Manson's Memo - XLI is on the way

So, the Super Bowl teams are determined. Two Midwest teams will go to Florida to play each other. Seems to me it would be better to play the Game in Gary, Indiana, between the two, but it's not really about the football game -- it's about the event.

There is a load of money involved in Super Bowl XLI. There are the tickets -- that only corporations can afford to buy. There are the TV ads and the new promotions that begin with the Super Bowl. (I saw an ad this week about an ad that will play during the Super Bowl. Even the Super Bowl commercials have their own commercials.) There is the TV revenue that goes to the league. There's the money that the players will get. And there be more than any of this in legal and illegal betting on the game, the coin flip, and everything associated with the game. Take away all that money, and all you’d have left is a football game -- and this could be a pretty good game.

Things can very easily get buried under all the falderal. There may be a gem at the center, but there is so much junk built around it that the gem may be lost. Of course, there are lots of reasons for all the stuff that accumulates around the core -- some of it may even be valuable. In the history of the church things become institutionalized and carved into stone. There are good reasons for the things we do in church. But often, they become part of the clutter that buries the most valuable thing in the church.

We can do without much of the trappings of church. We can do without denominations. We can do without fancy equipment. We can do without pianos and organs. We can do without pastors. We can do without buildings. All of this is the stuff that has grown up around the core of the church.

If we dig through all that, we can find the gem that is so valuable -- without which all the other stuff has no meaning. The Gospel that in Christ, God reconciles the world -- in Christ, God reconciles us.

Darrel's Dozen -- top films of 2006

It hasn't been a bad year. If it's easy to put together a top films list, then there hasn't been much to choose from. This year my list overflows. Although all of these films are certainly worth seeing, what the year lacked is a few films that just plain knock your socks off. That means that the grade for the year is a respectable B-.

Here are my "dozen" films for 2006:

1. Tsotsi - the powerful story of a South African gangster who life is changed when he steals a car with a baby in it. Winner of last year's Best Foreign Language Oscar.
2. Lion in the House - four hour doc on a children's cancer ward. Heartbreaking. Life affirming. Played at Sundance, then went to PBS. I hope they show it again and again.
3. Letters From Iwo Jima - Eastwood sets a new standard for war movies.
4. Little Miss Sunshine - a VW bus with no clutch filled with a family of broken people careening out of control
5. Volver - one of the most entertaining and interesting approaches to death (and, by extension, life) that has made it to film in recent years
6. A double feature: The War Tapes & My Country, My Country - there may be other docs on life in Iraq that belong in this double feature. The life of GIs in one, the life of an Iraqi doctor in the other.
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - a man's descent into the hell of medical care (or medical nobody cares)
8. Another double feature: Sweet Land & The Secret Life of Words - A pair of love stories that I feel blessed to have seen, because they have such little distribution -- and because they are so good.
9. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days - bravery and commitment in the face of death
10. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - revenge, grace, rebirth
11. Pan's Labyrinth - finding immortality by remember who you are
12. Babel - the world-wide connection of events and of people

Even though I have more than twelve films in my dozen, I still have half a dozen films that I'd like to have included (in no particular order): Joyeux Noel, The Proposition, Thank You for Smoking, The Departed, An Inconvenient Truth, and Children of Men.

Favorite discoveries or revisits from past years:

A Time for Burning
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Walkabout
Boys of Baraka
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Favorite performances of the year:

Actress: Judy Dench in Notes on a Scandal
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed
Ensemble: Little Miss Sunshine

The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil opens in a florist shop where we learn that Kitty's family doesn't buy flowers, because why should you buy something that you can grow. They also don't grow flowers because it is "silly to put all that effort into something that's just going to die." Certainly an unromantic beginning to a love story. Well, I say it's a love story, but it takes a while to get there.

Kitty is a daughter of an upper-class British family. She seems to have no real interest in marriage because she's never fallen in love with anyone and can't see the point of marrying. But soon societal and family pressure leads her to consent to marry Walter Fane, a bacteriologist headed for China as part of the bureaucracy of the British Empire. Walter and Kitty are an ill-matched pair. Kitty yearns for passion; Walter is cold and detached. They become part of the British society in China where Kitty is seduced by Vice Consul Charlie Townsend. They have an intense affair, but Walter discovers it. A divorce would ruin Kitty's reputation, so he offers her an alternative -- go with him to the middle of a cholera epidemic in rural China.

They are now away from all that seems like civilization to Kitty. But Walter hasn't brought her to Mei-tan-fu to rekindle a flame -- they never had any flame. He has brought her here to punish her -- possibly even have her die from the disease. As Walter tries to fight the disease (he is more concerned with the microbe than patients, as he tells the Chinese doctor there, he's an M.D., but not a clinician), Kitty has nothing to do. In time she becomes involved with the nuns who are caring for the dying patients and for the orphaned children.

As I said above, it takes a while to become a love story, because the story we see is of a loveless marriage -- built on convenience, pride, spitefulness, and vengeance. They care so little about each other that it seems unimportant that the other might get sick in this far away place.

Over the course of the film, Walter and Kitty learn that passion and love are not restricted to the physical manifestations. There is a far more spiritual nature to love and to passion. As Kitty works with the nuns, the Mother Superior tells her of her own journey. When she was young she was passionately in love -- with God. But as the years piled up, and there were times God wasn't there (or so it seemed) they settled into an indifferent comfort -- like an old married couple. She has learned, she tells Kitty "where love and duty are one, then grace is with you." For Walter and Kitty, the process has to work in reverse -- they only had the indifferent comfort; from there they must find their passion.

In time we will learn if it really is "silly to put all that effort into something that's just going to die." That is an issue that faces us each day. How much effort should we put in to relationships or people or jobs that are transitory (as all are)? It is part of the issue that the writer of Ecclesiastes pondered: "For who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which they pass like a shadow? For who can tell them what will be after them under the sun?"

The Painted Veil is the kind of love story that moves us not through its romance, but because it shows us what makes life worthwhile.

Book Review: Reel Spirituality, 2nd edition

The original edition of Robert K. Johnston's Real Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue has been for many, myself included, a very helpful text to understand the interaction between theology and the movies we watch. In recent years this interaction has been a growing discipline. Johnston, who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary, has been a leading writer in the field. Now a second edition of the book has been published and the expansion improves what was already a valuable resource.

Johnston has rewritten all of the chapters of the first edition, and added two more chapters. All the things that made the first edition valuable are still here, but with additional comments about more recent films and also bringing in the expanding body of literature focusing on film from a spiritual and theological perspective. The revisions of the text leave the core teachings intact, but provide even more examples and clearer understandings. This includes his basic approach to film and why film is so useful for theological discussion, and his basic approach to the critical analysis of film from a theological perspective.

Along the way Johnston includes what might be called mini-reviews of various films. The reviews are insightful and always serve to illustrate the critical approaches to understanding film theologically. The reviews are valuable for anyone looking to better understand the theological approach to watching film or just for someone looking for some good films to add to their must see list. But they are not the real reason for the book; they are icing on the cake.

This edition, like the first, concludes with a look at the films of Peter Weir. This examination serves to demonstrate the various principles put forth in the book. Weir's films are diverse in terms of genre, but have certain common themes that wind through them in different way. Johnston's assessment of these films helps the reader to see the process of analyzing films from a theological point of view.

The two biggest additions to the book are the two new chapters. The first deals with the importance of image and music. It corrects one of the shortcomings of the first edition: that it was so strongly focused on the literary aspect of film. To be sure, narrative is almost always central to any film, but much of a film's power comes from the way that narrative is presented. This new chapter looks at the way image and music are used to heighten the storytelling aspect of film. It serves as a brief primer of filmmaking for those without such a background, covering procedures such as framing, editing, special effects.

The second new chapter is the most important improvement in the book. That chapter deals with the ways we respond to films ethically. Often discussions about ethics in film are limited to the amount of violence or sexuality. Johnston wants us to consider films as a way of finding a "common moral vocabulary" of moral discourse for important issues we face as a society. His examples in this chapter are the two films that won best picture Academy Awards for 2004, The Sea Inside (Best Foreign Language Film) and Million Dollar Baby (Best Picture). Both films dealt with issues around euthanasia. Johnston looks at the two films to ascertain their understanding of the issues and the way life and death are viewed in the two films. From there he shows the way these films can be useful in our approach to the difficult issues that are dealt with in these films. Whether one accepts euthanasia as moral or not, the discussion of the issues is important for our culture and films can be a catalyst for such dialogue.

Reel Spirituality is an important resource for anyone seeking to better understand the potential film has in theological reflection. For those who wish to find deeper meaning in films than a few hours of entertainment and for those who wish to find new ways of teaching theological concepts, Johnston's new edition of the book is an essential addition to your library.