for the Bible tells me so

On Saturday night Brent and I went and saw For the Bible Tells Me So.

I was the only woman in the theatre.

Apart from that, my main observation about the film is that I was pleasantly surprised that the inevitable negativity toward Christianity was not the whole message, but was rather well-balanced by the stories of Jake Reitan (Lutheran), Bishop Robinson (who grew up Disciples of Christ in KY but now, obviously, Episcopalian), and others. Rather than simply dismissing Christianity as a religion too hateful and xenophobic to accept gay people, the film makes the case that hatred is not the center of the Christian gospel.

from the Sundance review article:

Karslake mostly avoids demonizing the religious right, instead simply
holding up the families at the heart of his story and saying: Here they are.
These are the gay people you so fear, and they are your sons and daughters, your
brothers and sisters, the neighbors you've known for years. Karslake has made a
powerful film, one that I hope will be widely seen, because it addresses the
fulcrum of the religious right's objection to homosexuality without attacking
those who hold those beliefs. Rather than smacking down with a righteous hammer,
Karslake instead simply takes those who would believe that there is no common
ground between faith and homosexuality and gently, relentlessly chisels away at
every argument that bolsters those beliefs.

One of the more striking things about the film is the difference in the quality of religious speech made so obvious by the film. Karslake "mostly avoids demonizing the religious right" because the religious right's own words--from the mouths of Jimmy Swaggart, Dr. James Dobson and others--so self-evidently angry and fearful and hateful, do the job without any outside help. The vitriol is paired against the quiet, ultra-reasonable, peaceful replies of people like retired Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the difference is never directly commented upon but allowed to remain implicit and yet unmistakeable.

My one disappointment: that I was the only woman in the theatre, and Brent and I probably the only two straight people. This isn't, in the end, a film for gay people or for welcoming and affirming Christians. It's a plea directed toward those people, like the families featured in the film, who find themselves caught in the middle between intolerant beliefs and the moral imperative to change. But those people weren't there. And they weren't likely to be, at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village. Will the film reach the people for whom it is an offering? I don't know. But if it does not, in fact, make it to a theatre near you (in Abilene or Oklahoma or Tennessee or wherever you are)...Netflix.

The Brave One

Brent and I went to a movie Saturday night, thanks to Maria's offer to hang out with a not-yet-sleeping Clare. It's been a while since Brent and I went to a movie--the last was a doubledate to Harry Potter with Sarah & Andrew. I'd forgotten how much nicer it is to see a movie in your pj's on your own couch. The snacks are better, the bathroom's cleaner, the seat's comfier, and the comments from the peanut gallery are generally much more intelligent.

Since the point was just to get out while the gettin' was good, there wasn't anything in particular we wanted to see. It ended up a toss-up between The Brave One and The Kingdom. I like a good no-brainer action movie as much as anyone, but I can't say I was real excited about either. Jodie Foster's pretty good, but brutalized-woman-seeks-revenge-then-realizes-she-has-become-her-own-worst-enemy just sounded ho-hum. But, who cares...we're out and we're Clare-free!

So off we went. I must say that going to a movie in NYC was different from going to a movie anywhere else I've ever been. I now understand so much better why Law & Order is so packed with those god-awful cheesy one-liners. New Yorkers eat it up. Nicky Katt's whole function in the movie was to deliver Law & Order style dialogue (which, I have to say, he did with enough comedic flourish that it was on occasion funny). But the movie as a whole was disturbing, and even more so because we saw in a theatre in NYC. Jodie Foster's character, Erica Bain (despite the alternative orthography, certainly a symbolic nomenclature at work there), understandably traumatized, begins carrying a gun--and repeatedly experiencing situations in which she uses it fatally to protect herself and/or others from violent harm. There's an issue of plausibility throughout the movie, but passing over the need to suspend one's disbelief beyond the level ever required by an SF tale, the real issue I have with this movie is the frank and unnuanced sanction of Erica's action. Erica's counterpart, the good cop who befriends her, the steady symbol of respect for the law and restrained ("moral") use of force, at the crucial moment departs inexplicably from his convictions, hands her his gun (with the inevitably unfunny one-liner) and not only makes it possible for Erica to execute one of the men who had assaulted her, but also devises her escape. Erica is ready to be arrested, even after his complicity in the execution, but he tells her to run. The most disturbing thing of all: when she shoots the guy in the face, the audience whooped and hollered and applauded.

The movie ends with Erica climbing the steps in Central Park, the site of her assault, with a voiceover that makes clear that she has been irrevocably changed and damaged by the incident and its aftermath, and that there is no going back to the person she had been and wished she still was. In the last, say, ten seconds of the movie, it seems that the violence has been futile and pointless and has not changed anything--except Erica, who is less than she was. But the possible message of total lack of redemption in the violence she's perpetrated was probably lost on the audience that cheered her on as she blew the dude's head off.

Children of Men

So, what could possibly make me want to see a dystopian near-future sci-fi flick? (Who am I kidding...you all know by now I'm addicted to sci-fi dystopias.) But hearken to this amazing and only slightly ironic endorsement from newly-wed mei mei Emily: "It made me want to have a baby."

Normally, I think attempts to make sci-fi movies are doomed to cheesy failure. This isn't sci-fi's fault, but the exceptions are few. Enemy Mine (1985), with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., is one of the few exceptions (I re-watched it while hanging out in WA this past week. It's still pretty awesome.) And this movie. I thought the portrayal of the near future (the 2020's) was visually realistic, and the technological flourishes were well-chosen and not too brash, except for maybe the scene at the dinner table with the virtual keyboarding, but that didn't bug me (it probably bugged Brent). But there are no big pointy shoulders in shiny clothing; what a relief to look into a future where people wear things still recognizable as clothing.

The basic premise, and I'm not giving away anything you don't pick up in the opening scenes of the movie, is that for some undiscovered reason, human beings have lost the ability to procreate. It's been roughly 20 years since the last baby was born, and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What's the point of...well, anything, when there's no future to anticipate?

So of course, the plot unfolds around the figure of a pregnant girl. Unwed, marginal, and vulnerable, she is very much a Virgin Mary symbol (even makes a virgin birth joke before admitting she has no idea who the father is). And of course the baby is a baby Jesus figure, a concrete embodiment of restored hope for humanity. One interesting aspect of the story is the reversal of the assumption of the male gender of the baby, an assumption made by the mother and then later by a traitorous Judas character. That the baby is a girl underscores the break the baby represents from the violence presupposed in the worldview of the men in control of this anarchic future. The most arresting scene of the movie (despite the awesome moment where you get to see the baby come out, and let me say how excited I am that they included that, and also add, don't worry, it wasn't "gross") is the escape from the bombarded building: mother and baby and protector simply walk out, and as the soldiers hear the baby's cries and comprehend the significance of them, the fighting simply ceases...Until fired upon from afar, and then the frantic and ineffectual violence breaks out anew.

But for all that, the movie ends optimistically: Tomorrow really exists.

I cannot help but add one small pet-peevish criticism. I have no idea why, especially in a movie where the director was brave enough to give the audience a close-to-real birth moment, there would be no concern for continued verisimilitude regarding care. That poor baby went at least a whole night and a day without eating once. I was so concerned about this that I leaned over to Brent and hissed, "that baby needs to eat! why doesn't she feed her?" Is there some reason I don't know about that breastfeeding cannot even be hinted at in a movie? I know this is a small thing to pick on, but honestly. Wouldn't it be nice to have at least one movie remind us that breasts are not just pointless lumps of bodyfat that men (well, mostly men, I suppose) have arbitrarily decided to get off on? For myself, I had never regarded my breasts as anything but pointless, and if they had been any bigger I would have regarded them as pointless and annoying (friends not as lucky as me tell me that they really do have to wear bras...an awful way to have to live, in my opinion). Now, however, I am quite absurdly proud of them. I like them. I think they're beautiful. And they have a point (so to speak). I truly think this movie would be better if someone had thought of this and included a breastfeeding scene; it would have added to the feminist theme, the peace theme, the nurture theme, as well as reinforcing the point, first made visually and symbolically by the sight of the pregnant belly, that humanity's biology had been restored to rightness.