Hotel Rwanda

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

I was shamed into seeing this movie.

Sure, I heard it was well done and that Don Cheadle gave an excellent, and heart-wrenching performance, but the movie simply wasn’t a priority for me to see. Then I ran across a Brian McLaren column in the Leadership Journal where he poured out his frustration with the Christian movie-going public. They were moved en masse to see the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ. There was a hype machine in place, including pastors stumping for the movie from the pulpit, and organized church services for congregations to see the movie together. Reviews of the movie were caught up in it being one part cinematic experience and two parts religious experience. Truly they, anyone, would have hearts much more open to Christ after seeing that movie. However, with the movie Hotel Rwanda, not a peep from the religious right, the moral majority, was heard. Brian McLaren wrote that:

For whatever reason, when I walked out of the recent film Hotel Rwanda, the story of a hotel manager who saves more than a thousand Tutsi refugees from Hutu-led genocide, this thought wouldn't leave me: If we really had the mind and heart of Christ, this is the movie we would be urging people in our churches to see.

By all rights, Hotel Rwanda should be this year’s Schindler’s List. In fact, maybe it suffers from that “been there� feeling. Maybe the movie itself suffers from the same problem that plagued the Rwandan tragedy that it depicts: apathy. As the cameraman who was in Rwanda to document the atrocities–before it got too dangerous and all the foreign nationals fled--says, the West will have one response when they watch the footage on their evening news: “They’ll say ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible,’ and they keep eating their dinners.� Said another way, on a recent episode of Boston Legal, Candice Bergen’s character says that “The American people have spoken and they don’t care.� Not to put too fine a point on it, but Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte) sums it up bluntly when he says that “We think you’re dirt ... You’re not even a nigger. You’re African.�

“‘For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’� Matthew 25:42-45

Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) was an ordinary man, caught up in extraordinary circumstances. If ever there was a true reluctant hero it is he, a fact driven home by the point that he didn’t even realize that he was doing anything heroic. As a member of the Hutu tribe, he didn’t have to do anything. He was in a position of power and comfort, and he could have easily sat idly by, knowing that his life was in no danger. The spark for action probably started with his heart being open because his wife was from the Tutsi tribe. From there, he was moved to protect some 1200+ Tutsis. At the heart of his motivation, he saw the evil going on around him and his heart swelled with compassion. I think that we hope that we would respond the same way in similar circumstances. That was the core of what the movie was about: not the millions that were killed, but how people responded to such a tragedy. In effect, being a good man was as “easy� as doing what he knew to be right. Being good meant being a compassionate and decent human being.

The entire time that I watched the movie, the parable of the good Samaritan haunted my mind. In a nutshell, an expert in the law, a religious guy, knew that he was to love his neighbor as himself, but was looking for a loophole and asked Jesus to define who exactly his neighbor was. Jesus tells him a parable about a guy who gets robbed and beaten. Two various so-called “holy� people pass him by, but a Samaritan, a member of a despised “tribe� helped the man. When asked by Jesus which of these was a neighbor to the man, “The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’� Luke 10:30

You see, hate is an insidious thing. One of the things we have to realize is that, being human and all, we have a deep capacity to hate and hate has a long memory. It’s hate that allows us to quit seeing our neighbor as human and allows us to get caught up in wartime propaganda and see them as “cockroaches�. Something sub-human, worthy of extermination. It’s that wellspring of hate that leads to tragedies that make us have to form questions like “how many acts of genocide does it take to be considered genocide?� McLaren puts it this way

And I go back to the film, and think of the hotel and its manager, himself a Hutu, but one who loves Tutsi as well. I think about his distinction early in the film between family (who deserve help) and non-family (who one can't worry about), and how in the course of the genocide, he comes to see that all neighbors are family. And I wonder why so few of us see our neighbors in the Christian faith in anything close to a similar way, not to mention our non-Christian neighbors who may also be modern-day prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritans. I wonder what kind of tragedy it would take to bring us to the insight gained by that hotel manager.


A dirty little secret of the tragedy of Rwanda is that not too long ago, it was held as an example of Christian triumph. The missionaries had done their jobs and most of the populace claimed Christ as their Savior. This movie illustrates how fragile a spiritual life can be, showing the seen-too-often disconnect of a faith that tickles the mind but fails to penetrate the heart. A few years later, an attempt at genocide occurs. Too easily we can get drawn into our own brands of tribal warfare or, as McLaren writes,

I think about Tutsi and Hutu locked in a cycle of fear and aggression, insult and revenge, attack and counterattack. And I also think of the Twa (the literal "little people" of our world) whose story is so little known, who suffer in the crossfire between the larger, more powerful tribes. And I think about how our community of Christian believers is divided by tribes also caught in long-standing cycles that seem to defy reconciliation: Protestant, Catholic; liberal, conservative red-state, blue-state; contemporary, traditional; postmodern, modern; seeker-driven, seeker-sensitive; purpose-driven, tradition-driven, and so on.


Things come back to next time. Schindler’s List should’ve reminded us, moved each of us to claim “Never again� as our personal mantra in the face of overwhelming indecency. There will be a next time. McLaren puts it this way

And I go back to the film, and think of the hotel and its manager, himself a Hutu, but one who loves Tutsi as well. I think about his distinction early in the film between family (who deserve help) and non-family (who one can't worry about), and how in the course of the genocide, he comes to see that all neighbors are family. And I wonder why so few of us see our neighbors in the Christian faith in anything close to a similar way, not to mention our non-Christian neighbors who may also be modern-day prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritans. I wonder what kind of tragedy it would take to bring us to the insight gained by that hotel manager.

Be it tsunami or the next time a people decide that the only way to settle the differences between them is to completely wipe out a whole segment of the population, there will always be a next time.

Maybe we won’t have to be shamed into doing something.

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

Constantine

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

Most people associate horror with demons, Satanism, and witchcraft or slasher-type films. This being the case, few can understand how a horror film could possibly communicate the Gospel. From now on, whenver I'm confronted with this question, I will merely point to the movie Constantine and quote, “only in the face of horror do you find your noblest self.� This was easily the most theologically rich movies I have seen in a long time. It was like a tour of Dante’s Inferno—if Dante chain-smoked, that is.

“Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.’� Matthew 12:25

The character of John Constantine was created by comic book deity Alan Moore (The Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) during his run on the comic book Swamp Thing. The character was spun into his own series called Hellblazer (its definitive runs being under Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis), where Constantine became a noirish anti-hero in every sense of the word. Think of him as an exorcist-cum-hard boiled PI, casting out demons in his own name and under his own powers, relying on his ability to cheat and con them. He gets by playing one demon against another, even father against son. That becomes the sticking point of the character: somehow, in what should be the simplest cases of black vs. white, good vs. evil, Constantine manages to muck up the waters to an often frustrating shade of gray.

I came in fully expecting to hate this movie once I heard they had made Constantine American rather than British. (Look at how the Americanization of The League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen helped gut the original comic material when translated to film). Casting Keanu “he of the wooden acting school� Reeves rather than Sting (the actor of choice when the movie was originally proposed over a decade ago) or even James Marsters (Spike, from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer/Angel) made it nearly impossible for me to give this movie the benefit of the doubt.

But I was pleasantly surprised.

If you didn’t know anything about Constantine, then at first glance, this almost looks like The Devil’s Advocate, part II. Reeves continues to be drawn to the science-fiction/horror world. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix trilogy. I can see what drew him to this spiritual kinsmen of Neo, John Constantine. We all often feel like him, trapped somewhere between heaven and hell. Unsure if there is a plan to this life, because we can’t see much rhyme or reason to what happens here, we struggle to make it from one day to the next. Constantine's struggle is shared by Detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) who’s investigating the apparent suicide of her twin sister. The difference between them is that Constantine, who is suffering from terminal lung cancer, labors under the knowledge of where he is destined to go when he dies. And it ain’t pretty. Dodson, meanwhile, is not even sure she believes in the spirit world, never mind an ultimate spiritual destination.

There is quite a bit about this movie that will/should make people uncomfortable. (The comic book always had that disturbing/“this feels wrong� sort of quality to it for me.) This movie, however, redeems the comic in a lot of ways. It focuses more clearly on the heart of what makes Constantine resonate with me. It reminds us of a world we like to pretend isn’t there, either from lack of belief or an all too real belief in it. The movie presents a positively Medieval view of Heaven and Hell. “Behind every wall, every window� this battle between Heaven and Hell wages, with Constantine caught in the middle. The reality of this constant battle, that Constantine had been witness to since his childhood, overwhelms him to the point of suicide. According to Constantine, God is a disinterested spectator, “a kid with an ant farm.� He and the demons vie to see who will rule Hell and take over the Earth. So Constantine merely capitulates to what he already sees as a foregone conclusion.

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will plainly tell them, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.’� Matthew 7:22-23

His suicide lands him squarely in Hell, but he doesn't stay there for long. His body is resuscitated, and his spirit pulled back to earth. Even so, the awareness that Hell is his final destination alters Constantine's life to the point where his entire focus becomes trying to buy his way into heaven. Serving God in his own way and on his own terms, he “deports� those demons who intrude into our plane. Even though he knows why he is going to hell (because he tried to take his own life), he still wonders if, perhaps, he goes to church enough, prays enough, tithe's enough; perhaps he might, as W.C. Fields put it, "Find a loophole."

So Constantine finds himself caught in the Great Detente. In a scenario reminiscent of the opening chapter of the book of Job, God and the devil have made a bet of sorts. The angels in heaven and the demons in hell are not allowed to directly interfere with humans. Both sides are reduced to little more than “influence peddlers.� A balance must be maintained. Satan’s son, Mammon (if God could have a son, so could Satan, the movie posits) seeks to blow the balance out the water by fully entering our plane of existence. He aims to use the Spear of Destiny, the sword used to pierce Christ while He was on the cross, to do it.

Ultimately, this is a story about faith. Constantine is a man without faith. After all, what good is faith when he knows full well that there is a God and a devil, and that both were out to get him? He has plenty of head knowledge, but it doesn't translate into a heart knowledge that impacted his life (other than a sense of self-preservation). He lived life to keep his butt out of Hell just a little bit longer.

Plenty of other touchstones abound. The movie takes place in Los Angeles, the “City of Angels�. Billboards read “Your time is running out� and “Got Faith?� In a “baptism� scene, Det. Dodson gets a glimpse of what it means to be united in death, burial, and resurrection in her brief sojourn to Hell.

Overall, this felt like a good introduction to the world of Constantine, where we learn the rules and vocabulary, to a world we hadn’t seen. So, much like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, there’s a lot of exposition, but if has the feel of the beginning of a franchise. Visually exciting, there was no shortage of imagination from first-time director, Francis Lawrence (best known for music videos). The scenes in Hell look right out of the pages of a Middle Ages art book. This was definitely one of the more satisfying horror movies/comic book translations in recent memory. Not quite The Matrix, not quite your standard horror movie, hopefully the movie won’t frustrate too many viewers with its "innovative" theology and it's refusal to tie up all the loose ends.

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Spiritual Connections: The Constantine Gospel

At times, we have to dig pretty deep to find spiritual connections in a movie. At other times, we simply can’t escape them. Constantine definitely falls into the latter category. If The Matrix trilogy is the story of Christ in allegory, this movie is the systematic theology. Here are a few things we learn from Constantine:

We wonder if we’re doomed, yet we wander through life under the illusion that we can get through it under our own strength. This is how John Constantine enters the movie, attempting to live out his version of what he thinks his purpose is. He took it on himself to exorcize demons in order to impress God into letting him into heaven. Unfortunately for Constantine, God''s rules are different from Constantine's rules.

An issue that came up recently on a message board that I frequent was "When you read stories or see films dealing with the supernatural, do you want hard-and-fast explanations of the supernatural elements or do you prefer them left 'in the air,' open to interpretation?" For me, explanations are like rules, and the story has to stick to the rules. I like horror writer Geoff Cooper’s answer to this question: "If you're going to explain it, the explanation should be better than the mystery of not knowing." That is what the spiritual life is all about. Without too much searching, we sense or realize that there are rules to our existence. The law is written on our hearts or in a book waiting to reveal itself to us. This movie revolved around the law. For the Catholic church, a person who commits suicide goes to Hell. That’s the law. In the movie, the balance between good and evil, the non-interference pact between God and Satan, must be maintained. That’s also a law. Man has the choice to seek redemption. That’s the law.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in God or the devil. As Det. Dodson says at one point, people are capable of their own evil. For another, both God and the devil believe in people. Both have invested themselves in the choices that people make for themselves and, thus, the battle for people’s souls was enjoined.

Humans have been granted a gift, one great enough to earn the jealousy of angels. It is the gift of redemption. God’s love is so great that no matter how bad we screw up, all we have to do is ask for forgiveness, and God will embrace us. We are not worthy of this gift, we have done nothing to earn it. It was given freely as a gift of God’s love.

Contrary to what Constantine believes at the outset of this film, we cannot earn redemption through his own efforts. Like Constantine, no matter how hard we try, our efforts are never good enough, and we fall short. Several times, Constantine comes close to saving the day under his own efforts, but just misses.

Only through the power of prayer and faith can we receive the gift of redemption. To be truly forgiven, you have to ask for absolution. A demon, Balthazar (Gavin McGregor Rossdale), gets tricked into confessing because he forgets this fact. Even Constantine has to be reminded of it, by Satan (a scene stealing Peter Stormare) no less, who explains why Constantine keeps seeming to fail.

The key to salvation is found through blood and (self-)sacrifice. Constantine has to shed his own blood and die (a second time), to give himself up voluntarily, to finally defeat evil. Only through this act is his redemption found.

Yes, there’s a plan for all of us. Constantine had to die twice before he figured this out. The angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) sums it up best: “Be the hand of God. It’s your choice. It’s always been your choice.�

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

The Wire

If anyone poses the question "what is the best show on television?" the answer can be found in two simple words: The Wire. The show stands as inheritor of the crown of intelligent, quality television left by Homicide: Life on the Streets, except with cable’s rules for language, nudity, and violence. It is television that demands work, but the payoff is worth it. With its mix of action, laughs, and thought provoking look at the drug trade on our inner city streets, it is easily one of the most satisfying hours of television watching.

If anyone asks the question "who is the star of The Wire?" one need look no further than David Simon and his cast of writers. If you’re an afficionado of crime fiction, you’d have an appreciation for the assembled talent behind the scenes of the show. David Simon (author of The Corner and Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the basis for the HBO mini-series The Corner and the NBC show Homicide: Life on the Streets), George Pelecanos (of the popular Derek Strange series of crime novels), Richard Price (literary hero of the other writers), and Dennis Lehane (author of Mystic River).

One of the things that you can’t get away from is the racial aspect of the show. Whereas most shows run from having blacks on the screen, The Wire embraces a large black cast of some of the best drawn, best acted, and most engaging characters on today. Outside of sitcoms, too many teetering on this side of minstrelsy, not since the days of Homicide: Life on the Street have black characters played so many lead roles.

There are the returning familiar faces. Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Riddick) heads up the wire-tapping good guys/ "real po-lice". We watch the self-destructive, white Irish cop Det. Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, the embodiment of world weary, yet dogged, police)-- who as his colleague Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) says "puts fire to everything he touches then walks away while it burns"--slowly re-shape Det. Shakima "Kima" Greggs (Sonja Sohn) into his image. McNulty is all about the job, obsessing on the drug lords in his case, to the point of having no life outside of it and torching anyone who gets in his way. Stringer Bell (brilliantly acted by Idris Elba) and Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) head up the criminal enterprise. Stringer having finished college, is almost a post-modern drug dealer. Re-thinking the game, he tries to ditch the "gangsta" aspect of it, which was the main thing that drew police interest, and apply strict laws of economic principles as he strives for legitimacy.

There are new faces as well. We follow the slow, and rocky, road to redemption of former soldier Dennis "Cutty" Wise (Chad L. Coleman). There is up and coming (white) councilman Thomas Carcetti (Aidan Gillen), the beguiling politician maneuvering to oust the incumbent black mayor. There is no way to do justice to the huge cast, again pointing to the adroitness of the writers who create subtle characters with actors who can get a lot of mileage out of little screen time.

"Everybody in this world does what they gonna do." Butchie
"I still feel like I owe something." Omar.
"Conscience do cost." Butchie

The show is not afraid to examine the topsy-turvy morality where legendary gang-bangers, such as Omar Little (Michael K. Williams, who has created one of my favorite characters), are idolized and emulated. Where those released from prison (Avon, Cutty, and the other innumerable "soldiers") are given more respect than the few and seldom seen college grads. Where a good night is defined by the police, in their war of successive compromises, as "an absence of anything negative" such as a dropped body. Where the sin of gentrification and the fruit of a society turning their backs on the poor and disenfranchised has led to young black kids aspire to drug dealing because they believe the world offers no opportunities yet dangles the fruit of wealth in front of them.

"The gods will not save you." Proposition Joe

The reason that it is difficult to sum up what the plot of The Wire is about is because it is a labyrinth of overlapping stories. Welcome to the all too real, mundane world where incompetence, cover your ass politics, and striving for the status quo meets luck, diligence, and perseverance. Where bureaucrats and politicians attempt to govern the encroaching world of cops, drug dealers, and drug users. While all the while, we examine the toll that this war on drugs takes on their personal lives. The show is painful and brilliant at the same time.

In a nutshell, the show is about the drug game, the street game of survival on one side and the efforts to fight the good, if vain, fight on the other. The game is about the art of deception. Of your enemies. Of your friends. Of your boss. Of your grand-momma. Of yourself. What becomes all too clear is the futility of the law when it comes to battling something like drugs that is one part individual sin, one part societal neglect, and one part force of nature. There is a cloud of despair that hangs over every character that either the problem can’t be solved--at least not by the methods the law is used to employing--or that some people don’t want it solved.

"It’s what war is. Once you in it, you in it. If it’s a lie, then we
fight on that lie. But we have to fight." Slim

Drugs are the enemy within. They are pervasive. Insidious. Reaching its tendrils into every fiber of our being and society. They are in bondage to the game. Drugs feed on a weakness within us, like a disease, yet more than a disease. The thing about drugs is that people become slaves to them. Any addict will tell you that they are no longer in control, the addiction is in control. The need for sating that habit becomes the new law that lives in them and runs their lives. More than any mere moral rule, it has a physical aspect to it. It lives in addicts, indwells them, ever enticing, threatening, and bullying. Their lives become about feeding that addiction. Despite the good that the drug fiend may want to do, they find themselves doing things that in the light of sobriety they had no idea they were capable of. They are in a tug of war between conscience and the need to feed their inner beast that more often than not, they don’t know how to escape.

Let’s face it, the flesh is weak and the wages of drugs is only decay and
death.

"What if I told you that there was a certain liberation not in command or
self-control but in surrendering?" Deacon

The characters evolve and devolve over the season, but the only route to salvation comes in finding something outside of oneself. There were several paths to choose from. For some, temporary peace could be found by turning themselves over to the community (Cutty Wise) or to the job (McNulty). But the only choice to provide any measure of lasting peace was Christ for Deacon (Melvin Williams).

Make no mistake, the show is not a polemic by any stretch. As a dark vision of inner city turmoil, The Wire is the most densely written and demanding show on the air. It reflects how deeply capitalism is imbedded into the fabric of our culture, with drugs as economic transactions, murders as market fluctuations, and the toll to thin veneer we call civility as cost. Look for this show in re-runs, though it is best watched on DVD so that you have the entire story at your disposal and can appreciate its addictive unfolding at your leisure. With its tough choices in trying situations, interwoven stories, and its complexity amid simplicity, the show reminds me of what our spiritual lives often look like: messy, practical, and with an air of quiet triumphs.

Hopefully without the drugs.