Archive for film and tv

Religulous? He sought. He found.

January 10, 2009 · Filed under film and tv, religion and spirituality

I didn’t want to see Religulous because I suspected it would be a broad-stroke, sardonic attack on Christianity–which it is. Oh, Maher throws in a couple of scenes of rabbis with quirky, non-mainstream views, but 90% of the footage and script concerns those crazy, unscientific, literal-minded Christians–including some particularly juicy footage of glossalalia (or speaking in tongues). What surprised me is that the film is not funny.

Okay. You’re thinking: well obviously she’s a Christian or a Christian sympathizer, of course she wasn’t amused. But, no, really, there wasn’t much laughter in the whole theater and my husband, who DID want to see it didn’t laugh either. Funny, it turns out, wasn’t the point. Maher (as those who’ve seen it can attest) used this film as his addition to the Christopher Hitchens / Sam Harris genre. The film is Maher’s essay declaring religion the greatest threat to civilization.

He has a point as did the others before him. Violence in the name of religion is undeniably a force for evil and destruction and, I would say, the greatest threat to religion itself, ultimately. And blind faith interferes with scientific investigation as it always has. But I’m not here to tease out the ways religion intertwines with other aspects of ethnicity and the fact that people have religions, people live on land with resources and wars are fought over territory and power–on earth–using God or whatever deity or concept as the precept for drumming up fervor at home. And I won’t go into the other side, that some force needs to temper wanton scientific inquiry for its own sake that neglects profound ethical imperatives, some of them as old as Moses.

Maher has another group of points: literal, fundamentalist faith must negotiate a mine-field of contradictions. True. But as his much underplayed and quite funny contact at the Vatican hinted, many people of faith disparage that God-said-it-I-believe-it-that-settles-it bumper-sticker-fitting version of spiritual / religious experience. Maher doesn’t even let this man at the gates of St Peter’s say what he does think. We watch the priest  chuckle through Maher’s challenging questions about literal beliefs (Adam and Eve is his favorite even though even many of the most literal believers in Christ will tell you “Oh, that’s mythology.”) agreeing with Maher. Adam and Eve? Ridiculous, the priest agrees. Does it bother him that people believe these things literally? Yes, abosolutely the priest answers–but what are you gonna do? And he laughs.

But the priest still works there–and don’t tell me he couldn’t get work somewhere else, he’s obviously bright, engaging and of course has a good education. He works at the Vatican because even without those stories (in addition to creation Maher spent a long time on Jonah–did we really believe he lived 3 days in a whale . . . or a great fish?) the priest like many others finds meaning, power, depth and, yes, reality.

Maher’s not interested in that. He’s looking for the most outrageous extremes of the phenomena that exasperate him–and he finds them. He spends a little time on Islam–not much quality time but he gives it lip service. He betrays his own atheistic Zionism speaking with a rabbi who believes Israel is too sinful to live in the promised land. (This guy was my hero in the film because he kept saying, “Let me finish.” Something Maher almost never lets anyone do if he disagrees–a bad habit I observed ten years ago when he had his roundtable discussion show on late night TV.) Unfortunately, even though this guy persevered through several such intrusions, he didn’t finish and we didn’t get to understand his whole point of view. Maher leapt to the conclusion that the man approved of the holocaust and stormed off angrily shouting, “Never again.” This from a half-Jew-half-Catholic who was raised on the catechism. Apparently even without belief he is capable of ethnic loyalty–does that tell you anything?

Maher’s not looking for thoughtful religion. He’s looking for the ridiculous so he can ridicule it (unfortunately without much humor), declare it unscientific and illogical, take that as proof that all religion is wrong (at least all Christian religion) and ultimately declare atheism the salvation of the world. Atheism and science.

Maher is not seeking–and so he misses–the still small voice of God, which he mocks by giving its mention to a man playing Jesus at the Holy Land Experience). He misses the peace of God. And while challenging (with good reason) the notion of a switchboard God, frantically answering the myriad prayers of humans in all languages simultaneously clamoring for attention, he misses the amazed realization even the marginally faithful sometimes experience, that prayers are answered. “Coincidence” declares Maher striding off-. But in small and large things,  answered prayer is a mighty convincing experience.

These fields have just as many boobytraps for the atheist as for the blindly complicit believer. These issues are deep, wide, engrossing and enveloping. Those who really address them confront the ultimate and the infinite in awe and with a humble inadequacy. Mystics all throw up their hands and declare, “Ineffable!” Or they turn to poems, which are all but ineffable by definition. Oxymoron, metaphor and yes, mythology take the place of Aquinas style theology because in the face of our “maker, redeemer, . . . and friend” as the old hymn puts it–as we “lean on everlasting arms”–we are hard put to express our experience and all but prohibited from reconciling the contradictions. Yet, there we stand with the priest at the Vatican laughing at scorn, shaking our heads and going back in to immerse ourselves once more in the presence of God.

Maher is right–very right. And absolutely wrong. He looked for what he wanted to find and, as we might have told him, he found it. If he’d made it funnier I might be more forgiving. But, he wanted to make a point. And he did.

He returns to the site where “Christians believe the world will end”. Standing on a this barren, rocky place–one like so many in the Biblical landscape, he says he’s calling for doubt, because doubt is humble. This is an excellent point and quite soft given the rabid tone of the rest of the film. Doubt is humble and humbling. Willingness to acknowledge contradiction and deal with it is indeed essential to our efforts to bridge the appalling chasms between our world systems and world views which are undoubtedly :-) rooted in the mythologies and rituals we hold dear.

Doubt is necessary for the unbeliever too. Doubt that acknowledges the surprising fact that religion persists in the face of the challenges logic, science and contrary theologies. Doubt that acknowledges as Maher does, too, at one point, “I don’t know. That’s my message.”

The same man who told Maher of the still small voice (and he was a pretty ridiculous figure, I admit) also told him he has a “god shaped hole” one that only God can fill. Ironically, Maher is filling that hole with a quest to trounce God in his sanctuary. He chases him down like a cockroach using the great boot of his not very funny satire, calling all other atheists to join him in the hunt–and save the world (sound familiar?). But he spent two hours of my time talking about God and from all that one of the memorable scenes I carry away is from a truckstop chapel.

In that scene–early in the film–Maher stands in what passes for the pulpit and challenges the men on his favorite issues. They’re literalists to a man. But Maher allows one to make a moving testimony of conversion–he had been a drug dealer and pimp. Then before he leaves Maher asks them to pray for him. Of course their prayer calls for him to find answers to discover God, but it’s heartfelt and across 15 rows of seats I could feel the heavyset trucker’s awkward hand on Maher’s head–a reaching out and contact that ineffably convey the thing both men were seeking–brotherhood, unity, peace of mind. The man’s grace filled up the screen (for me). And Maher too was moved, “Thank you for being Christ-like, not just Christian,” he says.

Then, Maher seeks to undercut the moment by saying, “Boy when he told me he was doing drugs and women, I wanted to say, and what was the problem with that?” But it’s hollow. Anyone who’s known addicts knows exactly the problem with that. Maher found the proof of his point. But the enormity of what he didn’t seek engulfs his message in the end.

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There Will Be Blood

February 23, 2008 · Filed under film and tv

I’d read good things–especially about the music–and heard some bad. But the fact that it’s showing at the local “art film” house and has been for weeks tipped me toward favoring it. I didn’t know it was 3 hours long (someone should tell us these things–prominently!)

All in all, I think it’s a good film. During the long opening sequence, the sounds are pick axes, winches, cacophonous music and the groans of injured workers. Undistracted by dialogue, the viewer focuses on the evident physical effort and agony required for the central character, completely alone and ignoring his broken leg to drag himself out of his mine shaft, across a rocky landscape, into the claims office with a rock that hides a vein of metal. THere is material force in every movement.

The cinematography alone captured my interest: silhouettes of miners and derricks against an enormous sky, vistas across landscapes whose homesteaders have no hope of surviving as farmers, a close-up of Danie Day Lewis’s face disappearing into the demonic blackness of night and oil.

And I totally agree with The New Yorker critic who praised the music as a force to be reckoned with on its own. The repeating leitmotifs designate various moods. A locust-humming drone echoes the main character’s obsessive inner drive to success. Somewhat more melodic strains drench panoramic views of landscapes soon to be obliterated and command equal attention with the vocals. (I don’t get at all the use of Brahms’–I think–violin concerto, which shows up suddenly mid-film and is replayed at the end.)

Both Day-Lewis (whose performance is towering, though his accent is unidentifiable) and Paul Dano as his main antagonist deliver lines with their whole bodies. The scenes of healing / exorcism have equal force with Day-Lewis’s horrifying hateful attacks on friend and competitor and, eventually, even his adopted son.

Still, the film at 3 hours is too long, and there are other issues. Newsweek’s critic Richard B. Woodward is right (and I thank him for pointing out) that American Capitalism generally has not been at odds with American religion. But I think he’s wrong about the nature of the opposition suggested by this film.

Eli (twin of Paul who sells Plainview the information that leads him to enormous wealth and enormous personal failure and loss) does not represent mainstream religion. Eli’s Church of the 3rd Revelation is as independent and as ambitious (at least in Eli’s head and heart) as Plainview. And Eli, its very flawed prophet, draws motivation from two sorts of greed: greed for prestige and power and greed for cash. He leads a cult where he practices Ernest Aingley style exorcisms, and he attacks his father for a fool because he fell for Plainview’s snow job. Eli’s religion resembles Christianity, but strays–like many small American sects–very far from orthodoxy. The baptism features no water but invokes blood–over and over. Eli uses the baptism to avenge his humiliation–and material loss–by forcing Plainview’s public admission that he has abandoned his son. The parallel scene where Eli must recant his faith differs only in the pain we (at least I) feel for the victim and the outcome, which finally determines the central theme.
Woodward says this theme is the conflict of American capitalism and American religion. Because the religion (and the preacher) cannot represent a generalized American faith per se, I believe what Eli represents is the inadequacy of the entire 19th century agrarian culture to confront what they could plainly see was a potentially enormous evil, at the same time that they were seduced and subdued–bought off–by the potentially enormous profit (as opposed to prophet?), which they were too ignorant to realize they would never be allowed to share.

Day Lewis represents his character as a force of nature. His confessional scene with poor Henry presents a naturalistic analysis of himself: he is misanthropic, he wants “no one else” to succeed, he is single-minded. He was, we feel, closest to happiness alone in his hole with an axe and his urgent ambition. From that opening sequence through the explosion and fire that cost him so dearly, we see that he cannot turn away from his path. Essentially he has no idea what he would do if he were not digging holes, finding commodities and swindling their original and ill-informed owners. He admits as much to the oil tycoons who seek to buy him out, “What would I do?” he asks them. It’s not that he has no choice, but he chooses not to defy his nature. He simply lives out the revelation that is himself.

Single-mindedness does not characterize Eli. A twin whose “other half” apparently shared Plainview’s unsullied preference for material over spirit, Eli wants both. He claims to want money for a church, but the church is clearly (as we see from his splendid imitation of a televangelist operating on an arid plain in pre-electric culture) a vehicle to propel him into fame. But there is no doubt when we see his face gazing at the flaming derrick that he understands what is coming and realizes it will be cataclysmic. Other critics see him as entirely flawed. I see Eli as mixed. Weakness and hypocrisy triumph, but he has the intelligence to know a bad thing when he sees it–and the greed to want to take advantage of it anyway.

What this film presents to us is a grim thesis: there are people (men mostly) so possessed by the possibilities of enterprise and their own potential to dominate that no matter how clearly we see the tragedy in their wake we are powerless to stop or alter it. In fact, that tragedy will suck us into its sinfulness. Even H.W. (why doesn’t he have a real name?) who seems remarkably unsullied by his intimate contact with the diabolic Plainview, goes off to Mexico to start an oil company. Married in a much more mainstream church, he and his bride are the next generation and, like us, already inured to the essential tragedy in which they will now become the stars.

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