The Proposition

First things first: The Proposition is a brutally violent film. Even though I knew there was a lot of violence, it was still shocking at times to see the level and graphicness of that violence. Anyone planning on viewing this needs to steel themselves for what they will see.

That said, it is also an extremely engaging film. As brutal as it is, one cannot turn aside. There is a scene when someone is being flogged in public and the whole town is watching. It is obviously an appalling sight, yet, they can't bring themselves to turn away. Watching this film is a very similar experience.

The story is set in the Australian Outback in the lawless days of the 19^th Century. The police captain for the area is out to "civilize this place." He is from England and tries to maintain a bit of that civilization in his home and with his wife. He has captured two outlaws, Charlie and Mikey Burns, who were wanted for their part in a heinous murder and rape. Captain Stanley offers Charlie a proposition that could save both his and his younger brother's life. Stanley knows that their older brother Arthur is the real source of evil in the family. If Charlie will track down and kill Arthur, Stanley will let Charlie and Mikey go free. If not, Mikey will hang in nine days -- on Christmas. The resulting struggle for salvation, vengeance, justice, and maybe even civilization, is as harsh as the landscape in which it is set.

The Outback is desolate, hot and deadly. In this film it serves as the Hell the characters live in. One character, a bounty hunter, says that he believed in God prior to coming to Australia, but when he got to the Outback, "the God in me evaporated." Flies are ubiquitous throughout the movie. It is as if we are being told that this is the realm of Beelzebub -- the Lord of the Flies. They are on everything, not only carcasses, but on people as they go through their daily lives -- as if they were living corpses.

The Proposition had a feeling similar to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. All these films deal with a strong moral ambivalence in the characters as well as the brutality of frontier life. All these films have a sense of justice, but question if that justice can come by way of violence or if violence will in fact negate any justice that is sought.

Charlie is the one in the middle of everything. He is the middle brother and has to choose which of his brothers will survive; he is set between the law and his brother; it is in him that the battle between right and wrong is most clearly played out. He has (in the back story) already shown that he is not as bad as Arthur. In fact he has quit being part of Arthur’s gang and took the somewhat innocent Mikey to get him away from Arthur's influence. It's interesting that both Captain Stanley and Arthur tell him (in the same words) that he was right to leave and take Mikey with him. He can no longer accept the violence of Arthur's world, but is forced to live by that violence to survive and to save Mikey.

But the struggle is not just in Charlie; the whole society is struggling between what Stanley sees as civilization and the brutality of survival on the frontier. Those we expect to represent civilization, such as the police, are a horrid group. They are uneducated, cruel, racist bullies given the authority of the law. Those we expect to be most violent are at times the most cultured -- Arthur quoting poetry or fellow gang member Samuel singing an Irish tune.

In some ways this conflict can also be seen in Stanley and his wife, Martha. Stanley has carefully carved out a bit of civilization in his home. It is not at all like the other homes. There is a little garden surrounded by a fence to keep the Outback away from them. Whereas the rest of the town is always dusty and buzzing of flies, the Stanley home is immaculate. He tries to shelter Martha from town and the crude happenings there. Yet she comes, in her best English clothing, to give her approval to the flogging of Mikey. In that scene, Stanley is defeated; rather than bringing civilization, he sees the brutality has spoiled and soiled the one thing he sees as representing that civilization.

The battle between violence and civilization has certainly been played out in the Western genre through the years. Here that struggle gets what may be one of its most powerful (maybe too powerful) treatments. And as with Unforgiven, we are left with a sense of futility that as much as we might want to be peaceful, our natures will in the end defeat us and devour us.

Manson's Memo - 30 years of sermons

Recently, I’ve been reorganizing the files with all my past sermons in them. My files go back to sermons I preached while I was still in seminary. In the process I get to see what I’ve preached the last 30 years. Occasionally there is a surprise.

For example, a few weeks ago when I preached on John 10:11-18 in which Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd,� it was the first time I had ever preached on that. Now, this is not some obscure text out of Nahum that is easy to overlook. This is one of the key images of Jesus in the gospels. But in all these thirty years, whenever that story came up in the lectionary, I picked something else. I have no idea why.

There are other texts that I may have five or more sermons on – all of them different. Maybe the other lessons for those weeks seem more difficult to preach on, or maybe I just like those texts. Even though the various sermons are on the same scripture, they end up different because there is so much to find in what the Bible teaches us.

I once heard that John Wesley through away every sermon after 7 years, because if he couldn’t preach better than that now, there was a problem. Well, I expect some of my best sermons are old, and some are new. But it’s not about how I preach. I keep them all to remind myself of all the ways we can hear something new, no matter how many times we’ve heard a scripture, or (as with John 10) how important it can be to not overlook what is there.

שלןמ

(shalom)

Wah-Wah

As the British rule is coming to an end in Swaziland in the 60s, Ralph Compton’s youth is also coming to an end. And in many ways much of the life around him is falling apart.

Wah-Wah is Richard E. Grant’s semi-autobiographical story of coming of age in Swaziland as the nation prepared for its independence. Grant was born and raised in Swaziland. His father (like Ralph’s) served as Minister of Education in Swaziland during the end of the colonial period. Many of the events in the film are derived from events in Grant’s life.

Ralph’s family is part of the British colonial community. In the midst of this African nation, they carry on the Imperial British way of life as best they can. They play cricket. They follow the protocols of British society (such as you don’t address a titled woman unless she speaks to you first.) They are their own little society. But the stresses of this life are also real. Much of the stress is dealt with through alcoholism and adultery. Everyone knows it’s going on, but no one will face the problems.

For Ralph the problems begins to reach a head when he is eleven and his mother leaves to live with his father’s best friend. Ralph feels abandoned, first by his mother, then soon his father emotionally abandons him as his father falls into alcoholism. Eventually Ralph is sent off to boarding school.

When he returns home at age 14, he discovers that his father has remarried. His stepmother, Ruby, is an American who is very much an outsider in the British society. She complains that they all talk a kind of baby talk (e.g., “toodle pip� for good-bye) that she calls Wah-Wah. At first, Ralph wants nothing to do with Ruby. But when he discovers that she is as much an outsider as he feels, and as they share a common threat from his father’s drinking, they soon form a bond.

At this point, many others are feeling abandoned. Her father and the other in the British society are being abandoned by the Empire – all their jobs and standing will vanish when independence comes. His mother is being abandoned by her lover, who will be sent to Peru. The whole structure of society is falling apart. How should they deal with it? Well, by staging Camelot, obviously -- one more way of avoiding dealing with real issues by lapsing into fantasy.

Through all of this, Ralph is searching for his identity and some semblance of control over his life – as do all adolescents. In Ralph’s case his loss of identity and control seems a bit more pronounced. He is afflicted with an involuntary tic that contorts his face in times of stress. That tic shows the pain that is a part of Ralph’s life.

Ralph begins to find himself in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. He begins mimicking Alex’s makeup from the film. He begins a mild rebellion over his father’s drinking. He also has a way of having some control – puppets. As a child he began acting out his frustrations with small puppets. As he got older he began collecting puppets and thinking of putting on shows.

In time Ralph manages to get his father to confront his alcoholism and as the new nation comes into being, it seems that Ralph is on the verge of finding a new life in his own family. The film ends, after tragedy, with a whole new realm of possibilities for Ralph. The viewer is left to wonder what roads he will take from here on, but those are the roads of other stories.

Grant has assembled an excellent cast for his first film as writer and director. However, there is a cartoonish nature to some of the characters. This can probably be excused as the way memory works and the way exaggeration can be used in film as a foil for the more serious reality being portrayed. The look at the British society at the time seems a bit anachronistic, but the British Empire by that time was an anachronism.

All of this exaggeration and buffoonery seem appropriate as ways an adolescent would view the world. In that, Grant has tapped into a universal experience that goes beyond his own story. It is in that extension from his story to our story that we are able to consider the ways we too continue to avoid dealing with the problems of our lives and our families because they just wouldn’t fit with the façade of society.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Park Chan-wook has had a fascination with revenge in his recent films. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is the third in a trilogy of vengeance films following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. The films have been compared in tone and violence level with the Kill Bill films and Fight Club. Lady Vengeance continues his exploration of the subject he sees as a key issue on the mind of Korean society. But he discovered that after making the first two films on vengeance, “I realized that the overload of rage, hatred, and violence became poison and made my soul into a barren land.� In Lady Vengeance, Park is trying to show vengeance as an “act of redemption.� The story he tells brings a new dimension to our understanding of revenge.

At 19, Lee Geum-ja went to jail for her part in a kidnapping and murder of a five year old child. While in jail, she comes under the influence of a Christian minister who helps her invoke the angel within herself. She is kind to other prisoners as one who protects them and helps them. For many she is known as the Angel. She is also known as the Witch, a title she inherits after she slowly murders the abusive prisoner who had held that title. That dichotomy continues through the film as she is at times kind-hearted and at other times wicked.

During her thirteen years in jail, Geum-ja plans her revenge on her accomplice in the crime, Mr. Baek, the real criminal; Geum-ja is a victim in her own right. As soon as she is released, she rejects the minister’s encouragement so she can get to the work of extracting justice on Baek. With the help of former prisoners who owe her for her protection in jail, she begins the plot to find and capture Baek and deal with him in a way to provide vengeance.

(some spoilers follow)

When she has captured Baek, she, along with the detective who investigated her case, gather the parents of all the children Baek has killed and show them tapes he had made while he killed them. Whipped into an emotional frenzy, she offers the parents the option of turning him over to the courts, or having a more personal way of dealing with him. Their discussion and actions bring about what seems in many ways a satisfying justice, even if we may not approve of the process or the result.

(end spoilers)

The film is really about how we can move beyond our past to a new life. Geum-ja tells one of the prisoners that the way to get through prison is to die and be reborn over and over. As the film winds its way through the process of revenge, we discover that for Geum-ja, this is the first step that will allow her to find a way to new life. Even though she has discovered something of a new life in Christianity while in prison, she must set that aside to free herself from the stain she cannot forgive in herself. So when she exits the prison and the pastor offers her a cake of tofu as a symbol of living white (that is, pure) from now on, she dumps it on the ground.

Later after the vengeance is complete, we begin to see the new life starting to emerge. As all the families are sharing a meal, someone begins singing “Happy Birthday.� It just seemed appropriate to them – and this was for them a day of new birth. This theme is carried even further in the closing scene (more spoilers) as Geum-ja presents her long lost daughter with a large tofu cake, telling her to always live white. The daughter tastes the tofu, and offers some to Geum-ja on a finger, but Geum-ja doesn’t take it. It is as if she is still refusing to accept forgiveness. But then she buries her face in the cake as the voice over (a female narrator, possibly Geum-ja or her daughter) says, “I always liked Geum-ja. Farewell Geum-ja.� (end spoilers)

In many ways, the film just feels right about the closure that can come from revenge. It makes it seem as though just getting that revenge frees us from the rage we may carry. But at the same time, the Christian message is far different than that presented in Lady Vengeance. Geum-ja feels the need to atone. She even says, “But if you committed a sin, you have to make an atonement for that sin. Atonement, do you know what that means? Big Atonement for big sins. Small Atonement for small sins.� But the Christian message is that atonement has already been made. We do not atone for our own sins through revenge. We rely of the gift of God that comes in the cross of Christ. There is where we find our new life. It is in the cross that we are born again to “live white.�

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Mr. Lazarescu doesn't feel well. He's had a headache for four days. He thinks it's from his stomach; he's been throwing up as well. Walking through his apartment he speaks to one of his cats, complaining about how bad he feels noting, "You don't even care, you bloody animal." The sad thing is that nobody else cares either.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a trip through the impersonal world of medicine. Although set in Rumania, anyone who has made a trip to the Emergency Room will identify with Lazarescu's trip down the medical rabbit hole. Or perhaps we are meant to note that one of Lazarescu's given names is Dante and recognize this as a descent into Hell. This Hell is not one of punishment; it is the Hell of indifference.

From the time Lazarescu decides to call for an ambulance, apathy is the overwhelming attitude he encounters. Even the ambulance dispatcher only thinks he needs to stop drinking. This is a recurrent suggestion, even as he keeps getting sicker and weaker. Everyone seems to think it's his fault he's sick, so why should they bother with him.

Even those involved with him, his neighbor and, over time, the ambulance attendant who is shuffling him from hospital to hospital, are much more involved in their own lives than they are in his need.

At the hospitals he encounters issues of medical hierarchies (what business does a nurse have telling a doctor what a patient needs?), hospital politics (can he be pushed to the front of the line for an MRI just because he might be seriously ill?), and bureaucracy (can he have surgery if he is too sick to sign a consent?) Through it all he is treated not as a person, but as a bothersome intrusion into the hospitals' procedures. Finally he does find a hospital where he can get help, but it may be too late. In the end he is stripped of all dignity as he waits for help.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is both thoughtful and thought provoking. It was recognized at Cannes last year with the Prix Un Certain Regard. With a running time of 154 minutes, it is a bit longer than many are used to. It seeks to give us a sense of the time that Lazarescu is spending with this illness. The time also gives the viewer plenty of time to reflect not only on the times we have been Lazarescu, but also the many ways we are like all the characters who are too busy for him.

Much of the film takes place in confined places -- the ambulance, hospital examining rooms, the small apartment. It has an almost claustrophobic quality. It makes it almost uncomfortable to be so close to him amidst all this indifference and cruelty. And we should be uncomfortable with what we see.

This is something of a dark comedy. Certainly the subject matter is dark, but it is also open to considerable humor. For American audiences, however, much of the humor may not register as it would for a Rumanian audience. Still, there are places where the absurdity of the futility shines through.

This is the first of six films director Cristi Puiu plans to make about love. This film focuses on the love of humanity, but it does so by showing its absence. Lazarescu has no one to care for him more than as a passing concern preventing them from getting back to their own lives. His neighbors are busy making jam. His sister doesn’t want to come until tomorrow because it’s too late to come now. The ambulance attendants could be going to other patients. The hospital personnel are busy with other patients or with their own selfish interests. Perhaps things would be easier for Lazarescu if he had family to aid him in this Dante-esque nightmare. But if we look at all the world as neighbor (as in Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan), Lazarescu should not seem to be without family -- all those he came across should have recognized him as one in need and respond as if he were family.

I wonder how often we walk by Lazarescu: the guy who stands in front of the Post Office some mornings asking for change; the woman in the nursing home who can't remember who anyone is; a Palestinian whose home has been bulldozed or an Israeli victim of terrorism; a refugee from Darfur; all the people that we manage to overlook even when they stand in front of us. We may even assume that some of them are to blame for their circumstances, as everyone assumed Lazarescu's problems were based in his drinking. We often see those in need as intrusions into our lives -- keeping us from the "more important" things we want to do. Perhaps we should see those "important" things as the intrusion that prevents us for caring for our neighbors.