Meet the Fockers

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From teen movies to the latest Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts film, many of today’s comedies deal with the idea of falling in love, making a relationship work, and the amusing and sometimes hilariously painful path a couple takes to get there. The movies focus on two characters, their quirks, complications, and individual lives. In both Meet the Parents and its sequel Meet the Fockers, however, each movie recognizes a reality rarely addressed in romantic comedies yet known by anyone who has ever been in or near a serious relationship—when it comes to marrying or even seriously dating another person, you are never simply dating or marrying one person, you are marrying his or her entire family.

When Meet the Parents hit theaters 2000, Greg Focker was getting ready to propose to Pam Byrnes. Then, he went to meet her parents. The moment he arrived, ex-CIA agent Jack Byrnes was already investigating him, trying to dig up any and every skeleton in his past, and bringing to life every man’s worst nightmare of the father who believes no one less than Mr. Perfect himself is good enough for his “little girl.� Greg did his best, tried to impress his prospective in-laws, but just ended up making every possible mistake and completing the nightmare of the worst meeting-the-parents scenario imaginable. The movie was hilarious, but each laugh was just as painful as it was funny. For while each situation was amusing on screen, the anxiety, embarrassment, and need to impress behind each laugh were simply too real for comfort.

Despite the painful hilarity that Greg faced meeting the Byrnes, Meet the Parents ended with an engagement between him and Pam. At the end, Greg had managed to make it into the good graces of the Byrnes…the problem was, they still had to meet his family.

Picking up at this next critical step towards marriage, Meet the Fockers takes audiences along for the ride as the Byrnes meet the Fockers for the first time. Joining the returning cast of Meet the Parents, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand bring their own distinct comedic talents to the already hilariously entertaining Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro; together, all the actors to bring to life the extreme personality differences that make Meet the Fockers what it is. Without quite as many painful and embarrassing situations as in Meet the Parents, the movie is less tense but just funny as the first. Some of the humor is different and some is same. And while some of the laughs are as simple as Focker jokes, a baby learning his first words, and a dog dyed blue, the entire movie is filled with characters and situations that keep, not just a few people, but entire theaters laughing from the beginning to the end. More than just an entertaining comedy, however, the movie paints a clear picture of how very different two families, the way they look at life, and the way they see other people can be.

As Jack continues to probe into Greg’s past, Jack, once again, exhibits a way of living and interacting with others that is primarily judgmental and focused on perfection. He snubs his nose at Greg’s 9th place ribbons, raises his eyebrows at the Fockers’ less than mainstream or high powered careers, and jumps at the chance to cut down Greg for any and every piece of his life that is less than ideal.

Also joining the cast, the Byrnes’ grandson, Little Jack, emphasizes Jack’s high expectations for anyone who is going to be connected with him. Jack teaches the baby signs to communicate and chastises anyone who speaks to him as less than an intelligent adult. Instead of holding the baby when he cries, Jack refuses to give him any attention stating that the child must learn to self-soothe. And far from embracing the role of an over-loving always-spoiling grandparent, Jack simply focuses on making sure the child turns out nothing short of perfect.

In contrast to Jack, the Fockers demonstrate an outlook on life that celebrates reality instead of demanding perfection, knows everything yet does not judge, and revels in expressions of love and affirmation. While Jack looks down at Greg’s 9th place ribbons, Roz and Bernie mount them on a wall for display. “It’s not about winning or losing; it’s about passion…� says Bernie. Pointing to Greg’s head and heart, Bernie expresses his belief in value beyond ribbons and ideals, “You’re a winner up here and in here; that’s all that matters.�

As their lives merge again, Jack brings back a repeated expression from Meet the Parents as he continues to tell Greg, “I am watching you.� He watches so that he can know everything about Greg and make sure Greg is known for all of his imperfections. Although they are not CIA agents, the Fockers also carefully watch over their son. They know every detail—good, bad, and embarrassing—about his life. They even notice and figure out something that Jack misses. The difference between them and Jack is that, while they are watching and while they know it all, they do not seek to tear down; rather, they seek to build up.

Between Jack and the Fockers, we see a distinct contrast in families, parents, and the way people see value in themselves and others. Through Jack, we see the pressures present in so many parts of life that demand perfection and self-sufficiency, reject anything less, and refuse to see imperfection as anything but a failure that will forever be a part of who we are. In the Fockers, however, the movie shows us that even as we seek the best for ourselves and others, the world’s ideals need not define every person’s ideal, that less than ideal does not equal complete failure, and that focusing on the good instead of the bad and loving each other as much as we can goes a lot further than condemning anything less than perfect and leaving everyone to do everything alone.

In a world where so many situations bring out the anxiety and fear of needing to impress, be perfect, and live up to an ideal, Meet the Fockers is a welcome reminder that love can overshadow any and every less than ideal aspect of our lives. The movie reminds us of how important love is within a family. It paints us a picture of a father and mother who truly love their family and, in this, portrays a love quite like that of a heavenly father who loves us all more than even the Fockers love their son. While God may not be exactly like Bernie Focker, the exuberant, life affirming love that the Fockers share with everyone reveals the heart of God’s love and His desire to dwell not on our faults but recognize and grow everything we have to celebrate.

At the end of it all, after many laughs and just as many smiles, the movie sends us back to lives inevitably shared with others and simply asks us to not only share our lives but also share love and know that there is love to be shared with us.

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Spanglish

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Just as Spanglish, the language, is combination of languages, Spanglish the movie is a story about a meeting of cultures. The movie is about a non-English speaking Hispanic woman who goes to work for an upper class white family in LA. More than just a story about language barriers, the movie addresses deeper differences such as identity and values. It shows the many ways the dominant culture in which we live can determine our sense of value. It reveals that those values need not be our only choices. And it points out the reality that, in the end, we all have the ability to choose what we let define us and decide what really matters.

Through each character in Spanglish, we are introduced to different notions of meaning and value.

Deborah Clasky (Téa Leoni) is an insecure perfectionist. The company that she used to work for is no longer in existence, so she is now a full-time mother. She spends much of her time running and working out so she can have the perfect body, gets her kids into the right schools, and just wants her own daughter to fit in (in other words, fit into the right size clothing). Although she is well-off and has a loving husband, she is constantly striving to be better, do more, and literally run faster and than everyone else. Still, she finds herself feeling unhappy and unworthy of anything.

Her husband John (Adam Sandler) is almost the direct opposite. While he is a successful chef, he opens the movie dreading the possibility of his restaurant being awarded four stars. All he desires is to do what he loves, cook, and still have time to spend time with the people he loves, his family. After the restaurant is awarded the four stars, the difference between his outlook on life and his wife’s is very clear. She is immediately ecstatic and celebratory of their new status, while John curses the paper that gives him the news. When it comes to his children, John loves his kids just as they are and wishes they could stop worrying about things that don’t matter.

Entering into the Claskys’ lives as their housekeeper, Flor (Paz Vega) brings her own identity into their home. Coming from a culture that places a greater value on family than American culture in general, she values her own family, one daughter, very much. The reason she is working for the Claskys is so that she can both support and spend time with her daughter. She will have nothing to do with her daughter learning to see her value only in the right looks, the right school, or the right amount of money. And placing an emphasis on complimenting others instead of pointing out needs for improvement, Flor urges everyone around her to see value in their lives as is, not to feel they always have to be striving for something else.

As the movie unwinds, Deborah eventually hits rock bottom and the Clasky family faces a crisis. Sitting with Deborah as she cries, Deborah’s mother Evelyn (Cloris Leachman) shares her own perspectives on life. A former singer, it seems that much like Deborah, Evelyn was far from an encouraging or supportive mother during Deborah’s childhood. In this moment, however, Evelyn is ready to do nothing but help and advise her daughter and to “enjoy actually being of use.�

Teaching her songs to her grandson to help him get over nightmares (earlier in the movie), Evelyn came to her own conclusion that even a long-gone life that seems like no more than “an embarrassment� becomes meaningful when it is able to encourage others. Now as she talks with her daughter, she shares that idea, pushing Deborah to see how much she has, not because she is rich, not because of her looks, not even because of what she does, but simply because she is loved and has people in her life she can love.

After John returns home following an argument with Deborah, his daughter Bernice gets out of bed to make sure he is back and okay. He apologizes for worrying her, but she simply says, “It’s good for me to worry about stuff that really matters.� At the end of the story, everyone from Deborah to Flor’s daughter Christina either finds out or is reminded that the things that actually give their life value are the people who share their lives with them.

In a society where emphasis is too often placed on needing to be perfect, on success and money and prestige, without much consideration for family or relationships, this affirmation of the value of family is a welcome statement. As a story centered on emotion and relationships, however, the movie is disappointing. The story emphasizes identity and value below the surface, yet, at the end, the characters seem no more familiar than when the movie started. Emotions are revealed, but lines seem more like carefully crafted lines than the reality of what is going on deep inside the characters. Because of this, some characters’ behaviors seem unbelievable. And while the story has funny moments, touching moments, and some great statements about life and family, without the emotional strength it should have had, the events of the story itself struggle to keep you interested in what is going to happen next.

While Spanglish is not a movie I plan to buy, the questions the characters struggle with and conclusions they reach are ones I am glad to have shared with them. The movie asks: Who or what defines our lives and identities? and What really matters? It shows us the many ways our culture tells us to define ourselves and the many things the world considers important. And in the end, it presents value and identity in loving and being loved, in relationships, in family, and in simply seeing how much more those things can mean than living only to meet the society's expectations.

As John says while talking about the choice to either become the same as every one else or be different, “Between odd and the same, you’ve got to be rooting for odd.� In a culture where being the same and keeping up so often leaves relationships behind and leaves no room to love or be loved, it seems that choosing to be different is the way to go.

As one of the movie’s taglines states, “Every family has a hero.� With heroics in the form of care, concern, encouragement, and honesty, the movie shows that heroism is not about flying, x-ray vision, being perfect, or never letting anyone down, but about simply loving one another through it all.

Sometimes the heroes in our lives may be friends. Other times they may be family. When times get rough, when priorities and values must be rearranged, when the whole world puts love at the bottom of lists, and when even those people we count on the most let us down, God will remain the same, always ready to love us just as we are, to be the hero we all need, and never ceasing to know that every one of us can be a hero as well.

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One Tree Hill

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What do you get when you combine illegitimate children, estranged brothers, feuding families, failing marriages, broken relationships, and irreversible grudges -and put them on television- If you throw in some marginal acting, repetitive storytelling, and a midday time slot, then you’ve got one of today’s many soap operas. But allow the characters to desire better than division and brokenness, boost up the acting abilities, and create a storyline that actually takes its actors somewhere other than where they were last season, and now you’ve got the WB’s One Tree Hill.

From its cast of characters -related through broken relationships and illegitimate children- to a nearly fatal car accident, pregnancy scare, heart attack, and teenage wedding all within its first season, One Tree Hill began and took off with enough complicated back-story and unfortunate and regrettable first season events to easily send it spiraling into the disfunctionality of the soap opera world.

When One Tree Hill first aired just over a year ago, the cast of characters and the lives they lead were, to put it lightly, messy. In the middle of the mess stood two brothers, Nathan and Lucas Scott—same father, different mothers, and years of hatred in between. Around them stood their father, Dan Scott; Dan’s wife and Nathan’s mother, Deb Scott; Dan’s high school girlfriend and Lucas’ mother, Karen Roe; Dan’s brother and the man who essentially raised Lucas as his own son, Keith Scott; a select group of girlfriends and best friends; and even more complications and relationship problems. From the beginning, relationships were characterized by division and hatred. Even the ones that seemed to be going well turned sour as cheating tore friends apart and unequal feelings for each other turned trusting friends into awkward acquaintances.

As One Tree Hill’s first season began to roll towards its end and prepare for its next season, however, its characters seemed to say—we’ve had enough. They seemed to look at the soap opera life in the eye, tell it they wanted something different, and begin to consciously try to live a life that was centered not on grudges and hatred, but instead on forgiveness and reconciliation.

Although the center of conflict rested within the Scott family, the first person to take steps towards reconciliation was Haley James, Lucas’ best friend from childhood. She had grown up on the Lucas-Deb-Keith side of the Scott family division. Her best friend Lucas wanted nothing to do with Nathan and didn’t want her to have anything to do with him. Yet when a crush began to turn into a relationship with Nathan, she gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided to get to know him for himself, not just for his past or his family.

In the episodes that followed, Lucas and Nathan followed Haley’s lead. While they had each grown up resenting each other—Nathan for having the father and privileged life that could have been Lucas’ and Lucas for having the hidden affection that his own father rarely showed Nathan -Nathan and Lucas also decided to give each other a chance and eventually became good friends.

Although progress had been made at the end of season one, the characters in One Tree Hill still faced both family divisions and the divisive aftereffects of various actions between them. Opening season two with wedding vows exchanged between Haley and Nathan, however, this season's first episode began not only with a decision to pursue union instead of division, but also a decision to believe in a love deeper than the superficial high school love all around them and to trust in a love stronger than the one that had fallen apart for so many of the adults in their lives.

From the wedding through the first five episodes of this season, One Tree Hill has continued on its course away from soap opera dysfunction and division towards one seeking deeper meaning and actual love.

Frustrated with his actions that had ruined his friendship with friends Peyton and Brooke, Lucas had ended the previous season by leaving in hopes of escaping his past and starting a new life. As this season began, however, Lucas returned with a mission not to abandon his past, but to fix the relationships he had broken and give the relationships that had been broken for so long a chance.

Remarkably, even Dan, the character everyone loves to hate and the character that hates everyone, has shown desire to mend his relationships after returning home from his heart attack. Attempting to build a relationship with Lucas and grieving his broken relationship with Nathan, Dan asks his wife: “What if I spent my life chasing the wrong things? Success, money, respect. What if it turns out none of it matters because I lost my family along the way? Can I get it back? Is it too late?�

While the characters of One Tree Hill rarely visit church or participate in any sort of religion, this season did find Haley and Peyton in a church. Although they were there on a dare, Peyton finds herself actually confessing her heart. With tears in her eyes, she confesses that she has not been to a church since her mom died and is not sure she would want her mom to see the person she is. She cries and asks herself why she has even done some of the things she regrets. She speaks words of longing for a life that isn’t just good but would be a life that matters. And in the end, she whispers a promise to the priest, to herself, to her mom, to God that she is going to change.

In many ways, One Tree Hill is just another teen drama filled with teenage issues and teenage screw ups. At the same time, however, One Tree Hill is a show and a cast of characters that seek something deeper. Instead of dwelling on mistakes they have made; confining themselves to the lives they have been dealt, roles they have been placed in, and circumstances they feel confined by -instead of simply accepting and perpetuating a life filled with things that always fall short- the characters of One Tree Hill seem to realize that their lives can be something more and they truly pursue that.

While the town of One Tree Hill may simply be a small town like any other, it seems that its name and the transformations going on in its residents cannot help but connect it to a cross-shaped tree on another hill, many years ago. As each character cries out for a new life of deeper purpose and meaning, each seems to recognize that that meaning is a meaning that lies in love and love alone. In the same way that Haley and Nathan’s profession of love -a love that promises to take them and hold them, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, for eternity, forever -began the season, another love- that has already existed for eternity -seems to be tugging at the heartstrings of every character, ready and eager to transport the characters out of soap opera dysfunction and into the lives of meaning they desire.

As the season continues, I have no doubt that some characters will disappoint us and some relationships will not work out quite as nicely as we might have wished. Some nights it may very well seem like just another soap opera, a blunt reminder of the ways life makes us cringe and the things that make life messy. With so many characters questioning the lesser lives they have been leading and incomplete relationships they have been living in, however, I also think the characters of One Tree Hill may have a great deal to teach us all about seeking lives of meaning and love and seeing ourselves and all those around us with a purpose and value that runs deeper than who we are on the surface and who we have been in the past.

Closer

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—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
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Someone once told me that movies rarely portray people who are in love, concentrating rather on people falling in love and falling out of love. Depicting only first meetings, breakups, reconciliations, and points of crisis in two intersecting romantic relationships, Closer does just that. It spans four year’s time, skips months, portrays interactions less than twenty minutes long, and looks at those points when relationships begin, end, collide, and restart. A tale of the “modern relationship,� Closer does not merely explore an abstract happy concept of love and romance; rather, Closer reveals how we so often define love and, in the end, it questions the very ideas we allow to make up that definition.

Love is an accident waiting to happen.
The first statement to roll across the Closer preview screen months before the movie’s release, these words presented a first look at the love Closer would depict—love as chance, as a surprise, as something that happens in a moment, as something that cannot be denied, and as a literal fall that we are powerless to stop. In the opening scene of the movie, as Alice (Natalie Portman) locks eyes with Dan (Jude Law) and then gets hit by a car, this accident waiting to happen occurs. The question is, is the accident really love?

In a later scene, when Dan confesses to an affair he is having with Anna (Julia Roberts), he tells Alice that he just fell in love. She responds with the question, “You didn’t have a choice?� She states that that there is always a moment where you say to yourself, “I can do this or I can resist it.� And she leaves us with two more questions: Does an accident have to be love? Or even more so, can love really be just as simple as an accident?

Desire is a stranger.
Flashing between of few more clips of Closer’s preview, Closer’s second definition of modern relationships make the connection that if love is always a surprise, something new, and something unexpected, desire must rest in a similar realm. In one sense, this idea reflects the all too common feeling of wanting and desiring only that which we don’t have or know and growing apathetic towards and tired of that which we do know and do have. As Alice says to Dan during a break up, “I amuse you, but I bore you.�

In another sense, these words also seem to ask how real what we call desire actually is. If desire is a stranger, one must wonder if the feeling we recognize as desire is actually desire itself or if desire is a stranger we have yet to fully know. We must stop and ask ourselves if we can actually desire someone we know no better than the stranger walking down the street.

Intimacy is a lie we tell ourselves.
One step beyond desire and into intimacy, the preview’s third statement about modern romance not only claims that today’s relationships don’t fully know part of what we call love; it and so many scenes in the movie painfully point to the notion that, even in sexual relationships, intimacy is far too often non-existent.

Throughout the movie, much of the dialogue is about sex. The couples are clearly having it while we are not watching and have no trouble talking about it while we are. While they are physically intimate, however, every scene in the movie seems to portray the lack of any true connection or knowledge of each other much beyond the purely physical.

At the beginning of the movie, a scene involves Larry (Clive Owen) having cyber sex with Dan (posing as Anna). The dialogue is intimate. Larry is convinced he is in love. Yet, between the internet’s public nature, the literal distance built into it, and the fact that Larry is not even corresponding with who he thinks he is, the thought that this scene should actually be intimate is saddening.

Later in the movie, in a private room at a strip club with Alice, Larry screams out: “What the !*?# do you have to do to get a little intimacy around here?� He cries out for sex. He cries out because, for Alice, the whole scene is an act and her identity a lie. In connection with the entire movie, with sexual relationships rising out of “falls,� sex just because and out of guilt, and relationships between people who barely know each other any more than a stripper and the men who watch her, it seems that the question of where intimacy is could actually be asked about the entire movie.

Truth is a game we play to win.
In definition number four, these words reveal the harsh reality that relationships are far too often no different than competition in which every action is done to score, to win, and to gain an advantage. In this movie, truth is rarely told out of honor. Wrongdoings are not confessed in search of forgiveness. Confessions are not sought to offer forgiveness. Rather, truth becomes a tool to inflict pain, cause guilt, and be used to one’s advantage. Truth, when not useful for inflicting pain, is best kept close and guarded. And forgiveness, when given, is never offered, only earned.

At one point, Dan states, “Without truth we are animals.� Larry says, “Without forgiveness we are savages.� Throughout the movie, however, truth comes off as no more than taking or winning a point. Forgiveness is nothing other than getting the points you rightfully deserve back. And, when it comes down to it, neither reflects anything more than an animalistic desire to come out on top.

As a movie, Closer is very well done. As has been said by many people who have already seen the movie, the story is a very accurate portrayal of what many relationships look like today. The script and its frequent discussion of and emphasis on sex come across as unscripted and realistic. Each actor offers a performance filled emotion that we can see on each of their faces and Director Mike Nichols showcases the emotion of the entire movie with numerous close ups.

Although Closer is categorized as a drama/romance, I, however, would have to say there is nothing romantic about it at all. Yes, the story is about romantic relationships. It is about couples and sex and desire, but when it is all over, none of it is very romantic. After four years in and out of relationships, all the movie’s couples are are four people who still don’t seem that much closer to truly loving or knowing each other at all.

Rather than a celebration of love, the end of Closer is instead filled with a sense of emptiness and aloneness that longs for something more. It points the reality of Closer’s tagline: If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking. In other words, it makes us ask ourselves: If love is only an accident, if desire and intimacy never reach below the surface, if truth and honesty are only self serving, how in the world is any relationship ever going to keep our attention, satisfy any longing more complex than hunger or thirst, or give us any reason to truly allow ourselves to be known, allow ourselves to be loved, and allow ourselves to actually know and love another person?

At the same time that Closer portrays its relationships as the only reality, the emotional longing that each character exhibits throughout the movie tells us that we all need more and that in the end, there has to be something more. Loving us on purpose for longer than one moment, desiring to know every piece and aspect of who we are, never playing games or keeping score, and always offering forgiveness, God shows us the reality of a deeper, stronger love every day. It is love that is not an accident, a stranger, a lie, or a game. More than love at first sight, it is love that never ends, a love that is ours already, and a love that desires to replace too many skewed definitions of love that currently define too many relationships and leave too many people constantly looking for something more.

Alfie

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—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
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Nearly 40 years ago, after over an hour of broken relationships and hard lessons about life, Michael Caine stared at movie audiences and posed the question: “What’s it all about?� The movie Alfie ended and Joss Stone began to sing the movie’s title track—“What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all about when we sort it out? Are we here to take more than we give?� The credits rolled, the music faded, and the screen went black. Nearly 40 years later, however, the same song that asked Caine’s Alfie what life was all about has begun to play again as a new movie hits screens introducing Alfie to movie audiences for the second time, this time as Jude Law.

While times, men, women, and relationships have changed since 1966, Law’s Alfie follows a very similar storyline to Caine’s. From the moment both Alfies come on screen, both men quickly establish themselves as womanizers, ladies’ men, players, and men with extreme commitment issues. More than just a picture of a man behaving in a way that would hopefully cause most people to cringe, however, both movies look deeper into the dysfunctional relationships Alfie creates for himself and push Alfie to figure out what he is actually missing. Alfie does his best to avoid commitment, love, and dependence of any sort, but, in they end, both Caine and Law’s Alfie unwittingly seem to find themselves missing and desiring those very things they avoided.

Opening with a shot of a superman figurine and Alfie’s morning recitation from his word of the day calendar (this day—“ostentatious�), the movie wastes no time quickly establishing Alfie’s value of the superficial and, even more so, the effort he exerts to keep from becoming committed in any way. In a casual relationship with the married Dorie (Jane Krakowski) at the same time that he has what could be a stable and committed relationship with single mother Julie (Marisa Tomei), Alfie shows a desire to almost destroy anything that even hints at commitment. When he comes home to Julie, Alfie barely does anything to erase suspicions that he is seeing another woman. Replying with a simple “Thanks baby,� to Julie’s “I love you,� Alfie reveals both his avoidance of love and tendency to take and never give. Even in his relationship with Dorie, Alfie is ready to call it off completely as soon as Dorie “wants a little more than [he] can give.�

At the same time that Alfie avoids anything remotely like love, it seems, that even at the beginning of the movie, love is a feeling Alfie possesses. In Caine’s Alfie, Alfie’s relationship with the mother of his child reveals a desire to love through his attachment to his son. When the woman leaves him and marries another man, Alfie displays a sense of loss as he watches the other man take over his role as father. In Law’s Alfie, the sadness that appears on Alfie’s face when he passes Julie and her son playing together after they have broken up reveals a similar attachment to a child who isn’t even his own.

In both movies, however, the majority of Alfie’s deepest realizations occur in connection with his relationship with his friend’s girlfriend. In Caine’s Alfie, Alfie has an affair with the wife of his roommate at a sanitarium. Their affair leads to pregnancy and Alfie arranges for her to have an illegal abortion in his apartment. When he returns after the procedure, he is shocked when he sees the baby that has been aborted as well as the toll that abortion has taken on the woman. Not only making a powerful and controversial statement about abortion and the effect it has on human life, the situation adds to Alfie’s sense that he has once again hurt more than helped as well as missed out on a love relationship he could have had with a child.

While developed in a different manner, the parallel relationship in Law’s Alfie also seems to cause Alfie to contemplate his life the most and feel his deepest sense of loss. The set up for this relationship is a drunken night with his best friend/co-worker’s girlfriend during a temporary split. While Lonette (Nia Long) and Marlon (Omar Epps) quickly reconcile, Lonette soon finds out she is pregnant, goes to a clinic for a legal abortion, and immediately moves away with Marlon. Later, however, Alfie finds out that Lonette did not have the abortion.

Adding this new dimension to that storyline, the whole situation further brings out Alfie’s sense of sadness at hurting a friend and watching someone else raise his child. More than that, however, the relationship between Lonette and Marlon gives one of several examples of what love can really be, a subject that was only briefly explored in Caine’s Alfie. When Alfie goes to visit Lonette and Marlon and sees the baby that is clearly his, he looks at Lonette and half asks/half states: “Marlon stayed?� She replies, “For now,� and although the look that Marlon later gives Alfie clearly embodies deep pain, Marlon’s commitment to Lonette reflects a very un-superficial love that both endures pain and offers forgiveness.

In addition to the example of love shown between Lonette and Marlon, Law’s Alfie brings in two more storylines that further exemplify what love can be/should be. One is the relationship between Alfie’s boss and his wife. While Alfie refers to their constant state of arguing as a good reason why people should never marry, when Mrs. Wing leaves Mr. Wing, Mr. Wing is in tears. As soon as Alfie suggests Mr. Wing write a poem to win her back, Mr. Wing begins the task with all his effort. While love may be difficult at times, for Mr. Wing, it is clearly something worth fighting for.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to Law’s Alfie, however, is an older man named John whom Alfie meets in a bathroom. In the strangely deep conversation between two men who have just met, John tells Alfie about the sudden loss of his wife, how he spent his life putting things off and never realizing what he had, and how, in the end, he just wishes he had more time with her. As he hands Alfie his business card and leaves, he shares with Alfie two pieces of advice—one, find someone to love, and two, live every day of life as if it were your last.

The next meeting between Alfie and John occurs after Alfie visits Marlon and finds himself overcome with grief and without any friends. Once again, John offers a few bits of wisdom. In response to the seeming incomprehensiveness of Marlon’s commitment to stay with Lonette, John once again affirms the power of love saying, “You never know what you will do until you are in love.� When Alfie sadly states that he has really messed things up, John makes no hesitation to agree, but offers hope saying, “The question is—What is going to happen with the rest of your life?�

At the end of Alfie, even after nearly 40 years in which to find a sufficient answer to the questions posed in the original, Law’s Alfie asks the same questions that Caine’s Alfie asked before Law was even born. While the movie could be chalked up to the best “I hate men� break-up movie in a long time, a chick flick to be feared by every man visiting the theater with his wife or girlfriend, a depressing example of too many messed up relationships, or a remake that will never live up to the original—for most people, I believe it can be much more.

While it is not exactly the same as Caine’s Alfie, the elements that Law’s Alfie adds, the changes it makes, and the positive examples it gives create its own appeal apart from its original counterpart or stereotypical labels. Although the movie spends a great deal of time portraying unfulfilling and dysfunctional relationships that fall far short of suggesting any real love, Alfie’s sadness at what he has missed paired with the examples provided by Marlon and Lonette, Mr. Wing, and John suggest that love is something that actually exists and also is not something that should be avoided at all costs.

While Alfie’s question, “What’s it all about?� still hangs in the air at the end of the movie, the answer seems to lie in the love he has seen in others’ lives and the love he feels as though he is missing. It is more than just a forced act, fake words, or grudgingly executed actions. Instead love is something that compels us to put another person first, to allow ourselves to change, to give, to forgive, to protect, to trust, to hope, and to persevere. While the minimal surface-level “love� Alfie pursues in his own life is very often the deepest level of care/concern/intimacy many people are willing to let into their lives, the love that answers Alfie’s question seems to be one that is not afraid to go deeper, risk more, build one another up instead of tearing each other down, and be real.

More than just an abstract concept that we each must figure out own our own, however, this love that asks us to go deeper than surface level is a love that is offered us all every day, ready to help us find a life of true fulfillment, offering forgiveness whenever we mess up, seeking to repair every crack and flaw in our imperfect lives, and simply asking us to trust in that love and share it with those around us.

I Heart Huckabees

HJ Links
—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections

Although most of us probably would not admit to it in public, I’d guess that the majority of people actually do have little voices in their heads. Not a million and one different personalities that should send us racing to our nearest psychologist, not even that angel that sits on one shoulder and the devil that sits on the other, but our own voice, inside our own heads, always there, always talking, sometimes about what we are doing, sometimes about something completely different, and more often than not questioning who we are, what we are doing, and why in the world we are doing it.

As the movie I Heart Huckabees begins to roll across the screen, it is that little voice that we hear talking to Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) and asking those same questions that so often circulate through our own brains—in nutshell—What am I doing? and Does what I’m doing even mean anything or make any difference? And from here, I Heart Huckabees begins, launching into a whirlwind montage of comic scenes and lines as Markovski sets off on a mission to find the meaning of life.

In search of this meaning, Markovski is first joined by existential detectives Bernard Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin) whom he hires to decipher a series of coincidences in his life. From there enter Brad Stand (Jude Law), Markovski’s coworker and archenemy; and Dawn Campell (Naomi Watts), Stand’s girlfriend and voice of Huckabees, who also hire Bernard and Vivian to investigate them. Lastly come Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), a petroleum obsessed client of Bernard and Vivian; and Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a Frenchwoman with different views on the existential questions of life. With next to no plot, I Heart Huckabees jumps from there and proceeds to chronicle life as each of these characters explores what defines his or her life, reality, and identity and each one searches for what life’s meaning actually is.

For Markovski and Corn, the reality with which they enter the story is one centered on hopelessness. The reality they seek—one of meaning and purpose. Markovski spends his days trying to save forests and marshes with next to no avail and wonders if several chance encounters with the same man might hold some deeper meaning to his seemingly futile life. Corn obsesses over petroleum consumption, sweatshops, and other global problems and just wishes people would do something about them.

Joining the search for life’s meaning, with their only intention being to mess with Markovski, Stand and Campell begin to question their identities and lives only after Bernard and Vivian’s investigation helps them recognize who they actually are. Listening to himself tell the same celebrity encounter story over and over again, Stand (while having a nervous breakdown) comes to see his life as “putting on a show when inside he’s frowning and drowning� (as Stand said himself in an earlier poem). Reaching a revelation that her identity is based only on her looks, Campell trades in her barely-there clothes worn in Huckabees ads for baggy overalls and a bonnet.

In response to Markovski and Corn’s desire for meaning in life and Stand and Campell’s flawed definitions of their own lives and identities, I Heart Huckabees presents various answers to where the real meaning of life actually lies.

The first “authorities� to enter the story, Bernard and Vivian present the conclusion that the meaning of life is about the connection of all things. As Bernard explains in a highly comical scene, reality is like a blanket: we’re in one spot, someone else is in another, in another spot is the Eiffel tower, and in another a hammer. To find the true meaning of life, one must learn to see the “blanket truth,� a universe where everything is connected, everything has equal meaning, and therefore “everything you could ever want or be you already have or are.�

In direct opposition to Bernard and Vivian, Vauban intrudes into the investigation with her own conclusion—nothing is connected, we are all alone, we are all miserable, and therefore nothing matters. For her, finding meaning in life simply means accepting that the world is hopeless and, instead of trying to do something about it, pretty much doing things to forget about it. With this attitude, Markovski and Corn end up in a scene that involves hitting each other in the face with a large rubber ball that, while hilarious, cannot help but be connected to real life numbing agents such as drugs and alcohol.

While only presented in a brief scene and not quite shown as an authority, a third answer suggested to the meaning of life that Markovski and Corn encounter is religion. While dining with a family, Markovski and Corn tell the family about their investigation. In response, one of the children asks why they don’t just go to church, the mother responds with a statement that some people have additional questions, and the child finishes with a comment that we don’t have to ask those questions. Spiraling into arguments and accusations of hypocrisy, the dinner does not end well and Markovski and Corn make a quick exit.

In the end, I Heart Huckabees has presented a variety of options as to what the meaning of life could be. Instead of presenting one solution as a defining answer, however, the various solutions that have appeared throughout the movie seem to come off as too abstract, too hopeless, too disconnected from reality, too extreme, and/or simply incomplete in one way or another. While each character seems to have grown in small ways, while they all seem to have abandoned lives of complete non-meaning and non-purpose, it seems that even in the answers they have found by the end—we all are connected in suffering, but still, our lives have meaning and there is hope—at least one bigger question still remains: Where do we go from there and why? br>
So, at the end of the hour and forty six minutes, you may ask, is I Heart Huckabees worth seeing? And to that all I can say is, it really depends. As a comedy, I Heart Huckabees is definitely full of quality laughs. Other than one too-weird sex scene in a swamp (which, in my opinion, could have just as well been left out) and a few meditative montages, the comedy is unique, mostly avoids cliché jokes and over-used sexual humor, and has more great one and two liners just waiting to be quoted than I can count. At the same time, however, I repeat that the comedy is unique . . . meaning—although simply seeing the well-known cast play such bizarre roles was enough to make me smile throughout the entire movie, this disconnected story of extreme overacting and situations and jokes that could never fit into any sort of normal world may simply not be what every moviegoer would consider funny or even entertaining.

Beyond its comedy, I Heart Huckabees also has its other pluses and minuses. Between its examinations of the things that define each of the characters and the various ideas presented as the meaning of life, I Heart Huckabees not only touches on many issues that are real in people's lives, but also manages to present pieces of many worldviews, ideologies, and struggles alive in the world today. For viewers who like a logical storyline with growth, development, and resolution, however, this anti-plot story with little real character development and more questions than answers hanging at its ending might be more confusing and possibly depressing than some may care for.

So, do you see it or not? I leave that up to you. But if you do decide to go see I Heart Huckabees or have already seen it, enjoy the comedy, smile at the actors, and have fun listening to that little voice as you toss around the meaning of life inside your own head. As you think about connections and coincidences, ask yourself how we are actually connected. As you think about the things of life that seem hopeless, ask yourself what can actually set you free from your own fears and feelings of hopelessness. As you think about whatever defines you, ask yourself if it is all just an act and if you really are who you are. As you think about whatever provides your life with meaning and explains the things of this world, ask yourself if it is something more than an idea you blindly follow without question or if instead it is something you have questioned, have allowed yourself to face the questions and struggles of the world, and do allow to be something that interacts with life instead of just a belief, a mental assent, that rests inside your head and nowhere else.

As you ask yourself all of these questions and so many more, consider the possibilities given the characters in the movie, the more specific “whats� and even bigger “Why?� that still remain wide open at the movie’s end, and how Mark Wahlberg’s answer to Good Morning America’s question of what he actually believes the meaning of life to be (love, compassion, and forgiveness?all coming back to Jesus) could very well answer all the questions that you ask.

As the little voice in your head asks you what the meaning of your life really is, let it ask, ask it questions in return, and don’t be afraid to actually find the meaning of life.

Around The Bend

HJ Links
—Overview
—Review by Darrel Manson
—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections

From the moment we are born until the moment we die, life is a journey. More than just the present, it is everything that is our past and whatever could be, might be, ought to be our future, as well. It is the good and the bad, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes dangerous, sometimes boring, but always moving forward onto the next day, the next year, the next milestone. Sometimes, however, it seems that journey must stop. Something interrupts, something stops us in our tracks, and all we can do is look back at the journey that is behind us and ask ourselves what it is that has been driving our lives and defining who we are.

In the movie Around the Bend, three men and one boy must face this journey called life: its good times, its bad times, and the reality that their journeys have intersected. With the patriarch of the Lair family on his deathbed, Around the Bend begins with four generations of men being brought together for the first time since Turner (Christopher Walken) abandoned his son Jason (Josh Lucas) and left him to be raised by his father Henry (Michael Caine). For Jason’s six-year-old son Zach, it is the first time he has met the grandfather he thought was dead. For Jason, the reunion is awkward, unexpected, unwanted. For Turner, it is simply something he has to do, quickly, not dealing with more than the present demands, then ready with a planned exit. For Henry, however, it is not only his dying wish but his desire for a restoration and a healing that he has no intention of allowing to die along with him.

So, in the hours before his death, Henry ensures that the remaining Lair men will take one last journey together; instead of asking for a normal funeral, he turns the scattering of his ashes into a road trip which will take his son, grandson, and great-grandson to the places that meant something to him during his life. More than just a look back at his own life, however, Henry also sets Turner and Jason up for an experience in which they must confront the events that have defined their lives and decide if those are the events that they want to continue to define who they are.

Taking the three Lair men to sites clearly centered on times of joy and love shared with others, Henry prods Turner and Lucas to let those kinds of moments define their lives. Leading Turner and Lucas to a site that embodies the guilt, shame, and resentment that rest between them, Henry’s words telling Turner to confess what happened there highlight how much guilt and pain can define who we are; then, in his note telling Jason to forgive Turner, Henry speaks to the freedom that rests in forgiveness. While the journey is difficult, messy, and one that neither Turner nor Jason particularly want to face, they make it to the end and continue on, the truth of the brokenness within and between them brought to the surface, forgiveness bringing them together and filling the holes that had been inside them for so many years.

While Around the Bend is no action packed suspense, no sensational new story that no one has ever heard of before, and no laugh-aloud comedy that leaves you rolling in the aisles, the story presented in Around the Bend is both unique and powerful in that it is so real. It portrays a journey of self-discovery and healing, but it refuses to do so through fake monologues and sappy emotional confessions that occur only in the movies. Between Turner and Jason, the discomfort and strain reflected in all of their actions reflect the pain and complication of damaged relationships with the assistance of very few words. As the pain between them slowly begins to come to the surface and fall away, they do not waste time with words they don’t need to say, but simply continue on their trip, more at ease with themselves and consciously choosing to continue on and help each other on the journey ahead. Dealing with a situation that is in and of itself strange, the story and the actors also portray the subtle kind of comedy that cannot help but surface in the day-to-day strangeness of trying to get through and deal with life.

More than just addressing the pain and struggle of a son estranged from a father, however, Around the Bend also truly hits a nerve that connects with the pain and regret that dwell in so many relationships of all kinds. It reveals the toll pain can take on the lives of both a person who has been hurt and the person who has hurt him or her. It speaks to the need to heal people in pain and restore broken relationships. Most of all, it speaks to the truth that the pain and hurt of our past need not be things that define us for the rest of our lives and that we need not overcome it all on our own.

On this journey that is each of our own lives, the reality is that we all have things that we regret, things that weigh us down with guilt, things that fill us with shame. Like any trip, life isn’t all Disneyland vacations and Caribbean cruises. Life is good one minutes, and then five minutes later it is horrible. Life is fun, and then two days later, it is unbearable. No matter how hard we try to live a “good� life, we will let ourselves and others down. Fortunately, as the Lair family discovers, we need not let our downfalls define who we are or the life we live. By recognizing that we can be forgiven and by forgiving the things and people that define our brokenness, we can let every memory of hurt and pain go and instead choose to define ourselves and our lives by old and new memories of love, joy, and family.

While this life may be a long, winding, bumpy journey, the reality is that more than a journey along a road, this life is a journey of people, of intersecting lives and actions, of family, of friends, and of helping each other along the way. In the same way that the Lair family had a father who hurt for the brokenness in his family, who carried his family through hard times, and who mapped out and provided a journey through which his family could find healing from their pain, forgiveness from their guilt, and restoration to a life free of brokenness, we too have a Father and a Savior ready to carry us through hard times, ready to help us come to terms with the things that fill us with pain, and just waiting to offer us forgiveness and set us back on a journey defined by love and joy instead of pain and emptiness. The question is: Are we willing to trust and follow the His map or not?

Shall We Dance?

—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

I admit it. I had not planned on seeing this movie. As I went to watch it, I already had it pigeonholed into a variety of stereotypes—Richard Gere movie, JLo movie, dance movie, chick flick, probably-not-as-good-as-the-foreign-original movie. Nonetheless, I found myself in a theater with a friend watching it the other night, and even in its simple, fairly predictable story, it caught me. While its previews had marketed the movie primarily as a romantic story about passion and love, as I watched it, I found that Shall We Dance? was about something more than the passion of romance: in the end, it told a story about seeking and finding a passion and love for life itself.

Shall We Dance? opens with Richard Gere’s John Clark riding home on the subway. He is talking to himself or us and tells us he is a lawyer and spends most of his days drawing up wills for his clients. He talks about the things people leave in wills and the process of someone making and revising a will. Then he tells us his response to his clients’ question of “is there anything else?� His answer is: “The rest is up to you,� and in this statement he sets the stage for the movie to come—the reality that sometimes life can seem as structured and mundane as the legalese in a will, but if we choose to seek it, to find it, to see it, life can be much more.

For John Clark, this journey to finding that something more to life occurs through dance. While he leads a good life, has a good job, and loves his family, he still seems discontented. Then, one night, he finds himself enrolling in a dance class after recognizing the same longing he feels inside himself on the face of a woman (Jennifer Lopez) staring out a dance studio window he passes every night. He is joined by two other men—Chic, in it for the women, and Scotty, in it to lose weight and get ready to propose to his girlfriend; Bobbie, a hardworking single mother who spends her evenings dancing; Miss Mitzy, the studio owner and a widow; Paulina (Lopez), a professional dancer who has retreated to the studio after a fall at a major competition; and later, Link (Stanley Tucci), a costumed coworker of Clark’s who loves Latin dance but feels he can’t dance as himself.

As the story unfolds, the members of the class not only learn to dance but also seem to find a deeper value in themselves and in their lives. Miss Mitzy stops going to her bottle in the cupboard during class and smiles, simply because she enjoys what she is doing, Paulina rediscovers her passion for dance, Clark quits moping home every night and instead dances all the way across the street and onto his train, Link eventually loses his wig, and all of the students enter a dance competition together. Although setbacks occur towards the end of the movie, by the time the credits roll, dance has become a positive part of all of the characters’ lives, not as something extra they needed to add, but as something that just helped them find meaning in the lives they already had and the people they already were.

Reflecting on Shall We Dance? in connection with real life, I can’t help but think how much life really can be like dancing. Sometimes we simply don’t know the steps, we feel foolish, and we just don’t know what to do. Other times, we miss steps, we trip, we fall. More often than not, the dance can feel more like a routine, like the same songs and the same steps over and over again, more like marching, less like really dancing. In many instances, we feel as though all we can do is dance alone and even if it is possible, it just isn’t quite the same as having a partner.

Just as all of the characters in Shall We Dance? were able to find value in their lives through dancing, I wonder if we also may be able to find that deeper meaning if we stop moping and marching and start dancing. I think about how lives might be transformed if each movement was not mechanical but filled with passion, emotion, purpose, and direction connected to each step we took. I ask myself how much more meaning each life on earth might have if we, like Clark, stopped being ashamed of not finding meaning in the things the world says should satisfy us and actually seek lives of deeper meaning and purpose.

Just as anyone can chose to join in at a dance or stand by the wall simply to watch, the decision to seek a life of meaning, passion, and emotion is also a choice. In the same way that Paulina urges Clark to not abandon dancing by painting the question “Shall we dance, Mr. Clark?� on a banner, I believe each of us is also being asked the same question on a daily basis, being asked by someone who knows the steps to every dance, who knows each of our individual styles, each of our individual abilities, and the true potential that is inside each and every one of us. In the same way that Beverly Clark’s (Susan Sarandon’s) desire for a husband to be someone to care for her and make sure her life does not go unnoticed or unwitnessed is answered by her husband taking her hand and teaching her to dance, God also extends his hand to that same longing in us, ready to lead us, teach us, pick us up whenever we fall, and asking us not just to live, not just to settle, but to take His hand and let our life become a dance.

Without a Trace

HJ Links
—Review by Elizabeth Leitch
—About this Series
—Spiritual Connections

Joining the ranks of the well-established crime dramas of Law and Order and the soon to be just as popular CSI series, Without a Trace first aired in the fall of 2002 under the name Vanished. Just as CSI took crime out of the courtroom and into the laboratory, Without a Trace brought viewers a new perspective on the crime drama. Without a Trace focused not on the criminal, his/her crimes, and bringing him/her to justice, but on the victims—missing persons, their lives, the circumstances that lead to their disappearance, and finding them.

Since its beginning, Without a Trace has explored the disappearances of people from all walks of life—men, women, young, old, black, white, rich, poor, servicemen, business women, teenagers, children, parents, people from all over New York, who simply disappeared from the map that was their life. In each episode, the missing individual and his or her life become the focus of the investigation. The team interviews everyone they know. They try to reconstruct the hours and days leading up to the disappearance. They attempt to figure out how and why the missing person has disappeared from the routine of day-to-day life.

As the details unfold in each case, the team most often comes to one of two different conclusions as to why the person has disappeared—one, the individual was kidnapped; two, the individual ran away. Greater than just the moment of a kidnapping or the instant the person decides to run away, however, the disappearance of every individual points to the idea of a life in trouble and a person who has lost his or her way even before the actual disappearance. Sometimes it is the abductors who are lost, looking for love, looking for money, or simply trying to find a way out of a desperate situation that they believe should not be their life. Many times it is the missing person themselves. A person whose life has taken a wrong turn, gotten tangled in dangerous situations, gotten complicated, and somehow resulted in his or her disappearance or a decision to try to escape the circumstances. In cases where the victims have run away, their sense of being lost often stems from the feeling of living in a world in which they do not feel they belong.

Throughout the course of each investigation, victims’ lives are laid bare before investigators. While some victims do remain “innocent,� more often than not, the lives of most victims and those closest to them are revealed to be not quite as perfect as they may have seemed. In each case, however, the team is dedicated to finding the individual and rescuing him or her. Sometimes victims may face criminal charges once they are found, but the team is dedicated to first making sure their lives are safe. Whoever they find the persons to be and whatever circumstances may have lead to their disappearances, the team is dedicated to finding every person and enabling them to return to the lives in which they are not lost.

While Without A Trace always delivers captivating stories and outstanding performances by all its actors, the way each episode truly delves into a life gives the viewer so much more than a good story. Each episode is also a clear reminder of the value of life and the right and opportunity each and every one of us has to escape from lives of being lost and find lives of belonging, value, and purpose. Even after just two episodes of this third season, this point is already being driven home.

In the 2004 season’s first episode, a blind teenager and her instructor are kidnapped. Investigators delve into her life and soon find, among other things, that she was having extreme difficulty coming to terms with her blindness and realizing her life still had value. In the end, however, she escapes and is the one who is able to direct investigators back to the cabin where her instructor is still captive.

In the second episode, the woman who goes missing is a burn unit nurse who is quickly determined to be one of the main suspects in abortion clinic bombing years earlier. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that she was working in the burn unit to try to make up for her sins, that she had recently decided to come out of hiding and confess to her crime, and had been kidnapped by one of the other bombers. Although the teams stops an explosion that would have killed her, she still is shot by someone connected to her abductor. As she lies dying, however, her thoughts flash back to a scene several weeks earlier and as she listened to a survivor from the original bombing speak a message of love and forgiveness specifically directed at her and her fellow bombers.

While many of us have never actually been technically missing, the stories portrayed in Without a Trace (including the individual struggles of the investigative team themselves) speak to any and every feeling of despair, lack of control, and confusion that we all face as we deal with life on a day-to-day basis. While those around us may not know how lost we sometimes feel, and there may not be a team of trained FBI agents trying to figure out how we got off track, the truth is that God is aware of what we are going through at all times and is always seeking to restore us to the best life that we can live. Whether we played an active part in getting ourselves into a mess, or we just slowly slipped into a life of despair, or just can’t seem to stay where we want to for any amount of time—whether we are rich or poor, black or white, young or old, man or woman—God is there, always valuing us and seeking to find each of us that feel lost.