Does your life make good art?

American playwright Tennessee Williams said that, “if the writing is honest, it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.”  This provides an appropriate framework for the film Shakespeare in Love which blurs the distinction between the life and art of “Will” Shakespeare. 

As a young poet fumbling for inspiration to write his next great comedy, Will inadvertently falls in love with Viola. (Gwyneth Paltrow wins a Best Actress Oscar for her performance and the film won six others, including best picture, in 1998.)  Viola is the daughter of a wealthy merchant and is on the brink of being married off to a bankrupt aristocrat, played by the always dashing Colin Firth. 

This is the first layer of the film’s plot line. 

But in the midst of this passionate and hilarious love story, Will begins to write and act in the play as he lives it.  His life entangles the story.  And here is the second, deeper plot about what happens when Will enters into his own work; when Shakespeare becomes Romeo and falls in love with the real Juliet. 

Whatever your spiritual perspective, it’s worth noting that C.S. Lewis makes a similar analogy in his Christian writings.  Could it be possible for Shakespeare (or God, as Lewis’s analogy goes) to write himself into his own play, to meet and interact with his own characters?  What happens then?

Shakespeare in Love is a classic fairy tale romance with a significantly different bend.  A bend towards honesty, entering in, and art crashing into reality.  This is a film about love, yes, but I’d argue it’s more deeply about living and telling an authentic story.

What is the Bible really telling us?

If you can’t approach this film with a posture of humility, please don’t watch it.  I mean it.  For the Bible Tells Me So portrays Christianity’s hatred and treatment of homosexuality in an attempt by the filmmakers to turn what Christians have waged as a brutal war into a conversation. 

As a Christian, this documentary is hard to watch.  And it should be.  Not necessarily because of what any of us may personally believe, but because of what the community of people we ascribe ourselves to has done in the name of God.  We have marginalized, persecuted, and hated an entire population.  And if we haven’t participated, we have stood by in apathy and fear.

In this film you meet five people with unique and diverse backgrounds, cultures, and stories as homosexuals.  The first gay Episcopal deacon, a famous politician’s daughter, men and women who are in heterosexual marriages before coming out, people with supportive parents and others with parents who tragically disown them.  We meet activists, religious-types, and academics from all over the country and the political spectrum, revealing piercing assumptions and responses.  And yet when love does break through you will see hope, transformation, and a beautiful testament to the goodness of humanity. 

Three things I hope we all take away from this film:
1. We must create safe spaces for people to share who they really are. 
2. When it comes to loving or having the ‘right’ view, we must choose love.  Every time. 
3. We must foster communities of love, justice, and inclusion for all people.

Who knew that anarchy could be so much fun?

The next time you find yourself overwhelmed with the tragic sense of life, when you just need to watch a film that’s a good laugh from start to finish, check out the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup.

There’s wise-cracking Groucho, as Rufus T. Firefly, the war-mongering cowardly dictator of a country named Freedonia: “You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are.”

There’s his brother Chico, as Chicolini, an inept spy, always good for a puzzling line:  “How would you like a job in the mint?”  “Mint?  No, no.  I no like mint.  What other flavor you got?”

There’s silent Harpo as a spy named Pinky, the perpetual child, and perhaps the funniest one of the bunch.  And there’s Zeppo as Bob, the hapless straight man.

Of course there's a plot, since movies are supposed to have those, but really, what difference does it make?  This movie is just an excuse for the Marx Brothers to show off.  They are absurd, surreal, hilarious, unpredictable, and just plain funny.  This movie was made in 1933 and nothing since rivals it.  The pacing is tremendous, the laughs are almost non-stop, and the absolute, utterly bizarre behavior of warring nations is revealed as ridiculous.  Really, who knew that anarchy could be so much fun?

Duck Soup is rated number five on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 American comedies.  It’s number one by me.  So please, go and treat yourself to a few laughs.

Can I be fixed?

Let’s be honest. Martin Scorcese and “family friendly” have never gone hand in hand. But what Scorcese forgoes in his familiar, often violent, style with the release of Hugo, he gains in subject matter.In fact, what is seemingly a kid flick at first glance, is arguably more of a lesson in film history for us all. A film about (the wonder of) film.

Hugo is based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and is both the fictional account of an orphaned boy (Hugo) and the (predominantly) non-fiction account of French filmmaker George Méliès. One could even argue (I am) that Hugo’s storyline is a mere excuse to get to the real agenda at hand – educate the modern culture of Méliès’ prolific work and vast contributions to our present film era.

And while this is worth the price of admission alone, it is not the basis of its representation here. Rather, what Hugo brings to theaters this month (that intrigues us) is its commitment to image, its celebration of creativity, and its pursuit of one of humanity’s familiar questions – What is my purpose?

Actually, Scorcese uses the sub-plot of a broken automaton (a weird and somewhat creepy clock-like-person-of-sorts) with missing pieces, as a metaphor to our primary characters Hugo and Méliès. Midst the pursuit of purpose lies the fundamental concern of being fixed. A concern that we are all too familiar.

What if… I exercised more? What if… I tried something new? And, what if… I actually found what I was looking for? (obligatory U2 reference) What then?

In the case of Hugo (the movie), it’s not about a thing. It’s about a reality. A reality of grace and acceptance. One that happens to show up in a film of three-dimensional beauty.*

*Personally, I think the onslaught of 3D releases (and re-releases) is a bit played and ultimately driven by additional revenue opportunities. (Seriously, Titanic in 3D?) But, Hugo is worth it. Embrace the awkward glasses. Enjoy.

Where will your curiosity lead you?

In 2006 The National Science Foundation sent documentarian Werner Herzog to the South Pole with some doubt as to whether he wouldn’t “come up with another movie about penguins.” Herzog, in his gravelly, German-accented narration, continues this recount: “My questions about nature, I let them know, were different.”

Herzog was drawn to the Antarctic after seeing underwater photographs taken in the Ross Sea, an expanse covered in six feet of ice and the size of the continental United States. Yet the story is just as much about the people living in this corner of the world, as the place itself, where compasses don’t spin but point upward.

Encounters at the End of the World is a strange film, full of odds and ends, people and creatures alike. Herzog finds volcanologists, a Russian philosopher, a linguist-cum-biologist, a researcher who once drove a garbage truck across Africa, a plumber descended from Aztec royalty. He asks how they arrived there. As one puts it, “if you take everybody who’s not tied down, they all sort of fall to the bottom of the planet.”

The more profound questions Herzog brings to this place, to its creatures and topography, to our modern-day explorers, the scientists, and finally to humanity, remain mostly unanswered. They are questions of existence, of our past and future, questions pregnant with joy and grief, met with visions of the silent, overwhelming continent. Melville’s description of Moby Dick helps us to imagine the this land:

“Is it that by [the whale’s] indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reason that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows?”

The people living here send mammoth balloons 40km into the atmosphere looking for neutrinos, the most elusive, omnipresent, foundational of particles. They swim beneath fields of ice, “underwater cathedrals,” in search of species and formations. Shackleton at the turn of the century and modern-day scientists: people are directed here by the compass of their curiosity. Their questions connect them, and are sustained by this “wide landscape of snows.”

If you knew someone was doing something wrong would you tell?

In the wake of the scandals at Penn State and now Syracuse, it’s easy to say yes, but whistleblowers pay a high price. Consider that the main defense strategy of the accused Penn State coach is to attack the credibility of the coach who turned him in.  Not too long ago, whistleblowers were called “rats,” and I was raised in a culture that taught ratting someone out was as contemptible as committing the original crime. These issues are at the heart of Elia Kazan’s 1954 masterpiece of corruption On the Waterfront.

Marlon Brando’s character Terry Malloy is a former prizefighter turned thug for the mafia-controlled union that controls the shipping docks of Hoboken, New Jersey.  He develops a conscience (with the aid of both a young woman played by Eva Marie Saint and a priest played by Karl Malden) and laments the compromises he’s made.  The question the movie turns on is whether or not Terry will tell a crime commission what he knows. Brando’s performance is regarded by many as the finest ever by an American actor.

Director Elia Kazan personally knew the cost of “naming names.” He testified before the House Un-American Activities commission in the early 1950’s, naming people in the movie industry he knew were Communists. Kazan was greatly reviled for his willingness to testify. As late as 1999, when a 90-year-old Kazan was awarded a lifetime achievement Oscar, some members of the audience at the Academy Awards refused to applaud.

Is it the right thing to tell what you know?  Elia Kazan knew the pain of trying to find the right path from personal experience, and On the Waterfront dramatically illustrates it.  The film won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. It’s generally regarded as one of the ten best American films ever made.

What if we were not alone, really?

Let’s play the “What if?” game for a minute. What if there was life on another planet? (Seen this film already.) What if we could communicate with other planets? (Nothing new.)

But, what if there was another you? On another Earth?

This is the establishing question surrounding Mike Cahill’s feature film debut Another Earth. As blatant in the title, scientists have discovered “another earth” (deemed Earth II) that has come within both visual and communicative reach. On first contact, it seems that the new Earth mirrors our Earth. The same landscape. The same people. And (just maybe)… the same story lines. The latter of which becomes the primary curiosity.

I get it. It sounds like it could be some sci-fi travel adventure where Nicholas Cage makes a heroic journey to Earth II in order to save all of humanity and beyond.

Let me clarify. It’s not.

In fact, it is arguably more of a philosophical art piece than sci-fi. It’s driven by the questions. It’s patient. It favors visual communication. It creates tension. In other words, it admitantly fits the “rednow” genre quite well.

There is no doubt (here at rednow) we are deeply interested in the question “What does it mean to be human?” Cahill is seemingly interested in the same question. While on the surface, the narrative explores the reality of another earth and another you, this is ultimately not the primal question of the film. Back to the “What if?”

What if we were not alone?

This is the story of Another Earth.

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Another Earth is currently playing in a few select local Art House theaters. If not playing hear you, no worries. It will be out on DVD on November 29th.

Where’s the twist?

I was about a third of the way through The 39 Steps when my wife, Kate, walked into the basement where two friends had joined me to take in Hitchcock’s world. She asked us the natural question—how’s the movie?

My friend’s response speaks of the importance of The 39 Steps as a film and Alfred Hitchcock’s place in cinematic story telling. Carson looked at Kate and said, “I’m waiting for it to happen.”

“It,” of course, is the twist.

In 1869, Phonney Martin was described as an “extremely hard pitcher to hit for the ball never comes in a straight line‚ but in a tantalizing curve.” While it is still debated who the first pitcher was to throw a curveball, no one who watches baseball can imagine the game without it. The curve, at one point in time, had never been seen. When it slashed across the plate for the first time with a bat hopelessly chasing it, the game was changed forever.

Martin’s curveball was not the fastest, craziest, most unpredictable pitch ever thrown. Others have come along since and done more with the curve. But there was a time where Martin was almost unhittable. He took people’s breath away.

In 1935, when The 39 Steps flashed across screens worldwide, cinema changed forever. No longer would the viewer step into the theater and expect a straight narrative line. Hitchcock had changed the game.

The 39 Steps isn’t the fastest, craziest, most unpredictable film you will ever see. But almost every filmmaker who uses a narrative twist, not to mention high camera angles, point-of-view shots and intentional framing to tell their story, is copying something that started with Hitchcock.

So step into the box and enjoy the beauty of a first of its kind as it flies by you.

You may have already read his sister’s eulogy that was released this weekend.  In it we learn that with family surrounding him Steve Jobs’ last words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”  I wish I could have been there to hear the tone and pitch and meaning and weight of those words.  Were they pensive?  Excited?  Scared?  Triumphant?  Sad?   All of the above?

I imagine that Chris McCandless’ final words carried a similar sentiment as he took his final breath on Bus 142 in March of 1992.  Except Chris was totally alone, penniless, starving and malnourished in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

What else could you say after a two year adventure of shedding your identity, abandoning every societal norm and embarking on a quest for ultimate truth–with no money, no ID, no family holding you back.  What kind of “Oh wow” must Chris have been feeling in those final moments?

This is the story behind Into The Wild.  My generation’s modern epic.  Our real life Shakespearean tragedy.  Our battle cry of what matters.  Of what we do and why we do it.

If Steve is the icon, the secular prophet of our technologically obsessed society, than Chris McCandless is his antagonist–an unassuming life demanding that there must be a better way.

There really is no other response to Chris’s short life, his heart, and the questions that take him to places and people and adventures that I will never see… “Oh wow.” (The tone with which you say these two words will depend on how you unpack this film, and Chris’s story, for yourself.)