Viewing journal for Oct. 2005

10-3-05	-	Duma
10-5-05	-	Serenity
10-6-05	-	Assisted Living
10-8-05	-	Capote favorite for the month
10-9-05	-	Stand By Me
10-15-05	-	Unforgiven
10-16-05	-	Good Night, and Good Luck
10-17-05	-	4 Little Girls
10-17-05	-	The Mother
10-18-05	-	12 Monkeys
10-19-05	-	The Squid and the Whale
10-20-05	-	Where the Truth Lies
10-21-05	-	The Bridge of San Luis Rey
10-27-05	-	The Shawshank Redemption

List of all the films I've seen in 2005

Where the Truth Lies

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—7. Production Notes
—8. Spiritual Connections
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Lies can be destructive. So, too, can the truth.

Lenny Morris and Vince Collins were a comedy team back in the 1950s. They were in films and worked night clubs. They had an annual telethon to raise money for polio. They were well known and loved by many.

When the body of Maureen O’Flaherty was discovered in their hotel room, it turned into a great mystery. The two comics had alibis that kept them out of trouble, but the mystery went unsolved. Even though they managed to survive the scandal, their partnership didn’t. They soon split up and went their separate ways. They had had a great relationship as a duo. How could it end so suddenly? What had come between them?

Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies explores the way truth and lies can become so intertwined that the truth may no longer matter, even if it can be determined. The process of hiding the truth poisons the well of relationship for years to come.

The film bounces back and forth between time periods and between voices. We hear Vince and Lenny tell their versions of what happened during their time together, and most importantly, their stories of Maureen’s death. The stories are being told to Karen O’Connor, a young journalist trying to find the truth. Hers is another voice in the storytelling. She has her own secret relationship with the pair, and develops more secrets as she interacts with them. They tell her lies; they tell her truths. She tells them lies and truths as well.

As the stories unfold, there are lots of twists along the way. It isn’t until the end, that we discover the truth that ruined the lives of these two men precisely because they never really knew the truth. They assumed they knew, but they didn’t. Even as they tried to hide what they thought was the truth from the world, they were in fact only perpetuating lies that they had believed.

In watching the film, I was aware of the way that deception can take on a life of its own. Even when everybody knows there is deception, they don’t want to talk about it or bring it to light. The longer they try to keep the deception going, the more harm it ends up doing.

This kind of dynamic takes place in all kinds of abusive relationships. It is sometimes referred to as “the elephant in the room.� Everyone knows the elephant is there, but no one will acknowledge it. People move around it and act like it isn’t there, but in reality it is the most important thing in life, because everyone spends so much time pretending to ignore it.

In the film, because everyone spends so much time trying to avoid the elephant, they miss the chance to bring healing to those who are hurting – and everyone is hurting. If only they had dealt with the things that were separating them from each other, they may have discovered a truth beyond the truth they thought they knew.

It should be noted that this film was released as Unrated, because otherwise it would have been NC-17. There are ample and explicit sex scenes that are important to the telling of the story. Egoyan is said to have tried to remove some of them, but was not able to get it to a level that the MPAA would have accepted as R rated without damaging the story (at least in Egoyan’s mind.)

—Overview

Good Night, and Good Luck

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—10. Presentation Downloads

Civil liberties set aside for security reasons. Journalists afraid to report in ways that might be considered “un-American.� Television networks more concerned with the bottom line than their responsibilities to use the medium to inform and educate. Sound familiar?

Go back fifty years and all these issues were at play in the coverage of the Cold War search for Communism as manifested in McCarthyism.

The early 1950s were a time of great turmoil as America worried about the infiltration of Communists in our government. The threat was real. Senator Joe McCarthy took advantage of that threat to rise to power. He claimed to have lists of “card carrying� Communists in government positions. His tactic was to slander and smear people with hearsay, innuendo and intimidation. To oppose him was to become the target of his attack and to be labeled as a Communist or Communist sympathizer, and as such, un-American.

After a few years of this, many Americans were beginning to see through the charade of McCarthy’s tactics but few were ready to stand up to him. In late 1953, one of the most respected television journalists, Edward R. Murrow and his co-workers at CBS took the step to show what was going on. Good Night, and Good Luck is the story of that confrontation.

Director and co-writer George Clooney’s father was a local television anchor man. Murrow was one of the household heroes that Clooney grew up with. He comes at this story with a high regard for those journalists who put their jobs and reputations on the line to show the nation that what was happening in America was a violation of our ideals. We see in this film that McCarthy may have been, as Murrow implied, a treasonous danger disguised as patriotism, but the bigger danger was that so many people, out of fear, allowed him to go on.

Good Night, and Good Luck is filmed in black and white, in part to bring about the feel of that time before color television, but also to use archival footage of McCarthy. In a radio interview, Clooney said that having an actor play McCarthy would have been unbelievable – no one would believe that he was that over the top. By using the actual footage of McCarthy, we see just how far he was willing to go.

The film shows us something of the pantheon of early TV journalism: Murrow; his co-producer Fred Friendly; CBS President William Paley, who supported them in spite of loss of advertisers. They are portrayed as the heroes Clooney grew up with – those who helped to keep America from falling deeper into the paranoia of those days. It also addresses many of the issues we continue to deal with five decades after McCarthy’s fall.

The issue Murrow used to begin his exposé of McCarthy was the case of Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich who was dismissed from the service because of secret evidence that his father and sister were Communist sympathizers. As we see the story that Murrow presented, we cannot help but be reminded of the current situation under the USA PATRIOT Act which was passed in response to the treat of terrorism. Many Americans contend that giving up our civil liberties in the search for security is a cost that is higher than we should pay – to cede our liberties is to lose the very life we seek to maintain.

Another issue examined in the film is journalistic ethics. Should all stories be balanced? Does there come a time when it is time to report what is obvious without having to show another side? Murrow et al. offered McCarthy time to respond, which he later did very ineffectively. Their original reports, however, were very much one sided. They knew they would be branded as un-American. Because of this, they lost sponsors. Murrow and Friendly paid out of their own pockets to air the show. One of the roles of the press in a free society is not merely to report, but to critique. Today, do the networks steer away from stories that need to be reported for fear of how they will be perceived and fear of losing advertising revenue? Are reporters up to the job of taking on issues that need to be addressed if it means they will be seen as unpatriotic or overly zealous?

The film raises these questions without giving explicit answers. Although I think the fact that they raise the questions and show us the early TV journalists as heroes does point in a particular direction.

The issue that is addressed more directly is the role of TV (and other media) in society. Does it have value besides the financial bottom line? Is it only for entertainment, or should it also educate and inform? Does it have a responsibility to be all that it can be, or only to generate as much money as it can for the shareholders? The film begins and ends with Murrow being honored by broadcasters a few years after the events of the bulk of the film. In his address, he chides them for the pattern he sees emerging in broadcasting. News is set aside for game shows. The money was becoming the only way to judge success. It has only become more pronounced since Murrow’s time.

The film certainly wants us to understand entertainment media (including both television and films) as being something that should be about more than entertainment and be judged on more than how much money they make. Clooney is, in a way, chiding his own industry (as Morrow did) for the attention that is paid to money-making fluff over substance. Good Night, and Good Luck is certainly the latter. It not only shows us a bit of our history, it calls us to see that history being replayed in our own day. It articulates a position that asks more for of our media and of ourselves.

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—7. Posters (George Clooney)
—8. Production Notes (pdf)
—9. Spiritual Connections
—10. Presentation Downloads

Elizabethtown

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(A Musical Bible Study Guide)
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—11. A Musical Bible Study Guide
(Word doc download)
—12. A Musical Bible Study Guide
(PDF download)

I recently read that Jonathan Sachs, the chief rabbi of Great Britain has noted that the Hebrew Scriptures include one commandment to love one’s neighbor, but thirty-six commandments to love or care for strangers.

In Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, Drew, a young man fresh off a major failure, travels to Kentucky, where his father has suddenly died, to make arrangements to bring his remains home to Oregon. Along the way he is cared for and loved by a collection of strangers: his father’s extended family whom he doesn’t know, a stewardess who sees her life as helping others (but needs someone to help her was well), and even a wedding party at the hotel he’s staying at. Drew is very much an alien in a strange land when he arrives in Elizabethtown, but through the gifts of love shared with him by these people he doesn’t know, he gets a chance at a new life beyond his failure.

Drew is something of a lost soul. He has just spent the last few years of his life designing an athletic shoe that is so bad his company will lose nearly a billion dollars. He is on the edge of the abyss when he learns his father has died, and he has to set aside his own doom to deal with his father’s.

How appropriate that as lost as he is, he meets someone who is well traveled and can give him some direction – Claire, a stewardess who sees her mission in life as helping others. She begins by giving Drew directions to get from the airport to Elizabethtown. He still manages to get lost. When he does finally find his way to the town, the entire population knows who he is and points the way to the funeral home where he begins to make arrangements. But even with Claire and the entire population of Elizabethtown, Drew is still a lost soul.

There are many reasons he’s so lost. First, he’s cut himself off from his family. An early scene shows his family having holiday dinner, and he is only there as a picture on the table. He has found a new family in the shoe company he has been working for – even a father-figure in his Zen-like boss. But when failure comes, the workplace family deserts him.

He also senses that the direction of his life – materialism and the drive for what he has considered success – really heads nowhere. Later in the film, Drew notes “Success, not greatness, is the only god the whole world serves.� He has been serving that god and discovered that he got nothing in return. His life to this point has, he discovers, only led him to despair.

It is at this point that strangers begin to take care of him – Claire, his extended family and the inhabitants of Elizabethtown, even a bridal party (and they do party) that is staying at his hotel. Everyone just adopts him and tries to get him pointed in a direction that leads to life. It doesn’t matter that he is from California (actually Oregon, but for them it’s all California); they all sense that here is a sojourner among them who needs help. And as the Torah instructs, they care for this stranger.

Drew isn’t the only one who’s lost. His cousin Jessie is lost when it comes to knowing how to be a single father. His mother is lost in knowing how to grieve the death of her husband. Claire, Drew’s primary guide, is just as lost as he is. Crowe describes Claire: “[She says,] ‘I like helping people. I’m here to help you.’ But if you look deep in her eyes you see ‘One day somebody will help me.’� Life, the film seems to be telling us, is not so much a matter of anyone knowing the way, but of lost strangers helping other lost strangers, and in the process, everyone finding their way.

The final act of the film is a road trip Drew takes with his father’s ashes. Claire has created a very detailed itinerary for him and given him CDs to listen to along the way. This road trip is a great gift for him. Along the way he is able to develop something of a post-mortem connection with his father. He is able to begin to see his life as more than his failure. It is in the journey that he finds the direction to return to life from the land of his own spiritual death. Often it is the journey that is the real destination of our lives.

This film comes out at a time when many people around the country are directly or indirectly taking care of strangers in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Evacuees have been placed around the country where churches, schools, and communities have opened their arms in welcome. Work is already beginning on new homes through Habitat for Humanity. Churches around the country will be sending work groups to help rebuild homes, churches and lives in East Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. All this is more evidence that we can live up to the call that we are given to care for our neighbor.

Crowe’s films have a hopeful quality that suggests an optimistic view of the world. Many of us are cynical about the idea that people will come to the aid of strangers. We often think that people really only care about themselves. In Elizabethtown Crowe offers us a view (confirmed by the responses to the hurricanes) that people really do want to help the stranger in our midst. It is through the care we give to strangers (and that strangers give to us) that we become strangers no more.

Capote

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“Researching this book has changed my life.�

Truman Capote, a gifted writer had already achieved a good deal of fame as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He was ensconced among the New York celebrity literati. Late in 1959 he read a newspaper account of the murder of a family in a small Kansas town. The book he ended up writing about that murder, In Cold Blood, would change the way people looked at nonfiction. It would also change Capote’s life. He would never finish another novel.

Capote is not a full blown biography; it is a look at Capote’s labors in bringing this story to the world. He started off with the idea of writing a magazine article for New Yorker about how the murders affected this small town. He goes to Kansas with his childhood friend Harper Lee (herself a writer who soon won a Pulitzer for her book, To Kill a Mockingbird.) Before long he knew that this would need a book to tell the story. He created the nonfiction novel – a nonfiction story told with all the writing skill that goes into telling a story of fiction.

He spent a great deal of time in the town, becoming friends with a number of the residents. When the murderers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were captured and brought back for trial, Capote became obsessed with these two criminals. To be sure there was something monstrous about them, but there was also a vulnerability. As he got to know them, he discovered there were connections between their lives and his.

In the film, we mostly see the relationship that develops between him and Perry Smith. In Smith he sees much of himself. At one point Capote notes that it is as if “Perry and I grew up in the same house. One day he went out the back door and I went out the front.� Capote identifies with the sense of abandonment that makes up Smith’s childhood. He also identifies with Smith’s insecurity that leads to him craving attention of any kind. We see some of this same kind of hunger in Capote as he seeks to be the center of attention in New York society.

Capote’s relation with the killers is something of a contradiction. He notes that he’s been accused of using them to get the story for his book. At the same time he’s been accused of being in love with them. He doesn’t see how both could be true. But they are. He is extremely egocentric and, although he has found lawyers for them, is distressed when they get stays of execution, because if slows down his ability to finish the story. At the same time, he knows he will be devastated when they are gone, because they have become such a part of his life.

In the film, we see Capote going back and forth between his two worlds – the world of the literary fame and the world that is inhabited by people such as Smith. It was perhaps a bit upsetting to discover just how much he was familiar with both worlds.

Capote is told in the film, “Be careful of what you do to get what you want.� It ends up that he manages to create an astounding book, but ends up so personally involved that he never seemed to be able to get over it.

On the surface, many will be attracted to the film for the acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman, does a superb job of capturing the well known voice and mannerisms of Truman Capote. Such imitation often invites great praise. It can also invite discussion of whether imitation constitutes good acting. Last year, Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles and much the same debate ensued. In both the case of Foxx and now with Hoffman, the portrayals go beyond mere impersonation. In Capote, Hoffman not only nails Capote’s familiar bearing, he takes us into the torment that filled Capote as he wrote the story and in many ways became part of the story. We see the loneliness, the sorrow, the ambition and determination.

In many ways this is a performance-driven film. The work of Hoffman and the supporting cast (especially Catherine Keener and Clifton Collins, Jr.) are what make this film really come alive. But there is a depth to the film that goes beyond the performances. That depth comes from the connection that we see between Capote and the killers. He realizes that as monstrous as the murders were, these two were more like everyone else than they were different. He saw in them a humanity that was damaged and buried, but by no means completely lost.

Being able to see that broken humanity was what gave Capote the insight to bring the story of In Cold Blood to the world. This film allows us to see how that sense of brokenness is a part of every life.

Dear Wendy

There is something about guns that appeal to many people. Both my sons, when they were old enough, bought guns, even though they know the second amendment is not in effect in my house. A psychiatrist might say that a gun is a phallic substitute. Maybe so. But guns certainly represent power.

Dear Wendy is the story of Dick, a young man who discovers that carrying a gun, even though no one knows he has it, gives him a power – a confidence – that he never had before. He shares this discovery with other “losers� in town and they form the Dandies, a bit of social club, a bit of church, a bit of gang all mixed together. They find an old abandoned part of a mine and there they create The Temple, where they escape from the outside world and can concentrate on their guns. Through their joining together by carrying guns, they all begin to grow within themselves.

They have no desire to use their guns (other than in target practice) because they are pacifists. One of the prime rules of being a Dandy is that you never display your “partner.� The guns are not to be used outside The Temple. They are carried to provide “moral support.�

The attitude towards guns is an exaggerated version of the romantic mythology associated with guns in America. The Dandies don’t use just any gun. They want guns that are older, preferably with a history. They see each gun having its own character and personality. They name their guns, and refer to them as partners. They don’t refer to the purpose of guns as killing, but use the word “loving� instead. They go through a ceremony similar to a wedding in which a Dandy is united with his partner. We see in the Dandies an idyllic vision of good hearted people who just happen to love guns.

Of course, for the plot to move along there has to be some conflict. It begins with the introduction of Sebastian, the grandson of Dick’s former maid. He is African-American and has gotten into trouble elsewhere and has “blown someone away� (possibly in self-defense.) The local sheriff asks Dick to be an unofficial parole officer for Sebastian to help keep him out of trouble. Dick begins to bring Sebastian into the Dandies’ activities, although Sebastian has a much different understanding of firearms and their uses. Sebastian also brings some destructive emotions to the group, especially jealousy.

The film is written by Lars von Trier and directed by Thomas Vinterberg, the two creative Danish directors that created the Dogme movement (although this is not a Dogme film.) Dogme was designed to make films seem more real. The strictures of the Dogme Vow of Chastity are not in use here. In fact, there is a sense of unreality about this film. The unreality is not so much like a fable or fairy tale as some films. Rather the film has something of the feel of a comic book. The set for this film is just a few blocks of a mining town. It looks like a backlot street made up to look like a backlot street. It is reminiscent of the set without buildings of von Trier’s Dogville in its minimalism.

Von Trier especially has been controversial in the United States because of his portrayals of America. This film will stir that controversy a bit more. Although in production notes Vinterberg says that pacifists with guns are interesting because that is how the Western world sees itself, the film is very clearly focused on America and America’s love affair with guns. Nearly every scene has an American flag in it somewhere. The flag may or may not be obviously displayed, but it is there telling us over and over who this film is about.

It is easy to take offense at outsiders critiquing our culture. They aren’t really invested in us and we are free to question their standing at bringing such issues before us. It is especially hard to have them be so heavy handed (as with the use of flags). It makes it seem as if they are being judgmental and condemning us for the way we are so tied to violence and the means of violence.

In their defense, they point out that Americans have made films about other countries for a long time without really being part of those cultures. They also point out that much of their own culture is American in that most of the TV and movies come from the US. They feel as if they are part American because they are so surrounded by American culture.

Even though it can be debated if they are the right people to raise issues about America, it is more important to consider whether the issues are valid. Sometimes it may take an outsider to help us understand how we seem to others. To be sure, I think their picture of America is not always accurate, but it is very often the way the world sees us.

What does it mean to us that they picture us as pacifist with guns? I’m flattered they think we value peace, even though I seldom see any evidence of this on any level other than a few individuals. It is obvious that America and many Americans feel more secure because of the weapons we have, both as individuals and the large stockpile of weapons we have as a nation. We all, of course, believe that we would never use these weapons. We just want them for the “moral support� they provide. They make us stronger, we feel, just because we have them.

Is it any wonder that other nations want to be armed as well? Should we be surprised that Iran or North Korea wants to develop nuclear weapons so they can feel the same security? Do the nuclear weapons held by India or Pakistan or Israel give them security? Are they only for feeling secure? Do they hold the potential to “love� that the Dandies’ partners have?

It is true that this film can and should be seen as being about more than America. It is not only about us, it is about the way the feeling of power can seduce us into thinking our virtue is enough to restrain us, even if others can’t be trusted with such power. The power that comes from such things as guns and bombs is only power if the ability and will to use them exists as well. And when we choose to live partnered to weapons we have sold a bit of our souls for a security that might be fleeting or even illusory.

While I find validity in their overall theme, I am still bothered by part of the film – the way racism plays a role. Race is not the key issue in the film, and is never spoken of, but it certainly has a role to play. Remember that it is Sebastian who brings turmoil into the story. It is he who has killed someone. Later in the film, the battle that we know is inevitable because of the guns is precipitated by another African-American.

Are the filmmakers intentional in the use of African-Americans in this way? Is it a way of saying, “white people with guns are safe, but black people with guns are dangerous?� Is this a reflection of the filmmakers’ racism? Or is it (as seems to be the case often with von Trier and Vinterberg) merely a reflection of how they think America is? Are they intentionally racist in this way to show us what they think we need to see in ourselves?

Obviously this film will not be winning any awards from the National Rifle Association. But it may not be accurate to call it anti-gun. What it does is challenge our romantic ideas about guns and our idea that our guns (and other weapons) really give us security.

As with almost all films from von Trier or Vinterberg, Dear Wendy will upset a number of people. Perhaps what makes their films so upsetting is not just their outsider status as they look at American culture, but also that there is truth in what they tell us about ourselves.