Movie Commentary
I appreciate Chuck's comments about the movie list regarding Bourne Supremacy and Oceans 12, although I disagree with him completely - this is the great things about personal movie lists, they don't need to subscribe to anyone else's opinions. I'm sure Chuck will have his own list going in a week or so, up on Public Musings. We look forward to it.
Oceans 12 - to me, the precise problem with this movie is that it is not fun at all. It looks amazing because it's maybe the best looking cast ever assembled and Soderberg is an awesome Gaffer, making his actors always look unbelievable - see Julia Roberts walking down the stairs in a red suit in Ocean's 11 or J-Lo and G. Cloony in Out of Sight. But the vibe and attitude of the film is completely phony - like, "Look at us, we're having SOOOO much fun." It reminds me of high school cliques watching home videos and pointing at each other - "Look how CRAZY and FUNNY we are." Meanwhile, everyone else watching sees a bunch of vain retards trying really hard to appear cool. Further, the caper at the heart of the film is convoluted and by the end feels really hollow. Compare it to good recent caper films - Thomas Crowne Affair or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels or old caper films - The Killing or the original Italian Job and we're talking about completely different leagues.
Regarding Bourne Supremacy, I'll name a couple other films with better action without FX - Bourne Identity, Heat, Collateral...again, I liked Bourne Supremacy, but not quite enough to be in the same category of Eternal Sunshine or Million Dollar Baby.
The NYTimes article offers a neat hypothesis. I will certainly think about it as I watch and make films. They are right in that the two films that made the biggest splash are Passion and F 9/11, and it may have to do with the sense of urgency by each project...neither are close to being the "best" film, but both come from the heart, at least. I actually think the same thing can be said for Garden State - a film I did not care for - but it did come from the heart and was well received by all the poseurs out there (just kidding, of course).
And regarding Kevin's comment and Passion, whatever you say about it, certainly is part of a larger discussion about religion. Church folks, especially Catholics, were swarming to see this film. It particularly resonated with hardcore Catholics - the same sect that were the "bad guy" in the Da Vinci Code (which will be coming to theaters soon also). Not only that, religion is now offering the strongest and most popular critque of Western/America values...after the essential de-bunking of Marxism. It is a critique that Osama Bin Laden has latched onto, namely that Freedom, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not the yard sticks of a just civilization, but that virtue and doing God's will are more worthy goals. He is obviously popular amongst Muslims, but I can guarantee that there are lots of non-Muslim, religious people out there for whom virtue is of greater value than liberty.
As for it's urgency, Mel Gibson gambled all his own money on this film - if that's not urgency, I don't know what is.
2 comments:
Who determines what is meaningful discussion on religion? Sounds like the Poliburo to me...
More people saw this movie than any other text or movie or song or anything related to a religious topic this year or probably for the past 10 years. That contributes to the discussion. This blog never talks about religion and here we are going back and forth about the Passion of the Christ. Bingo.
Whether the Passion was sophisticated or high-minded, or fair, or thoughtful, or anti-Semitic, or simplistic or flagellent, is a different question altogether...but the Pope was talking about this film, for Chrissake, how can you even claim this wasn't a big deal? Or doesn't have meaning?
I do agree that the masses don't always get it right...it's probably more likely, they only rarely get it right. Reality TV, Britney Spears, and Everybody Loves Raymond don't contribute much to anything.
Tom Clancy on the other hand, I think does contribute to our understanding of military affairs. Bill Clinton is a big Tom Clancy fan and I remember Norman Swartzkof citing a Tom Clancy novel when being interviewed on 9/11 - commentators were saying "Using a plane as a weapon was unimaginable." Swartzkof said, "Well, not really, this actually happened in a Tom Clancy novel."
I watched Nashville last night (1976). It ends in an assassination of a famous country western singer. There is an interview with Robert Altman about the film and he said that in 1980 after John Lennon got shot, the Washington Post called him and asked him if he felt responsible. He laughed and said, if anything, the authorities were responsible for not paying attention to his warning.
So where does that leave us with respect to Passion of the Christ? I'm pretty sure the anti-Semetic charge was debunked after people saw the film. I haven't heard anyone whose seen the film come away thinking it was anti-Semetic. That entire claim came about during the script stage when someone sensitive read the script and cried wolf.
What stands out most in the film is the violence. Mel Gibson's message is simple - Jesus suffered an inhuman amount of torture for all of our sins. What is signficant about the film isn't so much that it offers a new, or intellectual, or interesting commentary on the Jesus story. I don't know much about Catholicism or religion in general, but I can recognize the point of this film wasn't to shed new light.
What stands out is the broad appeal of this simplistic interpretation of the story. If one looks around at the state of religion around the world and this country, the most noticable thing, for me, at least is how democratic (small d - as in by the people - the masses) it is. The most powerful religious group in America these days are Evangelicals...and as far as I know, they are small churches, that are rather strict when it comes to morality - and are much more local than national. The popular spokespeople for this group are not clergy members, knowledgeable in theology, but celebrities like Billy Graham who don't offer interesting or progressive views on religion, but instead offer real simple messages that appeal to lots of people. Appealing to masses sometimes yields Howard Stern and Eminem. It can also yield Billy Graham...all tyrants will tell you the easiest way to rally the troops is to identify an out group. For the Evangelicals the out-group used to be Catholics. Now it's homosexuals and Muslims.
Along the same lines, we also have Osama Bin Laden, who espouses strict and literal interpretations of Islam. Bin Laden is not a scholar, but there are TONS of Islamic scholars (too many, if you ask me) who offer an entire spectrum of interpretations of Islam, progressive, strict, etc. He, like the evagelicals, is practicing a simple and personal form of religion. Too bad for us, it requires Jihad against the West.
A discussion about the state of religion in the world would be wise to use both Passion of the Christ and Last Temptation. I really like the latter film, and still think the end, Jesus's final battle with the devil, to be quite moving. But let's be honest, no one saw the Scorcese film when it came out and even fewer are aware of it today. Passion, however, is a chance to look into a keyhole and see how many "religious" people view the world. This, to me, is extraordinarily valuable and important to our contemporary understanding of religion.
I think we are simply coming from different angles. You are excluding Passion of the Christ from a serious theological discussion. Fair enough, it doesn't belong on the shelf with the New Testament, Martin Luther, or the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'm saying it belongs in the discussion of the way religion influences human behaviour and current events.
Perhaps we can agree on that.
Post a Comment