Religion and Politics

There has been a recent controversy in northern Ireland regarding the role that some fundamentalist Christians wish their faith to play in politics - there is a huge conversation to be had about this, and I look forward to exploring it at Greenbelt in a few weeks' time - come and say hi if you're a reader - but for now, here's one small contribution:

When Senator Barack Obama recently addressed the role of religion in public life he said that religious politicians can no more divorce themselves from their convictions than can committed secularists. For we all bring a range of beliefs, experience, and prejudices to the table. But the problem arises when we offer no rationale for our policy positions other than referring to a religious or ideological text.

William Wilberforce, the British MP who campaigned for an end to the slave trade is often held up as an example of how faith should influence politics. No one would doubt that his view of scripture and the teachings of Christ led him to oppose the evil of human trafficking. But it may be inappropriate to use Wilberforce as a role model for traditionalist Christian activism today. Wilberforce did not simply uphold traditional Christian morality – if he had done so, the slave trade might have continued a lot longer than it did, for church authorities were often complicit in injustice themselves. No, in fact, what Wilberforce did was far more risky than simply siding with the religious establishment – on being confronted with the horrors of slavery, he reconsidered his theology in the light of experience and reason. In other words, he changed his mind about what he thought God believed. And he devoted his life to persuading others – using the same combination of scripture, reason and experience.

In that light, using Old Testament texts to maintain the status quo today does not represent the tradition of radical Christian activism personified by William Wilberforce. In fact, it may be doing the opposite.

What is most troubling in the debate is that faith-based activism has a lot more to be concerned about than the typical issues of private morality mentioned by some individuals and groups. Senator Obama made his remarks about religion and politics in a speech to a progressive Christian group in the United States, who have engaged with the vast issues of economic injustice, the dangers of climate change, racism, and the war in Iraq. This suggests another question to me: if William Wilberforce were around today, what aspects of religious faith would he criticize, and which oppressed groups would he defend? This is certain – religious power often comes late to the side of the oppressed; and good people are often proven wrong in even their most sincere convictions.

It should not surprise us when people of faith re-consider their beliefs, for religious faith is supposed to have conversion at its centre. The notion of change should not therefore be threatening to people of faith. And so, to put it simply, if we want to follow Wilberforce, might we start by asking ourselves: what part of our own religious traditions need to be converted?

Immigration

The following is taken from the text of a Thought for the Day I presented on BBC Radio Ulster this morning.

In a few weeks’ time, I will make a life-changing journey. After 33 years of living in Northern Ireland, I am about to become an immigrant. I’m excited about this move,
not least because I believe that doing something new is one of the best ways to grow as a human being.

But two questions come to mind as I prepare myself for leaving home.

The first is, ‘What it will feel like to be an immigrant?’ Will I be welcomed by the people in my adopted country? Will I stand out? Will I have to sell newspapers at traffic lights or wait tables in restaurants where the indigenous population refuses to work? Will I have slogans painted on the wall of my house telling me to leave? Will I have to rely on churches and charities to defend my human rights? If there is something wrong with my visa, will I be handcuffed and detained indefinitely?

In considering my own imminent immigrant status, I am very aware of how often I have failed to welcome the people who have migrated to Northern Ireland recently. I have not always sought to see the good in the faces of people who have arrived here, often coming from difficult circumstances. I hope people will respond differently to me as I move overseas, and help me find a sense of home when I get there.

The second question is, ‘What I will miss when I leave?’ We have a reputation
for complaining in this society – but I want to remember what it is about being northern Irish that makes us all feel, at times, that this is the greatest place on earth.

Of course I’ll miss my friends and loved ones – and hopefully they’ll miss me too.

I’ll yearn for our sense of humour – especially the ability to laugh at ourselves.

In my mind’s eye, I’ll visualise the natural landscape – from the reward of the view after the walk up the Silent Valley to the way evening light hits the lough shore in Randalstown Forest.

And I will miss the sense of community that is bound together by our local media when they’re at their best.

Finally, of course, there is our extraordinary political experiment – the attempt to resolve a violent conflict without victory or defeat, but through agreeing to disagree, to put the past behind us, and to share power for the sake of all the people.

It’s got its teething problems, of course, but we are also often very hard on our politicians. So I want to end my last Thought for the Day as a Northern Irish resident with the hope that we might, after decades of complicated and painful relationships, be able to commit ourselves to something simple: to decide always, before we start complaining, to first do this: to try to see the good in each other.

Is 'Southland Tales' the new 'All the Pretty Horses'?

I need your help, regarding a matter that may initially seem simple, but on closer reflection may well be the unanswerable question:

Justin Timberlake lip-synching to The Killers

Jon Lovitz as a racist cop

Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star investigative journalist

Dwayne Johnson as a much more famous version of himself

Wallace Shawn and Miranda Richardson together at last

Religious visions of the apocalypse and consumerism will eat itself scenarios

Some of the most striking visual images in US cinema of the past ten years

‘Strange Days’ meets ‘Memento’ meets ‘Blade Runner’ meets ‘Donnie Darko’ meets ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’

I think.

So, to the question: can anyone tell me what the hell ‘Southland Tales’ is about?

It’s well-known (and obvious from watching it) that this movie has been cut to ribbons - which didn’t harm ‘Across the Universe’, a movie that I felt could have lost a couple more scenes and still been breathtaking; on the other hand, I still wait in vain for a director’s cut of Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’, which I genuinely think could be a masterpiece if the studio hadn’t exercised their prerogative to make great things worse by dividing them in two. ‘Southland’ comes from Richard Kelly, who in ‘Donnie Darko’ proved himself capable of both smart philosophy and cinematic poetry - sort of a Ferris Bueller meets Ingmar Bergman kinda guy; and so I want to believe that his next film is more than the sum of its parts. But watching it last night was … how should I say this? Confusing to the point of monotony? Maybe, but I’m open to a re-viewing with new lenses: and this is what I need you for: Is there any one among you who can tell me what I should do with ‘Southland Tales’?

Some Questions on Sexuality and Theology

I once heard the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams sum up his vision for what religious life could be when he defined Christianity in the following eight words: ‘God’s love in Jesus Christ is never exhausted’. As the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth conference prepares to meet it seems that this is a far cry from the dehumanizing language used recently by figures in church and politics alike, in interventions about theology and sexuality.

I think we’re missing the point. Religious people have developed a reputation for prudery and sexual repression, while the iconic images of sexuality in gossip magazines, television and other media rely far too much on simplistic notions of beauty, and the promotion of hedonism. Simply put, religious people aren’t supposed to be enjoying sex, while everyone else is supposed to be having it all the time.

But I think it goes even deeper than this – lots of people (and I count myself among them) struggle to see life itself as a gift freely given, with endless possibilities. Religion and secular ideology both often seem to trap people in a mindset of feeling unworthy of what some people call God’s love, and what might also be helpfully termed self-acceptance. Yet many of the important figures who shaped religious history seemed better at taking life for what it is than we are today; Martin Luther, who said ‘love God, and sin boldly’; St Augustine who preceded this with the parallel thought ‘love God and do what you want’; earlier still was Jesus, whose promise to his followers that they might have the most abundant life possible finds only a hollow echo in so much of religious life today.

So, where does this leave us? Well, as one Church of England priest said this week, I think that Christianity – my tradition - needs to get over its obsession with respectability. If we want to talk about theology and sexual orientation we should stop defining people exclusively in terms of their sexuality, we should really listen to the stories of people whose lives are the subject of the current theological debates, and we should spend at least as much time actively speaking out against homophobic attacks and replacing homophobic language with words and actions that respect people’s dignity. We need to recognize that the history of religious and political institutions alike includes changing their positions on a range of important issues – from slavery to race to gender. And maybe ultimately we need to take the risk of believing that a faith defined by the notion that God’s love is never exhausted might actually have something new to say to us about human relationships.

hancock - with spoilers, not that it matters

so, here's what might have happened. some time ago, a coupla guys sat down to write the treatment for a new superhero movie. one of them had a pretty decent pedigree, having put together the scripts for about thirty x-files episodes; the other was newer to the task, but had proven his chops in the composition of one of the few jet li movies to manifest a grasp of film grammar - 'fearless' (not the fantastic peter weir-jeff bridges existential work of 1993, which if you haven't seen you should stop reading this and rent straight away). the idea goes something like this: let's do a movie about a superhero that looks a little different from the rest. let's do a movie about a superhero who doesn't know where he came from, or why he's here. let's do a movie about a superhero who wakes up regularly drunk and depressed, and causes mayhem every time he tries to save someone; leaving a trail of metallic wreckage throughout the urban landscape familiar from superbatspiderxmen movies of the past. let's make him unique: an unpopular superhero. let's put him on the receiving end of anger from the public; and in need of some redemption. let's mix things up a bit by making his only friend - in this case a p.r. consultant - married to a beautiful woman who feels a little strange around our protagonist. let's make the revelation at the centre of our story be that this superhero is the most truly tragic superhero in movie history. let's make him a lonely amnesiac who has been suffering a crisis of identity for over eighty years; and let's make the beautiful woman his wife of several thousand years, who, like him, does not age because she cannot. she has left him alone because - in a twist that is potentially up there with 'the usual suspects', 'the crying game' and 'taxi driver' - she is his superhero pair, and they have discovered that even though they love each other, when they are in physical proximity, their powers weaken, and they are vulnerable to attack. let's end the story with both of them nearly dead at the hands of their enemy, and deciding to part in order to save each other. sure, we can start the tale with a little humour, a little amusement, a little dance with the audience; but the point of this story is to pull our hero out of his lackadaisacal jokey reverie. the first half of the movie is 'mystery men' meets 'the long weekend' or 'days of wine and roses', and the second half is the secret love child of 'unbreakable' and the david banner full-of-pathos parts of 'the incredible hulk'. in that regard, it will be a rare thing: a mainstream hollywood movie that manages to be both entertaining and artful, dramatic and intelligent; honest about its own terms.

alas the realisation misses the mark - 'hancock' coulda been a contender, but ... have a listen to the film talk podcast for more on 'hancock' and other movie lore

'The Visitor'

On the film podcast that I co-host with Jett Loe, we haven’t invested a lot of time in the ongoing conversation discussing smaller, independent-style movies; there’s no agenda there - it just happens that way. But we will be talking about 'The Visitor', after I saw it last week. It deserves serious attention.

In keeping with our policy of not discussing the film in advance of the show, I’ll have to keep my deeper opinions to myself for now; but I think I can get away with this: ‘The Visitor’ deserves your time because it is a serious attempt at telling a story about people who feel real, and who encounter real problems and hopes (grief, the possibility of new friendship, the tortuous negotiation of the US immigration system, learning to play the djembe); some people may say that one of the reasons they don't consider contemporary US ‘indie’ drama to be a source of enthusiasm is that these films are rarely told with visual flair, and in that regard, why not just make them into plays or novels? And I think that is often right. But Tom McCarthy, whose previous film is the utterly beguiling ‘The Station Agent’, knows how to frame human beings talking, and while what’s in the physical image is important, I think that a movie that conveys heart but may lack the photographic nuance of Henri Cartier-Bresson (or Henri Alekan, or Vilmos Zsigmond, or Robert Elswit) might still end up being the most engaging film I’ve seen all year.

herbie hancock's 'river'/ ry cooder's 'i, flathead'

i rarely write about music here, partly because i don't feel qualified to do so, and mostly because i struggle to capture the meaning of sounds in words, but i've been so touched by two new(ish) albums over the past fornight that i had to mention them. herbie hancock's 'river' - a love letter to joni mitchell from the jazz pianist whose playing can be evoked but not circumscribed by images of eating chocolate, or lying in a hot salt spa, of breathing deeply on a balcony balmy night, or maybe just the words 'it's bloody amazing', and ry cooder's 'i, flathead' - an acclamation of youthful days when the most exciting thing in the world was driving a cool car and trying to get a cute girl to catch your eye ... hancock's music drove me home last night; cooder's made me think. i'm going to stop writing and listen to corinne bailey rae sing 'river', and leave you with the thought for the day i wrote for radio ulster last week.

"You know when you hear a wonderful piece of music for the first time, and it captures your attention so much that you just have to hear it again straight away? Last week it happened to me when I heard a new song by Ry Cooder, the slide guitarist and facilitator of the amazing band of elderly Cubans, the Buena Vista Social Club. Cooder has a new album out with the impossibly brilliant title ‘I, Flathead’, an older man’s love songs to the feeling of being young, and learning the romance of driving a really cool car.

The album is about the exuberant exhiliration of living completely free, which a friend of mine likes to describe as dancing like no-one’s watching. When you apply this idea to the rest of life – to the choices we make every day, from what to eat to what route to take to work, to who to live with, and what to do with the years we have on earth, it’s a useful corrective to the monotonous patterns many of us seem stuck in.

Research shows that when you ask elderly people about their regrets, they tend to agree that if they had it over again, they would take more risks. They might choose a different career path with less financial security because it would be more psychologically rewarding. They might take the trip they always avoided because they didn’t speak the local language. They might, as Shakespeare has Edgar say in ‘King Lear’, ‘speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’.

What would it mean to follow this advice, and ‘dance like no-one’s watching’? Some of us today need to be reminded that no matter what the circumstances of our lives, what has happened to us, or how we have fallen short of our own ambitions or values, we still have freedom to choose to get back in the game. We can take the risk we’ve always avoided. Today might be the day that someone listening picks up the phone and calls an old lover, who turns out to have been waiting for years to hear from them; or someone else quits the job that deadens their soul, and pursues the creative dream that has lain dormant since they were a teenager; or someone else decides to stop allowing the pain of past trauma to prevent them living a life where the only limit is their own vision of the possible.

Today, someone’s going to dance like no-one’s watching, someone’s going to speak what they feel, not what they ought to say, someone’s going to get back in the game – it doesn’t matter which metaphor you use: but if today is a day for someone to free themselves from whatever unnecessary restrictions they have allowed to hold them back, why shouldn’t that someone be you?"

the savages

'the savages' has a joke for a title, in that it implies we haven't progressed much as a race since the prehistoric times when throwing bones in the air was the height of creativity, or even more recently, when the european medieval homicide rate was 50% in some places (you had a one in two chance of being murdered by someone you knew in the days of the black plague, the early inquisition, and orlando bloom's inter-faith dialogue). 'the savages' is about siblings trying to care for the elderly father who didn't treat them well, and whom they don't like very much. in that sense, it is about living and dying, and, in the context of contemporary medical culture - which can keep people alive far longer than ever before, leading to the inevitable fact that one day, someone is going to have pull the plug. savage indeed. or at least potentially so.

there are dozens of movies about 'dying well' - from 'stepmom' to 'terms of endearment'; and even though these have a reputation for over-egging the sentimentality, i don't mind them that much. we all have to deal with the death of loved ones; this is hard enough without taking away the comfort that a 'soft' movie might bring to the bereaved. though, of course, in these movies debra winger and susan sarandon don't exactly die like we do in real life.

'the savages' wants to present something more honest; and in philip seymour hoffman and laura linney's brother and sister pair, and most especially philip bosco's father, portrays a painful little play. these are characters with whom you sympathise, rather than like. they make bad decisions. they are self-centered. they have a little bit of heart. it feels like real life.

no magic solutions present themselves; but facing the death of a parent does in some sense help the children grow up, if only a little. and the movie ends with a motif that some may find grating, but i think is one of the most honestly life-affirming images in the movies.

read more of my film posts and the ongoing conversation with jett loe at the film talk website

walker: the anti-wanted

alex cox is one of those film-makers with a committed following among people who have managed to discover his work against the odds: his movies don't get shown in too many multiplexes, and you're not likely to find a trailer for them on websites linked to 'people' magazine. most of us know him for the weirded-out sci-fi/property developer film 'repo man', but i just spent part of a cold and sunny saturday afternoon in the company of 'walker', his 1987 piece about the involvement of an early form of neo-con 'take over the world' impetus in mid-19th century nicaragua.

in this movie, massive-scale violence is the inevitable corollary of imperialism, and (bad) religion and (selfish) politics combine to produce a sorry mess; one whose legacy still unfolds today. william walker, as played by the mighty ed harris, is what james mcavoy's character in 'wanted' would become if he ever hired a spin doctor. and the difference between 'walker' and 'wanted' is that alex cox understands that it's possible to make an entertaining film about violent people without falling in love with them.

Wanted

well, now that i've seen it, certainly not by me.

this is one of the most grotesque, patronising, blunt-edged, monotonous films i've ever seen. the question of what kind of meaning we bring to our own lives is an important one; and movies of course can be as good as any other creative media at exploring it. but 'wanted' appears to suggest that the two options available to every ordinary bloke today are simply these: act out the role of vladimir or estragon, droning away at an office on stage at a theatre of the absurd, or to kill everyone you meet. 'what the f*** have you done lately?, asks james mcavoy before the hard electric guitars start over the end credits, underlining the nihilism he's just given his soul to. well, for one thing, i know something i'm not going to waste my time doing again.

hope and dealing with the past

A Thought for the Day that I gave on BBC Radio Ulster this morning

We talk a lot these days about dealing with the past; which in itself is a pretty deep concept. I’m convinced it’s far better to try to address the profound sorrow of our recent history than to bury it along with our dead. And yet, talking and thinking about the past can leave us trapped in it – we may find ourselves spiraling into a cycle of revenge in which our conversations are colonized by blaming each other for the pain with which we allowed ourselves to be defined. It brings to mind the image of a person tied to a waterwheel trying to stay dry, and managing to keep out of the water for a few moments at a time. But the wheel just keeps on turning, and the person never lets go.

Where does hope come from in a world where we remain fixed on sorrow? It’s easy to be superficial about hope. It’s easy to talk about the well-known figures of historic peace and justice movements who are held up as examples that we should follow. But, with all due respect to the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings of this world – because God knows we owe them respect – sometimes I think they are not the most helpful icons of how ordinary people might live peaceably – and hopefully – in a difficult world. To start with, they were public figures, leading public lives. Most of us, naturally, are not scrutinized as they were. We have to get on with the business of finding meaning amidst ordinary work, family pressures, bad weather and mortgages.

So let me offer this story instead. A friend of mine once asked a Holocaust survivor what he feels when he hears a German accent. The man, who had nearly died in a Nazi concentration camp said, ‘It took days for the train to take me to the camp. In the early hours of each morning, the train stopped for a break. And every morning, German villagers came out of the woods, and put food through the slats of the train to feed us. So when I hear a German accent, before I allow myself to think: That person might be the son of the people who tried to kill me; I think: That person might be the son of the people who tried to feed me.’

The story should speak for itself; but if any interpretation is needed, to me this story speaks of how hope does not to have to rely on the future actions of our enemies, whoever we consider them to be, but on the fact that they had more in common with us to begin with than we may ever have realized.

in defence (?) of m night shyamalan (part 2)

as for lady in the water, here's what i wrote on its release two years ago:

M. Night Shyamalan believes in magic, and he wants us to as well.

He also has an inflated sense of himself.

This is not unreasonable, given that his first major film ‘The Sixth Sense’ launched him at the turn of the millennium as a Hollywood wunderkind, capable of making thrillers so tight they were worthy of the adjective ‘Hitchcockian’, and even seared a new phrase ‘I see dead people’ onto the cultural lexicon. He followed ‘The Sixth Sense’ with another Bruce Willis-starrer, ‘Unbreakable’ – a film that captured the minds of many a Pentecostal youth leader eager to talk about the weight of spiritual vocation, a theme underlined by his next film ‘Signs’, in which the then uncontroversial Mel Gibson (oh how times have changed) played – of all things – a Lutheran pastor in the midst of a crisis of faith. He remained the critics’ (and the audience’s) darling until 2004, with the release of his post-9/11 analogy ‘The Village’, among whose many fans are myself and only one other person I can think of. It’s clear that he loves movies, and that he wants to conjure the same feeling we all used to share as children transfixed by the happenings on-screen – Magic.

And this is what he’s trying to do with ‘Lady in the Water’, a self-styled ‘bedtime story’ about a mermaid/angel hybrid called Story who arrives in an apartment complex in 2006, to warn its residents of how far humanity has strayed from the path of good. Or at least that’s what the opening titles suggest. This notion – that there is ancient wisdom that could save us, if only we would return to the Source – has obvious Christian resonances, that echo in all of Shyamalan’s other films, but the Story in this movie either loses the point, or fails to make it clear in the midst of a somewhat incoherent narrative.

To be sure, there are visual flights of fancy (shot by Christopher Doyle – Wong Kar-Wai’s photographer of choice) that entranced me, and the central performance from Paul Giamatti proves that ‘Sideways’ was not a one-off. But it’s never clear just what Shyamalan is trying to convey through his disappointed characters, and the none-too subtle repetition of television reports of how awful the world news is. Indeed, after the first hour, when I realised that the story wasn’t really the sum of its parts, I found myself feeling bored for the first time in one of his films. There are myths, there are monsters, there are quirky characters aplenty – from a body builder committed to working out one side of his body only to a film critic who meets a sticky end (Shyamalan is clearly a man to bear a grudge)…but there is no overall sense of what the film is really about, or even who it’s for. Is it about one man’s pain, or the whole society’s fear of global terror? Is it about the spiritual vacuum in our world, does it champion or does it critique the gung ho vigilantism that could be a caricature of the Bush administration? Is it merely (and maximally, for these matters are not without merit) an attempt at creating a new fairy tale?

The reason the answers to these questions remain ambivalent is that I’m not sure Shyamalan has decided who his audience is. The film is so convoluted in places, and demands so much attention that it wouldn’t be out of place in a festival of surrealism. And in that context, it might be welcomed as an at least intelligent attempt at post-modern storytelling. But if this is the case, then Shyamalan is guilty of wanting to have his arthouse cake and eat it in a multiplex. A film that is marketed as a scary fairy tale for all the family needs to be a scary fairy tale for all the family, and not a complex narrative about guilt and loss if we’re not going to feel unnecessarily confounded.

Perhaps the key to understanding ‘Lady in the Water’ is the scene in which the film critic claims to know more about the story teller’s intentions than the story teller himself. It’s obvious, and even quite amusing to see Shyamalan take his revenge on the critical family who appeared to mass ranks against him on the release of his last film. However, this attempt at being self-referential leads him to appear ultimately egotistical in the worst sense – in the final analysis, ‘Lady in the Water’ becomes a film about how Important the director thinks his work is. He even plays a character who is told of his cultural and political significance by a divine being (a plot element that would seem less egregious had he not played the character himself). This makes the film at least interesting to those of us who care about peace, justice, and what in ‘Superman Returns’ - another film with Christian resonance released this summer - was referred to as ‘all that stuff’. But it left me only with a feeling of disappointment, confusion, and the desire to sit down and have a good conversation with the director about his worldview and motives, rather than watching the film again. It still has more imagination and ambition than ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ and every other summer blockbuster put together, and perhaps we should be grateful that with ‘Lady in the Water’, Shyamalan has finally broken free of his apparent need to have a major plot twist at the movie’s climax. Next time around, let’s hope he doesn’t forget the plot in the first place.

For thoughts on 'The Happening', check in with www.thefilmtalk.com this Friday...

in defence of m night shyamalan

ok ok ok

so let's begin with the obvious point about m night shyamalan

it's popular to do him down

so much so that it's easy to forget how much 'the sixth sense' appeared as a remarkable eruption of new talent - a film that managed to get pretty much everything right. and while my mum did predict the twist about 40 minutes in, i think she's in a tiny minority. that film was an elegant piece, that defined 'thriller' as something more than just a mystery story, but one which actually engaged my emotions, and made me think about life and love. and how bruce willis can bring it to the table when he has the right material and director.

'unbreakable', the follow up, which philip french in the observer newspaper rightly described as representing the reason why shyamalan's style - more than any other contemporary director - deserves to be called 'hitchcockian', was about the inner turmoil of a superhero. it's the anti-hancock, and has more drama and reflective pathos than any of the other recent superspiderhulkxman movies you could pick.

'signs' showed signs indeed of shyamalan's possibly simplistic worldview (which seems to be a variation of 'everything happens for a reason' or something like that) , but still managed to be a terrifically entertaining 'bad things lurking outside your window' story. and - this is the key to appreciating his work - showed an increasing mastery of film grammar, camera movement, editing, and knowing how to make an audience feel something.

'the village', which has caused its fair share of arguments among friends, was almost universally denounced, although i happen to think it's a masterpiece, and i use that word very rarely. two things come to mind: this film dares to take seriously the implications of the language used around 9/11 and the 'war on terror' to propose that the consequences of political fear-mongering will ultimately include the death of your own children - and perhaps this idea is simply too horrifying to absorb; secondly, i think critics confused this film with another genre. they thought that because it was shyamalan, and because it was scary, that that made it a horror film, when actually it's one of the most moving love stories i've ever seen.

i'll get to 'lady in the water' and 'the happening' later - for now, let the record show, i think the best way to understand m night shyamalan is to think about him the way philip french used to: he is trying to make hitchcock films. whether or not he is succeeding is not the point - actually, the more interesting question, for me, is whether or not hitchcock is as profound as he is usually assumed to be.

life in a media circus

I've been traveling lately, and in various hotels and friends guest rooms, have seen more TV than usual. This sojourn away from my usual ignorance of broadcast television has provided the following dubious delights:

• Fox's "Moment of Truth" game show, which really does turn real life into a game, and has apparently bribed at least one marriage into oblivion through paying for public confessions of adultery. (I expect the show's producers might try to tell us that the show teaches something else about personal responsibility, or that's all in good fun, or that the contestants are there by their own informed volition; or we may even discover that the show has been lying to us and faking it. But here's the real moment of truth: when the host says, "some of these questions are way over my line," and yet still asks them, has he himself not become the definition of insanity?)

• CNN rampantly advertising Larry King's exclusive interview with Jesse Ventura as if his non-campaign for the presidency was almost as important as Jessica Simpson's non-engagement and non-pregnancy.

• Various entertainment clip shows dedicated to matters such as Robin Williams' divorce, and the Tom Cruise birthday party video.

• And in the past week, major news networks hysterically talking as if the sad events surrounding a Texas polygamous sect are just waiting to happen to your children; and the ridiculous and over-the-top response to Senator Obama's attempt at explaining an utterly uncontroversial reality: that being economically disenfranchised can make you feel entrenched. This is amusingly accompanied by the absurd suggestion that there has ever been a U.S. President who did not somehow arrive in the White House linked to the economic 'elite'.

Most of us would like to believe that we have come a long way since the Roman circus – where human beings killed people for our entertainment - or even the Victorian circus - where we only abused the disabled and disadvantaged. Today's circus may look like it only mocks the powerful – with the fabulously wealthy being humiliated as they emerge drunk and bloodied from a nightclub, or photographed while getting an embarrassing haircut. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think people are not harmed by the pornography of social humiliation offered up 24/7. Amy Winehouse's visible bruises and alleged substance abuse problem, and Britney Spears' obvious mental illness are not legitimate fodder for our entertainment, no matter how economically powerful these two women may be.

To read the rest of this post on the God's Politics blog, click here.

something worth taking a moment out of your day for

i don't usually post links for their own sake, but my brother in boston just sent me this.

it's one of the most moving short films i've ever seen.

saved by the bell

ok friends

you can rest easy.

after last week's threat-filled dilemma, i'm back to my usual self.

having feared for the very life of cinema itself, i spent almost six hours in two separate darkened rooms today, watching a brand new movie, and one that's over a quarter of a century old.

both were magnificent.

i had never seen bergman's 'fanny and alexander', so when the opportunity arose at the rather lovely duke university free screen society to see it on a nice public screen, i made plans to be there. i need to think about it for a while before i say anything else, so let this suffice: i think i saw something wonderful tonight, and imagine i feel somewhat differently about the world than bergman. the notion that you can never be free of your ghosts seems to me not to chime with reality. people make peace with the past all the time. i hope that bergman's life was less debt-ridden than his art.

and the other film, much less serious than bergman's, but nonetheless beautiful - scorsese's rolling stones' concert film 'shine a light' - an exhilirating, exuberant, often hilarious and incredibly exciting film. i was the only guy in the audience and was delighted. the sound's great, and the images are utterly cinematic - i couldn't quite figure out why this movie was restoring (some of) my faith in cinema, but then i realised that these boys are ultimately some of the world's consummate performers. they belong on a movie screen.

charlie watts is the eric morecambe of rock'n'roll, doing comedy huffs and winks at the camera, and needing to be helped down off his rostrum. mick is old enough to be your grandad but more alive than most teenagers. ronnie wood is the sniggering kid, hiding his smokes from his mum, and looking down girl's blouses. and keith - well, it's easy to lionise the guy (and demonise too), but i'll stay out of that. let's just say this: he knows he's lucky to be alive, and seems to spend most of his time in a state of stunned enjoyment. there's a moment at the end of the movie
when the music is done, and he's kneeling on the ground, holding the neck of his guitar, his eyes closed and lips pursed in an obvious prayer. in four years' time, the stones will have been together for fifty years. there's not a lot about their music that could be called socially mature, but they've been expressing truth and angst about the human heart for as long as i've been alive, and half as long again. and scorsese has made a gorgeous, thrilling film about them.

and in a weird confluence, both of the films i saw today are in some part about the same thing: the role women play in men's lives. it's been a very good day at the movies for me.

the complexity of charlton heston

Charlton Heston died this weekend at age 84, following Roy Scheider and Richard Widmark as the latest in a series of powerful cinematic actors to pass away -- although Heston was probably best known to a younger generation as the old guy who walked out of a Michael Moore interview in Bowling for Columbine. His was an ambivalent life – living through 14 presidencies (and personally befriending several of the most recent occupants of the office), supporting civil rights when it was unfashionable, switching his political allegiances, and latterly becoming identified with right-wing causes. Not often a subtle actor (although you could do worse than watch his performance in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil as a tribute), he represented a particular kind of vanishing screen presence who, like John Wayne, represented a vision of American greatness that depended far too much on the suggestion of invulnerability.

So, now that he is gone, what do you say about Charlton Heston? Something simple: He shouldn't be judged on the basis of one interview, given after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease to a door-stopping filmmaker known for his pranks.

He should be judged on his contribution to the movies -- doing gravitas better than anyone else, standing as our image of Moses, Ben-Hur, various military captains, the head of the CIA, and ultimately a particular kind of god figure. I never saw a Heston performance that didn't entertain me on some level.

And, in the interests of full disclosure, he should also be judged on his political activity. The simplistic analysis of the relationship between personal freedom and gun ownership offered by the National Rifle Association, which Heston did so much to bolster, seems outrageous to my Northern Irish ears. In his speeches to and on behalf of the NRA, Heston also sometimes seemed to lack empathy for the victims of gun crime, in his attempts to promote his contentious understanding of the U.S. Constitution.

At the same time, he was an early supporter of the civil rights movement, and even picketed a screening of one of his own films because it was being screened in a racially segregated cinema. He also made several films, such as Soylent Green, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes, that endorsed environmental and anti-nuclear causes at a time when it wasn't as easy to engage the public mind in these matters.

To continue reading this post on the God's Politics blog, click here.

cinematic shame

hello there

i have a confession and a cry for help, all rolled into one.

i have spoken with my colleague jett loe about this, and he has expressed his empathy. but i feel i must share this story with you, dear reader, in the hope that you might be able to assuage my fears.

yesterday i took advantage of a couple of hours away from my labours and bought a ticket at one of the local nashville multiplexes, for a film that looked to any reasonable viewer that it might pass the time, if not enjoyably, at least with a few moments of entertainment. failing that, some light dancing on a white screen has always served as a counter to the monotony of a tuesday afternoon.

after 45 minutes of the film had passed, i found myself gasping for a reason to stay. this film, which i do not wish to name, for it has already had enough publicity, was so derivative, so formulaic, so utterly without interest or merit that i had become bored enough, as mr loe once said to me, that i wanted to eat my own hair.

i attempted to steel myself for the possibility that something would eventually happen to pique - or resurrect - my interest. such as laurence fishburne turning in the kind of performance he used to. but then i realised something.

i was embarrassed.

even though i was alone in the cinema, and nobody else knew i was there, i was actually beginning to feel ashamed that i had spent six bucks fifty on this movie.

my inner monologue told me that i had enough self-respect left to choose life.

and so i left the cinema, and didn’t look back, lest i see the destruction facing the rest of the audience, and turn to a pillar of salt.

in the hope of purifying my spirit, i decided to step into the next screen and see what was playing there.

then i visited the next screen.

and the next.

‘tyler perry’s meet the browns’

‘drillbit taylor’

‘vantage point’

‘10 000 bc’ (on which more in the next thefilmtalk episode)

and, sweet merciful lord

’superhero movie’

after my embarrassment had dissipated, i was faced with a terrible question, one that my colleague mr loe has been asking himself for far longer than i:

do notable exceptions ultimately do nothing so much as prove the rule:

that cinema is dead?

r.i.p.

ladies and gentlemen it’s hard to believe - but this week sees three significant film-related deaths, with the sad losses of anthony minghella, arthur c clarke, and paul scofield.

jett loe on www.thefilmtalk.com has already said that minghella was a genuine ‘big’ film maker, and nick james, editor of ’sight and sound’ suggests that he was the natural heir to david lean; all i’ll add is that i never saw a film by him that i didn’t like, and i could watch ‘the talented mr ripley’ any time - for its rhythm, for its performances, for its music, and for the way it gets under the skin of how loneliness can turn into neurosis.

what do you say about arthur c clarke? i grew up with his ‘mysterious world’ tv show; i can replay his gutteral voice in my mind, i had my imaginative horizons expanded when i read his book ‘rendezvous with rama’; but, beyond all that, ‘2001′ is one of those movies that leaves me feeling like i’ve seen the greatest film ever made, every time i see it. people suggest that all he brought to it was scientific nuance - but his sense of wonder at the possibility of there being intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is clear.

and then there is paul scofield. ‘a man for all seasons’, ‘king lear’, ‘quiz show’, ‘the crucible’ - do yourself a favour: take your pick, and watch one this weekend. he may have had the accent of a pompous theatrical knight - but this guy knew how to act.

the return of film talk

all good things to those who wait - after a nearly 9 month long hiatus, enough time for a new human life to be created, jet tloe and i have returned to our podcast, now re-born and re-christened 'the film talk'. find it on i-tunes or at thefilmtalk.com

and let us know what you think.