Augmented Means to Diminished Ends

This evening, I saw the film Avatar, and the above basically sums up my reaction.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. The spectacle is amazing. I saw it in 3D, and it was well worth the extra money. The alien creatures (the animals, I mean) are well-conceived. The final battle is exciting. There is no doubt that James Cameron knows how to make a crowd-pleasing movie.

The problem was, it was basically a B-movie. There was very little of original sci-fi in it. What was there was hardly touched upon. For example, the Avatar concept could have led to some really interesting implications. How can you grow a (to all intents and purposes cloned) body without some kind of consciousness already in it? This is a living organism waiting for someone else's consciousness to be implanted. How does that work? What are the implications for the mind-body problem? The film touched on none of this.

What it did have was a weird quasi-biological version of Star War's Force. And the Na'vi were basically cyphers for American Indians. That annoyed me. They couldn't have thought up an alien alien? With the budget they had? Come on!

Likewise, the script was merely decent -by no means extraordinary, but certainly not as horrid as Star Wars dialogue. Mind you, there were some corkers. At one point, for example, the obligatory hyper-gung-ho military baddie declares to his men, "We will fight terror with terror!" Someone should tell the scriptwriter that being gratuitously topical is not always a good thing, and that if one does choose to do it, it should at very least make sense within the film. In this case, there had been no Na'vi suicide bombers whatsoever- indeed nobody had been killed yet at all- and so the statement made absolutely no sense.

And the plot I have seen in at least half-a-dozen other movies. It was done better and more plausibly (though that conclusion may say more about me than the film- my Japanese history is by no means thorough) in The Last Samurai.

I suppose economically it makes sense to throw a mind-blowing budget and test out unprecedented effects on a film whose story is tried and tested. But just once I would really like to see the Cultural Mafiosos take a risk. Pitch Black was far better as sci-fi than this. And when is someone going to make a movie out of The Mote in God's Eye? Now there's an alien culture I would pay to see on-screen!

Transformers- urgh!

Last night I went and saw the Transformers sequel with a group from Glenmore Park Anglican. I am glad they were there otherwise the experience would have had no redeeming features whatsoever. A bad movie is almost made enjoyable when you can share a knowing snigger with the person next to you at a particularly poor joke or unconvincing emotional moment. As for the movie itself, all I can say is that one can only take so many explosions before monotony sets in.

Fortunately, there exist people who can say much more than that and more eloquently. I was greatly gratified to read this review of the film by Roger Ebert, which is probably one of the best bad film reviews I've read. Suffice to say, reading the review was far more enjoyable than watching the film it describes.

Further Thoughts on Watchmen

I have now read the graphic novel, and found few differences apart from the cosmetic. The nihilistic heart of the story exists in both media. So I stand by what I wrote before.

Only two things to add to it.

One- a comment I read, posted to the review of the film at Christianity Today, which I thought summed up the proper Christian approach to the film more or less perfectly: "If you do decide to watch it, let it make the cross more necessary for you." Can't really put it better than that.

Two- a worthwhile juxtaposition which occurred to me the other day in this connection:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.- Juvenal
Who watches the watchmen?

Nissi Dominus custodierit civitatem, frustra vigilat qui custodit eam.- Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord watch the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.

I watched Watchmen

It is a strange thing when you come away from some piece of art and decide that you like it, but that you really shouldn't.

This is how I feel about Watchmen, which I went and saw yesterday. Its not the first time I've felt it either. Exactly the same thing happened when I saw Kill Bill. That was a film that had no redeeming qualities at all, was filled with violence and cussing, whose protagonist and villains were all equally ruthless, and yet...and yet....I loved every minute of it and will still put it on of an evening if I need something to lift my mood. Can I justify this to anybody who might demand an explanation? Not really.

I have no idea if Watchmen would similarly stand up to repeat viewings for me. Only one way to find out, I suppose.

The good things first. I enjoyed Rorschach. He was psychotic and violent, but he had principles. His reaction to the guy who killed the girl, and the fact that I was meant to sympathise with that reaction, told me that there was still some objective sense of moral justice lying under the surface of the film, even if it crossed the line into vengeance by a smidgen. I was glad the film didn't try to make the murderer sympathetic. Arguably, though, this was subverted later on with Ozymandias, whose evil was meant to seem sympathetic (or at least morally ambiguous)- but there Rorschach saw through it and declared it for what it was, which I liked. The whole film noir thing was very enjoyable (I love film noir!). The opening credits sequence was brilliant; such richness of multi-layered imagery! I had to concentrate to catch every significant detail and probably didn't succed. That was well done, very stylish. And, of course, you have to love a film whose soundtrack can include Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel alongside Wagner and Mozart (although I do wish one of these days someone would mine the Ring Cycle for something other than Ride of the Valkyries)!

On the other hand, there are many reasons to dislike Watchmen. Violence on that level was unnecessary. I remember having to look away in the chainsaw scene in Scarface. There is a chainsaw scene here as well, from which I didn't have to look away though it was no less graphic. That bothers me not a little. Besides which, is it really easier to saw the guy's arms off than simply untie him? Surely the knot wasn't that difficult?

The sex was also way over the top and unnecessary. And, I have since been told, completely off-screen in the graphic novel. Of course, there are love scenes and then there are love scenes. There were three of them here, though, and the third one in particular did not fall into either of the above two categories (On the other hand, Dr Manhatten's nudity didn't bother me in the slightest- he didn't look all that different from Michelangelo's David anatomy-wise and it didn't draw attention to itself except, ironically, when he was wearing those horrid black undies; for the record, ladies, black and fleuro-blue clash!).

These things, however, are petty complaints next to the real one, which is the nihilism and subversion of the hero archetype. John C. Wright has a very good review in which he discusses this aspect at some length.

Now, I must say, there have been films whose overall theme or point left me utterly cold. I despised The Bucket List because of its cavalier and hedonistic approach to death. I despised Seven Pounds because of its glorification of suicide. But the nihilism and postmodern subversion here didn't repel me utterly. If I were to analyse why I feel that way, I think it might look something like this:

Nihilism, cynicism, subversion, deconstruction; these are medicine, not food. Medicine is a worthwhile thing to take in small doses. To subvert the hero motif and subvert it so completely is a wake-up call which shouts loudly to the audience that no man can be trusted (and, unlike in some other movies- yes, I'm looking at you, V for Vendetta- here there was no political partisanship). Calling to mind the things going on in America's recent history, 'no man can be trusted' is probably a necessary message to hear. To receive a small dose of nihilism may be a worthwhile thing to do when earthly things appear too solid; all the things we instinctively try to hold on to are after all made and maintained ex nihilo.

The problem comes when all of that becomes the staple of a steady diet. Because, of course, man and all he counts worthwhile are not the only cards on the table. There is also the guy who made the table and invented the game in the first place. And it turns out he's been playing along with us for some time now and has some cards of his own.

If an audience is at the point where they have begun to see the futility of the categories that formerly made sense of their world, maybe the time is ripe for some new categories. Where deconstruction has become attractive- well, maybe the thing being deconstructed was worth tearing down. But rather than leaving a bare, gaping hole in the ground, those with building experience should set about constructing something else, something better able to stand.

I see, therefore, a film with this sort of message as an opportunity and a wake-up call. At a time when both financial and mental certainties seem shaky and their solidity is being questioned, it is a good time to point to that which really is solid. That's the opportunity.

The wake-up call is that we had better know and believe that ourselves. Our culture has a low tolerance level for hypocrisy and salespitches. God is the only truly solid thing in the universe, but if we want to convince people that that is so, we had better live like it is. Which, of course, is a big part of why we are doing Lent.

A Christian culture can certainly make nihilistic art. King Lear depresses me every time. But even in King Lear, there is the beacon of love and goodness that is Cordelia. And the entire play turns on those two words of utter and sublime grace and mercy spoken by her to her mad and pathetic father, "No cause."

Watchmen needs a Cordelia. Rorschach is the closest it has, but he doesn't make it, because he has justice (which is, it must be said, no small thing in our culture- credit where its due) but not mercy nor love. Absent a Cordelia, it is up to us, the audience, to accept what is offered and supply what is lacking.

How Sweet the Sound

I've been doing some more reflecting on the film "Amazing Grace' of late. Its been a couple of weeks since I saw it and so I've had a bit of time to chew it over. Like a tough but flavoursome steak. Or something like that.

One of the things that strikes me more and more as I think about it is the depiction of John Newton and, specifically, his experience of grace, about which he so famously wrote. When I was growing up, John Newton was a bit of a legendary figure at church, like King Arthur or Robin Hood. We would often sing "Amazing Grace" and the pastor at the time (Adrian Tepper, of hallowed memory) would never fail to mention Newton and give a brief outline of his story before we commenced the singing. He had run a slave-ship, we were told. He had been converted. He wrote this song. That was the template of his life I understood as a boy.

With the kind of religious atmosphere that surrounded us, one got the impression that it was a clean cut. Like those weight loss 'before' and 'after' photos. Once he was evil. Then he was good. Whether or not something like this was said explicitly, that was the impression one received because that was how conversion was generally treated. One's life was divided into pre-grace and post-grace with the yawning abyss of a single moment dividing the two (one took pride if one could remember the date of that moment). This all seemed perfectly normal. Grace worked like that.

At first, as I watched "Amazing Grace" I expected the depiction of John Newton to fall in line with my boyhood impressions. And at first it does. William Wilberforce gets up in a tavern, gives a short spiel about Newton's life to a bunch of slave-owners and then sings the first verse of the song. Exactly like we used to do at church. Imagine my surprise then when I saw how John Newton himself is depicted in the film.

In "Amazing Grace" we only ever see Newton well after his conversion. His slaver days are long behind him. And yet he is a man haunted by his sins. "Every day," he says, "I am haunted by 8000 African ghosts- ghosts of the men who died on my ships." His faith is no less sure. When we first meet him, he is reminiscing and advising William Wilberforce. Yet he seems keenly aware that the sins of his past were not committed by someone else but by him, and that that is something he has to live with, something that does not go away. When William Wilberforce asks him to aid the Abolitionist cause by writing a memoir of his slaver days, he cannot bring himself to do it.

The film does not leave him there, however. Near the end, after the passing of years, Wilberforce comes to visit him again. Newton is blind now ("I once was blind but now I see," he muses, "I wrote that, you know."). Yet it is now that he can summon the strength to write down the sins of his past life. "Only two things I know:" he says, "I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Saviour." At the end, when the crucial vote is cast, he is in the mezzanine overlooking Parliament.

Grace builds on nature, as the Fathers were so fond of saying. Grace is not magic. In the life of John Newton, its action was not instant but like yeast in bread (actually didn't someone else use that same metaphor for something similar? Luke 13:20-21).

It is perhaps only relatively recently in my Christian walk that I have come to appreciate the fact that both sin and grace are realities. That may sound like a strange thing to say. But there is a certain form of Christianity which treats them rather like legal decrees. One sits under a sentence of condemnation- that is what sin is. Then one receives a pardon and is declared acquitted- that is what grace is. There is a certain warrant for this biblically, if one restricts oneself to a particular set of passages, but not as much as one might think (none whatsoever, according to N.T. Wright) and a reading of the entire Scriptures offers a rather different picture.

The image I have found more helpful is that of a drug addiction. There is a moment when you cease to take the drug, when you have your last bong or whatever. But then you've got the consequences to deal with, the damage the stuff has done to your body, the cravings, etc. Sin is a poison. It is an acid. It eats away at our souls. It cripples us, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and sometimes even physically. That doesn't go away in an instant.

Human beings are creatures of time and process. Grace does not treat us as though we were not. It builds on our nature rather than obliterate it. The poison must be sucked out. The burns must be healed, not just bandaged over. Grace alone can do it- I certainly can't do it on my own, any more than I could do my own open-heart surgery.

But grace is not a diploma, a title. It is life itself. It is the Blood of Christ in my veins; the sap of the True Vine; the antivenom. It has to be pumped through my system, get to where the poison is and nullify it.

The cravings will one day stop. There will come a day when the work of grace will be complete, when I will no longer desire the drug of sin, that everything contrary to God's will will repulse me. But that day is not yet. I'm still in rehab. My system is still being purged, my soul still being cleansed. Grace is a reality though. And it is effective. It effects real change in me. As long as I submit to it, the work will continue apace. This is called justification.

John Newton's life, as depicted in the film "Amazing Grace", is a reminder to me that the life of grace is a journey (and that that shouldn't surprise me), and also that that journey has an end. And you know what? Suddenly that song takes on new meaning for me.

What I Learned from Dodgy Movie Adaptations

During my undergraduate days (ah! what halcyon days they were!), in one of my several English Lit courses I was required to write an essay on an adaptation of one of the novels we had studied. One of these had been Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which I found interesting and surprisingly popular (in all senses of the word)- Defoe was perhaps one of the first to indulge in the making of endless sequels following an initial unexpected success. And yes, if you're interested, none of the sequels to Robinson Crusoe were any good- there's a reason you've never heard of them.

The book had interested me so I dutifully made my way to my local video store and borrowed a copy of Robinson Crusoe starring Pierce Brosnan. Yes, there's a reason you haven't heard of it either. It was made in 1997. I don't remember seeing it advertised at all, and am not even sure if it saw the cinema. If it did, it didn't really warrant it (not that a lot of the things that see the cinema these days do). What interested me most about it, however, was the elements of the plot the film had changed.

In the book, Robinson Crusoe sets out to sea to explore and see the world. It is his desire for new experiences and adventure that propels him towards a maritime career. And his being marooned on an island is only the most major of his many adventures (the book also includes, among other things, Crusoe and Friday fighting off wolves in the snow, for example). In the film, Crusoe is compelled to seek the sea because he has killed a man in a duel out of love (sic) for the newly-invented character Mary.

I am not so much of a purist that I was offended by the change simply because it was a change. Defoe certainly would not have been fazed by someone changing his story to make more money- he would have changed it himself if he had thought it would have that effect. I was far more interested in why the change was made and what it meant. I explored a couple of ideas in this connection in the essay I subsequently wrote.

Fast forward a couple of years. The film The Time Machine starring Guy Pearce is released. I am slightly but not overly intrigued by it- not enough to pay money to go and see it, at any rate. I had enjoyed the book by H.G. Wells in high school very much (my first introduction to Wells, actually), but the film looked a bit silly. When it came out on DVD, I had occasion to sit and watch it for free. So I did.

And here I detected the same pattern. In the book, the Time Traveller (for so he is called throughout) is obsessed and excited by the concept of time travel. The very idea is exhilirating. And the way Wells describes it, there's a certain exotic wonder about the idea of it and, subseqently, its execution. In this, it is a very nineteenth century book- entranced by the idea of Progress, coming on the tail-end of the Age of Discovery. This scientific impulse- to learn, know and see new things- this wanderlust, this thirst for discovery and to pioneer, was resurrected very briefly with the NASA programme, but didn't last more than 10 years after the Moon landings.

Exhibit A: The Time Machine starring Guy Pearce. In the film, the impulse to travel through time has nothing to do with science or discovery- it has to do with Guy travelling to the past to rescue his fiance who was tragically killed.

This pattern of film versions of books replacing the original motive of the protagonist with one based around romantic love got me thinking. We are probably aware that ours is the most eroticised culture in recent history. Generally, we may be accustomed to think of this in connection with its negative implications- the sexualisation of youth, for example, or the lowering standards of modesty, the increased availability of pornography, etc. Yet here we see quite different (and, in one sense, positive) implications of this viz. the summum bonum has become romantic love.

In our culture's mindset, the goal of human existence, and its highest good, has been sexualised. If we canvas any number of films, or even just imagine for a moment, and see what qualifies as a happy ending, it will inevitably involve a romantic relationship. The application of romance as summum bonum can be varied as well. For example, the redemption of a protagonist almost invariably involves him/her falling in love, often with a fair helping of self-sacrifice thrown in. The applications can be multiplied.

All of which leads me to suggest that JPII's Theology of the Body is brilliantly timely. It redeems the glasses through which our culture sees everything. It explains and heals not only the vices to which our culture is particularly prone, but also the goods for which it longs and the virtues that it elevates above any others. For this reason, I believe the Theology of the Body will be absolutely crucial for future evangelistic efforts. For those of us involved in evangelistic efforts ourselves, therefore, we need to take the Theology of the Body into account. These are the words our culture needs to hear and, indeed, is longing to hear. The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few.