Over the Garden Wall

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014). It's one of the most unique and quirky series in recent memory.

There are a hodgepodge of influences. The setting is predominantly but not exclusively 18th-19th century New England or the Midwest. The specific season is Autumn; I suppose Halloween best suits. Aesthetically it elicits an old timey wimey Americana feel. Other influences I noticed: the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, gothic horror, Peter Rabbit, the Wind in the Willows, Betty Boop, Shirley Temple, Little Nemo, Studio Ghibli, even Disney (e.g. a songbird albeit a sarcastic one). Likewise I detected shades of Dante. For example, the opening chapter begins with the characters lost in a deep dark wood. Our protagonist is "midway" between childhood and adulthood. Also, Beatrice serves as a guide. And the ten shorts seem to roughly correspond to Dante's ten divisions in Inferno.

Story-wise, it's about a pair of brothers on a journey or pilgrimage to return home. One wonders if the story is allegory or reality. Is the pilgrimage in the similitude of a dream (cf. Bunyan) or is it meant to be real - a world between worlds, perhaps a limbo between life and death (cf. Dante)?

The characters are universal archetypes. Wirt is a Byronic hero. Greg is a knight of faith. It's interesting the two brothers are juxtaposed with one another like this - one the prototypical heathen, the other a kind of Christian. The Woodsman is a wild-eyed prophet in the wilderness. The Beast, in my view, is the personification of hopelessness: cue Dante's "abandon hope, all ye who enter here". Same with places and events. For instance, the Unknown seems to represent the afterlife or something like it. At the same time, there's a subversion of expectations in Over the Garden's archetypes (e.g. the big bad wolf is a tame pup).

Pilgrimage stories typically consummate in reaching a destination where the end is the narratival summum bonum. The Pilgrim's Progress' end is the celestial city where God and his people dwell. The Paradiso's end is the beatific vision: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle". Over the Garden Wall's end seems to be romantic love in the guise of a girl named Sara. If so, I'm afraid that's a bit of a letdown, for it would suggest (among other things) that even the best secular pilgrimage or journey stories like Over the Garden Wall haven't evolved much since Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus longs to return home to reunite with his beloved Penelope. Perhaps this is what adolescent or youthful love finds most grand, but then it'd better suit springtime rather than the autumnal themes which are what pervade the entire series. Perhaps this reflects the sad fact that our secular culture has no higher aim or ideal in life to live for than romantic love.

Strachan reviews 1917

Owen Strachan reviews the film 1917: "Keep Your Eyes on the Trees: An Essay on 1917, the Most Profound Film Since Tree of Life".

I also reviewed 1917 back in February.

Tolkien and the Film Adaptations

I prefer Lewis to Tolkien as a fiction writer, but this is insightful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfktLVP4Qr0&list=PLKjwFyELc2Snqt4O6X4VhCm2Pk1k2pXUx&index=19

Coronavirus vis-à-vis Contagion

1. I enjoyed the movie Contagion. I thought it was generally accurate and realistic. Below is a British physician reviewing the movie in light of what's happening with the coronavirus. I appreciate his humor and I think his review would be educational for many people too. Hence why I'm posting it.

2. As far as where things stand with the coronavirus at present. I haven't paid any attention to Scott Gottlieb until now, so I don't know what he's been saying about the coronavirus in the past, but I largely agree with his recent remarks here. There's a transcript as well.

Parasite review

(No significant spoilers except in the very last paragraph.)

The film Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the first foreign film to have ever done so. It's a South Korean film.

The premise is a poor and unemployed family consisting of a father, a mother, a teenage son, and a teenage daughter end up conning and weaseling themselves into working for a rich family. The father serves as their limo driver, the mother as their house maid, the son as an English tutor for the rich family's daughter, and the daughter as the rich family's youngest son's art therapist. They forged documents to pretend like they have college degrees and work experiences they don't. The rest of the film unfolds from this setup.

I think one could evaluate the film on at least three different levels: a thriller with some dark comedic elements, a critique of "crazy rich" Asian culture, and social commentary (if not metaphor) about contemporary class warfare. Let's consider each of these.

What makes the LOTR movies better than the Narnia movies?

Recently I was watching a roundtable discussion in which one of the participants tried to explain why he preferred the LOTR movies to the Narnia movies. It's an interesting question.

By way of disclaimer, it's been several years since I saw the movies, and decades since I read the fiction, so my recollections may be fuzzy, but here's how I'd answer the question:

1. One reason I think LOTR translates more easily into film is its travelogue quality. That naturally invites a cinematic adaptation. 

The Middle Earth landscape is more down-to-earth than some of the Narnia books (e.g. Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Magician's Nephew). 

2. In addition, the LOTR movies had a bigger budget and better director. By the same token, they were filmed in New Zealand, to take advantage of the fabulous landscape. So the movies have a more wide-open feel to them.

By contrast, the world of the Narnia movies felt more cramped and artificial–like they were mostly filmed in studios or made more extensive use of CGI. Mind you, if they had a bigger budget, as well as a director who excels at simulated worlds (e.g. James Cameron, George Lucas), that wouldn't be an impediment.

3. Lewis generally uses characters as mouthpieces for his philosophical and theological musings. So they're apt to be one-dimensional, with stilted dialogue. Compared to so many other novelists, Lewis is aloof when it comes to characterization.  

Lucy is an exception, but that's because she was inspired by a real girl Lewis was very fond of (June Flewett). The daughter he never had. Lucy comes alive in the way other characters don't because it has a real template, and Lewis found her delightful. Another exception is Digory, but that's because Lewis put a lot of himself into that character, from is own troubled upbringing. 

By contrast, Tolkien didn't have nearly as many interesting ideas as Lewis, which makes the characters and their interaction more natural and realistic. Compared to many other gifted novelists, Lewis is rather weak on dialogue and characterization. Where he comes into his element and excels most other novelists is in the realm of ideas and the evocative, otherworldly settings. When it comes to fictional settings, he's more like Ray Bradbury and Cordwainer-Smith–although the latter is better at dialogue and characterization than Lewis. 

4. Lewis has far higher peaks than Tolkien. Some of his fiction moves on a transcendent plane (Perelandra; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Magician's Nephew) that Tolkien can't match. Indeed, Tolkien doesn't even aspire to such heights, and that would lie beyond his reach if he tried. Lewis uses his fiction to illustrate his sense of sehnsucht, and he has both the imagination and expressive prose to succeed. 

That's more challenging to capture on film, without the distinctive and descriptive voice of Lewis as narrator. It would take a bigger budget and a more talented, imaginative director than Michael Apted to emulate that quality.

5. Finally, the film version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader isn't long enough to do justice to the narrative. It needs to linger more and savor the atmospherics. 

Dracula without Christ

I suppose vampire flicks are interesting in large part because of their associations with Christianity (often Catholicism). Symbolisms involving blood and (holy) water. Children of the light vs. children of darkness. Dracula as a Cain or antichrist figure. And so on.

However the new BBC/Netflix Dracula series seems to be attempting to subvert this relation to Christianity. To secularize Dracula. To background the Christian themes and symbols in Dracula and to foreground secular elements. The series suggests that traditional Dracula tropes (e.g. fear of crosses or crucifixes, sunlight burning vampires to a crisp) are in Dracula's head. Dracula doesn't actually get burned by sunlight. Crosses don't in fact harm him. He simply fears sunlight and crosses. So it's more like a person with an irrational phobia. This in turn (the episode suggests) is because what Dracula really fears is death so he's turned his fear of death into superstitious rituals or the like in the hopes that these will keep death at bay. It's like someone afraid to walk under a ladder because he thinks it'll mean bad luck for him.

If this is the case, then it's further interesting to note the creators and showrunners are Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Both men are known for their work on the BBC's Doctor Who as well as the BBC's Sherlock. Both are vocal secularists as well as LGBTQ supporters. Indeed, Gatiss is homosexual. As such, I wonder if perhaps Dracula is meant to mirror what most secular homosexual men fear - getting old, losing their youth, a slackening in their sexual vitality, death? Sure, many non-secularists and many non-homosexuals share these fears as well, but it seems to me it's particularly acute among homosexual men. For example, Prof. Christopher Hajek at the University of Texas-San Antonio has concluded based on his research that gay men are "scared of aging more than a lot of other people would be".

At the very least, even if it's not true of homosexual men, or no more so than the general population, it seems quite true of secular atheist or agnostic types. See this 97 year old professor for instance. He "grieves" as those "who have no hope" (1 Thes 4:13) over the death of his wife. He wrote a book arguing not to fear death when he was much younger, but at 97 years old he candidly admits he was wrong in his book. He confesses he's scared of death.

In any case, there's no ultimate hope outside Christ. That's why it's good for us to remember and be thankful that God saved us, for we too "were at that time separated from Christ...having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph 2:12). God gave us hope who had no hope. And God continues to give hope to the hopeless if only they will forsake the darkness and come into the light.

Drama is conflict

From what I've read, it's an unquestioned axiom that conflict is the essence of drama. That's morally disturbing if true. Is life boring unless we always have obstacles to overcome? Likewise, is life boring unless we're always setting new goals? An endless (vicious?) cycle of conflict and conflict resolution?

Does this mean heaven will be boring? What worldview is implied by the axiom that conflict is the essence of drama? 

Is conflict essential to an interesting, fulfilling life–or just essential to an interesting story (novel, movie)? But is that a tenable dichotomy? 

Is this an artificial requirement for what constitutes good drama? Is that a natural prerequisite–or has it been conditioned into us? Like needing to get high. It's fun to watch a gripping movie, but you can't live on adrenalin. 

Is conflict a staple of drama because it's such an easy, lazy way to write a story? Inject that artificial stimulant. Does it take more imagination and skill to write an interesting, satisfying story that doesn't center on conflict and conflict resolution?

The stereotypical plot forms an arc. The storyteller introduces a point of conflict. The conflict intensifies in a rising motion, then peaks. That's both the dramatic high-point and turning-point, although it may not be the structural turning-point. Usually things come to a head towards the end of the story, to maintain suspense. Then there's the falling motion when the conflict is finally resolved. The climax is delayed for as long as possible to gin up excitement. Build pressure to a breaking point. Everything after conflict resolution is anticlimactic, so that's relegated to the tail-end of the story.  

That's a perfectly good plot convention, but must every story be shoehorned into that pattern to be a good story? Once again, what's the relationship between a good story and a good life? If we run out of challenges, must we constantly invent new challenges to be happy? What does that say about the world to come? Can we enjoy life unless there's conflict? In effect, is that just busywork? Filler? 

I'm not suggesting we should eliminate conflict from storytelling. Conflict is an inescapable feature of human experience–at least in a fallen world. When we write about real life, that will include many stories where conflict is a central theme. 

The question, though, is whether this convention is smothering the potential for good stories that don't center on conflict and conflict resolution. And it goes to the larger question of the relation between life and. Is conflict necessary for a happiness? Seems to me it's about balance. We need a certain amount of variety. We need a certain amount of stability and predictability. We need some repeated pleasures. Striking a balance between change and familiarity. 

Some stories have an open ending. They create plot conflict, but leave it unresolved. In real life, many situations lack closure. All the loose ends aren't tied up into a pretty bow. In a sense, hell is a paradigm example of an open ending, where conflict is forever unresolved. 

1917

I saw the film 1917 yesterday.

Kitschy flicks

1. It's often said that most Christian movies are kitsch. To be fair, I think that's usually directed at evangelical movies. Off the top of my head I can think of several excellent Catholic movies, viz. Beckett, Brideshead Revisited, Diary of a Country Priest, In This House of Brede, A Man for All Seasons, The Nun's Story, The Scarlet and the Black, and Monsieur Quixote. And there are undoubtedly others I'm unaware of. 

In general, Catholic movies are better than evangelical movies. That may be because Catholicism generally puts greater emphasis on the fine arts than the Protestant faith (an exception are Dutch painters). Catholic worship is more visually oriented. Same is true for the Eastern Orthodox (and to some extent Anglican worship). In reviewing The Passion of the Christ, Roger Ebert insightfully noted that Gibson was inspired more by the stations of the cross than the Gospels.

In fairness, I've seen hardly any of the evangelical films on which the dismal reputation is based. One I did see which fits the trope is The Cross  and the Switchblade (1970), although I thought Estrada acted fairly well, despite the material. But in general it was a cringe-worthy film. Which is a pity because it's based on a true story with lots of dramatic potential. It needed a better director. 

Michael Landon Jr. is an evangelical director. I watched Love's Enduring Promise (2004), which was fairly good. The next installment, Love's Long Journey (2005) suffered from a replacement actress who wasn't as charismatic as the original actress. However, I lost interest in the franchise. 

The best evangelical movie might be To End All Wars, yet I confess that while I owe it, I've never been in the right mood to watch it. But I did love the novel. 

2. This goes to the underlying question, what makes a Christian story Christian? In his book A Christian Guide to the Classics, Leland Ryken draws a useful distinction:

Some Christian literature takes specifically spiritual experience as its subject matter…In other Christian literature it is not the subject matter that is religious but the perspective that the author brings to bear on the subject (64).

i) To expand on his distinction, the content can be what makes a story Christian. A story with a distinctly Christian plot, characters, setting, dialogue. Stock examples include Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Perelandra. 

ii) Or it can be the narrative viewpoint. That's more oblique. The plot, character, setting, and dialogue might not be distinctly Christian or churchly. It might involve mundane experiences common to believers and unbelievers alike. Yet that can still be oriented towards a Christian outlook, in terms of what is shown or implied to be ultimately important. Hopes and longings that can only be satisfied within a Christian framework. Redemptive motifs. The use of subtle Christian symbolism. The dawn of heaven casting shadows into this world's valley. 

Of course, these aren't airtight dichotomies. A Christian story can have elements of each in varying degrees.

A weakness of many evangelical films may be overreliance on explicit Christian subject matter to convey the message. Mind you, that can be the basis of great Christian storytelling, but not if the execution is formulaic and heavy-handed. It requires originality and imagination.

Likewise, the failure of evangelical directors to project a Christian vision through a more mundane vehicle, by way of emblem and contrast. That could be due to limited talent or thin theology.  

3. In my own fiction I oscillate between the two different methods of Christian storytelling, even though I don't set out to tell a story with that conscious distinction in mind. My fiction is Christian, not because I have an apologetic agenda, not because this is evangelism in a fictional garb (although there's nothing wrong with that motivation), but because that's what I care about. That's what centers my own life. I write the kind of fiction I do because it speaks to me, not the reader. Hopefully it speaks to the reader as well, but the best fiction is more organic. It is not in the first instance an apologetic or evangelistic goal, but the side-effect of the goal I'm personally aiming for in my own pilgrimage. When I do apologetics, I do it straight. That's a different genre. And my fiction isn't purposeful in that sense, but expressive of my journey. In that respect, my fiction lacks the apologetic thrust of C. S. Lewis. 

"Marvel movies aren't cinema"

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/entertainment/indepth/martin-scorsese-i-said-marvel-movies-arent-cinema-let-me-explain/ar-AAJSMU9

He's a great filmmaker, so his commentary is insightful. Mind you, I just don't care for the subject matter of most of his films. An exception is Silence. Two quick points:

1. First of all, there's the artist who's the primary audience for his own work. He writes fiction or makes movies which reflect what he cares about, what's important to him. In the case of a great artist, that indirectly appeals to many others, although in some cases the work is for connoisseurs. 

That's in contrast to stuff that's made to sell. Where the creators are thinking all along, how will this play? They begin with a target audience, and work back from there. 

2. Good art or great art is idealistic. It presumes that life is worthwhile. So quality matters. 

But consistent secularism cuts the nerve of artistic idealism. And if there is no immortality, and what we value is merely the instinctive byproduct of blind evolution, then everything is ephemeral. It's silly to be a serious artist. Nothing endures. 

So why not go for the buck? Quick money? Forgettable films? 

Good or great art is an act of faith, even if the artist isn't consciously Christian. But secularism erodes the faith necessary to create good or great art. It replaces faith with cynicism. 

At the moment I'm not taking a position on Marvel movies, but just making a general observation that's pertinent to all kinds of movies. 

A good movie in a bad movie

Perhaps it's the amateur fiction writer in me, but I seem to see or look for different things in a film than professional film critics or most movergoers. Sometimes, when I'm watching generally bad movie, I think to myself, "There's a good movie trapped inside this bad movie." Of course, most bad movies are just plain bad, but there are exceptions. 

Paradoxically, a bad movie with a good movie struggling to get out can be much more interesting than a conventionally good or even great movie. For instance, Casino Royale (2006) is a great movie of its kind. Flawless craftsmanship in terms of acting, smart dialogue, clever plot, exotic locations, and all that. So many movies suffer from shoddy indifferent craftsmanship because they're made for a quick buck, so it's refreshing to see a movie where real care went into every element of the movie. But it's a pity that the flawless execution is wasted on a Bond vehicle. At the end of the day it's just an high-end popcorn film. 

Now let's compare it to Skinwalkers (2007), a low-budged werewolf flick. It was panned at Rotten Tomatoes. Indeed, I don't know that any major movie critic even deigned to review it. It was beneath them. 

Yet it has some compelling dramatic ideas. Much more interesting than a better film like Casino Royale:

• A Golden Child (Timothy) who's a savior or natural-born healer

• The Golden Child was heralded by an ancient oracle

• The curative power lies in his unique blood type

• His blood can break the curse of lycanthropy

• But his life is threatened by werewolves who don't want to be cured

• Several characters sacrifice their lives to protect the Golden Child 

• The film has a conspicuous number of Christian names: Adam, Caleb, Huguenot, Jonas, Rachel, Timothy

I think many people panned the movie because they're too theologically illiterate to recognize the sublimated biblical motifs. Admittedly, given the widespread animosity to Christianity, they might pan the movie if they did recognize the biblical themes. 

It's striking how often secular films will appropriate and allegorize Christian theology. There are variations on the theme of humans facing a plague or mass extinction, but one person has a curative mutation, viz. Children of Men (2006) and "The Nest" (The Outer Limits). 

As we approach Advent, I've been listening to Handel's musical setting of Isaiah 9 ("For unto us a child is born…"). There are obvious parallels between the Christchild and the character of Timothy in Skinwalkers. Ironically, some secular filmmakers unintentionally do what C. S. Lewis intentionally did, by encoding Christian motifs in stories, which slip under the radar. 

One change I'd made to the movie is that in the original, Timothy is hunted by Varek, who doesn't realize that Timothy is his son. Varek bites him, but ingesting the blood restores his humanity. Biting Timothy is a simple efficient plot device to get the cure into Varek's system.

However, I think it would be more dramatically effective if, when Varek is about to attack Timothy, as he comes within striking range, he senses a mysterious affinity between them, which restrains him from attacking Timothy. Later he finds out that Timothy is in fact his son. Perhaps at that point he willingly accepts the gift his son offers. 

There are many improvements that could be made to the film. The point, though, is that it has some elemental themes that transcend the material and the execution. It could be turned into a much better film because some of the raw material is so potentially powerful, whereas there's nothing to work with in the case of Casino Royale. That's as good a film as you can make, given the raw material. It can never transcend its intrinsic superficiality. What you see is all you'll ever get, whereas there's more to Skinwalkers than meets the eye if you know what to look for. Watching Skinwalkers, I think it myself, "There's a good movie trapped inside this bad movie!" Someone like Brian Godawa might be able to extract the core elements and rework them into a powerful film. 

Movies as mirrors

T.J. Lewis 

Parents:

JOKER IS NOT A KID MOVIE and I’m not comfortable saying it’s okay for teens either. I saw both (including a baby) in the theatre last night, despite AMC having signs warning “this is not a superhero movie.”

It is getting RAVE reviews for the acting and storyline, but
it is NOT entertaining. It’s graphic, twisted, and it works very hard to make you sympathetic toward a psychopath and to make his actions 1) justifiable & 2) amusing.

There is no Batman “here I come to save the day” moment...there’s nothing but chaos and people cheering it on. Case in point, after one murder, the crowd I was with laughed hysterically because another very vulnerable character was forced to watch.

It does paint vividly the severe need to care for those with mental illness well, but we shouldn’t need a movie to tell us that. We only need to watch the news. 

A lifetime at the movies

1. A Christian cliché is that we should interpret every notable experience through the lens of Christianity. What's the significance of that experience from a Christian perspective? Sometimes this can lead to overinterpreting experience, by trying to find something Christian in something that's not. But as a rule, it's a cliché we should live by. 

Movies (inclusive of TV dramas) are good candidates. Movies are the major art form of our time. In terms of mass appeal they displaced the novel. And not just for the hoi polloi. Movies are often a serious art form for talented directors, cameramen, screenwriters, and actors. Just imagine what a genius like Dante or da Vinci could do with the film medium?

I don't mean that movies ought to replace paintings or novels. But in our own day and age, movies are the dominate artistic frame of reference. 

2. Reading Pauline Kael reviews, I'm struck by her all-consuming passion for film, and how personally she takes movies. For her, it's not simply a case or watching or reviewing a movie, but a tense, suspenseful confrontation. 

I suspect that's in large part because, as a secular Jew, she was wholly invested in this world. This is the only life we get. So movies were her religion. That's what she lived for. 

That presents a paradoxical contrast to a Christian perspective. I think movies are both more important and less important than an atheist. On the one hand, it's just a movie. Usually fiction–although some movies have their basis in a "true story" (as the saying goes). So it's not all-important the way it was to Kael.

On the other hand, everything is equally and ultimately worthless in a godless universe. By contrast, everything has a purpose in a Christian universe. Good or great movies have a larger, more enduring significance than the (usually secular) director intended. I view movies with more detachment than Kael, but at the same time, good things in this life have a value that carries over into eternity.  

3. As I reflect on all the movies and TV dramas I've seen over the course of a lifetime (those I consciously recall), I'm struck by how few movies had an indelible impact on me. I can only think of two: The Last Picture Show and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis–both of which I saw when I was coming of age. I think that's in part because that's a more impressionable time of life, and there comes a point in life where it's harder for any experience to make an indelible impression. 

During our formative years, certain experiences become a reference point for the rest of our lives. That can be good or bad. Take apostates who use the folk theology of their Sunday school pedagogy as the standard of comparison for Christianity. 

On the one hand there are movies and TV dramas we outgrow. At least, we ought to outgrow some of that fare. On the other hand, there are movies and TV dramas we grow into. We weren't ready for it when we were younger. It went over our heads. Or we didn't have the personal, corresponding experience to make it resonate at the time.

This goes to a dynamic, dialectical relationship between the movie and the movie viewer. What we bring to the movie.

I first saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with my late parents in my childhood home. At the time, they weren't my late parents. Watching it now has an added layer of poignancy. A split-personalty experience where I watch it again from my current situation, but remembering and comparing that with the viewing experience of my younger self. 

4. This also goes to the complicated question of what makes a movie a favorite. I might admire a movie. I might regard it as a great movie–without liking it. I think The Last Picture Show is a great movie of its kind, and it has some scenes I like, but it's not a film I'd recommend, exactly–and it has other scenes I dislike. 

Here's one way I might gauge a favorite movie. In the Star Trek episode "All Our Yesterdays," the planetary inhabitants are threatened with extinction when their sun goes supernova. But they have time-travel technology, so they survive by escaping into the past.

In terms of what makes a movie a favorite, one question I ask myself is if I'd to step into the world of the film. Would I like to live at that time and place? Would the characters (played by the same actors) be enjoyable friends and neighbors to be around?

To take a comparison, I think what makes Perelandra or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer so appealing is that the reader wishes he could be there. It would be fun to visit or even live there. If you're a boy reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it would be fun to hang out with Sam Clemens and his playmates on his uncle's farm, the mighty Mississippi (before locks and dams domesticated the wild river), and the caves around Hannibal. 

Likewise, how many readers wish they could step into the exotic world of Perelandra and experience the floating islands? Or the Silver Sea in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader? 

By the same token, there are films we admire at a distance, and then there are films that evoke a yearning to go there. Certain films and novels tap into that. You may call it escapist fantasy, but many people long to escape this life and take refuge a better world. A fallen world is unsatisfying. 

5. Some movies have an intriguing dramatic premise, but lack the imagination or worldview to give a satisfying answer to the question it raises. Take Tuck Everlasting (2002). It raises good questions about mortality and immortality, using the fountain of youth as a plot device. From a secular standpoint, mortality and immortality are both unsatisfying. And that's why the ending of the movie is a cheat. By refusing to consider the Christian alternative, the message of the film ("Don't fear death but the life unloved") isn't up to the challenge. That's trite and superficial. 

6. It's puzzling why some movies are popular while similar movies, as good or better, are less popular. Why is The Butterfly Effect so much better-known than Mr. Nobody? 

Some films bomb because they sail over the heads of the average viewer. Take the remake (or reboot) of The Prisoner (2009). The original has a cult following. One problem is if we assess the remake by comparing it to the original, rather than judging it on its own terms, as an independent reinterpretation of the same dramatic premise.

Although the reboot lacks the verve and clarity of the original, the studied ambiguity makes it more profound. Like a mystery novel, the viewer slowly discovers the truth behind the illusion. But it overtaxes the attention span of impatient viewers. It's too subtle, too cerebral, for the average viewer.   

Tristan & Isolde (2006) is another example of a film that's too good for its audience. Too classy and highbrow. No competition for a schlock-fest like Twilight franchise or The Hunger Games franchise. In This House of Brede is even more of a connoisseur film. There are lots of moviegoers who have no taste for truly grown-up fare. 

7. Some films are perfect from start to Finish. Take House of Flying Daggers. 

But others are memorable for particular scenes, or the physical setting. Take the starkly isolated house in Giant (1956), exposed and vulnerable on the windswept plain, with the mountain range on the horizon. 

There's also a nice scene between Dean and Taylor in his house. In general, his performance is mannered. And Taylor had some bad luck with costars. In one film, her costar (Newman) is a straight actor who plays a closeted queer character while in two other films her were costarts are queer actors (Hudson, Clift) who play straight characters. By contrast, there's natural sexual magnetism between Dean and Taylor. 

Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven has some arresting scenes, but I dislike the propagandistic quality of the film. The opening scene in Mulholland Drive, with its tragic fateful ambience, is the highpoint of the movie. The coda to Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy–a melancholic setting of the Nunc Dimittis, with the innocent timbre of the tremble soloist–lingers in the mind.

Into the Wild has some memorable scenes: Christopher paddling down the Colorado River. A deceptively optimistic scene with Eddie Vedder's "No Ceiling" playing in the background. A desperate telephone call in which an old man is trying to talk his way back into the graces of his estranged wife. He's burned through too many lost opportunities. He can never come home.  

8. If you think about it, there's a foreboding sensation when you watch an older movie in which all the actors are now deceased. From a secular standpoint, all that's left of the once living, feeling, passionate, embodied agents is a digital simulacrum, two steps removed from the real person. A celluloid record or analogy recording, remastered. 

The Hunger Games: Wet Tinder

So I'm sitting in a pizzeria, staring at a flatscreen TV as I wait for my order. Turns out I'm watching part of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. (I Googled it after returning home.) The Hunger Games is one of those movies you hear about even if you never saw it. I read some reviews. And from what I witnessed, I wasn't missing out. 

It's undiluted chick flick fare. There's Katniss with second fiddle, boy-toy actors who play her love interests. Apparently, fans, as well as some critics, think Jennifer Lawrence is a fine actress. Really? I mean, she can emote. And there's only so much you can do with the role, considering how it was written. I guess she's just pretty enough without being unattainably gorgeous that teeny bopper fans can vicariously identify with the character. 

The basic idea of the story has some dramatic potential. A decadent totalitarian ruling class centered in the capital city. Reminiscent of imperial Rome. Versailles. Czarist Russia. The Forbidden City. And it's easy to see contemporary parallels. Big Tech. Silicon Valley. Blue cities. Blue states. 

But the execution is so cartoonishly broad and heavy-handed that it's hard to take seriously–unless you're a teenybopper, which is, of course, the target nitch, and widely successful in that regard. Like the Twilight franchise, the appeal is largely impenetrable to the male half of the population. At least normal guys. The kind of movie girls drag their boyfriends to. So long as the boyfriend has earbuds and a hidden phone to tune out the kitsch. 

Heroes and anti-heroes

Some thoughts on heroes and villains and storytelling. This involves some literary and film criticism. And there are tons of spoilers about The Dark Knight, Logan, and the much older film Seven. It's a bit of a jumble if not a haphazard mess, and I don't have the time I'd like to have to better organize and finesse it, but I figured it's better raw than not at all.

1. Many people are fascinated with crime stories, film noir, vigilantes, outlaws, and the like.

   Take the hard-boiled private investigator. I think the main attraction of the P.I. is that he has legal authority to investigate and arrest criminals, and he's fighting to solve crime, but he can operate outside the law. He can rough up people in a way the police can't, he can sneak into places the police need a warrant to search, he can fake the evidence for the greater good of getting rid of the bad guy, and so on. He's a just individual, but he isn't beholden to the judicial and legal system.

   Similar things could be said for the vigilante and the outlaw.

   In short, these are stories about a certain type of character - the anti-hero. Characters who are at heart good but who operate on the (legal and/or ethical) fringes of society. In D&D parlance, the police or sheriff would be lawful good characters, while the P.I. or outlaw would be chaotic good characters.

2. A good story needs a good enemy. The antagonist mirrors the protagonist.

Tolkien biopic

I've been watching trailers and reading reviews of the new Tolkien biopic. I don't plan to see the movie. So my observations are secondhand:

i) On the plus side, the biopic is apparently a respectful, even referential treatment, rather than a hatchet-job or conscious attempt to reinvent Tolkien. 

ii) The dilemma is that for the most part, scholars lead pedestrian, even boring lives, and it's hard to turn that into a gripping movie. The biopic tries to sidestep the dilemma by using flashbacks from his combat experience as well as boyish swordplay. But for the most part there's a chasm between Tolkien's imagination and his outward life. What was going on in the privacy of his head can't be transferred to the screen. Philology isn't the stuff of big screen drama.

While his experience on the battlefield probably colored LOTR, so did his love of Nordic/Teutonic mythology, Beowulf, and the medieval chivalric tradition. But how does a director show that?

iii) Reviewers have noted the conscious absence of Catholicism. I'm no fan of Catholicism, but it meant a lot to Tolkien. If the point of a biopic is to show what made him tick, then his religiosity must be given a prominent place. Otherwise, it's uninformative, and lacks biographical fidelity. In that regard, the biopic reminds me of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, which was a beautiful lyrical movie, but erased medieval Christianity and whitewashed Islam.

It's not that Karukoski is necessarily secularizing Tolkien by design. For one thing, the uncut film had a scene of last rites, but Karukoski cut that out when a focus group didn't resonant with that scene. However, it's an artistic mistake for a director to second-guess the audience reaction. A movie is more likely to be emotionally compelling if, in the first instance, it resonates with the director. 

I don't know enough about Karukoski to say, but there's the ironic possibility that even though he made a biopic, he's inspired by the novels rather than the novelist. He can't identify with Tolkien's traditional Catholicism. It just doesn't mean to him what it meant to Tolkien.  

iv) Then there's the interesting question of why the Inklings don't figure in the biopic. Perhaps, because Lewis was such an overwhelming figure in his own right, Karukoski didn't wish to risk displacing Tolkien by bringing Lewis into the story (not to mention Charles Williams). 

Lewis and Tolkien had some important things in common: both were polyglots, and WWI vets, steeped in literary mythology. Both men lost their mothers at an early age, and while Lewis wasn't orphaned, he was estranged from his father. Both men knew loneliness and the horror of war firsthand.

Incidentally, I suspect not a few Catholics elevate Tolkien to make him the Catholic alternative to Anglican C. S. Lewis.

v) I've read that Tolkien had an unhappy marriage for a number of years until his wife made the adjustment and later, when they retired to a resort community. That would be worth incorporating into the biopic, both for biographical accuracy as well as dramatic depth and interest. 

vi) It would be better to do a dramatic TV miniseries about Tolkien. That wouldn't be exciting, but it would be more balanced and faithful to his life and vision. 

Touch

In our oversexed, X-rated age, this scene illustrates the sensual power of touch:

A G-rated gesture. Yet it carries such a charge.

Touch is so important in human relationships. There's platonic touch. A mother caressing a child. A father holding the hand of his young son. Friends and brothers hugging each other.

Then there's erotic touch. In this scene, the gesture of a very pretty women putting her hand on his hand. It's like the difference between potential energy and kinetic energy. A boulder on a hilltop doesn't look very energetic. Indeed, it looks decidedly unenergetic. But if it rolls down the hill, by the time it hits the chalet at the bottom of the hill, it has obliterating force.

There can be such potency in small, subtle, mundane gestures. That's lost on so many modern directors.

Types of fiction

Human beings love stories. Human beings love fiction. I think a basic reason for that is because individual human experience is extremely provincial. You can only live in one place at a time. You can only live in one timeframe. So stories enable us to vicariously expand our range of individual experience. 

There are roughly two kinds of stories: factual and fictional. We can also subdivide the fictional category. Many fictional stories could parallel factual stories. Many stories deal with the kinds of people, situations, and events that happen in real life. 

That raises the question of why novelists, playwrights, and moviemakers so often prefer fictional stories even though there are real life stories that illustrate the same things. I think that's largely due to convenience and flexibility. In fiction you can arbitrarily select and combine the elements so that your characters say and do exactly what you wish, when and where you wish they to do so. That gives a creative artist great freedom. In real life, the variables can't be manipulated that way.

It also reflects the fact that our knowledge of true stories is quite limited, whereas imagination is much more expansive, so that  fictional stories doesn't require the same amount of knowledge as, say, a historical film or novel. 

Speaking for myself, I find dramas based on "a true story" more emotionally satisfying than imaginary stories. Knowing that it happened to real people. 

On the other hand, there are fictional stories that couldn't happen in real life. Take stories about time travel, interstellar travel, a parallel universe, or a fantasy world, viz. Perelandra, The Tempest, vampires, aliens, talking animals. 

In some cases, these might be naturally impossible, although there could be a Perelandra theme park. An artificial setting. In other cases, they might be naturally or physically possible, but we lack the technology to experience that. 

In addition, unrealistic fiction is appealing because it's how we wish things would happen sometimes. Comedies often trade on that appeal. 

Mr. Nobody

The film is a useful illustration of the theodical principle that every alternate timeline (or possible world) may have tradeoffs. There's no one best possible world:

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/mr-nobody-an-explanation/