I watched the 2011 film version of Jane Eyre and instantaneously documented my unvarnished initial thoughts and reactions. I’ve never read the original book, nor know anything about the story, so it’s entirely fresh to me.
“What is hell?” the headmaster asks Jane. A pit of fire, she replies. But she really knew, as others have discovered, that hell is other people.
The schoolmarm pauses her whipping of another girl in class as the headmaster enters. “It is your mission to render her contrite and self-denying,” he says. “Continue.” Woo boy, this is gonna get ugly.
I’ve seen a face I won’t soon forget. It’s the face of an unsure redemption, of grace on the upswing. Of counting tenuous steps as tiny miracles. This face is a freshly washed used car whose surface is clean again, but whose frame within still carries the weather and rust. It’s a face leading a journey from point A to point B, its body taking those tenuous steps perhaps not for the first time, but nevertheless in abject terror. It’s a good thing this face is flexible, for its pieces can come together to form a portrait that is more pleasing and assured than the muddled innards it covers. A stoic smile, forward gaze, hopeful laughter—all evidence that the gears are turning still, that the car may be well used and probably unsellable but it is still a car on the move.
The face, you can see, is a powerful thing. I saw this power in the library the other day, on the train two years ago, and in the movie This Is Martin Bonner.
The man in the library came to the desk, to-go coffee cup in hand, with a question. “Where are your books about Alcoholics Anonymous?” I checked the catalog to see what we had in the stacks and we walked to 362, Social Welfare Problems & Services. “I have a meeting in an hour nearby and I just wanted something to read until then,” he said as I scanned the spines for what he wanted. A meeting? Oh. A meeting. He was unashamed to show that he meant AA, that these books weren’t for “a friend” or his mother. He was drinking coffee, going to the library, and then going to a meeting, all to make himself better. And he had that face in front of it all: sober in every way, clear-eyed, pragmatically hopeful, still emerging from the darkness but happy to do so.
I saw the same face on another man, but without the pat assurances of redemption. On a late train home I saw him sitting alone, he and I the only remaining riders in the barreling train car. His workman’s books, rugged jeans, and thick jacket told of hardy work and long days. His near-bald head was greyed along the sides, and his face—the face—was wrinkled by age and strain. But his eyes (isn’t it always the eyes?) told the rest of the story. They saw far beyond the train car he was riding with me through the darkness. They projected a hopeful vision of the near future, when he would leave the train and take a bus (or walk, or drive) to his final destination, a place that seemed especially trepidatious tonight. Whom was he going to see, and why? An estranged daughter he had wounded in too many ways? An ex-wife he wanted to win back? Whoever it was, they had his full attention. He clutched spiral notebooks, unfolding them now and again to sneak a peek, then closing them and trying to send his attention elsewhere. It was as if he had written carefully chosen remarks in those notebooks, a long-time-coming speech that would need to rectify whatever he was carrying that night from his past toward his approaching future. If his face indicated anything, it was his doubt of success. His fidgety hands preempted any attempt his face made to tell anything but the truth. And the truth was, as I saw it, he was terrified.
I saw the face, too, in Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner (2013), a serene and sure film about two men with a faith problem. Martin, a recently bankrupt former church business manager, is a volunteer coordinator for a religious non-profit that prepares inmates for life on the outside through a strenuous work program. The film opens with Martin pitching an inmate on joining the program, which emphasizes rebuilding the prisoners’ “commitment to community.” The inmate balks at this prospect: “What’s in it for me?” he asks with an edge.
Martin, it seems, could ask the same thing. Divorced, separated from his adult children, working for an organization whose faith he no longer holds, he gets through each lonely day with the face we have all worn at some point—the one that says I don’t know, but I’m trying. He buys art at auction and on eBay to decorate his barren abode. He attends (at his daughter’s behest) a speed-dating event despite strong reluctance and low expectations. He sits through a promotional video filled with earnest testimonials extolling the virtues of the inmate rehabilitation program, his stoic face belying his spiritual ennui.
Yet through all of this he becomes an unlikely refuge for Travis, a freshly paroled convict whom Martin picks up from prison. They go to a cafe and Travis tastes good coffee for the first time in years. It’s here we see in Travis’ face the dim light of renewal starting to emerge, the kindling dawn that trails a long, dark night. His face, cautious and humble, tells tales learned the hard way and behind bars as only small graces like good coffee can trigger. His past self—convicted of vehicular manslaughter twelve years ago—is gone. He has a new self now, but for what?
Travis dines with his assigned mentor, who in Travis’s words is “very Christian,” well-meaning and friendly but uncomfortably certain of his role as God’s disciple. When Martin and Travis meet again, Travis shares this with Martin and asks him, only half-jokingly, if he’s “very Christian” too.
“I’ve got a degree in theology and worked for the church for many years,” Martin deadpans.
“I should have known,” says Travis, resigned to more proselytizing.
“But that shouldn’t mean anything,” Martin replies. “I had what you call a ‘crisis of faith’ a few years ago. I woke up one Sunday morning and I didn’t want to go to church anymore. I felt I’d sacrificed enough of my life to God, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I woke up selfish and it hasn’t gone away.”
“So you quit the church?”
“No. I got fired for getting divorced.”
“And you still wanted to work for a Christian organization?”
“Frankly, Travis, they were the only people who would hire me. I applied for a manager’s position at Starbucks and couldn’t get an interview.”
I don’t know, but I’m trying.
Every day provides new opportunities for these men to struggle for tiny victories, for just a flicker of light to illuminate their darkened paths. Martin struggles to connect (quite literally) with his adult son, who for some reason won’t return Martin’s many calls. Finally, Martin receives a gift in the mail: a painting from his son, which might as well have been an olive branch. Similarly, Travis strives toward redemption in a meeting with his estranged daughter, who in his decade-long absence has grown into a young woman who doesn’t know her father. The conversation is awkward, stilted, each fumbling to connect with someone they know ought to love but can’t, at least not right now. Travis, desperate for his new life to begin, wants to make up for lost time, but his daughter, though willing to have a relationship, still wants to take it slow.
I don’t know, but I’m trying.
I could be wrong about these men and their faces. I don’t know their lives truly. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to see, and projected onto their faces stories I wanted to believe but didn’t know for sure were true. I was happy for the man killing time in the library before another chair circle, another Serenity Prayer, and another day in the struggle, but I could be wrong about him. I was hopeful for the man on the train whose destination I did not know but whose sincerity in getting there was evident, but I could be wrong about him too. And I was glad to see the two men in This Is Martin Bonner find each other as they traversed with fear and trembling the tightrope between faith and doubt, but perhaps another viewer would see in them something entirely different.
With respect to the late, great Roger Ebert, I’m taking the name of his memoir and biographical documentary and giving it instead to Richard Linklater’s new epic novel of a film, for it is Life Itself.
Boyhood chronicles the young life of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who at the film’s beginning is a six-year-old on his back, gazing up at a blue sky. He’s in trouble at school for shoving rocks into a classroom pencil sharpener — not because he wanted to destroy it, but because, he tells his mom after she leaves the principal’s office, he thought he could make arrowheads for his burgeoning collection. Such a small moment of innocent longing comes to typify Mason and his journey, which we get to witness throughout the rest of the film’s twelve-year time frame.
Most Hollywood biopics take the “greatest hits” view of their subject’s life. They often glide over childhood to establish some running themes before skipping to adulthood to get to the “real” or familiar story: J. Edgar and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom are recent examples of this. But Linklater, he of the intimately expansive Before series, he’s a deep-cut kind of guy. Rather than, say, making a pit stop in childhood on the way to adulthood — where supposed Important Things happen and Life Lessons are learned — it’s as if he rented a place in town so he could stay as long as necessary to really understand where he was, akin to a documentarian or journalist. Linklater the director seems not like the guy at the party who enters with a bang and works the room all night with a procession of drinks in hand, but the one in the corner talking to one person all night about everything — mutual acquaintances, pop culture arcana, and the familiar tropes of life we often don’t know we share with others until we share them with others. He has an eye trained on the truth.
Boyhood unveils its truths deliberately and episodically, year after year adding new dispatches from the front lines of Mason’s life. These dispatches are often celebratory, sometimes jarring, but mostly they catalog life’s banalities, the tiny triumphs and tragedies that accumulate into something approaching a story. In an interview with The Dissolve, Linklater says Boyhood is “all about the little things that don’t have a place in a movie. … This is all the shit they cut out of [a] movie.” This isn’t Beatles 1, a compilation of greatest hits with all the very best the band offered; it’s the Anthology series, a deep dive into the band’s catalog that juxtaposes alternate cuts of the classics hits with obscure and ordinary songs that never get radio play.
The film zooms in to the granular level and stays there, preferring to consider some of the moments that won’t make the slideshow at high school graduation. He makes a virtue out of seeing the cosmic in the quotidian, not unlike, as Brett McCracken noted, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which considers similar connections between a Texas boyhood and the cosmos. Malick employs a much greater visual artistry than Linklater does in general, and with Boyhood specifically, but both filmmakers are concerned with the long game. They delight in capturing the beauty of detail and the rich story such details can tell.
Boyhood captures not just a person but a time and a place. The film is indeed the step-by-step story of a boy’s emerging from boyhood, but it is also a profile of a place. In the literal sense this place is Texas, where Mason — an often frustrated member of an itinerant family — lives in various homes and goes to various schools, haunting the backyards, basements, and back alleys that seem to draw boys in their restless wandering. In another sense the place of boyhood is psychological: it’s a confining, often confusing place where hyperactivity is stifled, where self-determination is chimerical, where the specter of sexuality haunts every interaction with girls and informs (poorly) the vulgar sex talks with other boys, where you’re constantly being told what to do, and where your well-being is almost always at the whim of adults who may or may not deserve such a vital power.
I’m very familiar with the place Boyhood lives in. Excepting a few key differences, I saw so many moments in Mason’s story, little and large, that harmonized with my own.
When as Mason’s mom drove him and his sister away to a new city he saw his neighborhood friend biking behind them as a last goodbye, I saw in my mind the dreadful day my childhood best friend from down the street moved away with his family, and the weekend before when we had one last sleepover and wore our Batman pajamas and wrestled with my dad.
When Mason aloofly played video games on an enormous Apple iMac G3, I saw my fifth-grade computer lab where I wrote a short story about mice playing games and found refuge from my teacher who assigned essays as punishment for peccadillos instead of for teaching us how to write better.
When Mason and his step-siblings were barred from drinking soda by an oppressive father yet in the next scene walked home from school with Cokes proudly in hand, I felt the exhilaration of sneaking to Walgreen’s one summer with my friend to buy candy forbidden by his mother and eating it all in a fury before returning home.
When Mason’s biological dad brought him to an Astros game against the Brewers, I reminisced about trips with my own dad to County Stadium (and then Miller Park) in Milwaukee to see those very Brewers and get autographs during batting practice in between stadium hot dogs.
When Mason entered middle school and hung with kids who clearly were bad influences on him yet offered friendship and camaraderie in the fight against the seeping oppression of puberty, I remembered my own struggles with peer pressure and in crafting an identity that fit in the nebulous space between family, friends, and myself.
When Mason’s high-school photography teacher lectured him condescendingly in the dark room about his aimlessness and impractically whimsical photos, I recalled clashing with a teacher freshman year who was as frustrated by my antagonistic apathy as I was by her overbearing personality.
When I saw Boyhood, I saw my life itself. I saw an hourglass full of sand that drains way too quickly. I saw how every little moment is another grain we can add to give us a little more time, but only if we take the time to appreciate them. “Love all of God’s creation,” exhorts The Tree of Life, “both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love.”
Driving to college through the Texas desert, Mason stops at a gas station to fill up. He pulls out his camera and starts shooting the little things he sees around him: the architecture, the people, the sky… photography teacher be damned. Once again he’s the daydreaming kid considering the clouds, but now with the accumulated knowledge from a boyhood survived. He’ll soon be filing dispatches from new places — college, career, marriage, fatherhood — ever adding to the hourglass new grains of sand, each a story of life in itself.
Alyssa Vincent (Twitter) and I go way back to our college days, where we were fellow English majors and worked as co-editors-in-chief of our school newspaper. When we were emailing about her contributing to the second issue of the Simba Life Quarterly, I made an allusion to The Fault In Our Stars, which elicited a strongly worded retort very much in the negative about the John Green mega-best-selling book. Intrigued, I suggested we hash it out over Google Chat. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our (slightly obscene) conversation, which powered through a few bouts of spotty WiFi to touch on the effects and implications of the TFIOS phenomenon.
Alyssa: No. He is not. It’s impossible for a boy to be a manic pixie, because a manic pixie fulfills someone else’s destiny, or helps them achieve it. Gus could be a manic pixie dream boy for himself, but I don’t know if that could actually work. I already sound like a kooky feminist (HUZZAH), but in literature, male characters are rarely going to help female characters get along. Unless it’s Peeta in Hunger Games.
Chad: But isn’t that what happened? Poor (Understandably) Sad Hazel has her spirits lifted by goofy, positive cute boy who helps her discover the meaning of life.
Alyssa: But her spirits aren’t lifted! HE DIES. OK, they’re temporarily lifted, but a manic pixie never leaves their mark unhappy. She may be ~**happy**~ because she has felt love, but she’s immediately sad because it’s been taken from her. (Quick note: have you read the book or seen the movie? I’ve done the book but not the movie.)
Chad: I’ve consumed both. I realized after watching it, though, that in the future I think I’ll pass on reading books before seeing the movie if I can help it. Since I knew what was coming, it was hard to fully engage with the film and let it be what it wanted to be. As librarians we know that the book is always better than the movie, so I think both should get their fair shake. I’m curious as to what triggered your very visceral, expletive-laden reaction to it.
Alyssa: PEOPLE THINK HE IS ROMANTIC BUT HE IS JUST SAYING ROMANTIC SHIT AT HER RATHER THAN ENGAGING WITH HER. That is not love. Love is not saying someone’s full name and pushing yourself on her even though it’s pretty clear she doesn’t want a relationship. But fuck her boundaries! She wants love, she JUST DOESN’T KNOW IT. And EVEN WHEN HE DIES, he’s basically just like “Ugh, my life meant nothing because all I did was nothing.” All while Hazel’s like “My life meant everything because of you!” CLASSIC.
Chad: I think this book/movie suffered from the Twilight Syndrome: a plain, depressed girl with low self-esteem and a charisma vacuum has a shallow yet (to her) powerful encounter with a supposedly charming, good-looking dude who notices her. While Hazel’s transition to True Love took a bit longer than Bella’s, it seemed like an equally low bar that she needed to hit.
Alyssa: Exactly. And thank you for saying “supposedly” charming. Because that’s exactly what he is. He’s well-read—good for him! I’m not about to be like “OMG WHAT HIGH SCHOOLER EVEN SAYS THE SHIT HE DOES,” but what bothered me was her complete lack of engagement with it. She smiles, and that’s great, but we’re treated to such a clever girl who’s basically downgraded to fun retorts every so often in Gus’ wake.
Chad: Which causes me to wonder whether this is another example of adolescent girl wish-fulfillment in disguise of a putative love story. They’re high schoolers! Like Romeo and Juliet, if they had survived I’m guessing they wouldn’t have lasted long.
Alyssa: Ooooo, good call. I guess on a bigger level that’s what worries me about these books. Not like books are the only way for kids to learn things, but how are girls supposed to have real relationships when they’re presented with this shit?
Chad: And your quibble about Gus’s charm and eloquence is on point, though perhaps directed at the wrong target. From the little young adult literature I’ve read, teens who talk way more eloquently than in real life seems to be the status quo.
Alyssa: I think it was exacerbated in this book. I’ve read a bit of YA, and while the kids are clever, they’re never this blasé about it. And we can’t chalk that all up to “Well, he had CANCER so he’s so mature.”
Chad: While he did seem to be a better-than-life character, I recognized his type as the goofy, likable guy in high school that everyone pretty much liked, including the teachers. As was the case with Sutter in The Spectacular Now, I was glad to see an un-Edward-like male character.
Alyssa: Really? I have to see TSN, but I feel like Gus would look down his nose at Sutter. But that’s neither here nor there, since I can’t back that up with actual facts. Yes, it’s awesome to see a diversity (at least in personality) of male characters as they relate to women. And I will applaud John Green on the book-realistic sex scene. I think that if you really love the person you first have sex with, that’s basically how it goes down.
Chad: Clearly I’m not the target audience for this property, but I’m baffled by its mega-success. Perhaps John Green’s deep cult following helped elevate it. It hit a nerve somewhere for the legions of tween and teen girls who eat this stuff up. What’s the appeal in this book specifically?
Alyssa: I’m wondering the same thing. I picked the book up because it came out right near the tail end of my MLS schoolin’, and all the YA librarians were LOSING THEIR SHIT OVER IT. I think the appeal might lie in the fact that he’s a funny, nice, super-cute guy who is into a “plain” girl who’s very smart. And if there’s something that plain tweens comfort themselves with, it’s a) that they’re smarter than the pretty girls, and b) that a boy will finally notice them for that before college. That sounds so mean, but I would also sign that comment with “xoxo, a plain former middle-schooler.” Really, I think it’s the idea of a boy wanting to talk to you about what you’re interested in. For all the shit I give Gus, he read a book that was very important to her. For girls of all ages, that is total catnip.
Chad: How would Middle School Alyssa have reacted to it?
Alyssa: I WOULD HAVE LOVED IT. Honestly, I really think I would have. I’m a little cynical to his comments now, but I think I would have told my stuffed animals “See! He’s out there! There’s a funny, nice boy who likes reading as much as I do who’s going to love me forever!”
Chad: Naturally I see things from the male perspective, and as a young lad I think I would have seen Gus as a cool, nice, fun guy who got the girl because he was himself and actively sought her. Big difference from the angsty bad-boy types who were terrible role models yet still got the hot babes. Sure, he was pretty driven in his quest, but what did Hazel lose from being with him? (Aside from him.)
Alyssa: I don’t disagree with you. It is great to see two people who are honestly being themselves come together. That’s hard enough to have happen in real life. I guess I just feel for Hazel because Gus needed to be the star. Hazel is the type of person that would happily hold the spotlight, but I guess I wish she wasn’t? That she somehow also wanted to be the star? But then that’s total projection, and not fair to the story.
Chad: I also saw a bit of myself in Hazel. For a long time I tended to be a “no” person, preferring to do more solitary things and enjoy being introverted. But it was, of all things, watching the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man that helped to jumpstart me out of that. He was the same way: always saying no to things out of fear, worry, or boredom. But that leads to a small, lonely life. Though it was the Queen of the Manic Pixie Dream Girls herself, Zooey Deschanel, who helped pull him out of his existential funk, I sympathized with his, and likewise Hazel’s, journey from a sedentary, insular person to someone who would do crazy things like go to Amsterdam.
Alyssa: I think I just can’t get over their supposed “banter.” I’m not against a driven dude, but I guess I viewed early-book Gus the same way I view a cocky guy at a bar. Like, Cool it, dude. I know I’m hot and funny. Maybe give me a chance to know you before you launch into another soliloquy?
Chad: I struggled with the banter too. Again, that seems endemic to YA. I really struggled with Eleanor & Park for that reason. (I also struggled with Eleanor’s very tortured inner monologue, yet TFIOS was a much easier read for me despite still having a female protagonist.)
Alyssa: Another one I have to pick up. And I applaud that reading of it—that who cares if he’s a little grandiose—she came out of her shell and she’s better for letting her life be touched by someone. I guess I just wish the genre could fast forward to a time where we see a teen girl opened up by something other than a boy. Why can’t it be a movie? Or a book? For a few moments, I thought the book that meant so much to her would… do more? Be more? But it just ends up being a device in her relationship. I’m not trying to be like “down with people!”, but I do think it’s super dangerous to have girls think that the only way their worlds can be shaken (in a good way) is by romantic love. It’s not the only thing. That’s something I tell myself a lot, because I met Kurt (fairly) young, and it changed so many things in my life that I find myself trying to remember the other ways in which life changes. And I think more girls need to know those ways.
Chad: Clearly as a culture we’re still trying to shake off the Disney pixie dust that has clogged romantic storytelling for decades. But like glitter, that stuff does not come out easily. I thought having the book being central to her identity was a great step forward. Who was the last young female protagonist for whom that was the case? Belle loved reading, but it’s not like the Beast helped her reenact scenes from Shakespeare. Hazel had a very keen interest, Gus (sincerely) took effort to share in it, and they were both better for it, despite being grenades.
Alyssa: OH MY GOD CAN WE STOP WITH THE GRENADES.
Chad: It’s a metaphor. Get it?
Alyssa: UGH YES. You do not have exploding cancer. I appreciate that that was probably the most teenager-y thing either of them thought, but still. I definitely agree that it’s important that a book played a central role in her identity! It’s great! But it’s not enough.
Chad: You don’t think people with terminal illnesses worry about their effect on their loved ones?
Alyssa: Honestly, I don’t know how younger people with terminal illnesses react. I’m not saying that they don’t worry about their effect, but I don’t think it becomes their whole lives. Now, do I think Hazel has a personality that lends itself more to that more solitary “I’m gonna hurt everyone so I should keep to myself” assumption? Yes. But I don’t think that’s true of all people.
Chad: I do hope more female-driven, non-romantic stories get made in every medium. Frozen had the romantic element, but at least the sister dynamic was front and center. (A conversation for another day, to be sure.) TFIOS didn’t break through as far as you would have liked, but to me it went a little farther than you give it credit for. Though maybe a little far at the Anne Frank museum.
Alyssa: RIGHT OH MY GOD. Though again, I thought that that might be something teens would do. I sound so old. I’ll admit that this conversation has me seeing it a little more fairly, but my first (and likely only) read just had me sort of thinking “Um, I can’t take this smooth of a talker-atter seriously.” And I probably should have, but it’s just a tic I have. Boys: STOP TALKING AT GIRLS.
Chad: I’m with you there. I’m suspicious of anyone who talks that much with that much eloquent banter, let alone a high school athlete who loves violent books. I knew those types of guys. Some of those guys were friends of mine. Gus, you’re not one of those guys.
Alyssa: Exactly. So that’s where the book lost me from start to finish.
Chad: I had to keep saying to myself that “This movie is not for me.” This shouldn’t excuse the filmmakers and John Green from making something excellent, but there’s a difference, from goal and execution, between TFIOS and 12 Years A Slave. Same with the book too. The recent “Should adults read YA?” debate brought all this out onto the Internet. Should we hold YA to a different standard?
Alyssa: I had such a hard time with that article. Because the core of her argument is ridiculous: just like 13-year-olds probably won’t get a lot out of Anna Karenina (though they could technically read it), adults may not get a lot out of 13 Reasons Why. I don’t know if it’s about a different standard. I mean, I think it’s more about why you’re reading a book. More often than not, I’m reading a book to be a) challenged or b) entertained, or c) both. As long as a book does that, it’s been worth my time. But I do understand that people have much more developed standards than me. In terms of 12 Years A Slave and Anna Karenina, I worry that those types of works get credit immediately because they’re about difficult subject matter. Do they really deserve credit? Or are people just nervous about “not getting it”?
Chad: Yeah, there’s plenty of material for adults that just sucks.
Alyssa: I think that’s why adults reading YA is such an easy target—like, how could “kids books” teach you ANYTHING or be good at all unless you’re simple?
Chad: Whatever I’m reading, I want to learn from it. I’ve also concluded that I’ll read for myself, because I want to. Reading TFIOS allowed me to learn what young people (pass my false teeth, grandma) want to read. Even if it sucks, it tells us something about them. My response to the article was that adults should definitely read YA, the good stuff at least, but that they shouldn’t stay in it. There are SO MANY BOOKS out there, especially for adults. Expand your horizon!
Alyssa: No, absolutely. I find it weird when people are like “Well, I only read mysteries/YA/chick lit/ETC.” Um, really?
Chad: I felt compelled to read Eleanor & Park and TFIOS because they were high in the zeitgeist and I wanted to challenge myself to read something other than history or nonfiction. But I don’t see myself going down that road. They are also easy reads, so after a hefty history tome they are welcome palette cleaners.
Alyssa: I dip my toes into YA every so often, but I feel like I need something more to chew on. That makes me sound like the insufferable Slate writer, but I didn’t really read YA when I was a young adult, so it makes sense to me that I wouldn’t be drawn to it now.
Chad: Which is why I’m generally OK with TFIOS selling a bajillion copies. If young’uns or even adults read it, who knows where it could lead them?
Alyssa: Exactly! And like you said, the characters are better than what’s been going on in the past, so at least it’s forward motion.
A passage early on in Paul Elie’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own popped out when I first read it and stuck with me as I watched Darren Aronofsky’s remarkable Noah.
Elie’s book chronicles the intersecting lives and spiritual journeys of four influential Catholic writers: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. I’m still working my way through it, but from the get-go I was hooked by Elie’s weaving narrative of literature, faith, and pilgrimage in the lives of these four exceptional figures. The passage that stood out to me described a moment in Dorothy Day’s bohemian days in New York City as a young socialist and hard partier. She was returning home at dawn from another booze-soaked bacchanalia when she felt inspired to stop at St. Joseph’s Church for the 5 a.m. Mass:
She knelt in a pew near the back and collected her thoughts. She was twenty-one years old. All her life she had been haunted by God. God was behind her. God loomed before her. Now she felt hounded toward Him, as though toward home; now she longed for an end to the wavering life in which she was caught. …
For the time being, she began to pray. “Perhaps I asked even then, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’” Perhaps she told herself, kneeling there, that “I would have to stop to think, to question my own position: ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him, O Lord?’ What were we here for, what were we doing, what was the meaning of our lives?”
I wonder now if Aronofsky read this book while working on Noah, because the same thoughts that haunted Day also haunt Aronofsky’s Noah. Except the God that Dorothy Day sought and implored and felt haunted by was not the same God that Noah knew. God is known in the film as The Creator, the celestial deity that everyone in this ancient time knew to be the creator of the world and everything in it. The Creator is everywhere and is in everything. (“God was behind her. God loomed before her.”) And this Creator haunts Noah: with dreams of a great flood; with preternatural visions showing the weight of sin on the world; and with an overwhelming mandate from above to carry out justice on the wicked.
How Noah and his family deal with this is one of the key threads of this film, a miracle of a movie. I call it a miracle not to discount the massive amount of creative work put in by Aronofsky and his team to get it on the screen, nor to minimize the miraculous works from scripture depicted in the film; it’s a miracle because it’s good.
Again, I’m not discrediting Aronofky’s directorial prowess. The opposite, in fact. Christian movies (rather, movies made by Christians with explicit Christian messages marketed chiefly to Christian audiences) just aren’t that good. They too often focus on the transmitting the message (or The Message) instead of making good art. But great films can do both well without sacrificing either. Films like Noah and The Tree of Life and Short Term 12 and Ikiru and Into Great Silence and Winter Light and so many others aren’t worried about whether viewers “get” the message. They are art. They are beautifully created, and they are OK with asking questions and not hearing back about them. They ought to haunt you as they are haunted, by something deeper and bigger than themselves.
I’m grateful to Aronofsky for rendering this story for the screen with such theological savvy and care for craft. Noah isn’t perfect, but neither was Noah. Yet the Creator used him anyway. And why that is haunts me.
I watched this video from the 2005 Oscars to remember the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, but was reminded when watching it that Heath Ledger was also up for the award that year. And now both men are gone. When an old actor dies we can look back fondly on his career and be grateful for seeing him perform for so long. But when young and gifted men like Hoffman and Ledger died so suddenly, tragically, prematurely, it hurts.
As when Ledger died, when I heard the news of Hoffman’s fatal overdose I mourned not only for his family and friends, but also for the roles he’ll never have. Both men had come so far and done so much, even as relatively young men, yet still had so far to go. Cinema will miss them dearly, and so will I.
I tried something different with my recent 2013 Omnilist, naming 13(ish) of my favorite films, books, TV shows, and albums from the last year instead of a traditional top-10 list for each medium. But in that process I had to cut out a lot of films from the final list I otherwise would have loved to highlight. Here, then, are the movies from 2013 I loved a lot, but not quite enough to get on the podium.
Frozen Delightful soundtrack, beautiful setting, and charming voice work (especially by Kristen Bell and Josh Gad). It duplicates the Tangled model, while actually being better than Tangled. I’ve written before about the power certain types of music, especially the showtune kind, can have over me; Frozenhits that sweet spot often. It’s no surprise that Disney is turning it into a stage musical on the quick. I’ll be there.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Like most people, I thought this was much better than the first movie in the series. Like any good sequel, the stakes are higher and we get to see different dimensions of Katniss and Peeta as they struggle with new challenges. Plus: Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The Hunt I really should have included this on the 2013 Omnilist, but something had to give. Mads Mikkelsen, who previously played the oily villain in Casino Royale, shows tremendous range in this film from Denmark (an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language) about a schoolteacher who is accused of pedophilia. His guilt is never assured, so the small Danish village he lives in slowly turns against him and fuels his emotional disintegration. Moments of paranoia and indignation mix with flashes of grace from unlikely places, creating a gripping story in the tradition of Hitchcock’s “the wrong man” chases.
Inside Llewyn Davis This latest Coen Bros. fare would pair nicely with Frances Ha, another story of a twentysomething New York artist struggling to get by and get on, in a “Sign of the Times, 2013 edition” double feature. Llewyn is much less likable than Frances, but likability isn’t often a priority Joel and Ethan Coen have for their protagonists. That didn’t stop me from rooting for him—to make better decisions, to be a better human being. We all can be Llewynesque sometimes: flailing, stubborn, unable or unwilling to see the good in life or in other people. But if we stay that way too long, we too will find ourselves (spoiler alert) knocked out in a dank alley, watching someone else take center stage while we remain stuck in a purgatorial loop. I suppose the only cure is to listen to the film’s excellent soundtrack.
Love Is All You Need I usually have a pretty good idea about movies in theaters that I want to see, but this one came out of nowhere. Pierce Brosnan stars as an irascible divorcé whose son is marrying the daughter of Ida, a cheerful Danish hairdresser who caught her husband cheating. The two meet for the first time at the wedding in Italy and form an unlikely bond that develops throughout the often uncomfortable wedding festivities. Unlike many clichéd rom-coms, this film’s conclusion felt earned. It was a pleasure watching two diametrically different people come together in an uncontrived and sweet way.
Mud Matthew McConaughey is having quite the moment. His performances in The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Clubs are getting a lot of attention, but his turn as a mysterious Arkansan drifter in this Jeff Nichols flick is just as magnetic. Likewise, the two boys who discover Mud squatting in an abandoned boat on an island in the Mississippi River hold their own against McConaughey, who is on the lam but looking to reconnect with his old flame. Mud lives in the same charged atmosphere of Nichols’ previous great films (2007’s Shotgun Stories and 2011’s Take Shelter), where the characters fight mysterious and deadly forces.
Prince Avalanche I’ve never seen a David Gordon Green picture before this one, so when people say it’s a return to form for him, I’ll believe it and consider it a compliment. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are an odd but alchemic pairing of laborers repainting traffic lines in the wildfire-ravaged Texas countryside and struggling to reconcile their eccentricities and frustrations. It’s a spartan production with an emotional core, and Paul Rudd, in an uncharacteristically dramatic role, makes it happen.
The Spectacular Now One of the better high school movies I’ve seen, in that it captured that time honestly. I wasn’t like Sutter at all, but I knew kids like him in high school. I was more like Amy, the shy observant type who was attracted to people who seemed to live more interesting lives. Of course, Sutter’s popular-guy routine belied his budding alcoholism and strained relationship with his deadbeat dad, personal problems that caused him to make a number of bad decisions. But that’s high school, right?
Stories We Tell Not quite sure how this documentary didn’t get an Oscar nomination, but it will live on regardless as a story that is both unique and ordinary. Director Sarah Polley tells the story of her life through interviews with her family, weaving in reenactments with home videos and talking heads while also dissecting the medium of storytelling itself. Having just completed an oral history of my grandmother’s life, for which I combined interviews with her and over two dozen family and friend to tell the story of her life, I applaud her attempt to create a clean yet complex narrative out of a messy life.
The World’s End As someone who didn’t enjoy Hot Fuzz as much as Shaun of the Dead, I thought this was a return to the excellent mix of quick wit and cultural commentary Simon Pegg & Co do so well. One of the funnest and funniest moviegoing experiences I had in 2013.
Standard operating procedure for making year-end culture lists says to rank your ten favorite films/albums/books, but I’ve recently soured against this convention. Choosing a pre-determined number of “the best” among many great works, as all award shows do, is great entertainment but entirely arbitrary. So this time around, I decided to institute my own arbitrary yet entertaining convention of naming the best 13 films, albums, and books from 2013 I encountered last year.
This omnilist honors the fact that consuming art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I don’t wait to watch a movie until I finish reading a book, or until I’ve listened all the way through an album. These things happen concurrently, swirling around my head and heart together like cultural stew. With that in mind, I heard, saw, and read a lot in 2013, but these are the ingredients (divided by form and alphabetized) that came together the best in 2013.
Books
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield I followed Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut and ISS commander, on Twitter during his mission last year. In addition to the beautiful ISS-view photos of cities he’d frequently post, Hadfield made several short videos documenting how quotidian tasks like cutting fingernails and using the toilet are accomplished in zero gravity. Likewise, his memoir brought his life as a pilot and astronaut down to earth, describing the lessons on leadership, work, and sacrifices he’s learned both on this earth and outside of it. Entertaining, informative, and very insightful, this book shows that Neil DeGrasse Tyson isn’t the only Space Publicist out there.
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher I heard about this book after I started reading Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative. At times memoir, biography, history, and cultural commentary, Little Way documents Dreher’s struggle to come to peace with the small Louisiana hometown he fled, and his saintly sister Ruthie, a schoolteacher who happily stayed put. When Ruthie gets terminal cancer, Dreher sees how the town he couldn’t wait to leave rally around his sister and her family, leading him on his own emotionally-fraught journey home. Dreher writes honestly, lovingly, and critically of his sister while pondering the true meaning of home.
The Ocean at the End of the Laneby Neil Gaiman This was the first book I read in my nine-novel November marathon, and it ended up being one of my favorites. It also initiated me into the Gaiman oeuvre, something I’m keen on exploring more after reading this novel. The prose’s lean style allowed the fantastical elements of the story to interplay nicely with the more grounded parts, like the boy’s interactions with his father and the new woman in his life. I often forget how life could seem more terrifying as a child, but I forget just as often that we undervalue the strength that kids have to overcome that terror.
Unapologeticby Francis Spufford I found this very much of a feather with N.D. Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, another whirlwind theology book I read this year. While I also enjoy the earnest, intellectual theological writings of C.S. Lewis and the like, books like this one breathe much-needed fresh air into the faith-based discourse that can often come off as stuffy and anticultural. This is a book of and for the heart. Spufford isn’t asking if we can believe the reality of God; he’s asking if we can feel it. The Message translation of the Bible set out to rewrite the scriptures in contemporary language to keep its message “current and fresh and understandable,” but I think Unapologetic does this far better.
12 Years A Slave It’s hard to avoid the trap of talking about a film like this in award-season terms, judging its quality and worth by its viability as an award contender. This film is and will be an award-winner, but that descriptor in itself doesn’t say much about the tense, focused interpretation of Solomon Northup by Chiwetel Ejiofor, or Michael Fassbender’s typically immersive and impressive performance as a strident slaveowner. Two decades before the Civil War, Northup fought against the dehumanizing institution of slavery as an unwilling combatant, a Northern free man in a Southern slave’s shoes. If Abraham Lincoln became the biggest political lever of the Civil War, then Northup was the fulcrum. This film duly honors the pressure and pain Northup endured serving as the metaphorical fulcrum of the struggle against slavery’s destructive regime.
Before Midnight When I saw this with Jenny in Chicago this summer, we got to the showing a few minutes early and walked into the theater. The movie was already playing, which I found odd since I knew we were a bit early. But we sat down and watched what we soon figured out was the very last scene. Lightbulb: we were in the wrong screening room. We went to the correct room and watched it from the beginning, but I found this snafu altogether fitting: seeing the end of this film at the beginning echoed the start of the whole Before trilogy, which found Jesse trying to convince Celine, despite all the odds and circumstances, to take a chance on him. Kudos to Richard Linklater & Co for making this beautifully wrenching and wrenchingly beautiful series happen.
Gravity Though another (very fine) 2013 film already has this title, Gravity could have just as easily been named The Spectacular Now. For all its fireworks and heart-pounding brinksmanship and wide-eyed views of Earth and outer space, Gravity never departs from the now, the relentlessly present moment Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s astronauts are experiencing. Director Alfonso Cuarón grabs hold of us right away and says, Betterhold on… and we do, barely.But the spectacle of the ensuing ninety minutes, for me, wasn’t just a nonstop roller-coaster (which it pretty much was), but a series of beautiful images like the one at top: Bullock’s capsule, accompanied by flaming space debris, catapulting toward Earth like a chariot of fire.
Her In a year full of thoughtful, challenging films, this one has inspired the most post-viewing contemplation. It’s a kind of Rorschach test for the digital age: when you see this story of a broken, unsocial man who is befriended by, then falls in love with, a highly intelligent and customized operating system, do you think it’s a dream or a nightmare? Does this futuristic fable portend the end of human interaction, or does it show technology’s restorative promise? That the similarities between Her‘s near-future setting and the present day are so many—the constant connection to mobile devices, the self-imposed social isolation—suggests that we don’t have to wait for the future to answer that question.
Like Someone In Love I don’t watch horror films because I don’t want to be haunted. Little did I know that Abbas Kiarostami’s follow-up to Certified Copy would be as haunting as anything I’ve seen in a while. There’s nothing paranormal in this Tokyo drama, but rather a fraught, mysterious air that permeates the simple story of an elderly widower connecting with a prostitute in unexpected ways. Like This Is Martin Bonner (below), the restraint Kiaronstami shows tightens everything on screen like a vice. No shot or line of dialogue is wasted. (This was released in 2012 but not in the U.S. until 2013).
Short Term 12 If Her is for the brain, then Short Term 12 is for the heart. This portrait of the staff and patrons of a short-term foster care facility for at-risk teens focuses on Brie Larson’s Grace, but moves around the facility’s sphere, capturing connections between Grace and the kids, and between the kids themselves. When Grace’s own troubled past starts hijacking her attempts to guide the teens through their own crises, her tough shell starts to crack. In addition to having young actors who can actually act, this movie sympathizes with the risk opening up requires.
This Is Martin Bonner “I’m inclined to believe that director Chad Hartigan is some kind of superman when it comes to restraint.” That was critic Jeffrey Overstreet (who has been a particularly passionate supporter of this film) on This Is Martin Bonner, which follows a pastor and a prisoner on their interweaving paths through life. Overstreet rightly praises the film’s restraint, which other faith-based films often lack. But the faith in This Is Martin Bonner isn’t didactic or caricatured; it’s real, which means it’s messy and imperfect but infused with love. This is currently available on Netflix, so see it while you can.
TV
House of Cards Like any good work of art, House of Cards rewards repeated viewings. Knowing the full trajectory of the first season allowed me, when rewatching it, to see all of Frank Underwood’s gears turning as his master plan progressed. It’s also a visual feast, taking the noir aesthetic from the David Fincher-directed pilot and propelling us further into the dark underworld of politics and power-wielding. Not sure if I have Valentine’s Day plans yet, but I hope season 2 will be part of them.
Music
Lucius EP by Lucius & Days Are Gone by Haim (I’m cheating here by listing two separate albums in one slot: my omnilist, my rules.) Wedding receptions are pretty much the only place I full-on dance. But when listening to Lucius and Haim, I can’t help myself. How can you not move and sing along to the Michael Jackson-flavored “Falling”? Or to Lucius’ “Turn It Around”? If women-powered dance rock groups is becoming a trend, consider this guy on the bandwagon.
I was having a bad day. And then I saw 12 Years A Slave and regained some perspective.
Director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s incredible memoir was remarkable in its restraint. Though a strange thing to say about a film that has been lauded for depicting the horrors of slavery accurately and harrowingly, it’s not surprising given McQueen’s adeptness in showing versus telling, and capturing a moment’s deeper truth without resorting to platitudes or judgement.
An example (with spoilers): years after being kidnapped and sold into slavery, Northup meets a white man who is serving as an indentured field hand on the same plantation. Downtrodden after years of humiliation and forced labor, Northup finally works up the courage to ask the white man whether he would be willing to send a letter for Northup without telling his plantation master. The man agrees but quickly betrays Northup, which almost gets him killed by his sadistic, mercurial master if not for Northup’s quick wit and evasion. Nonetheless, McQueen shows Northup burning the letter, focusing on his face as the light from the alit letter — his desperate grasp at liberation — slowly extinguishes, along with his dwindling hope.
It’s a small moment, played beautifully by Chiwetel Ejiofor, that in other directorial hands could have been something lesser, like the protagonist shaking his fists at the sky or angrily monologuing. Instead, it was the perfect image of what slavery’s power did to beat down the slave’s hope and determination for freedom. Northup overcomes this oppression, but he was fortunate compared to his fellow slaves.
The film is full of other subtly strong moments like this, driven by a cast of heavy-hitters. It also follows Northup’s memoir very well, though I hope viewers will be compelled to go back to the book to read the details of this story in Northup’s strong literary voice.
And you’ll see the glitter of crashing cymbals and you’ll hear the thunder of rolling drums and the shimmer of trumpets. Ta-ta-ta! And you’ll feel something akin to the electric thrill that I once enjoyed. — “Seventy Six Trombones” from The Music Man
How does God speak? Through nature, according to the book of Job. Through Jesus and a holy spirit, says the New Testament. But ask Rachel, a teenaged fundamentalist Mormon who believes she has experienced an immaculate conception in Rebecca Thomas’ 2012 film Electrick Children, and she would tell you God spoke to her through a song.
On a rustic Utah compound, Rachel, dressed in plain Amish-type clothing, lives simply and dutifully within her Mormon sect’s rigid culture. On the day she undergoes “ecclesiastical interview” by her pious father that is documented on a tape recorder, the existence of which she only then learned. The device is intriguing and mysterious, but according to her pious father, “can be used for evil” and must be guarded only by those who can be trusted.
But when Rachel can’t shake the allure of this (to her) new thing, she does what many teenagers do when confronted with the forbidden fruit: she breaks the rules. Picking out a cassette seemingly at random, she sneaks a listen of The Nerves’ 1976 song “Hanging On the Telephone” (covered by Flowers Forever) and is immediately transfixed. It’s like lightning through her body, an electric thrill that fills her with a spirit she hasn’t known before.
Weeks later, her thoughts (via narration) are told as if recorded onto a tape. “A few weeks ago, I experienced a miracle. An angelic voice came unto me and when I heard it, I was troubled… The only voice I heard was from a song on a tape. Could it be that he did this to me? This wonderful blessing of heavenly light. The voice that sang those words, wonder and spirit: Don’t leave me haaaaaaaaaangin’ on the teeeeelephone. Is he the one who felled me with this Jesus baby?” Juxtaposed with a telling of the story of Mary’s virgin birth, Rachel’s symptoms of pregnancy allude to a possibility too confounding to believe.
But it’s a possibility that her father does not believe, which leads Rachel to flee from an arranged shotgun wedding out into Las Vegas, the wilderness of civilization to her. “I travel beyond the walls of a home I cannot again call my home, in search of the father of my holy child — the man who sings on the cassette tape.” Static clogs her thoughts as she enters the unknown land. She’s on a quest and, though her zealous brother Will follows her in search of a confession of Rachel’s sins, she’s on her own.
The theme of encounter continues along Rachel’s journey. She meets a ragamuffin skater rebel, Clyde, who must have experienced the same electric thrill in Rachel as she did in the tape, for he becomes her shepherd even though he himself is a lost sheep. Later on she even finds the source of the voice on the tape, in an encounter that adds new light to her search for the father.
Spirit is alive in this story’s searchings. Rachel, Will, and Clyde all seek an encounter and a resolution to the dissonant tones clouding their minds. They are infused with an unnamable aura compelling them to act: Rachel, to find a (or is it The?) father; Will, to find atonement for (or escape from) sin; Clyde, to find reconciliation with his family and purpose for his connection with Rachel.
Electrick Children tells this nuanced fable with visual snap and a serene flow. Thomas, who also wrote the script, demonstrates care for the characters and respect for the wide-eyed searching that Rachel undergoes. This is a film not about where a journey ends but about how and where it begins. And the how and the where for Rachel’s odyssey happen to be the same electric thrill of encounter with a simple cassette tape. From there her quest, and that of the other wandering souls, is merely a response to the voice’s exhortation: Don’t leave me haaaaaaaaaangin’ on the teeeeelephone…
Just read this in the peroration of N.D. Wilson’s (magnificent, challenging, tempestuous) Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl:
If the Maker of the world were to descend to earth, how would you expect him? If you heard that the Infinite, the Spirit Creator was entering into His own Art, wouldn’t you look to the clouds? Wouldn’t you look to the cherubim in their storms; wouldn’t you expect a tornado chariot?
There really must be meaning in the universe, because I read this passage the morning after watching Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, which asks similar questions N.D. Wilson does. Cecilia, the downtrodden waitress in Depression-era New Jersey with a tool of a husband, goes to see the film-within-a-film The Purple Rose of Cairo so many times that the character of Tom Baxter, the wide-eyed archaeologist, feels compelled to call out to her in the midst of the movie. Tom is so transfixed on Cecilia that he breaks through the screen into the real world and runs away with her.
Tom isn’t the creator (or the Creator) in the story here, but he is the infinite made finite. The eternal, the Art, come down to earth. Not by a cherubim storm or tornado chariot, but by a brave step into another dimension. Cecilia is astonished. All those times she came to the theater alone to watch the film for hope or escape, they are now dwarfed by the source of her hope made tangible before her eyes. Looking at the screen was her way of not looking at the ground, but now, in a way, she gets to look at the clouds.
Alas, the dream would just be a dream, seemingly over as quick as it started. The entr’acte cannot last forever, for the show must go on. The art must return to its frame, and the viewer to her life. But the film’s bittersweet resolution doesn’t negate Cecilia’s soulful resurgence. She watches Fred croon to Ginger: Heaven… I’m in heaven.
I recently saw the above trailer for Steve McQueen’s upcoming film 12 Years a Slave and immediately got excited to see it on the merits of the trailer, cast, and director alone. But then at the library the following day I happened to see the memoir upon which the film is based and decided to read it.
Twelve Years A Slaveis the Solomon Northup’s first-hand account of his kidnapping into the cruel slavery world of the antebellum South and his long-awaited deliverance. Great Scott is his story breathtaking. The book is short yet wonderfully written, so I’d highly encourage you to read it before the movie comes out so you can read for yourself Northup’s concisely poetic narrative.
One particular passage that stood out was his description of Christmas day, one of the few days all year that the slaves didn’t work:
That morning [the slave] need not hurry to the field, with his gourd and cotton-bag. Happiness sparkled in the eyes and overspread the countenances of all. The time of feasting and dancing had come. … There were to be re-unions, and joy and laughter. It was to be a day of liberty among the children of Slavery.
One of the few ebullient passages in what is otherwise a dark and suffering-filled story, I like how it shows the slaves drawing their own joy and tangible meaning out of a holiday that was also celebrated by the very men who unjustly enslaved Solomon and his brethren.
Read the book. (And while you’re at it, check out the director Steve McQueen’s film Hunger, which chronicles the harrowing prison hunger strike of IRA rebel Bobby Sands.)
With a fortnight now between us and 2012, I’ve had time to consider which films I liked in what I think was overall a weaker year for films than previous ones. Keeping in mind I’ve yet to see a few key films, here (in alphabetical order) are seven movies from last year that grabbed hold of me in some way:
The Avengers. How fun was this one? Sure, there was nearly too much going on and the villain was sub par, but this band-of-misfits story was popcorn fare at its most alchemic and thrilling. And though it’s a clear money-grabbing ploy, Marvel’s inter- and multi-film thread between the Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Avengers movies thrills me to no end.
Les Misérables. I hear and understand all of your protestations, Les Mis Haters, but I still don’t care. This being my first experience with the show, I was thoroughly impressed by the simultaneous scope and intimacy in this hugely emotive (if occasionally uneven) epic. Seeing the stage version might change my mind, but right now I’m immensely satisfied with Hugh “The Dancing Wolverine” Jackman and his crooning compatriots.
Lincoln. Ever since this project was originally announced—way back when Liam Neeson was set to play Lincoln—I’ve followed every rumor and development, attempting along the way to telepathically convince Spielberg to stop wasting his time on dumb movies (Tintin andIndiana Jones 4 anyone?) and get to the good stuff. It finally worked, and once Daniel Day-Lewis signed on I knew it would be gold. Seeing those pre-release images of Day-Lewis in half and full Lincoln regalia brought on history-laced tears. My only complaint is that this wasn’t a miniseries; if John Adams can get the 8-hour treatment, why can’t the most documented and revered American figure ever?
Looper. Complaint up front: this seemed like two movies, with the first act feeling like a gritty, sci-fi noir with a great concept, and the second part morphing into a child-centered domestic drama. Despite this uneasy bifurcation, writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) deserves much adulation for crafting such a creative and emotional story, and for boosting Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s already burgeoning career.
The Master. Like other P.T. Anderson films, this was a confounding and compelling narrative that was won by its performances yet greatly supported by a rich production design and savory soundtrack. Casting either Philip Seymour Hoffman or Joaquin Phoenix will give any film a heavy dose of tortured gravitas, so having both of these men together, working at a high level, makes for an intense ride. Though rightly labeled as an enigma, it’s one of those movies that requires multiple viewings for a worthy commentary.
Oslo, August 31st. A Norwegian cinéma vérité-style film, this is an engaging portrait of a man in quiet despair who tries valiantly to get out of it. Roger Ebert said this film was “quietly, profoundly, one of the most observant and sympathetic films” he’s seen, one that spotlights a life of what must be constant brinksmanship and inner turmoil for the recovering drug addict main character. The choices he makes, or doesn’t make, are the same ones we all make in our own lives—if not about drugs, then about the other things that keep us captive.
Zero Dark Thirty. I consider this a “clinical” thriller, because it trimmed all superfluous frills and subplots for the sake of a clean and concise story (despite being 160 minutes). I second Jessica Chastain’s comments at the Golden Globes, which lauded her character as a strong, capable, independent woman who stands on her own—an unfortunate rarity in Hollywood. The debate surrounding the film is a good one to have; meanwhile, I enjoyed this second recent high-wire thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow.
A few of my other favorites: Argo, End of Watch, Flight, Frankenweenie, Moonrise Kingdom, Queen of Versailles, 21 Jump Street.
I’m still not sure exactly what draws me to this kind of story. Maybe it’s because of the infinite re-viewings of the Back to the Future trilogy, specifically Part II, which focused on people seeing hellish versions of their past or future and fighting to fix them. Perhaps it’s because dystopian films often confirm the fatalism I occasionally feel about our country, culture, and world. In Alfonso Cuarón’s stunning Children of Men, for example, the abject dreariness and totalitarianism that permeate the Great Britain police state of the future appear not only possible but increasingly inevitable given the seemingly hopeless state of political and economic current affairs.
Similarly, in the film adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta, Great Britain (poor old England can’t catch a democratic break) has been taken over by draconian despotism à la Orwell’s Oceania in the preeminent dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Or, if robotic uprisings are your thing, the film version of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robottells the tale of formerly subservient anthropomorphic robots who become self-aware and start killing humans.
But the flip side to all this bleakness is the other key component to many dystopian films, the factor that draws me in: what happens at their end. Theo, the protagonist in Children of Men, fights his apathy and regains his spirit enough to save the last hope on Earth. In V for Vendetta, the formerly timid Evey conquers her fears and helps V complete his rebellious (if terroristic) acts in order to expose the regime’s villainy and inspire the oppressed proletariat to rise up against the corrupt government. I, Robot has Will Smith saving the day (as he is wont to do) by conquering the supercomputer VIKI with the help of a specially programmed, friendly robot.
In all of these dystopian worlds the worst things may happen, but these things are not unconquerable. In stories as it ultimately is in real life, freedom conquers slavery; good triumphs over evil; the will to live outlasts the will to suppress. These may be old-fashioned tropes, but they keep bringing me back even to the darkest of tales if only to see how the light arrives again.
(Some dystopian films I’d recommend: Minority Report, Children of Men, V for Vendetta, I Robot, WALL-E, District 9, Looper, Dark City. Wikipedia also has a more extensive list.)
I recently watched Ingmar Bergman’s achingly doleful Wild Strawberries, and one particular part stood out: the poem read by Isak Borg, the lonely old professor, when asked to resolve a lunchtime debate over the existence of God. After some Internet research, I learned the poem is an 1819 Swedish hymn by Josef Olaf Wallin called “Where is the friend I seek everywhere?” – which a helpful blogger translated.
The full hymn is eight stanzas, but here is one English translation of four of them that captures the plaintive yet uplifting tone of the film:
Where is that friend, whom everywhere I seek? When the day dawns, my longing only grows; When the day flees, I still cannot find Him Though my heart burns.
I see his traces, wherever power moves, a flower blooms, or a leaf bends. In the breath I draw, the air I breathe His love is mixed.
I hear his voice, where summer winds whisper, where groves sing and where rivers roar I hear it best in my heart speaking, and me keeping.
O! When so much beauty in every vein of Creation and life fail, How beautiful must the source be, The eternally True!
This poem can’t resolve the debate over God’s existence, but it certainly favors one side. The film focuses on Borg’s struggle to grasp his life’s meaning and the consequences of his callousness more than questions of faith. But with this hymn on his mind, how can the remorseful professor, at the end of his life, not think about What It All Means?
Watching Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop made me realize something I’ve suspected for a long time: I don’t ever want to be famous.
There’s a scene in this documentary about the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television” stage tour Conan created immediately after his inauspicious exit from The Tonight Show in 2010 where Conan does a meet-and-greet after one of the New York City shows outside of the venue. Before this moment we’ve seen Conan, despite his insatiable need to perform, get slowly and painfully worn down by the unending demands of life on the road as a folk-hero celebrity, the meet-and-greets being an especially draining post-show ritual the erstwhile talk-show host openly bemoaned to his staff. And yet, out he goes into the alley packed with euphoric fans cordoned off behind a barrier that Conan nearly straddles in his earnest attempt to sign anything and everything his acolytes present to him.
He does his duty as the accommodating star, making chit-chat and signing posters, t-shirts, beer cans, and even someone’s back (“so I can get a tattoo of it,” she says). But after awhile he’s had enough, bids farewell to the fawning phalanx, and retreats to a waiting car. He hops in, clearly agitated, and waits for someone to close the door. “Someone close the f***ing door,” he says to no one in particular. The attention he had just received, willingly or otherwise, was his life-blood, and the reason he did the tour in the first place, but he still can’t help being completely obliterated by it night after night, only to jump on stage and fulfill the “buffoon” role he readily affixes to himself.
That whole sequence to me illustrated the paradox of celebrity, and why I hope never to experience it. To be so in need of something, like Conan is of the act of performing for an audience, yet to be rendered nearly incapacitated by it after a certain point is a tough way to live life. To be sure, we all have this something in our lives we feel we need yet drags us down – the approval of our peers, alcohol, crappy reality shows, you name it – but seeing it play out on camera in the life of a public figure like Conan (one whom I greatly admire and enjoy as a performer) shows me specifically the perils of doing what you want even when it’s killing you.
Kevin Costner said in his tribute to the late Whitney Houston that the singer’s immense talents were at once “the burden that made her great and the part that caused her to stumble.” While Conan does not (hopefully) struggle with the same drug problems that led to Houston’s sad death, the principles between them are the same: it doesn’t have to be drugs that kill you. Whatever our own That Thing is, it may prop us up for a time, but it can also kill us if we let it. Conan probably won’t be killed by his fame, but if for example he continues, as he says caustically in the film, to “give away part of [his] soul” through the meet-and-greets for the sake of That Thing, he’ll soon discover than physical death and pneumatic death aren’t all that dissimilar.
I don’t mean to portray Coco or this documentary as quite so sullen – in fact, they are the opposite. Sure, we bear witness to Conan’s biting, often vindictive jabs at NBC for their treatment of him during the late-night debacle and to his sardonic teasing of his assistants and staff. But Conan is a funny guy and gives a damn about others, if in his own way, and the film shows this dichotomy well.
But Conan’s “luck”—and this brings me back to my initial thought—is that the moments he’s most unlikeable and fallible (read: human) are recorded by a camera and spliced together into a wide-release documentary. While that was the point of this project, I’m sure glad I get to make my mistakes when only the people around me I know and love know about them. And that’s why I never have nor ever will desire the fame Conan and so many other public figures receive, willingly or otherwise.
So this is me giving thanks for the ability to go grocery shopping, read in a bookstore uninterrupted, take an evening walk alone, make dumb mistakes, and be human without flashing cameras and obsessive eyes finding me, or even wanting to. I’m sure Conan would like that too once in a while, but something keeps pulling him back into the fray that only he and God can understand.
All that said, watch the movie. It’s a gripping portrait of a curious man in transition. Also, I miss his beard.
I saw a number of fine films in 2011. Here, I talk about the great ones and what I thank them for.
Beginners, for Christopher Plummer’s exuberance as a recently-out elderly gay man; for Ewan McGregor’s hopeful melancholia as his perpetual bachelor son, and for this exchange between them: “HAL: Well, let’s say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait but the lion doesn’t come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe. OLIVER: I’d wait for the lion.”
The Tree of Life, for having more questions than answers; for the depicting the creation of the cosmos; for daring us to believe; for the Job references; and for this quote: “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.”
Midnight in Paris, for delighting my English major self; for getting Woody back on track; for Corey Stoll’s Hemingway adapting the writer’s writing style for speech perfectly; for your light and warmhearted touch; and for teaching me about the temporal.
Martha Marcy May Marlene, for making me feel the quietly terrifying atmosphere Elizabeth Olsen’s dazed cult escapee feels; and for a talented Olsen sister.
The Descendants, for Alexander Payne’s surefire writing and style, for tween actors who can actually act, and for George Clooney’s on-camera talents once again trumping his off-camera smugness.
Win Win & 50/50, for putting Paul Giamatti and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead, and for finding comedy in the tragic and lessons in our own shortcomings.
The Muppets & The Artist, for your unabashed optimism and anachronistic humor, which modern cynics won’t like but need anyway.
X-Men: First Class, for being a first-class reboot/prequel/whatever you are; for Michael Fassbender’s and James McAvoy’s anchoring your greater meaning with gravitas and bravado.
Meek’s Cutoff, for letting Michelle Williams disappear; and for your unforgiving stare into the mysterious soul of the American West.
Attack the Block, for knowing exactly what you are and never straying from that; for employing kids who can actually act; and for surprising me for the better.
Warrior, for Nick Nolte’s Paddy Conlon giving an otherwise conventional sports story some achingly real meaning.
[Note: I still need to see Certified Copy, A Separation, Take Shelter, and Barney’s Version, among other films, but this is where the list stands currently.]
Sometimes we as moviegoers have to let movies affect us in ways we cannot explain or control. One of those ways is through music. Whether it is an epic orchestral theme or a lone piano suite, music in the movies can make the difference in how I respond to the story. Listening to a CD of movie themes got me thinking about my favorite movie moments that were made better because of their music. There are many such moments, but here are a few that stand out.
Cast Away: Saying farewell to Wilson
When Chuck (Tom Hanks) finally leaves the island four years after crash-landing there, he is mistakenly separated from his beloved anthropomorphized volleyball but can’t retrieve him. There is no music for the entire film until that time, about 50 minutes in. So when the soft strings finally come in, we feel the catharsis the same as Chuck as he paddles away. The theme itself, by Forrest Gump and Back to the Future composer Alan Silvestri, is so tender and affecting.
WALL-E: Eva and WALL-E’s space dance
I’m glad Pixar has basically locked down Thomas Newman for their film scores, because every one he does is magical, including The Green Mile, American Beauty, The Shawshank Redemption, and Finding Nemo. In a film full of cute moments between the robotic protagonists, the impromptu, extinguisher-propelled ballet may be the cutest.
Lord of theRings: The wholetrilogy
I’d argue the LOTR score is the most necessary and perfect ever. Howard Shore’s compositions are practically supporting characters in themselves. There are many stand-out moments in that trilogy for me, but there are two that would not have worked without a musical backing:
The first is in Fellowship of the Ring after Gandalf falls into the Mines of Moria as the fellowship looks on helplessly. It is a shocking and grievous moment, but the lone mournful soprano voice over the somber choir does not overwhelm it. It allows us to rest on the sadness if just for a moment.
The second is in Return of the King in one of the many endings, after Aragorn becomes the new king and the four hobbits bow to him. He stops them and says, in recognition of their sacrifices, that they bow to no one. Then the whole crowd bows down to them and the main theme of the trilogy swells one last time, representing the grandest end of an epic adventure.
Once: The breakup song
Once has quickly become my favorite film “musical” more so than real musicals because the music interweaves with the story so seamlessly without the awkward transitions between dialogue and song. In a movie with so many good moments, I still have to choose the scene when the Guy plays the song “Lies” while watching home video of him and his ex-girlfriend. He is still heartbroken, and the song backs him up in that.
The Truman Show: The end
The piano-heavy score by Philip Glass and Burkhard Dallwitz mixes classical standards with original compositions, adding whimsy and sophistication to Peter Weir’s allegorical tale. The best moment, though, comes at the end when Truman finally hits the wall, literally and metaphorically. It is a culmination of everything Truman has been through and we as the viewers wait in anticipation for how he handles the moment. It’s as good an ending as I’ve ever seen in any movie.
Remember the Titans: The final game
The music throughout the movie builds little by little, but it isn’t until the final game when the orchestra is at full-blast. Trevor Rabin’s score builds with the tension of the final game, but the moment I always remember is when Coaches Boone and Yost exchange congratulations at the end of the game and hold up the ball together. It is a triumphant moment for the team and for the music.
