Way Down East

I know that some readers may be disappointed by the lack of timeliness for these monthly movie reviews. You might find that by the time I blog the film reviewed is no longer in theaters.
You have to understand I don’t have access to the critics’ screenings offered to the big time reviewers.
Anyway, on to this month’s review of “Way Down East”, a silent feature that was quite a hit when it debuted in 1920.
Okay, ninety years is a tad long of a wait for a review, even from me. But this drama (perhaps better defined as a melodrama) provides an interesting examination of the moral views of the time, and ours.
It’s the tale of Anna Moore (played by one of the first movie stars, Lillian Gish), a young woman who cares for her poor, sick mother. Seeking financial aid, she goes to visit her distant, wealthy relatives. The cousins are embarrassed by their poor relation and offer no help. But at one their parties, Anna meets Lennox Sanderson, a true scalawag. (A title card introduces him as a man with “three interests: ladies, Ladies, LADIES!”)
After Anna rebukes Lennox for his attempts at seduction, she agrees to marry him. The cad arranges a phony wedding ceremony followed by a honeymoon, then abandons Anna, who finds she is with child. Adding to the heroine’s trouble, her mother dies and so does her newborn child. (There is an interesting, theologically problematic scene wherein Anna baptizes her dying son herself, fearing for his soul.)
Anna tries to put her past behind her. She goes to work for a wealthy and yet pious farm family. David Bartlett, the handsome son, falls in love with her and wants to marry her. But when family gossip informs David’s father, Squire Bartlett, of Anna’s past, his actions are swift and harsh and cloaked in Biblical terminology. We then have the film's action packed set piece and Anna is stranded on an ice flow. (The director, D.W. Griffith, bogarted this straight from "Uncle Tom's Cabin". I doubt Griffith, the maker of "Birth of a Nation" was a big abolitionist literature fan.)
I was surprised by how frankly the film dealt with the issues of sexuality and religious judgment. The movie deals with the hypocrisy of men’s immorality being winked though less scandalous behavior of women leads to shunning. The consequence -- condemning a child without a father rather than providing help and comfort -- must have been strong tonic for the time. And viewing trailers for an upcoming teen comedy, “Easy A”, I’ve thought the progress of dealing with such issues in the popular culture has not been all for the best.
From what I’ve read about the film (again, no advanced critics’ screenings for me), “Easy A” is about a virginal high school girl (Olive, played by Emma Stone) who pretends to bed high school boys to enhance their reputations. She then falls under the harsh judgment of the high school Christian club that assures her that she will need to answer to a higher power.
Now I could be wrong, but from what I’ve seen of the new film, it seems to deal with the issues of sexuality and religion with much less nuance than a film made nearly a century ago. It seems all of the Christians in the film are narrow-minded and petty. In “Way Down East”, some Christians are depicted as mean, but some exude grace. In the new film, it seems that sex is a topic of humor and that it would be crazy for anyone to think there could be any negative consequences. (Only Christians could be so crazy, to still believe in avoiding sexual immorality as Paul teaches in Romans 13: 13 or I Corinthians 6:18.)
It is wrong for Christians to judge the sins of others, but it is also wrong to fail to teach that God does have standards for sexual behavior. We should be people with tender and loving hearts. God, as a loving Father, provided sex as great gift in the context in marriage. All around us we see the victims of abuse of God’s gift, whether it be men addicted to online porn, women selling themselves for money (or even a false display of affection) and, yes, children who, according to studies, are less likely to prosper without the care of two loving parents.
As a church, we need to be faithful to not condemn those suffer from the sin that is common to us all, but rather comfort and strengthen those that are weak.
To find a source that deals much better with these issues, you might want to go to a popular novel. I believe the title “Easy A” comes from a work that is now 160 years old, “The Scarlett Letter”. Sexual sin and religious hypocrisy are nothing new. But fortunately, God’s grace is very old, yet ever fresh.

GET LOW

I had a good time at my dad’s memorial service. I know that might sound strange, but most people there enjoyed the service. There were good stories, laughter and plenty of food afterward. It was a party. Really, the only thing missing was my Dad. I wish he could have been there.
In recently released film, “Get Low”, the character Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) wants to attend his own funeral. He wants to throw a “funeral party.” He says he wants to give people an opportunity to tell their stories about him. But Bush does not expect the stories to be humorous or heartwarming. He has lived for forty years as a hermit with a reputation as a violent lunatic.
Bush first goes to the local pastor and asks if he can buy himself a funeral, but the pastor (Gerald McRaney) astutely observes that Bush is trying to buy forgiveness. He tells Bush that forgiveness can not be purchased but is a free gift of God. We must confess our sin and receive the free gift through Christ’s sacrifice. Bush leaves and finds a funeral home director (Bill Murray) who is more than happy to take his money for a “funeral party”.
As the film follows the preparations for the funeral, we begin to learn more of Bush’s story in bits and pieces. We learn about his sin and his ultimate failure to atone for it on his own, but forgiveness and restoration is found.
“Get Low” is based on a true story, set in Tennessee of the 1930’s. Told at a leisurely pace, the story does not offer summer distractions of CGI effects and explosions (okay, there is a fire at the beginning of the film), but it does offer its own pleasures.
Bill Murray offers his dry wit within a character of that time and place. Murray has been funny for over thirty years now, while many other comedians have worn out their welcome.
In fact, one of the real joys of the film is seeing old faces. Hollywood has always celebrated youth and “physical perfection”. But there is a special pleasure in seeing the aged faces of Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Celebrated actors when they were making films decades ago in classics like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”, “Carrie” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter” respectively, neither was known primarily for looks. But now there is a definite pleasure in seeing the lines and spots of age in faces of such fully lived lives.
“Get Low” can be seen as the third film in Duvall’s faith trilogy, the first two being “Tender Mercies” and “The Apostle”.
“Tender Mercies” won Duvall the Oscar for Best Actor and earned another Oscar for screen writer Horton Foote. (It is probably not a coincidence that Gerald McRaney’s character in “Get Low” is Pastor Horton.) “Tender Mercies” features one of the most realistic and moving depictions of a man’s gradual conversion to Christianity in any film.
“The Apostle” was written and directed by Duvall himself. There is no shortage in American media of depictions of clergy who fall into sin and hypocrisy. But this film does so with even more powerful depictions of God’s love and grace.
Each of these films is like a true Christian funeral. There is pain and tears, but joy and hope overcome.

A Fair Entry

To get in to the fair this year, most Andersons entered something. The fair cost $9 and the entry fee was $2. Since I got a $2 prize, it was free. (Paige also entered a poem and got a 3rd with a $2 check. Jill's graphic arts entry got 1st & Best in Section for a $5 check. Mindy's doll should have got better than a 4th Place with no check. But her project will at least make a decent present for someone.)

So here is what got me in the fair:

GRAPES

Great are the splendors of Sonoma County

Rarely can those splendors be adequately described

Among those who attempt to do, are poets

Poetry though, is not my forte

Earning free fair entry is enough for me

Sonoma County will need to look elsewhere for someone adequate to panegyrize

"Dream On, Dream On" - Inception

You know how you watch a trailer for a movie sometimes, and you feel like you know the whole movie? (The girl thinks the boy is in love with another girl because she saw them hugging but really it was his long lost sister and the only thing they don’t show is the last kiss and final credits.) After I saw the trailer for “Inception”, I not only didn’t feel like I knew everything in the movie, I wasn’t sure what I had just seen. Which is cool -- seeing a movie that has surprises.
So you might want to not read another thing and go out and see it. Or you might want to know just a little bit. “Inception” is a heist film. You know (last “you know”-- promise), the “Ocean’s Eleven” kind of thing where there’s a big job to pull off, so the leader (Leo DiCaprio) puts together a gang to pull off the big job. The gang includes grizzled veterans and a newcomer to the world of crime, Ellen Page (the perky little teen from “Juno”.) But they aren’t stealing money or diamonds but ideas. And not breaking into a vault but into minds through dreams. Yeah, so it’s different than the average heist film.
And you know (sorry, I thought I was done) how in heist films there’s always that extra twist to make the job tougher? The thing that makes this job tougher is that the team doesn’t need to steal an idea from a dream (extraction), but rather leave an idea (inception).
As with any heist film, there are plenty of fights, chases and explosions, but since some of these take place in dreams, they don’t always have to follow the pesky rules of gravity, time and space. There are rules, though. The film clearly sets up rules for the dream world and fairly follows them. (The writer-director is Christopher Nolan, who brings from the Batman films the experience necessary to make a fantastic world seem real.)
But why should one care about what happens in a dream? After all, dreams aren’t real. We tend to discount dreams as random images created by body chemicals and electronic charges in our sleep.
In the Bible, a dream is rarely just a dream. In Genesis 41, the Pharaoh of Egypt was warned in a dream about years of abundance and famine. Daniel, like Joseph, rose out of slavery to the heights of power based on his ability to interpret dreams. And Joseph was told about his Son Jesus in a dream.
Dreams can clue us in to our greatest fears and desires. I believe God can still, if He chooses, speak to us through dreams.
Just as Leo and company enter the dreams of others in “Inception”, we need to bring God even into our dreams, our deepest hopes and fears. II Corinthians 10:5 says “we must take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”. Even our dreams.

"My Father's Daughter" is Not a Jerk

“I was born a poor black child.” That line always made me laugh when I heard Steve Martin say it on his LP “Let’s Get Small”. (I’ll explain what an LP is later, kids, if you care.) He was such a WASPy guy (especially, for some odd reason, with his prematurely white hair.)
But I would think the line would some incongruous coming from the lips of Hannah Pool as well, the author of the memoir, "My Father's Daughter: A Story of Family and Belonging". Sure, she is black. But she is also British with the accompanying accent and she is a 30ish year old columnist for The Guardian. Her position of privilege makes the “poor” part of the phrase seem unlikely.
But when was born to a poor family (by our standards) in the
African nation of Eritrea. She was put in an orphanage and it was there that a British academic and his American wife adopted her. Her adopted parents were told that the girl they named Hannah was an orphan. But decades later, Hannah Pool received a letter from a brother in Eritrea. It was then she discovered she
was not an orphan. Though her mother had died in child birth, her father was still alive and anxious to see her again.
The book is the story of Pool’s fascinating journey to meet and get to know the family she never knew she had.
Pool’s skills as a journalist serve the story well as a Travel Log, introducing the reader to this small African nation with great beauty but that still suffers from a history of colonialism, poverty and war. She brings an interesting perspective on the nation’s customs, a liberated woman in a place
where women are expected to be demure and marriages are usually still arranged.
But the most interesting dynamic in the book is her interaction with her new found family. One of the great questions of her life is ‘Why was she put in an orphanage?’ As she learns parts of the answer to that question, she finds herself jealous of those who were able to stay with their father. But she realizes that her brothers and sisters may well be jealous of the advantages
she has as growing up with the riches of the Western world.
Pool, an atheist, is uncomfortable with the constant praise and thanksgiving her family make to God for their reunion with her. She probably wouldn’t be thrilled when I say that her book reminds of the longing every person that has ever lived has felt without a relationship with the Living God.
Romans 8:23 says, “Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” We all feel the need for more, for a parent that not only accepts us, but can fully understand us. God not only wants to
adopt us, make us His own, but His knowledge of us is even more complete than any Earthly parent (by blood or law.)
Another book that demonstrates from a theological standpoint the longing for a true Father is Timothy Keller’s “The Prodigal God”, an expansion on Jesus’ parable of The Prodigal Son’ that makes clear that we are all needy children with a Father anxious for a reunion with us.

(“My Father’s Daughter” by Hannah Pool is available from Penguin Books. “The Prodigal God” by Timothy Keller is available from Dutton Adult. And you can see Steve Martin with his adoptive African American in the 1979 film “The Jerk” which is justly rated R.)

BABIES, BABIES, BABIES

There was once a great story on NPR’s “This American Life” about a man who had an idea for a cable channel called “Puppies”. It would just keep the camera focused on puppies, 24 hours a day (with crawls advertising dog food and flea medicine). The guy felt that people would be happy just looking at puppies yawn, bite and scratch. I think he’s right.
The same kind of thinking went into the documentary, “Babies”. French director Thomas Balmes thought people would be fascinated just to watch babies. If not for twenty four hours - then at least for an hour and a half or so. He was right, of course.
The film was released in France in 2009 and in the United States this year, with a DVD release soon. I can’t imagine much was changed with these various releases, aside from translating the credits.
The film follows the first year of life for four babies in four families in four very different parts in the world. The families are all relatively well off in their cultures. But “well to do” means something different in a western urban center and a third world farm. Hattie and Mari are first born daughters in big cities, San Francisco and Tokyo respectively. Ponijao and Bayar are younger brothers growing among animals as well as siblings (again, respectively, in Opuwo, Namibia and Bayanchandnami, Mongolia.)
We don’t hear a lot of talking, even from the babies’ parents, and I only understood Hattie’s folks, who spoke English, because there is no dubbing or subtitles. The only editorial comment comes from the editing. We see Hattie’s father using a lint brush on his daughter’s PJs. A contrast is found in Panijao crawling through the dirt and sampling the taste of various stones.
There is, of course, quite a contrast in material possessions. Mari lives among the latest of gadgets and electronics to be found in contemporary Japan. Bayer’s family has a TV, but the family probably wasn’t in line for the premiere of the iPad.
One can’t help but wonder as one watches what the best environment for a baby would be. Surely we wouldn’t want a pregnant woman riding a motorcycle through rough mountain roads, like Bayar’s parents. But I would never want to subject any child of mine to the vapid song praising “Mother Earth” heard in Hattie’s playgroup.
I loved the free exposure that Bayar and Ponijao had to animals. But Hattie and Mari would grow up in a world with much more ready access to books. Is it better to be an only child with one’s parents’ undivided attention or to have siblings one can look up to and enjoy?
There certainly are advantages for children in some cultures. One can’t doubt the advantages of western medicine. But there must also be advantages to the freedom of living much more freely in the world of nature. We often think we must provide the perfect environment for our children’s growth and development.
I was thinking of this when looking at Exodus chapter 2. God needed a leader to guide the “Children” of Israel to freedom. And like all leaders (like all people, really), this leader started as a baby. The sons of the Israelites were being slaughtered by the Egyptians. So a wise Israelite woman allowed her son to be adopted by an Egyptian woman and raised in the court of the Pharaoh. I’m sure Moses’ mother would have been appalled if she watched a documentary on everything Moses’ adopted family did as they raised him. But God was in control.
As the song says, Jesus loves all the children of the world. As should we. And we should work to see that all babies, children, parents, well….everyone knows of God’s love for us. Jesus always took time for babies (Luke 18:15). So should we.

"Heaven" by Lisa Miller - a book review

When I was a little kid, first grade or so, I had a nightmare about Chilly Willie, the penguin cartoon character. Chilly was out in the ocean and he drowned. But that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was seeing the bird sitting on a cloud in heaven. And he was going to be there, doing nothing for ever. That boredom was what scared me.
That’s why I was happy to see that Lisa Miller, in her book Heaven (Harper Collins 2010), included a chapter entitled “Is Heaven Boring?” Because a lot of adults wonder about that, it isn’t just the mini-me. Miller explores many interesting questions about heaven and the answers provided by the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) for the last few millennia. Ideas about Heaven from culture (Dante) to pop culture (The Lovely Bones) are also presented.
Miller is Jewish, the religion editor of Newsweek and skeptical herself about the existence of heaven. But her interviews with followers of various faiths are fair and respectful. She calls Anne Graham Lotz (Billy’s daughter) a friend and listens politely (and uncomfortably) to Anne pleas to take the Christian path to Heaven. She also writes about her respect for prominent atheists.
It is interesting to follow the history of views of Heaven through the years and the various ways heaven is viewed today. Is Heaven a physical place or purely spiritual? Does one get entrance to Heaven through faith or works or does everyone get in? How does one’s view of Heaven affect the way one lives life? The varied answers to these questions that Miller finds are intriguing, sometime funny, and thought provoking.
I knew a lot of the things that Miller writes about. I remembered from my seminary days about Augustine’s teaching that unbaptized babies would not get into heaven. (The Bishop of Hippo wrote that just as the thief on the cross would enter Heaven based on his faith, though he was not baptized; babies who are baptized enter Heaven though they have not faith.) I hadn’t known (or remembered) that the church father went on to argue that there was a special baby hell, wherein baby souls wouldn’t really even notice their torture. (Baby hell is a concept worth pondering.)
I was unaware of some of the Muslim theories of the intermediary state between death and the Resurrection. This is a theory that two angels with green eyes and long fangs test the newly dead with a series of questions. Those who pass the test with flying colors will get a window view of heaven. Second tier corpses will get a window to hell with the assurance that they won’t go there. Third level is pretty bad because your grave will be set afire and fourth is worse because your sins are turned into wild animals that will attack you.
I also found fascinating the archeological evidence that in ancient Israel, people kept their ancestors bones under there house and may have consulted and/or worshiped them.
Miller can, of course, present no definitive conclusions with her research. But she seems to believe that it is a challenge to rationalism to believe in Heaven and is very uncomfortable with the idea that there is only one route to get there.
Obviously, these are difficult questions. But I believe in a powerful God who can do as He chooses. And that He has graciously choose to give life to His people after life on this earth.
And as to that question of whether Heaven is boring, I came to my own conclusions when I attended camp as a kid, a few years after that penguin dream. A speaker at camp pointed to the beauty around us (the spectacular Sierra Nevada Mountains) and the fun we’d had though the week (swimming, games, archery, great food) and said that a God who thought up such great things would have even better things to come. For me, that answered my fear. That’s when I trusted Christ for forgiveness of my sins and began looking forward to Heaven.