you think I am?"

Viva Zapata! *****

When I was a boy and my parents went out for the evening, I had the opportunity to stay up late and watch a movie. If I was lucky it was an old horror movie, or better something like “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and Dracula.” If I was really lucky I could catch “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Truly miraculous, however, was to catch a movie I can’t find anywhere, “Viva Zapata.”

It is Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn in an Elia Kazan directed, Steinbeck written saga of the early 20th century revolutionary of Southern Mexico. Every time it reduced me to tears. Quinn got the Oscar for his overacting and Brando just the nomination for one of his best performances.

1952 is the McCarthy era and the real Zapata was a student of Kropotkin. This film walks a beautiful line between right and left. Steinbeck’s Zapata not only believes he should fight for the rights of peasants, he believes that power corrupts and that the peasants will never really succeed until they distrust all leaders and fight for themselves.

There are many fine moments in this film: Emiliano explaining indirectly why the peasants need to kill his brother if they are going to be free; the young firebrand Emiliano explaining that children will starve if planting is delayed by political games, only to hear as Presidente (an hour later in the film) that children will starve if planting is delayed by political games; or the moment when peasants by sheer numbers stop the police from arresting their champion Zapata, by amassing in such numbers that the federales simply cannot move along.

Steinbeck gives you Mexican peasant culture; it is a gift you can treasure forever.

Dangerous Liaisons *****

“Dangerous Liaisons” is based on an epistolary novel written prior to the French revolution. It is 18th century France and the idle rich are amusing themselves by practicing the art of deception and seduction. At the head of it all is the Countess (Glen Close), master manipulator and society’s reigning queen for whom control is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Her devoted and lustful Vicomte (John Malkovich) is her partner in crime. Trust us, the modern day shenanigans portrayed in those cheesy reality shows have nothing on the machinations of the idle rich in 18th century France.

Bonded through a deeply cynical view of love, the Countess and the Vicomte strike a deal. If the Vicomte can seduce the pious Mme de Tourvelle, he will receive what would be his greatest conquest – the Countess herself. The perfect plan is hatched and our Vicomte is confident that he is in it only for the thrill of the seduction and the prize. But love it seems has a gravity of its own that pulls on each of them, causing them to lose control.

Love and truth, two things we try desperately to deny them when they disappoint us. You cannot control love and the truth will not only be eventually revealed, it will also reveal you. This is the lesson that we see our Vicomte learning as his heart is conquered by Mme de Tourvelle and then broken by his inability to rightly honor that love.

The climax of the movie is reached when the Vicomte repeats “It’s beyond my control” over and over again. It is the blunt instrument that he uses to break the heart of Mme de Tourvelle and placate the Countess. Is he lying? Certainly being in control in affairs of the heart has been his absolute. Control is what enables him to ignore what is best in humans and instead delight in their humiliation. The truth is that the control he prizes is a sham. The Countess has, by giving him this phrase, sent him on his way to Mme de Tourvelle like a missile fully armed. Malkovich delivers the line with a robotic intensity. The Vicomte is losing whatever humanity he pretended to have. His growing anger as he repeats it is a sign that he himself is not unaware of what he is losing. The only suitable punishment is death, which he elegantly turns into revenge upon the Countess.

So often people mistake love for their desire for control. Think about the wife who tolerates her husband’s infidelity. Is it love she is hanging on to or is she merely driven by the fear of losing her own fairy tale? In the name of control we deny the absence of love and its presence. Nothing good comes from this denial.

The closing scene of the film is chilling. We see the Countess seated at her dressing table staring into a mirror as she removes her "masque”. What lies beneath is the emptiness sown by denial.

The Purple Rose of Cairo *****

When we read the Cave Allegory from Plato’s “Republic” we all think of the movies; when Woody Allen reads Plato it leads to a movie.

In the “Purple Rose of Cairo” Wood Allen creates a movie within a movie, showing you scenes from a fictitious black and white depression era movie (also entitled The Purple Rose of Cairo) because his heroine can’t help but watch it over and over again. For her it is escape and an impossible inspiration. According to the fictitious movie, the purple rose of Cairo is supposed to grow in a pharaoh’s tomb - the expression of a perfect love. Of course no rose is purple and flowers do not grow without light. It is an impossible inspiration. It’s all Plato’s fault.

According to him our relationship to the truth is dreadful. We are like people chained facing a wall in a cave, behind them a fire, and between the fire and their benches men parading objects whose shadows project upon the wall. Hankering for the truth, the viewers take shadows for reality. But Plato has another important point. Although our sense of reality is shadowy at best, we are only capable of understanding anything, thanks to a set of ideals which are beyond real experience. The impossible inspiration guides us through our shadows and intimates that there is more.

The movies are all that counts for the heroine of “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. Her chains are the miserable life to which she is subjected by the depression of the 30’s and her abusive husband. After too many hours in a theater watching her new favorite movie, about people with ideal life styles, one of its characters impossibly leaves the screen, and while comically attempting to establish himself in the real world, falls in love with her.

Screen characters running free in New Jersey, is bad for the movie business. So the actor who played the role is enlisted in the task of capturing his shadow and returning it to the screen. When he also falls for our heroine she has the ultimate Platonic choice: perfection or reality. Which would you choose?

Departures ****

Just this way, just this once, never again

This movie borders on exquisite. No small task for a movie that not only deals with death, but with the tradition of ceremonially preparing the dead in front of mourners before their bodies are placed in the coffin.

There is always a taboo about death. People who spend time with the dead are “creepy”. It is perhaps not surprising that that those immersed in taboo are true artists in Japan. The principle of Japanese aesthetics was once summed up as follows: just this way, just this once, never again. There is nothing more mortal than we mortals. Each of us is just the way we are, just this once, never again. In Departures when the dead are prepared for cremation it is a public ceremony, wherein those present get to see the most tender treatment carried out with the utmost respect on those who have fully demonstrated their mortality.

Our hero, Daigo, departs with his wife for his childhood home after losing his job as a cellist. This departure signifies the beginning of a journey that takes him out of his comfort zone and into a pretty unusual job as a “casketer” that brings him closer to himself and ultimately culminates in the rediscovery of a Father he has lost.

In the Iliad of Homer there are a number of occasions when the warriors address a fallen ally or enemy. Even though they may have breathed their last the conversation is prolonged by the living. So it happens even now those in mourning address a corpse. In Departures the “casketers” are those who give dignity to the dead and to their mourners in the final moments…those moments when we stare into the deepest absence.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee ***

What Comes Next

You may come to this movie looking for a lot of meaning and given that, the ending might disappoint you. But don’t be disappointed because what you are getting instead is a whole lot of truth.  While Pippa Lee (played brilliantly by Robin Wright) is described as “an enigma” in the opening scenes of the movie and is in fact a rather peculiar woman with a colorful past, in many ways she is very much like the rest of us.  She struggles to weave the threads of her life into some kind of meaningful pattern. While not a chick flick, this is a woman’s movie…and not just a woman’s movie, but an American woman’s tale. A portrait of the American deconstructed life where you wake up in your 50’s in the midst of the busy world you’ve created to protect yourself and you’re just not able to buy into your own shit anymore. Working as a metaphor for a “great awakening”, Pippa discovers that while sleeping she raids the refrigerator and drives to the convenient store to buy cigarettes where an equally troubled younger man with a tattoo of Jesus on his chest (Keanu Reeves) awaits.  Just as she starts questioning her own sanity and getting kicked out of pottery classes, she discovers her much older husband is having a hard time buying into his shit as well. We also learn a bit more about the secret guilt that binds them. While infidelity is a major plot theme, this is not a move about affairs nor is it a movie about marriage. Rather it’s about our willingness to face ourselves and what comes next in a life that is not only alarmingly unpredictable but just might not ever answer all the questions we have about ourselves. Towards the end of the movie we find Pippa embarking on a journey and declaring “…I’m just going to see what comes next”. I’m reminded of the Stephen Dobyns poem, How to Like It. It’s last stanza reads…

How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.