Most of us will never face the spectacular decision which confronted the monks of Tibhirine.  Based on events in Algeria in 1995, OfGods and Men is the story of a grave choice: Do the monks return home to France OR remain in their village, risking death at the hands of Islamist terrorists who have threatened anyone whose religion does not perfectly align with their own?  It is not only the monks who are threatened, but the villagers too live in fear and hope the foreigners’ presence will protect them.

While we may never experience such a choice, among the film’s many beauties is the invitation to consider deeply how we decide.  In this sense, Of Gods and Men is contemplative, both for its affect and the tenderness it shows to the monks who must ponder their end.   These are men who, having left everything on God’s behalf, must now question– sometimes with anger–what else they must relinquish.  What resources can be drawn from at such a moment?

Watching this fragile community come to their decision invites our own contemplation.  The thousands of choices–most small, some spectacular–we make each day come from somewhere.  This film asks that we consider just where that place is.

Who is Miike Snow? Ok, that's a trick question. Miike Snow is really Swedes Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, along with American Andrew Wyatt. Remember when we all tried to fall in love with Animal Collective? Well, Miike Snow is what all of us who appreciated what Animal Collective was doing, but could never fall in love with their disjointed melodies have been looking for. Miike Snow's music enters the mix of the electronically enhanced pop music that we've seen from groups like Foster the People, LCD Soundsystem, and Bon Iver's self-titled release. And it is damn catchy... and there are some pretty insightful lyrics in there too.

Remember when we all thought this "electric invasion" of auto-tune and sampling the same old beats was going to kill pop music? Ok, maybe we didn't all think that, but I might have thought it at one point (a previous tweet of mine: When SNL & The Lonely Island can make a track as hot as any pop song, it's time to rethink the music industry), and surely a kid in skinny jeans said something to that effect while sipping on a tallboy of PBR.

What makes a good story?
Robert McKee’s aptly titled book, Story, is at first glance a how-to guide for screenwriters. Sure, most writers eschew any sort of how-to advice, but the beauty of the book isn’t that it tells how to format a screen play (it doesn’t) or when to place the inciting incident (not that, either).

The book talks about story— the type where we leave the theater and can’t stop thinking about it; the characters seem as real as friends, the plot contrived by the heavens. Story, McKee notes, is simply metaphor for life. Each author designs his or her story to communicate how life works. Story continually says, “This is what life is like.”

And, the essential element to story—like life—is risk. Add risk, blood-as-sweat inducing risk, and you’re on your way to a great story. Yet, in our postmodern (or post-postmodern) world, story has often been whittled down to an assemblage of interesting moments, or characters more acted upon than acting. McKee is a classicist, and we are classicists by which movies we go see (even if we don’t want to believe it).

The true beauty of the book, however, is that life imitates art. Story is as much about what we watch as it is about what we live. He closes, urging his writers to write every day—or all of us to live every day. “Do this without fear…For above all else, above imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule, and failure.” McKee urges us to ask, Is the story I’m living…worth watching?