Chicago

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“How can they hear the truth above the roar?�

Chicago, for my money, has got to be one of the most well rounded movies ever made. The cast shines, the production is impeccable, the story is engaging, the music and choreography are wonderful—everything about it comes together to create pure entertainment. Entertainment. A spectacle. A couple hours of flash . . . that’s it, right?

Nope. Sorry, kid. In one of the musical’s best numbers, “Razzle Dazzle,� Richard Gere quips: “how can they see with sequins in their eye?� Well, just as that question implies, there is something to see behind all the flash—there is truth above the roar.

But, basics first: Chicago is a musical, set in prohibition era Chicago, about a bored housewife—Roxie Hart—who wants to be a singing/dancing star. To this end, Roxie cheats on her husband, but ends up killing her lover, whom she thought was going to break her into show business.

Coincidentally, once in a women’s prison, Roxie does achieve a fame of sorts, as her story becomes the Michael Jackson/Kobe Bryant/O.J. Simpson case of the day. Her lawyer, the “silver-tongued prince of the courtroom� Billy Flynn—with much singing and dancing from the cast along the way—eventually gets Roxie acquitted via the sleight-of-hand trickery described in “Razzle Dazzle.� He doesn’t, however, even consider taking the case of an innocent prison mate of hers, and the woman is hung just before the conclusion of Roxie’s trial.

Once free, Roxie gives the final brush-off to her still-faithful husband, Amos, and at long last becomes a famous performer, pairing with fellow acquitted murderer and Flynn client, Velma Kelly. The final scene of the film has Roxie and Velma—both of whom literally got away with murder—receiving the accolades of a virtual “all of Chicago,� as they take their bows after the last number.

So, what else is there to it? Thematically speaking, it seems that all we have is a celebration of fame at any cost. A trumpeting of the lack of justice in the world. Perhaps we can just temper these ideas with others, and move on. But again, I believe that there’s something to be heard above this roar of the evil prospering and the upright suffering. Quite simply, just like in the line from the song, I think that truth is what we’re listening for. Behind the flash—ironically, paradoxically—Chicago turns out to be an affirmation of truth itself.

See, the real beauty of the film is that the audience is in on the joke the whole time. We know the real story, while the wool is being pulled over the movie world’s eyes. We know what there is to see, despite the sequins. And even if no one in the movie sees it, and even if Roxie and Velma unjustly “win� in the end, it is still apparent that—in the words of the X-Files—“the truth is out there.�

Yes, nowadays it’s hard to see the truth in the midst of hundred-channel television and the Internet and politics and the shrinking of the world and mass media and celebrity worship and increasing relativism and on and on. This is our postmodern world, and Chicago recognizes that the truth will always be filtered through all of this fragmentation, and doesn’t play games with it. I even sense, in the otherwise inexplicable blurring and shaking of the final shots of the movie, the filmmaker’s sense of unease at this state of things. It’s as if the final, unsaid words of the film were: “yes, this is how things are in postmodernity, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.� Still, even when blurred by smoke and mirrors, truth is nevertheless lurking onstage.

I think this is the main spiritual insight of the film: that the truth really is that hard to see, that sometimes we wonder if there’s truth at all, that sometimes it sure seems like there isn’t truth, but that there really is—past the flash of the sequins, above the roar—truth. And the next relevant question has to be: “alright, then . . . what is the truth?�

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.� Maybe there’s something to that.

Overview -click here
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About this Film -click here
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Friday Night Lights

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections

This is one heavy movie. From its droning opening sequence, to its anti-climactic ending, the whole movie just makes the viewer feel the weight of the characters’ football-induced oppression. Odessa feels like a war zone, with everyone either grimacing under the current pressure of the season, or suffering from the post-traumatic stress of seasons past. And the camera concurs: the film is shot in a grainy, quick, mock documentary style, as if to say—like a coach might say—“this is reality. This is life. It’s really happening, so deal with it, punk.� Well, with a coach there’d probably be exclamation points . . . but you get the idea.

Despite quality in every area of filmmaking, this heavy tone turns me off to the movie—I like at least a little levity somewhere, a genuine smile here or there. But of course, all of this heaviness is intentional. If this movie is saying anything, it’s repeating the old sports movie metaphor, “life is like (insert sport here).� In this case, life is like football. So, the heaviness—the heaviness which is produced by football and which permeates the lives of the past, present, and future people of Odessa—must somehow be part of Friday Night Lights’s insight into life. So, what is that insight?

To me, the insight has to do with high expectations, and the effects they can have. This story is filled with people who are all struggling to live up to high expectations. The players on Odessa Permian’s high school football team are all aware that they must “be perfect.� They must bring home a state title, because the whole town is depending on them—and the town doesn’t have much else to depend on. The coach also, played wonderfully by Billy Bob Thornton, faces the wrath of the townsfolk (and unemployment) if he calls one bad play, let alone loses a game, or doesn’t win the championship.

But the effects of these expectations don’t stop at the locker room door. The parents and families of players feel them. The coach’s family feels them. The town as a whole feels them. By a certain point in the movie, the pressure of all of this creates a great scene of irony, where one player is asked, by a college scout, if “football is fun.� Given the context, the question if really laughable. Maybe the game was supposed to be fun, but for the characters in this movie, it really can’t be anymore.

[Spoilers Ahead]

All of these expectations build through the movie, until we’re treated to two sports movie musts: the final “big game,� and the coach’s final inspirational speech. And it is in the outcome of these two musts that this movie turns the sports movie genre on its ear, and rams home its big insight. Normally the message of a sports movie has to do with teamwork, or brotherhood, or hope, or dedication, or something, right? Not so with this movie. Normally the team wins the big game in a sports movie, right? Not so with this movie. Instead, the coach gives a speech that would make Vince Lombardi roll over in his grave. The coach says that being perfect, meeting those high expectations, doesn’t mean winning. He gives a list of things that being perfect does mean, but the point is clear: reject those unrealistic expectations. Do your best. And then, proving that the movie really does believe what it’s saying, the Odessa Permian team proceeds to lose the big game.

Now the connection can be made. Now we can see that all of the intentional heaviness is there to show, with jarring realism, what people’s lives can look like when the focus is wrong and the expectations too high. We can see that if we’re too focused on the win—in whatever form it takes in our lives—we’ll end up unhappy. If we demand that touchdown of ourselves, we’ll never be happy with just a first down, no matter how good a first down might be. Friday Night Lights is telling us that we’re not perfect, never will be, can’t be, and that we’ll be miserable if we try to be.

Still, as much as this insight is true and good . . . boy we sure want that win, don’t we? We sure long for perfection, even as we know and remind ourselves with movies like this that we can’t reach it. The perfect season. The perfect 10. The beauty and simplicity of things when they’re just right, and going exactly as they’re supposed to. Strangely, it’s as human to want perfection, as it is to know we can’t have it. And when we see that we can’t get that perfection from ourselves, we’ll look for it somewhere else. Sports is just one of the ways in which we, vicariously, try to get a little bit of that perfection in our lives. I might suck, but the (insert favorite team here) sure don’t. And when they win, I kind of win too. When my favorite player makes that superhuman play, I feel a little superhuman with him.

To me, this is all evidence of our reaching for the divine. We sense our own imperfections, stumble miserably under the weight of them, yet constantly look for perfection, even if it’s in someone else. I think, as with all our deepest longings, that there really must be a food to satisfy this hunger. Perhaps a clue to it can be found in the person who claimed to be perfect in our place. The person who claimed to live up to the highest expectations, so we don’t have to struggle under our inability to meet them. Perhaps Friday Night Lights ends up being about people needing more than just themselves, maybe someone greater!

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf file
—Spiritual Connections