A Separation

Critics are going crazy for A Separation, the Iranian film by Asghar Farhadi that Roger Ebert named the best film of 2011. It currently has a perfect 100% score on  RottenTomatoes.com and ranked #3 (behind The Tree of Life and Melancholia) on the IndieWire critic's survey of the best films of 2011. It's the odds-on favorite to win the best foreign film Oscar.

Is it as good as the hype indicates? Yes, mostly.

A tender, nuanced portrait of modern city life in Tehran, A Separation is not a political or statement film. It's a film about people and their struggles, specifically two families whose fates become perilously intertwined. It's about an educated, secular middle class couple going through divorce, and their daughter who suffers in between a mother and father vying for custody. But it's also about a lower class, religious family (also raising a young daughter) who find themselves in a his-word-against-mine legal struggle with the more resourced and eloquent middle class family.

Who are the heroes and villains in A Separation? There aren't any. Perhaps the heroes are the two innocent girls, and the villains are systemic: an outmoded legal system, religiously justified oppression, class disparity. The beauty of the film is that has no agenda aside from immersing us in a world--something cinema does exceptionally well. It simply presents a slice of life--the struggles of a handful of everyday Iranians going through a particularly stressful stretch. And yet as contextual as the film is--many of the textures of its conflicts are Iranian to the core--it is also simply human.

The film humanizes Iran and gives it a face--a face that is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; a face that, under duress and in love, fear, anger, etc., looks awfully like our own. I suspect this is why critics have hailed the film as they have. It is exotic, foreign, and Other; and yet it is universal.

My only hesitation in crowning the film as some have is that it sometimes feels a bit too ambitious--trying to cover too much ground (gender politics, class, religion, family strife, justice, truth, education, etc.). It sometimes feels like an attempt at "modern Iranian life in a grain of sand," which imposes an unnecessarily weighty burden on an otherwise believable and well-observed family portrait.

Still, it's a superbly acted, beautifully made film. It is brilliantly observational and unsentimental, reminiscent of the quiet-but-powerful style of the Dardenne Brothers. For western audiences, it's also a helpful glimpse inside a country that--beneath the "axis of evil" simplifications of political and media narratives--is full of people like you and I: family-oriented folks who have good moments and bad, but mostly want to do what's right.

Best Films of 2011

Perhaps I’m biased (see my #1 pick and they entire month of May in my blog archive), but 2011 was a banner year for cinema. The Tree of Life is one thing, but there was a lot more going on this year to make a cinephile like me excited. There was a lot of artful doomsday (Melancholia, Take Shelter, Tree of Life, Another Earth), some great homages to early, classic and Spielbergian cinema (Hugo, The Artist, War Horse, Super 8), and some truly exceptional films about faith (Of Gods and Men, Higher Ground, The Way, The Mill & the Cross, Tree of Life). There was so much good cinema that my “best of” list actually includes three different top tens: the best 10, the second best 10, and then 10 honorable mentions. Many of them are available now on Netflix Instant, while a few of them have yet to release in most parts of the country. However you can, I hope you get a chance to see them!

10) Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene (T. Sean Durkin): An astonishing, accomplished debut from director T. Sean Durkin, Martha gives the audience more respect than any other film this year. There are a lot of gaps we, the audience, must fill in. But far from a head-scratching frustration, this subtle insinuation and refusal to spoon-feed is one the film’s most thrilling qualities.

9) We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay): By far the scariest film of the year. Not jump-in-your-seat type scary, but horribly unsettling dread and tension scary. Tilda Swinton plays a mother in a worst-nightmare-for-any-parent scenario, as she deals with an evil teenage son, Kevin, who commits a massacre at his high school. But the scariest parts of the film are the things we don’t see and the questions that go unanswered: where does the evil of a kid like Kevin come from? What do parents do wrong to lead to this?

8) Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt): One of the most original and haunting westerns I’ve ever seen. Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist, observational style (see Old Joy and Wendy & Lucy) is perfectly suited to this period costume drama set in the 1840s on the Oregon Trail. And Michelle Williams is mesmerizing as the centerpiece heroine. Like Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene, this film is intentionally ambiguous and invites the interpretations of an active audience, which is something I always applaud.

7) Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols): A jittery, tense, unsettled film for the unsettled world in which we live, Take Shelter is about the fears and anxieties of a modern-day working class man who simply wants to protect his wife and daughter from all manner of peril. Featuring stunning performances by Michael Shannon as a good-at-heart man (possibly) losing his mind and Jessica Chastain as his longsuffering wife, Shelter builds and builds to a finale that will leave you speechless.

6) The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius): One would have reason to approach this film skeptically. A silent film? Really? But what at first glance appears to just be a stunt or gimmick is quickly found to be something remarkably beautiful, charming, nostalgic and yet new. It's an homage to Hollywood, to storytelling within the bounds of technological limitations; but it's also about pride, love, adaptation, and the fickleness of fame. Go see it. You won't find a more pleasant surprise at the movies this year.

5) Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami): Certified Copy is essentially Before Sunset in Italy, which is good because Sunset is one of my all time favorite films. Filmed in glorious Tuscany, featuring the sublime Juliette Binoche, and riffing on notions of originality, inspiration, and cinema itself, Copy is a wonderfully complex modernist experiment in the style of Alain Resnais, and yet it flows breezily and romantically, never too pushy with its philosophical or theoretical notions. Academics should watch this film and take note: academic inquiry doesn't have to be convoluted, dry and inert. It can be as simple and beautiful as walking and talking in lovely Italian sunlight.

4) Poetry (Lee Chang-dong): It's a tragedy that only about 30 people saw this masterpiece when it opened in theaters early in 2011. From the masterful Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine), Poetry is a film befitting its title if ever a film was. It's about poetry literally, in that the protagonist--an elderly woman in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (Jeong-hie Yun)--is taking poetry classes; but the film itself is poetry: a delicate, quietly observant film that is unsentimental and yet profoundly moving, especially after it's sat with you for a bit.

3) Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois): A true story about monks in North Africa who risk it all in pursuit of their mission, Gods is one of the most inspiring films about faith, sacrifice, and community that I've ever seen. A quiet, austere, but utterly transcendent film, Gods paints a picture of what it means to be faithfully present as Christ's ambassadors in a world that is beautiful, dynamic, and frequently hostile. At once entirely timely (it deals with terrorism and Christian-Muslim relations) and timeless, Gods is a film I'll come back to in years to come--for inspiration, encouragement, and instruction for my own journey of faith.

2) Melancholia (Lars von Trier): Though often, and rightly, contrasted with Tree of Life (both films juxtapose the cosmic and intimate, and depict earth's demise), Melancholia stands on its own two feet as one of the year's most masterful films. More than just the antithesis of Tree of Life, Lars von Trier's gorgeous apocalyptic vision contains some of the most striking imagery and sequences you'll see this year. It may be bleak, nihilistic, and (insert depressing synonym here), but Melancholia is above all authentic. It's Lars von Trier speaking his auteurist mind and bombarding us with sound (Wagner's Tristan and Isolde), image (a planet colliding with earth, Kirsten Dunst unhappy in a wedding dress), and mood (sadness, dread) to astonishingly powerful effect.

1) The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick): What can I say about this film that I haven'talreadysaid? It met and exceeded all my expectations and instantly took a place on my list of all time favorites. Critics are right to be universallyheraldingthisasthebestfilm of 2011. It's one of the best films of all time. It's a film with the kind of scope, ambition and excellence that we just don't see anymore. It's a film that goes after big questions (the biggest) and attempts to be all-encompassing (God, life, death, sin, redemption, creation, apocalypse, everything else in between), but does so as much or more through the inherent strengths of the cinematic form as through traditional narrative exposition. It's a film that shows us the world in a grain of sand, so to speak. It blows open the possibilities of the medium, or rather--at times--perfects the medium to such an extent that it looks foreign to us, like something altogether new. Malick achieves something with Life that can rarely be claimed by a filmmaker or artist of any kind: He's given us something that we've truly never seen before, and yet something that will undoubtedly endure.

The Next Ten: 11) Hugo 12) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 13) Midnight in Paris 14) The Way 15) The Descendants 16) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 17) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 18) Bellflower 19) Another Earth 20) Warrior

Honorable Mention: Coriolanus, The Mill and the Cross, Contagion, Moneyball, The Trip, Hanna, Drive, War Horse, Higher Ground, Margin Call

Best Documentaries of 2011

I love good documentaries, especially the ones that combine artistry and exposition without becoming preachy or didactic. My picks for the top 5 documentaries of the year include films about cowboys, fashion photographers, 9/11 survivors and two films by the venerable Werner Herzog. 

5) Buck (Cindy Meehl):  The log line for Buck is simple: "The story of real-life horse whisperer, Buck  Brannaman." which would be fascinating enough to watch. But Buck is a story with unexpected depth because there is a lot more to Buck than meets the eye. How does our past, and the pain and ghosts therein, affect our path today? With Buck as its case study, this film explores that question somberly and gracefully, offering a vision for growth and redemption--both for wayward horses and for broken men.  

4) Rebirth (James Whitaker):  10 years after 9/11, how are those who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center coping? This film follows the grief process of 5 people over the course of the last decade, featuring interviews with them once a year during that period. The film is fascinating in the way that it shows us the physical aging as well as the gradual emotional healing of these people, and--juxtaposed with beautiful time-lapse footage of the new Freedom Tower being erected at Ground Zero--offers very tangible examples of hope and renewal coming out of tragedy.

3) Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press):  There are so many fascinating things about this film, which is at once an inside look at the fashion world, at photography, at New York City, the nature of trends, high society, class, and more. But above all this is a character study of Bill Cunningham, a lovable veteran photographer for the NY Times who rides his bike around Manhattan, snapping photos of whatever street fashion catches his discerning eye. It's a fascinating portrait of an elderly man who has never married, goes to church every Sunday, and is beloved by everyone who's anyone in the world of fashion.

2) Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog): Ostensibly a look at the death penalty through the lens of one particularly heinous Texas murder case, Herzog's 2nd masterful 2011 film, Into the Abyss, is really about so much more. Herzog is chiefly interested in life, not death, and especially the quirky messiness of "you cant write this stuff" real life people. There are plenty of fascinating, tragic characters in this film, and Herzog's sensitive interviews with them bring out an array of insights about life, love, grief and evil.  

1) Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog):  Werner Herzog has such an ability to explore the curiosities of the natural and human worlds and make them seem even more magnificent and mysterious than we've ever considered; and Cave is Herzog at the top of his game. Far more than just a close up look at some of the worlds earliest known cave paintings, Herzog's film probes the very essence of humanity, creativity, and the way that meaning is made and interpreted. It's a vast, stirring, beautiful and incredibly thought provoking film.

Honorable Mention: Page One: Inside the New York Times; Transcendent Man; The Arbor; Prohibition; Life in a Day.

Advent & Malick

Terrence Malick has never made a Christmas film, but I think his films, collectively, have a lot to say to us as we meditate on the meaning of Advent. Before you groan and say, "here McCracken goes about Malick again," let me explain.

At it's core, Advent is a season in limbo, in between the first and second comings of Jesus. It's a season about eschatological longing as much as it is about nostalgic joy for the Incarnation of God as man. It's about longing for and awaiting the coming kingdom, the restoration of creation to a state of shalom and fully realized glory. A key word is "restoration," for within the mystery of Advent is a deeply felt longing and remembrance of that original Eden, so long ago lost and yet made possible again in Christ.

In many ways, Advent is about existing in between two paradises. One lost. One still to come. Both are ever present in the believer's consciousness, as persistent reminders of fallenness intermingle with persistent, grace-filled interjections of hope. And it is here that I think Malick's cinematic vision has much to offer.

Consider The Tree of Life, which very literally depicts an original paradise (at least the creation of it) and a eschatological one (which, even if just a reverie or dream, is still very much an eschatological vision of Shalom restored). The Bible begins and ends with the "Tree of Life" (in Eden and in the Revelation 22 New Jerusalem), and in many ways the film echoes this bookended structure, with the middle section being the story of existence--struggling between sin/nature and redemption/grace--writ small in a tiny Texas town. In Tree of Life, Malick's characters experience that Advent tension between darkness and innocence lost on one hand and a coming reconciliation/restoration of goodness on the other.

Malick's other films reflect similar themes. In Badlands, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek play Adam/Eve type characters who "fall" and are banished from Eden, shamed in their fallenness and yet curiously moved by the beauty of life around them, even on the run. Days of Heavenfeatures similar themes of shamed sinners in search of redemptive paradise and a fresh start in the picturesque wheat fields of West Texas. In The Thin Red Line, Witt (Jim Caviezel) opens the film in paradise, on tropical beaches and indigo blue waters in Papau New Guinea. But then the reality of sin sets in, and war and death; everything is changed, and yet Witt still sees a spark of glory. The film ends with images of Witt once again in paradise, and the rest of the soldiers on a boat leaving the horrors of Guadalcanal, heading to some new shores of a better world.

Malick's next film, The New World, picks up that image by opening with colonists on a boat, landing on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia: the New World. But as with Malick's other films, the Edenic idealism of this "new beginning" paradise is disrupted soon by famine, war, and a romance between John Smith and Pocahontas that doesn't last. And yet as the film goes on, something keeps pushing Pocahontas on, in spite of great shame and hardship. Glimpses of glory call her forth, giving her reasons to hope; perhaps the best is indeed still to come.

An inherent aching for Eden persists in each of Malick's films, as each character instinctively strives for a fresh start in the midst of our brokenness. Indeed, I think every human feels this. Time and time again we fail, and yet some animating spirit of good keeps us on track, keeps us striving for the best, between the two trees.

This is what Advent is about: a hope that keeps us going, keeps us exploring, creating, cultivating, loving, making order out of chaos. It's the lingering instinct of our created purpose; it's the impact of the Incarnation: the Divine Creator come down to creation to redeem mankind and succeed where Adam failed, providing an example of humanity as it was created to be.

If Easter is about Jesus' death and resurrection, Advent is about the curious thing that happened next. Jesus didn't stay on earth to rule his kingdom. He ascended unto heaven and left his followers—the church, animated by the Holy Spirit—to carry the torch of kingdom work, to long and ache for Jesus' promised return but in the meantime to strive to be the humans we were meant to be, to spread the good news, to resist evil, to order creation and bring about flourishing.

Like Adam before us, and Noah, and Abraham and Israel, followers of Jesus are called to bring light to the darkness; to spread the illumination like in those candle light Christmas Eve services of our youth; or like that little blue candle and mysterious wispy flame in The Tree of Life. It's Ruach. The Spirit of God. Reminding us of hope, empowering us to carry on.

4 Films for Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving is all about family, and often, it's all about movies. After feasting, football & shopping, going to see a movie together has become an American holiday staple. If you're looking for a film to see this Thanksgiving, here are a few I recommend--unless you want to take your kids (then see Hugo or The Muppets). Each of these films is in some way about family and is near the top of my list of the best films of 2011. If one of them is playing in your city, go see it!

The Descendants: Set in Hawaii, Alexander Payne's family dramedy is rough around the edges but has a sweet heart. It's a film about a father (George Clooney) trying to be a good parent, a loving husband and a respectable citizen. It's also a film about dysfunctional families and the passing of character down from one generation to another. With its Edenic setting and themes of fallen paradise and inherited sin, The Descendants is a deceivingly smart, spiritual film. It's also a tearjearker, so come prepared for the final 10 minutes.

The Way: Directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen, The Way is a "Wizard of Oz"-esque journey movie, set on the Camino de Santiago ("The Way of St. James") in Spain. It's an uplifting film about family, pilgrimage, and coming back to faith. If you love travel, or have ever experienced the beauty of being thrust outside of your comfort zone in a foreign place, you'll enjoy The Way. It's one of the most underrated, refreshingly sincere films of the year.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: If you're in the mood for something a little less heart-warming and a little more thrilling this Thanksgiving, try Martha Marcy May Marlene. It's a beautifully made, haunting film about a woman (Elizabeth Olson... the Olson Twins' younger sister), who is psychologically damaged after she escapes from a cult. The film alternates between her experience inside the cult and her readjustment to life outside, as her sister tries desperately to care for her in the midst of her fragile state. The filmmaking is top-notch here and director T. Sean Durkin leaves much to the viewer in terms of interpretation.

Melancholia: What better way is there to celebrate and give thanks for life than to watch a film about the destruction of all things? Seriously though, there's something undeniably transcendent to behold in Lars von Trier's Melancholia, an ostensibly nihilistic film that in spite of itself manages to grasp something beautiful and sublime about art, life, and humanity's place in the world. Don't expect pretty things and joyful reconciliations in Melancholia. In spite of its wedding motif, this is not a happy-go-lucky rom-com. It's dour and bleak... but strangely beautiful.

Melancholia

Some time soon I would like to host a double feature screening of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Both of these 2011 films are experimental, ambitious, sprawling epics by respected auteurs; both juxtapose the cosmic and the intimate; both depict the destruction of Earth, to the lush cacophonies of Germanic classic music; both debuted at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, mere days before Harold Camping predicted a real-life end of the world.

But as similar as the two films are in some ways, they also offer strikingly contrasting visions of what it means to exist in the world. Melancholia, like Tree of Life, vividly depicts man’s flawed, sinful nature and his temporal smallness in the grand scheme of things. But whereas Life offers a hopeful portrait of human potential for redemption and hints at the existence of a meaningful, grace-filled telos in the world, Melancholia offers a bleak, bereft-of-hope portrait of humanity as irredeemably self-destructive and helpless, at best deluded by idealized notions of love and purpose.

The latest film from Danish provocateur Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dogville), Melancholia opens with a stunning overture, to the music of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, depicting the cataclysmic collision of Earth and a fictitious planet named Melancholia. This sequence, which includes gorgeous slow-mo shots and painterly tableauxs, “gives away” the ending from the outset: the Earth will die, and everything in it. Our foreknowledge of this impending apocalypse colors our perceptions of the family drama that follows—which concerns sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst), Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their extended dysfunctional family. The juxtaposition of the ridiculous, petty shenanigans of the family and the reality that everything is about to end serves as the film’s central conceit, and it works brilliantly.

(Read the rest of this review at Relevant's website)

10 Transcendent Moments in "Life"

As I've reflected on The Tree of Life (I think I've seen it about 10 times now), I'm no less awestruck by its beauty now than I was in the beginning. It's a film overflowing with the sublime, the transcendent, the holy. I've heard others call it a worshipful experience and I certainly concur. The following are the scenes that get me the most, each time I watch Life. They are, in my opinion, the 10 most transcendent sequences of the film. 

Jessica Chastain's opening voiceover sequence (1:55-4:17). "The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace..." These words from "mother" launch the gorgeous opening monologue of the film, set against images of childhood, cows, sunflowers, waterfalls, swinging from trees, and accompanied by the haunting and foreshadowing voices of Tavener's "Funeral Canticle."

Creation of the universe (19:45- 23:45). Following the death of her middle son, Jessica Chastain closes her eyes in grief and prays: "Lord... Why? ... Where were you? ... Did you know? ... Who are we to you? ... Answer me." This prayer is beautifully, painfully juxtaposed with images of the birth of the universe: swirling purple gases, turquoise nebulae, celestial stained glass. Witnessing these awe-inspiring cosmic beginnings is like having a window into God's creative process. And set to the mournful, operatic music of Preisner's "Life: Lacrimosa," it's downright worshipful.

"Life of my life" (34:40-36:00). Immediately after the dinosaur scene, and as a transition out of the "history of creation" sequence, Chastain's voiceover resumes: "Life of my life... I search for you... My hope ... My child." This is accompanied by Berlioz' "Requiem" and magisterial images of Saturn, Jupiter, and an asteroid on a collision course with earth, bringing death to the dinosaurs and an ice age to the planet.

"When did you first touch my heart?" (37:10-39:10). Part of the beauty of this scene is that it follows the grandeur of the universe's birth with something just as glorious: the birth of love, and the birth of a human baby. In this sequence, set to the achingly beautiful music of Respinghi, we see mother and father falling in love (Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt), followed by what might be the most powerful, abstract cinematic depiction of a human birth ever. The baby's birth is intercut with images of children being led through a forest by a woman in white (we see her at various points in the film... I take her as some sort of Holy Spirit figure), and a little boy swimming upwards through a submerged house (a motif we see a few other times in the film... Watch carefully at the end).

The boys growing up (47:00-50:10). Set to the stirring, full-of-life music of Smetana's "Moldau," this sequence, which starts with mother pointing to the sky and saying "that's where God lives," manages to capture so much truth and vitality--of life, of boyhood, of growing up--in a brief montage of the boys being boys: playing in the grass, playing with hoses/sprinklers, lighting sparklers, jumping on the bed, kicking the can, climbing trees, running in fields, putting grasshoppers down shirts, throwing balls up on the roof, playing tag, and then being called in for dinner at dusk. There's so much youthful exuberance packed in to this three minute sequence, and it stirs the soul.

Jack's prayer (57:55-58:55). The Tree of Life is in many ways a string of prayers. Roger Ebert says that the whole film is a form of a prayer. One of my favorite prayer scenes is when Jack sits down at his bed and proceeds to pray a genuine prayer full of petitions ("Help me not to sass my dad... Help me to be thankful for everything we've got... Help me not to tell lies") but also full of questions/whispers that are more rhetorical: "Where do you live? Are you watching me? I want to see what you see." All of this is set against a lovely piano rendition of Francois Couperin's "Les Barricades Mistérieuses."

Repentance & Grace (1:49:00-1:56:10). Following the extensive "fall of man" sequence, in which we see Jack discovering his own depravity (culminating in the BB gun incident with his brother), the tone shifts as Jack  seems to adopt a repentant heart ("What I want to do I can't do; I do what I hate.") and seeks forgiveness from his brother. Notice the score here: a slow, subtle piano quotation of the operatic Preisner theme from the birth of the universe sequence. Then there's the amazing reconciliation scene between Jack and his brother ("You can hit me if you want... I'm sorry. You're my brother."), followed by a scene of Jack showing kindness to the burned boy he and his friends had previously shunned.

In the Garden (1:53:30-1:56:10). Part two of the grace/redemption catharsis begins when Jack joins his father in the garden. No words are spoken, but a new understanding is reached. Immediately following is Brad Pitt's own moment of being humbled and brought to repentance. He loses he job and we hear his first (and only) voiceover of the film: "I'm nothing... Look at the beauty around us... I dishonored it all and didn't notice the glory. A foolish man." The sequence climaxes with one of the film's central voiceover expressions from Jack: "Father... Mother... Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will." The music in this sequence is quite deliberate: A subtle piano rendition of the Respinghi theme from the film's birth scenes earlier, perhaps to help define these moments as experiences  of "rebirth" for Jack and his father.

"The only way to be happy is to love" (1:58:30-2:01:30). In the final moments of the 1950s section of the film we watch the O'Briens as they pack up and move out of their Waco, TX home, to the music of Berlioz' "Domine Jesu Christe" (from the Requiem). We see Jack somberly walk out of the street of his childhood one last time, then as the car drives away and the house grows smaller in the distance, mother leaves us with one last voiceover: "The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by... Do good to them... Wonder... Hope." "Hope" is last word from mother in the film.

The end (2:03:00-the end). "Guide us to the end of time..." What can I say? Set to the "Agnus Dei" section of Berlioz' Requiem, the final 15 minutes or so of the film are absolutely sublime... a montage of sight, sound, hope & belief.

Take Shelter

Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter is a film for our paranoid, anything-could-happen, Harold Camping day and age. It's a jittery, tense, unsettled film for the unsettled days in which we live.

The film is about the fears and anxieties of a modern-day working class man (Michael Shannon) who simply wants to protect his wife (the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain) and young daughter in rural Ohio. He worries about a lot: tornadoes, agressive pet dogs, acid rain, strangers breaking in to his house, car accidents, etc. And he begins to have vivid nightmares about each of these scenarios. Is he going crazy? He starts to see a therapist. Others begin to take notice of his peculiar behavior--especially the passion with which he goes about building a storm shelter in his backyard. But is he actually crazy or simply a responsible protector of his family? This is the film's nagging question.

It's become commonplace for films to raise critical questions about the "culture of fear" and its attendant problems, as if our fears are unjustified and mostly just harmful to the supposedly utopian status quo. But what if our fears are justified? What if doomsday is coming and there are good reasons to take shelter and hide? That is the provocative question this film--a hit at Sundance this January--is willing to ask.

Take Shelter is a fascinating film--an intimate family portrait on one hand and a surreal apocalyptic abstraction on the other (perhaps akin to Lars von Trier's Melancholia or, in a weird way, Malick's Tree of Life). Like Jeff Nichols' first film, Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter is a film in which the tension slowly escalates and the expectation of violence builds and builds until explosive moments of release.

The 90% calm, 10% crazy performance of Michael Shannon is indicative of the tenor of the film at large. But Shannon's remarkable performance is also reflective of the larger mood of America right now. Are we losing our minds? Have we given up hope? As a financially downtrodden family man in the rust belt, at wit's end about how to thrive in a world gone mad, the only thing that makes sense to Shannon's character is to dig a hole, hunker down, and hope there's something left after the storms have all passed.

Moneyball

Moneyball is one of the smartest, most effective sports movies I've ever seen. It captures the "love of the game" spiritual gravitas of The Natural and Field of Dreams while also embodying the melancholy of nostalgia for the "glory days" (see Friday Night Lights). But Moneyball's most obvious antecedent and kindred spirit isn't a sports movie at all. It's The Social Network. 

The Moneyball / Social Network comparisons are numerous: Both are Sony Pictures; both are written or co-written by Aaron Sorkin; Both feature fast-paced chattiness and the negotiating of high dollar deals; Both examine the minutiae of men using technological savvy to "change the game" and make millions; both are about how computers are changing everything. Both films are also exquisitely made and impressively adept at making the mundane (business deals, statistics, programming) absolutely riveting.

But Moneyball isn't just The Social Network: Part II. It stands on its own two feet as, if not quite a masterpiece, then certainly one of the best ever of its genre. It's a film that avoids cliches and doesn't focus on heart-tugging, tear-jerking melodrama as much as it does on the fascinating subtleties on the business side of baseball. It's also a character study of one man trying to fulfill his calling in baseball but also in fatherhood. It's a film about ambition--about the intensity in the eyes of someone who wants something badly and will stop at nothing to get it; but it's also about the disappointment that success brings--because there's always something more, always a next benchmark just beyond the reach of even the most decorated and successful of men.

Brad Pitt's performance as Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane is the centerpiece of Moneyball and worth the price of admission. But Jonah Hill's supporting role--perhaps the first serious role for the comedy star?--is also a highlight, and the two play off of each other winningly.

Moneyball is a unique film that in many ways parallels the sport it documents. Like baseball, the movie is sometimes quiet and reflective, sometimes intense and rowdy, sometimes playful and sometimes deadly serious. It's also a movie that cares about people, heroes, their histories and their reaches for glory.

Machine Gun Preacher

Machine Gun Preacher tells the fascinating true-life story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing gang biker who converted to Christianity and devoted his life to protecting children in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda from the vicious LRA. Childers (played by Gerard Butler in the film) founded the organization "Angels of East Africa" and opened an orphanage in Southern Sudan to protect the area's  vulnerable orphans.

The "machine gun" part of this story is that Childers doesn't just rescue children from the evil clutches of the LRA. He fights back with violence and kills the villains. With machine guns and sniper rifles and other such things.

What the film raises is not a new question, but it's certainly a timely one: Should we combat violence with more violence? When does the cycle of violence & revenge end?

Preacher adds the further layer of Christianity to the question. Sam Childers is a Christian, a preacher, a representative of Christ. He sleeps in a mosquito tent at the orphanage with a Bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other. Should he be protecting the innocent victims of the LRA by shooting back at the LRA? Is there any other way to do it?

The film doesn't answer that question. Childers is represented as a very flawed hero and certainly isn't portrayed as a man with a halo. There are serious questions about his methods, his vigilante persona, his role in the sometimes problematic tradition of "white man comes to save the day in Africa, recklessly and without much context."

Still, it's hard to point out his faults when the rest of us aren't doing much to help the kids who are suffering every day under the brutal violence of the LRA: kids whose lips and noses have been cut off, kids forced to kill one another, 3-year-olds who've been raped... Childers argues that unless he and his fellow fighters arm themselves and go after the LRA, they would just continue victimizing the children and terrorizing the region.

Over the end credits of Preacher, the real Sam Childers poses a question: If you had a child who was kidnapped and I said I could bring them home to you, does it matter how I bring them home? It's a provocative question to end on and one meant to spark discussion as audiences leave the theater.

At a time when the death penalty, the justness of war and other "is killing ever right?" issues are on the forefront of debate (both in Christian circles and beyond), a film like Preacher is helpful addition to the discourse. It's not a perfect film and perhaps not as subtle as it could have been, but it makes very personal and humane the question of violence as a moral means to justice and liberation.

Rebirth

Rebirth is a powerful new documentary about 9/11, released last week in advance of the 10-year anniversary of that infamous day in history. The documentary, directed by Jim Whitaker, is part of a larger “Project Rebirth,” which is interested in the process of renewal and growth--both physically, emotionally, psychologically--in the wake of the traumas of 9/11.

The film follows five individuals of various backgrounds who were each affected in some tragic way on 9/11... Either by losing a spouse, or friend, or parent, or sibling, or just being severely injured. These subjects are interviewed once a year for each of the years following 9/11, and by reflecting on camera about how their lives have changed and how they’ve dealt with the grief over the years, we see the gradual process of rebirth in each of their lives.The human component of this film is juxtaposed with stunning timelapse photography from Ground Zero, which captures the gradual cleaning up of the site and the construction of the memorial and the new Freedom Tower, currently in the middle of construction.

Rebirth is one of the best films about dealing with grief that I’ve ever seen. Among the film’s many observant truths is the fact that processing and moving through grief can happen in a variety of ways. Each of the five stories is different. One person hurts deepest for the first few years, then remarries, then has kids and gradually accepts a happy new life. Another has a delayed reaction of grief... being stricken with post-traumatic stress disorder a few years after 9/11. Another channels his grief into action, joining the Dept. of Homeland Security and then as a bodyguard for Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.

Rebirth is about growth--how each of us, given enough time, can start to heal. I can see this film being amazingly helpful, and hopeful, for people who have recently dealt with tragedy in their lives. In the moment, grief attacks us with the seeming impossibility that life will get better. But as this film so beautifully displays, even the most horrific of traumas--though it never fully leaves us--becomes a smaller, less invasive horror in our lives as time passes.

Interestingly, no one in Rebirth mentions anything about spirituality or the role of faith in their life (aside from one character who says he’s not at all religious). And yet the film feels quite spiritual, even transcendent. It’s all about reconciliation, renewal, regained trust, hope. It’s about death giving way to life. It’s about an act of terrorism giving rise to eventual redemption. It’s a Resurrection film.

Higher Ground

Higher Ground is a great companion piece to the searing must-see Korean drama, Secret Sunshine, which released this week on Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray. Both films center on a woman's journey of evangelical Christian faith through ups, downs, doubts, renewal and tragedy. Both films are made by outsiders to evangelical Christianity but with a sympathetic eye toward truly understanding the complexity of the life of faith. Subsequently, both are brutally honest, messy, sometimes difficult portrayals that get one thing very right about the journey of religious faith: It's not always easy.

Directed by and starring Vera Farmiga (Oscar nominated for Up in the Air), Higher Ground is a comprehensive narrative of one woman's struggle with faith, from her girlhood to parenthood and beyond. Farmiga's character grows up amongst hippies in the 70s and becomes part of a small charismatic band of evangelicals (Jesus People-esque) who do life together as a Christian community, struggling to grow in faith together while also dealing with all the attendant issues (pride, temptation, gender issues, inequality of "gifts," legalism, etc) that come along with any church family.

Though perhaps too sprawling and ambitious in its multi-decades span, Higher Ground nevertheless manages to be truly perceptive about Christian faith in places, even more so than the average Christian-made film these days.

Perhaps the film's most resonant insight is its reflection on the centrality of relationships to the life of faith. Farmiga's attention to the nuances of her character's relationship to her parents, her husband, her children, her best friend, her pastor and so on all feed in to her complex relationship with God. The film recognizes that our human relationships--and their accompanying experiences of trust, love, affection & abuse--color our relationship with God. How can they not?

Of course the tragic parts of Ground are those that showcase the damage that can be done in one's trust in God when one's trust in other humans is betrayed. But the film also displays hope in its recognition that even when we are frustrated with God and want to end our relationship with him, he may not be through with us. He's the pursuer. Even in the midst of the follies and betrayals of a community of his followers, God still pursues us. Even in the midst of our doubts.

What's wonderful about films like Higher Ground and Secret Sunshine is that they don't shy away from the difficulties of trusting in God. They don't pretend its easy; nor do they pretend that faith exists in some sort of rigid space where we're either 100% rock-solid in our certainty or we're hopelessly adrift and stubbornly skeptical. Faith is a grey area, because humans are imperfect and messy. It's only by the grace of God that any of us have the gift of faith. And that's the most reassuring fact of all.

Best Films of the First Half

It's hard to believe, but the first half of 2011 is already history. That means it's time for a mid-year survey of the year in film. So, here are my picks for the best 5 films of the first half of 2011 (no one will be surprised at number 1):

1) The Tree of Life: Terrence Malick's magnificent film is breathtaking in both its ambition and its execution. This is a film that connects. It certainly connected with me, more so with each viewing (I've seen it 3 times). It's a film that pushes cinematic storytelling forward, imagining new ways to piece together image, sound, vocal fragment, idea. But the film is not just an exercise in style; it's a deeply personal, philosophical, punch-you-in-the-gut meditation on some of life's biggest questions. (my review)

2) Meek's Cutoff: I've been a fan of each of Kelly Reichardt's films (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy), but her most recent is perhaps the most interesting. It's the most philosophical western I think I've ever seen--if you can call it a western. Actually it's more like a Gus van Sant-esque period road movie. In any case, it's a film of great restraint, mystery, and "you-fill-in-the-gap" insinuation. It's a film that beckons the audience to actively participate in the process of meaning making, which is a rarity I always appreciate. (my review)

3) Cave of Forgotten Dreams: I love Werner Herzog. His curiosity about the world is endearingly transparent in his wonder-filled films, and Cave is no exception. A documentary about prehistoric paintings discovered in a French cave, this film is educational, artful, inspiring, and thought provoking. In true Herzog fashion, it highlights the simultaneous majesty and silliness of human civilization against the backdrop of an endlessly mysterious natural world. How do we make sense of the world? Herzog hones in on this abstract question, even while he--a true artist/philosopher--lives it out himself. (my review)

4) Certified Copy: Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy is essentially Before Sunset in Italy, which is good because Sunset is one of my all time favorite films. Filmed in glorious Tuscany, featuring the sublime Juliette Binoche, and riffing on notions of originality, inspiration, and cinema itself, Copy is a complex modernist experiment in the style of Alain Resnais. Rent it.

5) Of Gods and Men. A true story about monks in North Africa who risk it all in pursuit of their mission, Gods is one of the most inspiring films about faith, sacrifice, and community that I've ever seen. A quiet, austere, but utterly transcendent film, Gods paints a picture of what it means to be faithfully present as Christ's ambassadors in a world that is beautiful, dynamic, and frequently hostile.

Honorable mention: Another Year. It came out in L.A. the last week of 2010 but everywhere else in 2011, so I'm not sure in which year it qualifies. In any case, it's an amazing film. A must-see for fans of Mike Leigh. (my review)

I also really enjoyed: Hanna, Midnight in Paris, Super 8, X Men: First Class, Bridesmaids.

Super 8

Super 8 is a film about film. It's about a group of kids in the 1970s who, armed with a Super 8 camera (one of the first "home movie" technologies), set out to make a zombie film and inadvertently find themselves filming something even more "movie-like" than zombies. Of course, this then is turned into a film in itself, in the style of Spielberg.

The whole Spielberg homage thing is very fun--and done extremely well--but it's mostly interesting to me in that it immediately (along with the title) casts the film in a self-conscious light. This is a movie about the movies (a topic that always interests me). It's a movie about movies both in the sense that it draws attention to the jaw-dropping spectacle and magic of cinema (like any Spielberg film does), but also in that it seems to examine the cinematic impulse itself: what we do with a camera in our hands, how we tell stories filmically, how "reality" and "nonreality" intermingle in the process, and why we choose to direct the camera at some things and not others.

Just as JJ Abrams' Cloverfield explored the notion of amateur film-making by telling its monster movie tale through the lens of a low-fi camera and average Joe observer taking it all in, Abrams' latest film ruminates on the intersection of scripted and unscripted footage, amateur and professional, high and low tech. In Super 8, the "action" of the kids' film intertwines with the higher-budget "action" of epic train wrecks, military coverups and alien havoc. Tellingly, the kids see the "real" chaos in terms both of their own survival but also a "is the camera still rolling?" documentary impulse. They improvise and incorporate the bigger drama into their own narrative, poaching the disaster movie happening around them and repurposing bits and pieces of it for their own storytelling ends.

In this, Abrams' film reflects the curiosity of our contemporary YouTube landscape--where "raw footage" of whatever sort (disasters, news footage, celebrity gaffes, etc.) can be remixed, re-edited, and put to work to fit the fancy of any number of aspiring auteurs or opinionated pontificators. Like any media form, the moving image has proven to be skillful at both capturing reality as it unfolds as well as capturing the malleability of reality to fit itself within the vision, fantasy, or agenda of whatever artisan maneuvers the media apparatus.

Super 8--with its ubiquitous lens flares and high flying crane shots--doesn't hide the fact that it's sculpting reality in a very particular, non-real manner. It's clear that it is an artificial creation, just like any movie. But that doesn't stop the film from ably pondering its own ontology and asking questions about what we mean when we say things of reality like, "this feels like we're in a movie."

At one point in Super 8, the kids watch on the news the footage of a massive train wreck they were right in the thick of the night before. "It's on the news, so it must be real," says one character.

Indeed, our world is so entirely mediated these days that occasionally something doesn't feel real unless it's shown to us--from 20 different angles--on a screen of some sort. Our immediate perceptions are to be doubted. But the mediated image seems somehow more trustworthy.

Super 8 points out how ridiculous such a scenario actually is, even while it reinforces why the "real" on film can sometimes feel more compelling than the actual real. It's because movies like Super 8 are exciting, invigorating, resonant, and emotionally true. And it's because we increasingly live our lives via screens, images, and media. We trust them more than our own eyes.

Should Cinema be Slow and Boring?

In recent weeks, several prominent film critics have engaged in a lively back-and-forth about the question of "slow and boring" cinema. Hearkening back to the famous Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris debates of the 60s-70s, this latest debate revives some of the classic, ongoing tensions in cinema, and raises fundamental questions about about the movies are for, and how we should watch them.

It started with Dan Kois' piece in the New York Times Magazine, in which he basically said that he was sick of suffering through boring, artsy films, even though he knew they were good for him. Even though he still engages in what he calls "aspirational viewing" (giving artsy films a shot, hoping to connect with them in spite of their difficulties), Kois notes that he would rather not pretend to like certain films just to demonstrate refined taste:

Perhaps I’m realizing that enjoyment doesn’t necessarily have to be a performative act, even for someone who writes about movies. Or perhaps I just lack the youthful exuberance that led me to believe I could rewire my brain through repeated exposure to Antonioni. Part of me mourns the sophisticated cineaste I might never become; part of me is grateful for all the time I’ll save now that I am a bit more choosy about the aspirational viewing in which I engage.

This post was then responded to with a one-two punch from the Times' Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, in a piece entitled "In Defense of Slow and Boring."

Dargis unleashed her missive with a particularly large heaping of ire aimed at mindless Hollywood blockbusters such as the universally panned Hangover 2. She writes:

“As I get older,” Mr. Kois concludes, “I find I’m suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me.” Happily for him, movie theaters offer a cornucopia of junk food.

For instance: “The Hangover Part II,” which I find boring, raked in $137.4 million over the five-day Memorial Day weekend. It’s the kind of boring that makes money, partly because it’s the boring that many people like, want to like, insist on liking or are just used to, and partly because it’s the sort of aggressively packaged boring you can’t escape, having opened on an estimated 17 percent of American screens. Filled with gags and characters recycled from the first “Hangover,” the sequel is grindingly repetitive and features scene after similar scene of characters staring at one another stupidly, flailing about wildly and asking what happened. This is the boring that Andy Warhol, who liked boring, found, well, boring.

For his part, Scott responded not only to Kois, but also to critics like Time's Richard Schickel, who hated Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, decrying its “twaddling pretenses," and calling Malick "an inept filmmaker."

Scott responded:

In Mr. Schickel’s argument, “pretentious” functions, like “boring” elsewhere, as an accusation that it is almost impossible to refute, since it is a subjective hunch masquerading as a description. Manohla, you had some reservations about “The Tree of Life,” but your dispatch on it from Cannes emphasized its self-evident and disarming sincerity. Sincerity is the opposite of pretentiousness, and while it is certainly possible to be puzzled or annoyed by Mr. Malick’s philosophical tendencies or unmoved by the images he composes or the story he tells, I don’t think there is any pretending involved.

At Salon.com, critic Andrew O'Hehir takes a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach, though he sides with "team boredom" in the end:

Suffice it to say they're both right and both wrong and that, thankfully, hardly anyone holds those positions in their purest form. Pop culture can be a tremendously liberating collective experience, and can also be a tool and an example of totalitarianism. What remains of aristocratic high culture in the art-house tradition really does embody some of the finest aesthetic values of the post-Renaissance West, but it can also be a masochistic and exclusionary ritual, like Odysseus tied to the mast and listening to the Sirens sing. What is boring? A lot of human life is boring, and we've all got to pick our poison. Most people, most of the time, prefer to be distracted from the boredom of everyday life with movies that labor to entertain them -- and they may get understandably pissed off at those of us who claim that those things, too, are boring.

What about works of art that are deliberately and intensively boring, in the Tarkovsky mode? They'll almost certainly be out there somewhere, for the audience of flagellants like me who want to seek them out, but that's hardly the point. Even if you take the most dystopian possible view, as I often do, and see a culture that has tried to build a massive edifice to keep boredom out, a Maginot Line or Berlin Wall of permanent entertainment -- well, then reflect on what happened to the Maginot Line and the Berlin Wall. Boredom is like the ants' nest underneath your picnic, or the mass of hungry zombies outside the mall. Do what you will, you can't keep it out.

Though complex and multifaceted, I think what this debate boils down to is a question of the merits of "escapism" and the proper posture one should have towards consuming cultural items like films. If a film demands more than intellectual passivity from its audience, should we rise to the occasion and "aspire" (as Kois puts it) to get the film? Or is it our right and prerogative, as an audience, to demand that films speak to us on our level, give us what we want for a few hours (escapism), and then send us on our merry way?

Of course, beneath these questions is the complicated history and nature of the cinematic medium. Historically it's been a popular form of diversion, more "mass entertainment" than other artistic forms. But in spite of its populist roots, there is no question that cinema has proven, from even its earliest days, that it is indeed an art form--capable of exploring, exposing, moving, and challenging audiences as effectively (or , sometimes, even more) than novels, paintings, or plays. Thus, I think we can excuse from the outset the notion that film is somehow destined, or properly meant, to solely be diversion. Film has proven itself adept at artistic achievement, and we should thus proceed in this conversation as if film is on the same level as the "high arts," because it is--or can be.

The issue here is bigger than just film. It's about how we consume anything, and how we look at the world. Do we really believe in the power of art to edify our lives? Are there things left to discover or learn about the world through art? Or is it merely something pleasing from which we can partake as means of reprieve or escape?

It would be easy to accuse Kois and Schickel of being lazy--just not looking hard enough or caring to exert energy in "getting" a difficult, slow or boring film. But I think it has more to do with cynicism than laziness. Sadly, our world is ever more cynical and skeptical, doubtful that anything mediated is truly true, or good, or new. We're understandably reluctant to trust in anything mediated to us, because we've seen everything, we think. What could a movie possibly add that we haven't learned from first-hand experience? It's almost as if, in a world of over-mediated, what-can-we-trust incredulity, our physical and first-hand experience is all we can believe in.

We are also skeptical about meaning. Is it even there? Grand, ambitious attempts at meaning making are foolishness in a postmodern world (this is evident in Schickel's insinuation that great film directors only touch on the "big questions" as an aside to the more important narrative entertainment). We're dubious that pondering, probing, or discovering meaning in life is possible, or even desirable. Thus, why exert energy trying to figure out the nuances of what some other dude (especially some annoyingly esoteric, obtuse artist like Terrence Malick) thinks about the mysteries of existence? Just give me something I can laugh out, immerse myself in, or be amused by.

This sort of cynicism understandably makes any sort of sincere, complex or difficult art terribly arduous to endure. When we are closed off to the possibility that art can actually teach us things, or make our lives better, or reveal truth to us, then of course it becomes a chore and a bore to sit through. Kois's "aspirational viewing" is admirable, but it seems like what he's "aspiring" to is more a sort of in-the-know literacy than an actual discovery of beauty and truth. In the end, Kois seems to resent films that set their own terms, confront or challenge us, or suggest that we have things to learn about ourselves and our world. Escapist films are just so much more palatable.

The thing is, "escapism" doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's all in how we understand what escapism means. Yes, film and other arts are great at escapism in the sense that they show us exotic worlds, take us out of our comfort zones and allow us to see and experience wonders we might otherwise never behold. But when escapism is sought after merely because it temporarily nulls the boredom, void, denial, or fear we have in confronting the world right in front of us, escapism becomes an abuse (in the same way we might abuse alcohol or some other drug). In the latter case, escapism is a selfish, lazy, quick-fix thing we use to soothe ourselves. We don't care what the cultural text in question has to say; only what it does for us. The better approach to escapism is when we cede our control, letting the film take us where it wants to go and opening ourselves up to what it has to show us. In this, we see new scenery, new places, new perspectives. We "escape" the mundane. But we also see the mundane anew, recognizing--if we are willing to actively search--mysteries and curiosities about ourselves and our world that film and other arts are uncannily skilled at revealing.

Babies: Born This Way?

I was recently quite disturbed by this story of a couple in Toronto who have refused to divulge the gender of their recently born child, who they named Storm (how perfectly gender ambiguous!). Though Storm does indeed have a gender, Storm's parents—Kathy Witterick and David Stocker—aren't telling anyone, not even family and close friends, what it is.

"We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now—a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation," wrote Witterick in an email. “In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.”

“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” said Stocker.

There are many troubling aspects to this story, not least of which is the fact that a newborn has been turned into a political statement by his/her "progressive and proud of it!" parents. If we're talking about giving children more choices and more freedom, did anyone ask little Storm if he/she wanted to be turned into a political statement about gender ambiguity? No one asked Storm, but nevertheless it appears the baby is fated to live a life forever tainted by his/her parents refusal to raise a child with gender as a given attribute of identity.

More troubling is the notion that a baby's gender is a choice that parents can make for it, or even a choice that the baby can make for itself at some point. I realize that this is contested territory in our society today (look no further than the new documentary Becoming Chaz to see how normalized the notion of gender malleability is in our culture), but I just have a hard time accepting this extreme insistence on freedom of choice in the realm of something as fundamental as gender. Are we really free to become anything we want to be, if science/surgery can make it possible? Where does it end? I suppose it's a natural outgrowth of our society's values of autonomy and liberty (no one but me controls my fate!) that now even the bodies we are born with are subject to our consumer preferences.

But perhaps most troubling in this story is the idea that making choices for children is a bad thing--that, even from birth, humans are entitled to decide everything for themselves, and that parents who get too pushy about dos and don'ts are merely cogs in the machine of an oppressive hegemony, hellbent on suffocating the freedom and fancy of autonomous individuals.

Personally, I'm thankful for rules. I'm thankful my parents lived in a world of moral norms, dos-and-don'ts, crime and punishment. I'm glad they didn't let me decide everything for myself. I'm glad there were structures, guidelines, expectations. How awful to grow up in a formless void of anything-goes, "every feeling you have is true!" vapidity. We are fallen creatures, and every feeling we have is not true, good, or right. We need to learn that. We need people to tell us that we aren't always right, even when we feel like we are.

In The Tree of Life, the boys have a hard time with their disciplinarian father (Brad Pitt) and seem to favor their more gracious mother (Jessica Chastain). But notice what happens when their father goes away for a trip. Under mom's lenient watch, they get into all sorts of mischief. They discover their dark side. Freedom, unbound by the accountability of dad's watchful eye, leads them to sin. It's fun to be free, but it leads them down a dark path. Ultimately, they need their father. They need someone to tell them no, and they respect him all the more for it. This is loving: Being able to guide the unwieldy whims and freedom of someone you love into a pattern of virtue and restraint. Left to our own devices, free of all constraints and having no choices made for us, we're bound for all sorts of trouble.

The whole thing reminds me of Lady Gaga's Born This Way (which I blogged about back in February), an album which sets forth an increasingly heralded ethos of embracing whoever and whatever you want to be. "There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are,” sings Gaga. “Cause he made you perfect, Babe… God makes no mistakes.”

But if God makes no mistakes, why not celebrate the gender of a baby who is born one way and not the other?

What Gaga is really trying to say is "YOU are God, and you make no mistakes... Forget how God, or evolution, or biology made you... None of that matters because you can change it any time you want. You are bound by no one and nothing."

And that's an ethos that can only lead little Storm, and the world in which he/she will grow up, into utter chaos.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is not the only recent film release that has probed the big questions and explored the wonders and mysteries of the natural world with a gloriously sincere, child-like awe and wonder. Werner Herzog's astonishing, engrossing Cave of Forgotten Dreams has the same sort of existential curiosity as Life; the same operatic majesty. Both Malick and Herzog are explorers, philosophers, taking their cameras to the far reaches of the earth to create a cinematic meditation as interested in the science of the natural world as it is in the longings of the human heart.

Herzog's Cave takes audiences inside the Chauvet cave in southern France, where in 1994, discoverers stumbled upon the earliest known prehistoric cave paintings. The cave, which had been sealed by a rockslide many thousands of years ago, had preserved a vast array of cave drawings (of horses, lions, bears, panthers, hyenas, etc.) painted by prehistoric man more than 30,000 years ago.

The cave is so historically significant that, in order to preserve its priceless relics, only a handful of humans (mostly scientists, archeologists, historians) are allowed to enter to the cave, and then only for a few hours at a time at a certain time of year. In other words, you and I will never be able to go inside. But thanks to Mr. Herzog, and the power of cinema to take audiences into forbidden, forgotten, unreachable places, we do get to take a look inside.

After receiving special permission from the French minister of culture, Herzog and a crew of three were allowed entrance to the cave to film the documentary, using custom-made 3D camera equipment and limited lighting. It's a testament to Herzog's artistry that, even with so many limitations (they could only enter the cave for a few hours at a time, and could never step off a metal walkway inside the cave), the film feels as grandiose and epic as an opera.

As in Herzog's previous films like Encounters at the End of the World (2007), which explored the culture of scientists working in Antarctica, or Grizzly Man (2005), which observed the eccentric life of Timothy Treadwell amidst the grizzly bears of Alaska, Cave is preoccupied with the interplay between natural wonders and the humans who've dedicated their lives to exploring them andunderstanding them. Herzog's films feature jaw-dropping natural imagery and documents of wonders that feel genuinely undiscovered, but sometimes his camera seems even more interested in the humans he encounters in the process of discovery. Like any documentary, Herzog's Cave features talking head "experts." But they're more than talking heads. For Herzog, they are the subjects and stars of the film, embodying the mysteries and themes of the film as much as the cave paintings themselves.

Featuring his characteristically subjective, speculative voiceover, Herzog turns Cave into more than just a History Channel-funded documentary of one of earth's most important historical sites. He uses the film to ask big questions about what makes a human human: Are these cave paintings representative of some transition in the development of the human soul, where man discovered art, representation, culture for the first time? What can we learn from these paintings about the nature of man and his relationship with the world around him, with God? What drives man's curiosity about existence? What drives him to create art?

These questions arise on at least three levels in the film, as reflections of 1) the prehistoric humans who created the cave art, 2) the humans today who have devoted their lives to understanding things like history, and 3) Herzog himself, who finds himself compelled to make films like this, a sort of meta analysis of the human activity of culture.

In the end, Cave is more than just an document of a historical wonder. It's a self-probing meditation on the very meaning of civilization, of culture, of creation. It takes us all the way back to the very beginning of culture, to help us understand just how glorious, unexpected and valuable is man's facility for self-conscious reflection on himself and his world.

How to Watch a Malick Film

Yesterday, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life was released in theaters, and audiences in NYC and LA got to experience its curious beauty for the first time (viewers elsewhere in the country will be getting the film in coming weeks). Click here for my review of the film for Christianity Today, or here for a commentary piece I wrote on Terrence Malick's themes/philosophy, for the June 2011 print issue of CT.

The Tree of Life, like Terrence Malick's other 4 films, is rich with layers of beauty and meaning, but its also stubbornly ambiguous at times and potentially maddening. It's not a film you can fully "get" on a first or second viewing, if at all, but that's not to say that it doesn't have intense and immediate pleasures and gifts to offer, if one is willing to receive.

Below, and over at Relevant, I've offered a few tips for those willing to give Tree of Life a try. These are themes and ideas to keep in mind when approaching his admittedly unconventional, sometimes elusive films.

Remember Eden. Each of Malick’s films contains imagery of some sort of Eden, of Paradise found and Paradise lost. Whether a hidden treehouse hideout (Badlands), an idyllic farm life amidst glistening wheat fields (Days of Heaven), or a Thoreau-esque residency in the primal forests and tropics (The Thin Red Line and The New World), each Malick film beautifully portrays a blissful period of utopian living, followed by the loss of it—usually on account of sin. Malick’s films evocatively capture Edenic visions of perfection and natural beauty, and then, in their lack, a visceral groaning for renewal and reconciliation. The films are haunted by memories, reveries, vestiges of a more perfect, unified creation, and each film leaves a lingering feeling that redemption is still—somehow, somewhere—within reach. In The Thin Red Line, Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) articulates a common sentiment of existential pondering in Malick’s films: “This great evil. Where does it come from? … Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known.”

Become a child again. Innocence is a big theme in Malick’s films. His protagonists are frequently children, or at least “child-like” in their points of view. In Badlands, Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen play outlaws on the run, living a Tom Sawyer-type adventure, as innocently and whimsically as is possible for a murder spree aside. Days of Heaven and The New World both prominently feature the perspectives of innocent young girls, curiously exploring and experiencing the good, bad and ugly in the world around them. But the most significant child-like perspective in Malick’s films is Malick himself. The director’s gaze is thoroughly investigative, observational, awestruck and curious about creation, discovering wonder all around. Writing about The Tree of Life in the Village Voice, Nick Pinkerton quotes C.S. Lewis to describe Malick’s “childish” approach:

“Malick shows the wisdom of C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism: 'If we are to use the words ‘childish’ and ‘infantile’ as terms of disapproval, we must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing,' Lewis wrote. 'Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity and to admire?' It is because the 67-year-old director can get so much of that onscreen, and much more besides, that he’s one of the few American filmmakers operating on the multiplex scale who makes movies feel like undiscovered country.”

Don't be afraid to see "Christian themes." Finding “Christ figures” and “redemptive themes” in the movies can be overdone and convoluted, but if ever there were films where it was appropriate and natural, it would be Malick’s films. The director grew up Episcopalian and his films are full of biblical imagery, language and Christian motifs. God is constantly being questioned, searched out, relied upon in his films—whether visually through upward glances at the sun and sky, or through voiced inquiries (“Who are you to us?” “What was it you were showing me?” “Lord, turn not away thy face …”). Baptismal imagery is prevalent (at least two of his films contain literal baptism scenes), as are scenes of prayer, liturgical music and references to specific Bible passages and characters (Adam/Eve, Job, Cain/Abel, Ruth, the Book of Revelation). Though Christ is rarely, if ever, mentioned by name, Malick’s films are deeply influenced by Judeo-Christian conceptions of God and the biblical narrative. The Tree of Life, for example, is one gigantic whistle-stop tour through existence, taking us from Genesis to Revelation, reflecting on the nature of God all along the way. As Roger Ebert says of Life: “It’s a form of a prayer.”

Let it roll over you. Though Malick’s films are quite philosophical and vocally metaphysical (voiceover questions about God, evil, death, love are ubiquitous), they should not be processed in the way one would read a term paper. This is not to say they shouldn’t be thought about, analyzed or deconstructed after the fact (because certainly his complicated films invite all manner of critical response and worthy engagement). It’s just to say that, in the midst of experiencing the films, it’s best to receive them with eyes and ears wide open rather than trying to figure them out in the moment. Heavily influenced by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Malick studied philosophy at Harvard, Oxford and MIT before he made his first film), Malick wants his films to be experienced viscerally before they are understood cognitively. The J.D. Salinger-esque director doesn’t do interviews or comment on his films, but in a rare 2005 screening of The New World in his hometown of Bartlesville, Okla., Malick fielded a few questions and suggested to the audience that the best way to view his film was to “just get into it; let it roll over you. It’s more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself.”

The New World

In some ways, The New World serves as the perfect lead in to Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life. Why? Because TREES are a major theme of World. Yes, trees.

Throughout World, Malick's fourth film, trees are an essential image and metaphor. Early in the film, trees anchor the boats as the European colonists arrive. At the end, tree comprise the final shot. We look upward at a towering cathedral of trees, and then the film ends with the delicate drop of a leaf.

There's something sacred about trees. On his "Gospel of Trees" website, Alan Jacobs writes this:

The Bible is a story about trees. It begins, or nearly enough, with two trees in a garden: the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The pivotal event in the book comes when a man named Jesus is hanged on a tree. And the last chapter of the last book features a remade Jerusalem: “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” If you understand the trees, you understand the story.

“Think of a tree, how it grows around its wounds,” says one character in The New World to Pocahontas. “If a branch breaks off, it don’t stop but keeps reaching towards the light.” The New World is about resiliency—about pushing on amidst hardship, pain, suffering, and striving to make the best of one’s circumstance. Trees are like that—always growing, pulled toward the sky, even when winds and rain and hardship come. They weather all seasons, even if they lose some pieces along the way. And this is the journey of Pocahontas; the journey of life. We're all familiar.

The New World begins where the Malick's previous film, 1998’s The Thin Red Line, ended: with a boat of weary men escaping a brutal past and hoping for a new start. Though Line is set some 335 years after World, both films evoke a vision of humanity’s quest to transcend imperfect circumstance and begin anew. It is a sentiment of man’s soul that has driven him since he lost Eden. How do we regain what was given us? Can we ever reach those distant shores and “exchange this false life for a true one”?

That question is posed by explorer John Smith (Colin Farrell), in World.  Smith arrives on the shores of a new start in 1607, ushering in the critical confluence of native and European cultures that painfully birthed what would eventually become a great nation. Smith is determined to make “a fresh beginning where the blessings of earth are bestowed upon all,” and he takes up an Emersonian-style residence with the native Powhatan tribe (mirroring Jim Caviezel in The Thin Red Line). Following the familiar myth/fact legend, Smith soon falls in love with the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas (stunningly portrayed by  Q’Orianka Kilcher), and lives a beautiful period of utopian bliss.

The first act of World features a peaceful, “calm before the storm” ambiance. We know it is transitory and that something will soon disrupt the balance, but for a time all is well and transcendence is near. The New World fulfills its promise for Smith in the beginning, but soon the reality of war, destitution and man’s ailment (sin) spoils the garden. Paradise is lost, though glimpses of what was, or what could be, are always apparent.

The film's chief tension lies in the love triangle that develops between Pocahontas, Smith and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). When Smith is pulled away from his mythic romance with Pocahontas and called back to England, tobacco-pioneer Rolfe takes over as Pocahontas’ suitor. The two men epitomize different poles of a familiar dynamic—fleeting, reckless joy (Smith) on one hand and more stable, long-term security (Rolfe) on the other. The film's bittersweet resolution to this tension reveals a sort of “living in spite of” theme. Pocahontas might have preferred John Smith to Rolfe, just as she’d probably have opted for a continued life among the Powhatans rather than the Europeans, but she must cope with the circumstances in which she finds herself. She must take inspiration from trees, which keep growing even when branches fall off. She is a metaphor for America: an ever changing, flexible experiment that must adapt to survive, concede setbacks and allow for dissent and frustration in order to move forward.

From the breathtaking opening minutes of the film, an extended montage sequence of sensory crescendo (to the music of Wagner’s Das Rheingold prologue... repeated again in the middle, and end of the film), we know that World is not a conventional film. We do suspect it is a Terrence Malick film, however, and during the next two+ hours of 65mm nature photography, hushed voiceovers, elliptical editing, jump-cut storytelling, hyper-attentive sound and scarcely little dialogue, we become convinced of this fact.

In 2005, Malick made a rare appearance at a December 26, 2005 screening of World in his (rumored) hometown of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and actually fielded a few questions. The artist suggested to the audience that the best way to view his film was to “just get into it; let it roll over you. It's more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself.”

A film like this cannot be read like a book. It is not as black and white as your average American history lesson. Malick understands that America is more complex than that; that existence is more than one nation’s mythology; that any “New World” is not an end to the journey. The Virginian shore was just the beginning for Smith and the other early settlers. The New World is, as Malick told the Bartlesville audience, above all a story of hope: “Maybe the true shore is still yet to be discovered.”

The Thin Red Line

After two acclaimed films in the 1970s, Terrence Malick fell off the Hollywood radar for two decades, moved to France, and lived the quiet life of a recluse. No one knew when or if he would ever make another film. But in 1998 he emerged with a third film, a big-budget WWII film (adapted from a James Jones novel) released the same year as Saving Private Ryan. It’s as if Malick wanted to hold the unresolved tension of his first two films as long as possible, waiting for just the right project to release the catharsis. If The Thin Red Line is anything it is certainly a catharsis. The line between the holy and human is never as blurry within the Malick corpus as it is here. Even the form of the film, with its indistinguishable voiceovers and exchangeable characters, echoes this uncertain harmony. From the opening line of the film (“What’s this war in the heart of nature?”), the dualistic balancing act in nature takes center stage. While the protagonists of Malick’s two earlier films (Martin Sheen’s Kit and Richard Gere’s Bill) both encounter this “war” in nature, neither recognizes the simultaneous horror and rapture of existence for what it is. Only Line’s Witt (Jim Caviezel) sees the transcendental “light” amid the darkness all around him. Where others in that film succumb to desperation or nihilistic ambivalence, Witt sees sparks of a heavenly glory. He recognizes the seemingly paradoxical notion that “even—no, especially—in the throes of self-annihilation, man can apprehend the sublime,” as Gavin Smith wrote in his Film Comment analysis of the film.

The film’s World War II backdrop underscores the message of conflict as an elemental part of life, something running much deeper than just guns and bombers. It is a very Heideggerian notion—that reality shapes itself through conflict and struggle. As Heidegger puts it, the world (humanity) and earth (physical nature) are in a constant and essential striving, opponents that “raise each other into the self assertion of their natures” (“The Origin of the Work of Art”). Malick turns the philosophical concept into artistic exposition by showing how our existence is driven by conflicts between war and peace, darkness and light, love and strife, Paradise found and Paradise lost. It’s a film that is more interested in the fact that the world is governed by contrasts and conflicts, and less in the question of which side is right and which is wrong.

At the heart of the film is the notion that this warring tension is evidence of something other—some oneness and perfection just out of reach. It is perhaps what Chesterton deemed “divine discontent”—the happiness that comes from both loving and disdaining the world around us. If pure happiness is possible for man in this life, Chesterton says that it “will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance.” Happiness in life comes from the deepest longing for the other—for the filling of “the lack.” We see through the inhumanity of battle in Line that beyond the divisions of people and nations there is a common humanity that longs for that oneness and reconciliation which nature—in its beautiful brokenness—reflects.

As in all of his other films, Malick places his characters within gorgeous settings and idyllic landscapes, where they "move from innocence to experience haunted by a dream of Paradise" (Robert Silberman, "Terrence Malick, Landscape and 'This War in the Heart of Nature'"). Indeed, the specter of Eden is ever present in his films--a haunting remembrance of some distant, more perfect world. In Line, the romantic longing is expressed in the film's last monologue (which also foreshadows Malick's 4th film, The New World): "Walked into the golden age. Stood on the shores of the new world."

In Line, as in his other films, Malick uses raw and (relatively) unmediated nature as a chief expository tool. Much more than just a setting (the jungles of Guadalcanal) or a pretty background, the imagery in Line forms the heart of the film. Nature is at once cruel (creeping, suffocating vines) and beautiful (light filtering through the canopy), though in either case indifferent to human affairs. Like the final shot of an improbable palm sprout on the shores of a battle-weary beach, nature pushes on despite our best (or worst) intentions. The war in nature is eternal (at least as long as this world exists), and our own inner battles are indifferently digested in nature's “neverthelessness.” Even so, there is a cleansing, redemptive power within in. Our transitory place within the realm of the physical brings us into an intimate bond with it. Water imagery in Line shows this, as does light.  The baptismal quality of the former appears throughout—when Witt swims with the natives, when the soldiers swim during their leave, when the G.I. huddles in the cold, drenching rain, longing for purification. The divine illumination of the latter also offers redemption—lighting our dark hearts, warming our cold souls, and keeping the “spark” alive.

If nature is the heart of this film, then the character of Witt is its soul. Witt sees the spark in others, even when they don’t see it in themselves (as in Sean Penn’s character). Witt looks into the eyes of the dying, and where others might see depravity and waste, Witt sees the glory. What Witt sees in his comrades and enemies is less the ‘heart of darkness’ than the ‘heart of the ordinary’—ordinary men bound by the thin red line which encircles them as they walk the threshold between life and death, in the fragile, liminal space between meaning and meaninglessness.

Witt approaches death with startling metaphysical calm. He begins the movie skeptically, musing about his mother’s death: “I was afraid to touch the death that I see in her. I couldn’t find anything beautiful or uplifting about her going back to God. I heard people talk about immortality, but I ain’t never seen it.” Over the course of the film, however, Witt comes to realize that mortality and immortality are symbiotic rivals, at war and peace with each other like most else in nature.

At the beginning of the film Witt explains his longing to meet death in the same way as his mother (“with the same calm”), because “that’s where it’s hidden—the immortality that I hadn’t seen.”  When death comes knocking, Witt faces it with similar peace, looking upwards at the light as it ushers him out of time. His selfless action--leading the enemy away from his company and offering himself as a sacrifice so that others might live--is a fitting culmination of the film's redemptive momentum.

Witt comes to a peace about an unsettling question that defines the film's existential pondering (and is expressed in the closing monologue): "The darkness and the light, are they the workings of the same face?" Sure, it's true that "nature's cruel" (one of Nick Nolte's best lines in the film). But Witt sees that even in spite of the cruelty of nature, beauty and grace prevail: "All things shining."

Even in the hardened face of the character (Sean Penn) who seems resigned to the "survival of the fittest" way of nature, Witt is able to recognize the way of grace: "I still see a spark in you."

It's this sort of interplay between nature and grace, security and passion, survival and sacrifice, that has always interested Malick. It's a heavenly light glimmering through deteriorating leaves in the canopy, an alligator swimming freely and an alligator bound (two images in Line), aggressive waves crashing against a passive shore. It's beauty through dynamics. The harmonious consonance of seemingly conflicting, dissonant things.