Witness

Peter Weir has given us many films that allow us to see what happens when a person is taken out of their environment and has to confront other issues. Sometimes it may involve nature (Picnic at Hanging Rock), war (Gallipoli), different cultures (The Year of Living Dangerously), or new ideas (Dead Poets Society). Weir allows us to see the clash that takes place, but the real focus is the change that the encounter provokes in characters.

In Witness, a young Amish child on his first trip into Philadelphia witnesses a killing. John Book, the police detective investigating the murder, discovers police corruption that threatens him and the Amish boy's life. He gets the boy and his mother back to their home, where due to injuries, Book has to stay while mending.

Book is a hard, violent and cynical man. He spends his time dealing with the dark side of life. He sees himself in some ways as a “white knight� doing good in a world filled with evil - even if it means using violence to get it done.

The Amish are a small sect of Christians that are best known for their simple lifestyle and rejection of many modern conveniences such as electricity and automobiles. [For more information on the Amish, see
http://www.religioustolerance.org/amish.htm.] They live in separate communities because they want to maintain their ways and they do not want outside influences to their lifestyle. They are also strictly nonviolent.

When Book is in the Amish community, there is a conflict of culture and attitude. He is accepted as a guest, but not as part of the community. Even that acceptance as guest is only because of his need. He is a danger to them - not only because he is an outsider, but because the corrupt police are looking for him. But through their interaction, Book is confronted with a way of life that calls all his assumptions into question.

This is especially true for his assumptions about violence. He comes from a violent world and has learned to use violence in ways that he sees as proper. However, whether those ways truly are proper is very much called into question. In one scene, Eli, the boy's grandfather, explains to young Samuel the danger of a handgun - not so much the danger of how it could hurt people, but the damage it does to the user. He says, “What you take into your hand, you take into your heart.�

In another scene, Book has gone into a nearby town with a group of Amish. An oafish bully begins to taunt and assault them. Eli tells Book this happens sometimes. We watch as the focus of the bully's taunting does nothing to respond, until finally Book can take it no longer and uses his fist to teach the lout a lesson. On the one hand, we sort of applaud that the bully got what he deserved. But on the other hand, we know that Book has embarrassed his friends, and worse, has become the thing he is fighting. He wins only because he can be a bigger bully. The nonviolence the Amish were practicing was a much more powerful statement than Book could make.

Eventually (and because of the violence Book used in town), the bad cops find him and come to the peaceful setting to kill him. Although violence is necessary in this struggle, in the final accounting, it is not violence that wins the day, but the fact that many Amish, all unarmed, and who have come and are watching - witnessing - that brings the violence to an end.

The film is a beautiful look into Amish life - farming, barn raising, family, the simple life. But more, it is a look at people who are trying to live out their faith in the midst of a culture that goes counter to nearly all they believe. The film is a look at what it can mean to make one's faith a way of life.

The title, Witness, really has at least three meanings in this film. It is first of all the boy who is a witness to murder and has to be protected. It is also the crowd that comes in the final battle and through their witnessing of what is happening put an end to it. But mostly it is the witness that the community makes through their lives.

When Book goes back to Philadelphia, we know that he can never be the same person he was. How many people's lives can be changed by the way we live out our faith?

Intimate Strangers

HJ Links
—Review
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

One way of thinking of intimacy is the baring of one's self - to be completely open and naked before another. Such intimacy is not easy. It requires a level of trust that the other person will not take advantage of that which we reveal of ourselves.

In Patrice Laconte’s film, Intimate Strangers, Anne, a young woman with a troubled marriage, makes a wrong turn in the hallway as she goes to her first appointment with a psychiatrist. Instead of the doctor's office, she ends up in a tax advisor's office. Not knowing her mistake, she proceeds to tell her troubles to William. The stunned William lets her go on with this mistake. Then they set an appointment for the next week. Even after the mistake is made known, she continues to come talk to William rather than the doctor down the hall.

William is a lonely man who lives and works in the same apartment he was born in. His nights consist of a TV dinner alone. His tie is always perfectly tied. His desk is always neat. He has compartmentalized his life. It's comfortable, but unfulfilling. When Anne shows up, his world begins to open up.

This kind of mistaken identity is rife for comedy, and at times that is where the film goes. But intimacy is serious business, and as the story progresses, the comedy begins to fall into the background. Week by week Anne opens up a little bit more. We begin to hear very uncomfortable things about her marriage and her life. More, we begin to wonder if her story is even true. Is she really married? Was there a mistake that first visit, or was it planned? We start seeing ways that Anne manipulates William.

The tension begins to mount in an almost Hitchcockian manner as the story goes on. (This tension is helped along by a superb score by Pascal Estéve.) We really aren't sure whom we should fear or fear for. Who is a victim in all this? Anne? Anne's husband? William? We begin to sense that something dangerous is taking place.

The real danger is the intimacy. William and Anne begin to know each other as people rarely get to know one another. Anne and William become entwined in this ongoing intimacy. Each needs to be set free in some way, but to find their freedom, they must bare their souls to themselves and one another. Such baring of souls leaves one totally vulnerable. In that vulnerability, they are able to find their freedom.

It isn't easy being intimate with another. Even in marriage, there are often ways that we hide bits of ourselves from those we are closest to. But it costs us to hide those things.

Intimacy with God is also difficult. Even if we are already fully known by God, we still seek to hide our deepest selves. But it is only by opening ourselves and being ready to stand naked before God that we will finally find the freedom and peace of God.

Ju-on

HJ Links
—Review
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

Perhaps Ju-on should be thought of more as a franchise than as a specific film. There have been previous incarnations in Japan in recent years and there is an Americanized version (The Grudge, with Sarah Michelle Gellar) coming out in October, also directed by Takashi Shimizu. All are basically the same story, retold with different perspectives.

Ju-on: The Grudge is not the kind of horror film that American audiences are used to. The films most of us are used to are either plot driven or character driven. Plot is really only a minor consideration in Ju-on, and we are given only a few bits and pieces of any of the characters. It is really more about the ambiance of fear. It accomplishes this ambiance not by showing lots of gore, but by building tension and by throwing in little visual surprises that do far more to give us a sense of terror than lots of blood.

Ju-on is indeed creepy. The story takes place in a house in which a murder/suicide happened years before. Now the ghosts are seeking to hurt anyone that they come in contact with. These are not nice ghosts. They are not looking for some release so they can move on to another world. They aren't looking to tie up loose ends of some issue that is holding them here. They are downright malevolent: they want to kill people. One of the most disturbing images is the ghost of a child. He doesn't really seem to do anything himself, but he is always the harbinger of evil about to strike.

The story is told in a series of episodes, not necessarily even in chronological order, each based on a particular character. Some of the episodes are several years apart. But in each, there is some sort of contact with the house, then someone ends up dead, attacked by one of the ghosts.

I'm not really a fan of ghost films because so often the ghosts are just like us, only dead. Eventually in ghost films, things are straightened out and problems are resolved so everyone can get on with life (or death). Ju-on doesn't fall into that trap. The violence that took place in the house has set in motion even more violence, now being carried out by the victims. There is never any reason given. Nor is there any resolution reached. This might be a problem for some viewers who want things neatly tied up, but Ju-on isn't interested in solving anything -- just in creating that sense of dread and fear.

The violence that sets this off really functions almost like a virus. It just keeps spreading as more and more people come into the setting. There is never enough blood to satisfy the lust for vengeance that is being worked out by the ghosts. The people killed have nothing to do with the events that have taken place in the house; they are innocents. But revenge doesn't seem to care who gets hurt -- or how many. It just keeps spreading, drawing more and more people into the darkness of the violence.

I wonder what we really need to fear in this film: the atmosphere and mood that is so spooky? the ghosts? or is it maybe the understanding that violence and vengeance so easily grow out of control? That last is something we all can -- and perhaps should -- fear.

De-Lovely

HJ Links
—Review
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

Doesn't it seem as if all musicals are love stories? De-Lovely is really a biography, but it is done in the style of a musical, so it becomes a love story.

Cole Porter wrote many of the musicals that America was so fond of in the first half of the twentieth century. His shows include Anything Goes, Kiss Me Kate, and Can-Can. His songs include “Begin the Beguine,� “I Love Paris,� “Let's Fall in Love,� “Don't Fence Me In,� and “Be a Clown.� A sign of the respect in which Porter's music is held is seen in the array of artists who are part of this film, often singing only a part of a song: Elvis Costello, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Robbie Williams, Natalie Cole and more.

De-Lovely is designed to be a review of Cole Porter's life from his deathbed. Gabe (the angel Gabriel) serves as the director of the show, guiding Cole through various scenes from his life. The story is staged as a musical, with occasional breaks back to the old Cole as he comments about what is happening.

The story is carried along by Cole's wonderful music, sometimes in the context of one of his shows, sometime in a different setting. There is a real feeling here that the way to know and appreciate Cole Porter is through his music. But the film goes on to show us also the life that was behind that music. The music at times acts on two different levels: the outward level that it was used in public, and at the same time a more hidden level about his private life.

Cole was a man full of life and hungry for love. The story begins as he meets the woman who would in many ways be the love of his life, Linda. However, as much as they love each other, their love is not complete. Cole was gay. Linda knew about it, and allowed him plenty of room for that part of his life. But even though Cole often had affairs with other men, and even had a period while working in Hollywood during which he became somewhat indiscreet, as the film moves on, we see the great love that Cole and Linda shared, even in times that would try them severely.

What a complex construct love is. For most of us, most of the various components (sexual, emotional, intellectual) that go into love all converge in a single person. The relationship changes over time. In the case of Cole and Linda, not all the pieces of the puzzle came together as they usually do. Even in this, their love is seen by the freedom that Linda allowed Cole and the devotion and loyalty that Cole demonstrated. Theirs was not a perfect relationship or marriage, but there can be no doubt about the love they shared.

At the beginning of the film, Gabe finds Cole at his piano playing a ballad. He reminds him that you never start off with a ballad. Later he reminds him that you also don't end with a ballad. But De-Lovely breaks those rules, beginning and ending with ballads. The ballads point to the importance of Cole and Linda's love as the overarching theme of the film. Besides, Cole Porter never was one for rules.