Film and TV – Page 95

The Alamo

My review of the new movie The Alamo is up at DecentFilms.Com. I expected the movie to be too hokey to be enjoyable, but it actually was pretty good. It was more psychologically complex than one would expect, and the audience I saw the film with actually applauded at the end.

Walking Tall

My review of the new remake of Walking Tall is up at DecentFilms.Com.

Hidalgo

Just turned in my review of the new movie Hidalgo to The Decent Films Guide. The film stars Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings) as a cowboy named Frank Hopkins who goes to Arabia to compete in a long-distance horse race.

You can read what I thought about the movie in the review, but here are a couple of technical notes that really don’t belong in a review:

1) Since we’ve been talking about other languages in movies, I might mention that a good bit of this one is in a Native American language (Lakhota, I believe) and in Arabic. I don’t know Lakhota, but since 9/11 I’ve been studying Arabic. (I wanted to be able to read enough of the Qur’an in the original to refute the claims of Muslim apologists).

The story in Hidalgo takes the viewer to Yemen and Arabia, but the Arabic being spoken in the film doesn’t sound quite like Arabian Arabic to me. It sounds more like Syrian Arabic (though my ear isn’t good enough yet to be sure). Syrian Arabic is more "musical," like the Arabic in the film, while Arabian Arabic is more harsh and guttural.

I also noticed in the film that the subtitles when the characters are speaking Arabic aren’t giving a strictly literal translation of what is being said. That, however, was true of The Passion as well: The subtitles in it weren’t strictly literal, either.

2) The horsemanship in Hidalgo is pretty good. Viggo Mortensen really does know how to ride. In fact, I was stunned at one of the things he did in The Two Towers.

You know the scene where Aragorn has washed up on the shore and we see a horse step into the foreground, placing its hoof right next to his head and then putting its lips over Viggo’s nose? I was stunned when I saw this. In real life letting a horse do that would be incredibly reckless. Since we didn’t see it’s whole body, I thought for sure it was an animatronic (mechanical) "horse" that the filmmakers used, but no, it was a real one. Viggo apparently slept with it in its stall for a few nights to let it get comfortable enough with him. Still, I would have never done that.

In Hidalgo, Viggo rides well (for the most part) and uses realistic audible cues to tell the horse what he wants it to do (people often don’t realize how important audible cues are to riding–not just "whoa" and "giddyup," but sucking/clicking sounds that you make with your mouth; different horses are trained to respond to different cues).

Given the horse realism the filmmakers seemed to be trying for, I was a little surprised that Viggo didn’t talk to the horse more during scenes in which something that would be very frightening to a horse was taking place (e.g., a sandstorm). Horses are very timid and easily-frightened animals that need to be reassured that their riders know what is going on and are in control of the situation. Talking to the horse plays an important role in keeping him calm when something frightening happens. Otherwise he may run off in fear, carrying the rider with him (which is a Really Not Good Thing in a sandstorm).

I also was a little surprised at a couple of points in the movie when immediately after hard exercise horses were ordered to be bathed in cold water or run directly into the ocean surf. Body heat management is not easy for horses, and they need to be cooled down by slow walking before you get them wet. If they get too much cold water in their hair when they’re still hot it can cause the shivers and even get them sick. One would think that the problem would be exacerbated in the heat of Arabia, but then maybe the cold water there isn’t all that cold by our standards.

Why Don’t Some Critics "Get It"? (The Passion)

A reader writes concerning Wednesday’s blog:

I was wondering why the reviews are either extremely positive or extremely negative. I hardly read of any reviews in between. Do you think that reason why most people either love or hate The Passion of the Christ is because it is a high-context movie? Gibson’s desired effect seems to presuppose the viewer’s preexisting devotion towards Christ.

I think that you’ve got it right. When you run across a "love it or hate it" movie, it’s because there is some kind of context to the movie that is needed to appreciate it, meaning that critics who lack that context just don’t "get it."

This movie is "high context" in the sense that it requires some knowledge of what the issues surrounding Jesus were. If someone who knows nothing at all about Jesus were to see it, he’d likely wonder why Jesus is being treated the way he is. Although in theory you could piece this together from what gets said in the film, the overall experience would be confusing.

The movie also requires, if not a preexisting devotion toward Christ, at least openness to the Christian message and to the movie itself. Here is where some critics don’t "get it." They may have a basic knowledge of the issues (at least enough to comprehend the movie intellectually), but they aren’t open to looking at the movie through Christian eyes.

My compadre Steve Greydanus tells me that there are even accounts of critics in some places snoring through the movie. This is simply incomprehensible to me. Even if a person didn’t know anything about Jesus and found himself confused by the movie, it’s so intense that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone dozing off from boredom. Only a person who was completely unengaged with the movie on an intellectual and a human level could do that. Yet some critics, because of their lack of appreciation for the gospel story or because of their anti-Christian (or anti-this-movie) agenda, are unwilling to engage it.

Why Don't Some Critics "Get It"? (The Passion)

A reader writes concerning Wednesday’s blog:

I was wondering why the reviews are either extremely positive or extremely negative. I hardly read of any reviews in between. Do you think that reason why most people either love or hate The Passion of the Christ is because it is a high-context movie? Gibson’s desired effect seems to presuppose the viewer’s preexisting devotion towards Christ.

"It Is As It Was"–Was It?

There are still questions circulating about what, if anything, the Pope said after viewing The Passion of the Christ. Here’s my take on what happened. First, the established facts:

Last December Peggy Noonan and Rod Dreher both reported that the Pope had privately viewed a screener copy of the movie and afterwards said "It is as it was," which would appear to be a remark indicating that the pope was very moved by the film, and that he approved of it.
Shortly thereafter, papal spokesman Joachim Navarro-Valls and others began denying that the pope had said this. One claimed even claimed that the pope does not make comments on art.
But as Peggy Noonan revealed, before she originally published her story she had gotten e-mail from Navarro-Valls confirming the quote. Rod Dreher also had confirming e-mail from Navarro-Valls.
After a further inquiry from Dreher, Navarro-Valls stated "Regarding your request on the email text attributed to me I can categorically deny its authenticity," which would appear to mean that it was a fake.

What is one to make of all this? Both Dreher and Noonan had e-mail coming from Navarro-Valls’ usual account, so either someone was using his account without his knowledge or some kind of deliberate misdirection was involved. My guess is this: The pope really did make the comment (and he certain does comment on art–frequently in fact) but then Vatican officials got uncomfortable with it and started issuing denial stories using mental reservations.

A mental reservation is a fact or qualification that a person "reserves" (doesn’t state). For example, if a child is accused of eating a cookie before dinner last night he might say "No I didn’t" and reserve the fact that he did eat one immediately after school but not "(just) before dinner." Mental reservations can be morally licit in certain circumstances, but not in all. In some circumstances they amount to lying.

In this case, my guess is that the basic denial that the Holy Father said "It is as it was" is a mental reservation, to be construed along the lines of "He didn’t say it (as a public comment)." Though I hate to accuse Navarro-Valls of using a mental reservation, his statement is also susceptible of one. He may mean "authenticity" in the technical sense of "authoritativeness" rather than the colloquial sense of "genuineness." If that reservation is in play then Navarro-Valls would be saying that the e-mail that came from his account is not authoritative, not that it is a fake.

Now that the film is out, perhaps the Holy Father will choose to publicly clarify his thoughts on the film. Whatever the case may be, there is some kind of skullduggery going on. Either,

Noonan and Dreher are forging e-mail in Navarro-Valls’ name (which I don’t believe for a minute), or
Someone at the Vatican is forging e-mails from the papal spokesman (in which case the person needs to be identified, disciplined, and possibly prosecuted–and the public needs to be informed of the fact that the Vatican has taken corrective measures to prevent this from happening so that reporters can have confidence that they really are receiving e-mail from Navarro-Valls), or
Navarro-Valls and others are unjustly using mental reservations and hanging commentators like Noonan and Dreher out to dry (in which case the truth needs to be stated frankly and without reservation, for the commentators repeated what they said in good faith, and they have a right to enjoy their good names).

If either of the latter two are the case then the credibility of the Vatican press office is diminished.

Criticisms of The Passion

Thus far I haven’t commented much in public on the controversy around The Passion. Having finally seen it, though, I’m now in a position to address some of the criticisms that have been made of the film:

1) Brutality. Many parts of the film are brutal. Some in the audience will have a hard time enduring some of these (particularly the second phase of the scourging of Jesus and the Crucifixion). That being said, the film is not an exercise in sadism. The focus is not on the violence for its own sake but on what Jesus as a Person is undergoing.

2) "Ad Gibson" attacks. After seeing the film, I have no patience for people who have tried to psychoanalyze Mel Gibson and interpret the film as a manifestation of a brutality fetish on his part. I can’t know what happens in another man’s heart, but if Gibson had wanted the film to simply roll around in gore, it would have been much more brutal than it was (the movie is certainly not the bloodiest or most sadistic that Hollywood has produced). From what this film brings to the screen, it appears to be simply what it is: An attempt to be realistic about what happened during the Passion. That attempt requires us to look at things that are brutal.

The charge that the movie reflects sadism on Gibson’s part is simply an ad hominem–an attack directed “to the man,” and it tells us more about the person making it (i.e., that he wants to attack Gibson) than it tells us about the movie. Even more despicable are attempts to attack Gibson based on his father (who is a kook). To attack a man based on his relations is unseemly in the extreme and deserves to be dismissed out of hand. I have no patience for individuals who are vile enough to try to ad hominem a man based on his parentage.

Neither, for purposes of evaluating the movie, am I concerned about charges that Gibson himself may be a radical traditionalist. Lots of Hollywood actors and directors have all kinds of views that I don’t agree with or approve of, but as long as they don’t intrude these views into their films, they are not relevant to film criticism.

3) Anti-Semitism. I also have no patience for those who want to level charges of anti-Semitism at the movie. There is simply no basis for that. There are both good and bad Jews and good and bad Romans in the movie (including Jews and Romans who are not identified as Christians). Neither Jew nor Gentile is portrayed as worse than the other. In fact, by far the most brutal characters in the film are certain Roman soldiers, not the Jewish leaders.

What the movie does portray—and it is explicit about this—is that God loves man, that he is willing to extreme lengths forgive him, that Jesus loves and prays for his persecutors, that they did not take his life from him, and that they did not understand what they were doing. In fact, the moments when Jesus explains that his persecutors do not know what they are doing are among the most moving in the film.

I will concede that Gibson missed an opportunity in how the film deals with the conflict between Jews and Romans. In one scene the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tells his wife that he feels trapped. He has spent eleven years putting down rebellions while having the rotten station assignment of Judea, and now he fears a new rebellion will break out over Jesus: Either the high priest Caiaphas will start an uprising if Jesus is freed or Jesus’ followers will start an uprising if he is not. This paints Pilate as a complex and torn character, which is what the Gospels depict him to be.

Caiaphas himself is not torn in this movie. He simply wants Jesus dead. Why? Because he perceives Jesus as a blasphemer (which is what he would be if he weren’t in actuality the Son of God). Some will not like this, thinking that the film’s Caiaphas is some kind of bloodthirsty zealot. I think, however, that people who take offense at the high priest’s determination to see Jesus dead do not really understand just what blasphemy is or how grave an offense against God it is. Having forgotten the gravity of this sin (or even that it is a sin), they are incapable of understanding why the high priest would act as he does. This says more about them than it does about the film’s portrayal of Caiaphas.

Yet Caiaphas is not as single minded in the Gospels as he is in the movie, and here is where Gibson missed an opportunity. In John 11:45-53, Caiaphas reveals that one of his main motives in wanting Jesus dead is the fact that he fears that Jesus will start a revolt which will cause the Romans to invade and wipe out the Jewish nation. If Gibson had brought that fact into the film it would have made Caiaphas more two-dimensional and have created a sublime parallel to Pilate’s fears: Both men are afraid of a disastrous revolt, and their mutual fear and misunderstanding creates the perfect storm around Jesus that sends him to the Cross.

If Gibson had done this it would have further deflected charges of anti-Semitism and created a moment of great art, but the film is already great art and already goes out of its way to avoid even the appearance of anti-Semitism (for example, the final cut of the film omits the line from Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”).

For a year the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has been attacking this film baselessly, arguing that it could inflame anti-Semitism and drive a wedge between Jews and Christians. For some time I have felt that it was the ADL itself that was driving a wedge between Jews and Christians, and seeing the final film only confirmed this. Forgive me if I am blunt about this, but the activists who have been charging the film with anti-Semitism without even seeing it are hypocrites, pure and simple. They are knee-jerk reactionaries seeking to exploit the situation for their own ends.

What are those ends? For some it may be as simple as trying to make a living. They are activists, and activists need something to oppose. Since accusing others of anti-Semitism has worked for them in the past, they may have seen this film as another likely target with which to energize their supporters and make hay.

I can’t help wondering, though, if there isn’t something else in their motives: The Jewish people have a long history of suffering at the hands of anti-Semites, and Christian anti-Semites (who are far from the only kind; Muslim anti-Semites being another obvious type) often have initiated pogroms and other persecutions after being whipped up about their faith. It is natural, therefore, for non-Christian Jews to start worrying if they see Christians getting too excited about their faith, and the most realistic portrayal of the central events of the gospel ever filmed could certainly get Christians excited about their faith.

I therefore suspect that some have been opposed to the film because they don’t want Christians to be too excited about their faith. In other words: If there are to be Christians then these individuals want them to be lackadaisical, anemic, “ecumenical” Christians, the kind who never under any circumstances criticize things in Judaism, who never persecute Jews, and who certainly never evangelize them. No, the kinds of Christians who are wanted are those who buy into higher critical reinterpretations of the Gospels, who don’t get excited about their faith, and who—above all—leave Jews alone.

I personally have great respect and admiration for Judaism and for individual Jews. That is one reason why I am a student of Hebrew. Yet I also acknowledge that there is room for criticism in every community, the Jewish one included. Here is one criticism: It is unacceptably cynical and manipulative to falsely accuse a work of Christian art of anti-Semitism for the motive of keeping Christians from getting excited about their faith. Christians should be allowed to celebrate their faith without disingenuous manipulation attempts from others.

Of course, not all critics of the film in the Jewish community have this as a motive. Some have simply been scared by the activists in their community into thinking that the film may be anti-Semitic. But my knowledge of human nature and of the relevant history leads me to think that some of the critics are trying to manipulate public opinion regarding the movie for ulterior motives.

The danger, of course, is that once the film comes out (as it now has)–and people actually see it and realize that it is simply a telling of the gospel story and not a piece of Nazi propaganda–that the situation will boomerang on the ADL. People will realize that it was crying wolf and that it had ulterior motives in attacking the film. Some may even connect the dots enough to realize that one of those motives as keeping the goyim from getting worked up about their religion. If so, or even if Christians simply get tired of having a film version of the gospel story cynically smeared in print, this would drive the very wedge between Jews and Christians that the activists professed they were trying to avoid.

As the release date of the film approached, awareness of this reality seemed to sink in on the folks over at the ADL, and a lot of backpedaling started. Abe Foxman, the executive director of the ADL and the lead critic of the film, acknowledged that he didn’t believe that the film itself was anti-Semitic and that Mel Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but that he feared that the film would inspire and inflame anti-Semitism in others, particularly in countries less enlightened than America.

This is the language of backpedaling, of admitting that you got too hysterical about something and are now trying to ameliorate the situation. It’s also one reason that I regard Mr. Foxman and his associates, to be blunt, as shortsighted hypocrites who stand to do more damage to Christian-Jewish relations by their actions than would have occurred had they simply let Christians celebrate their faith without trying to rain on their parade.

Criticisms of The Passion

The Passion of the Christ

I have just returned from seeing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. As I expected, it was an extremely moving film that deserves the support of the Christian community. I did not expect the fact that it would be the best film about Jesus ever made, but that is what it is. By focusing on the final few hours of his life instead of trying to tell the story of his whole ministry and by having an unparalleled commitment to realism, the movie achieves a level of effectiveness and genuine affect that is not found in any other film about Christ.

There are things in the film that one can quibble with. I wouldn’t have made all the dramatic choices that Gibson did, but the ones he made were in the main creative, interesting, and illuminative of the gospel story. The realism of the film also is greater than in any prior film about Jesus. True, the city in the background during the Crucifixion doesn’t look quite like first century Jerusalem, but it’s a good facsimile, and this film more than any other gives you a sense of what it would have been like to actually witness the Passion firsthand.

See it.

I personally can’t wait to get a copy on DVD. I just hope that the DVD has a feature that will let me turn off the subtitles so that I can focus on the languages the film uses (Latin and Aramaic) without the distraction (and help) of subtitles. People may know that I am a student of these two languages, and soon after the film was announced I started getting questions about what it would be like for me to watch the film and understand what was being said. I always told people that I doubted I could follow along in these languages at conversational speed (especially the speed of anxious, fearful people watching the last hours of their Savior’s life).

When I finally saw the film, I found that I could follow more than I expected. Aramaic is the dominant language in the film, but it is a different dialect than I’m used to. That wasn’t too much of a problem, though, as the differences often had to do with pronunciation (in other words, the actors are portraying a different Aramaic accent than I’m used to), but the grammar was what I expected, many words were familiar, and it often only took me a few extra moments to decode what had just been said. I was pleased with how much I could follow, but want the chance to go over the movie several times on DVD as a study aid.

I found the interplay between Latin and Aramaic interesting. You may not notice some of the subtleties that are involved unless you are familiar with one of the languages, but if you are then it becomes clear that real thought was put into which language should be used at any given moment. As you would expect, the Romans speak Latin among themselves but try to speak Aramaic when they are talking to their Jewish subjects. The Jewish leaders try to speak Latin when addressing Pontius Pilate but then quickly and understandably lapse back into Aramaic when they need to say something complicated. This sets us up for a scene in which Pilate begins to address Jesus in Aramaic and then Jesus replies in sustained Latin (at which point a surprised Pilate switches to fulltime Latin, too).