Movies

Some quick thoughts on last week's movies:

The Last Temptation of Christ - I can see why people found it so offensive. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, ignored the Biblical account of Jesus being aware of his divine calling at an early age ("Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?") and instead portrays him as a regular guy who doesn't understand why he hears voices and sees visions. He wishes he didn't have that particular burden. That, I think, more than anything else is what disturbed me. In the end though, I chose not to view the film as overly literal. (It states clearly at the beginning of the film that we're not meant to anyway.) Rather than thinking of it as "This is how it really happened," I chose to read it as allegorical and this particular version of Jesus as standing in as a kind of Everyman, representing the struggles people have in coming to terms with their own personal divine nature and the difficulties of mortal experience.

People talked a lot about the titular "last temptation" which, in this film, was when Jesus was on the cross and he wishes he didn't have to go through with actually dying. He envisions coming down off the cross, getting married, having children, and growing old. It's a very literal, earthy way of portraying Christ's desire to "let this cup pass from me" but I didn't find it that unsettling. (Especially since we Mormons believe Christ was married and had kids anyway. My reaction to all the hoo-ha over The DaVinci Code -- "Meh, so what?") Anyway, the thing the film was really effective in was portraying how crazy and revolutionary Jesus must have seemed at the time. To the religious and political hierarchy, he must have seemed like a really dangerous nut. With most versions, it's hard to feel the immediacy and danger of what Jesus represented to that world.

For the record, the sequence of Christ being tempted in wilderness before beginning his ministry is hypnotic and beautiful and really powerful.


No Country For Old Men - This movie gave me that sense of good, knot-in-your-stomach, what's-going-to-happen-next dread that only really well-made, well-written, well-acted movies can produce. There's not an inch of fat on the entire movie and it moves along with a tremendous sense of confidence and economy. In addition to being a really kick-butt cat and mouse game movie, it's also a meditation on the passing of an older, gentler way of life and the encroachment of a newer, greedier, much more violent world. In other words, it's not just a cool shoot 'em up. What's more, the film looks beautiful. Every shot was thought out, purposeful, gorgeous. There's one shot as Josh Brolin's character is initially fleeing from the Mexican drug dealers when he dives down the side of an enbankment and heads for the river to swim away, the camera looks up at the edge of the enbankment and we hear the sound of tires screeching to a halt and all the camera shows is the dust from the tires backlit against the dark blue sky. You could frame it.


Dan In Real Life - I really loved this movie. It was excruciating to watch good-guy Dan try to keep it together while his decent but superficial brother has a relationship with a woman that Dan is madly in love with. Steve Carrel's performance as a still-grieving widower is convincing and funny. It's never maudlin nor is it overly sweet. The music by Sondre Lerche alone is worth the price of admission. It's the kind of jangly, acoustic, sentimental but self-aware stuff I like.

Overall, the movie made me want to go in to my sleeping daughters, wake them up, and tell them that I love them and that I appreciate them in my life, and that I'm sorry I'm such a poor parent sometimes. It's a movie that makes you want to love people more.


As much as I love it, I do have a couple of quibbles:

1. Does anyone really have family reunions like that? I come from a long line of professional family reunion organizers and I've yet to see one quite that idyllic. The family talent show everyone dresses up for? Family aerobics on the front lawn? It was a little Kennedys-at-the-compound for me.

2. The movie cops out on the ending. After it's revealed that Dan and Marie have a thing for each other, Dane Cook's character (the superficial brother who was dating Marie) is heartbroken for about four minutes and then he's shown speeding off with a seductive, equally shallow woman who was introduced earlier in the film. It's too easy. It uncomplicates things way too quickly for me to buy it. What's more, the movie never develops Dane Cook's character as anything more than a type and so it's completely (unrealistically) easy to disregard him and worry more about Dan.

Nevertheless, I loved it a lot and am willing to overlook those minor things.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Work continues to be work. The dust settles following last week's tumultuous retreat and things go back to normal bit by bit. I have two weeks left of school and then my two big papers are due. Maybe I ought to work on them now.