by Dean | Jun 25, 2018 | General
Aprops of the film First Reformed, a writer for Movieguide.org avers that “the movie’s politically correct leftist politics . . . are easily refuted by any person who’s done some research on those topics.” I do not doubt the reality of such refutation, but Paul Schrader is not really standing up for leftist politics in the film any more than he’s standing up for right-wing politics. And the observation that “the movie’s very last scene is just silly and anti-climactic, if not stupid” is one I disagree with because the ending seems morally justified and not altogether different from what occurs in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. Indeed, it is an idiosyncratic Christian ending.
These criticisms appear on the same Christian website that, some years ago, hotly condemned an obscure documentary (I can’t remember the title) that endorsed the idea of universal salvation. To support its view, Movieguide.org presented John 12:31-36 without analysis, without translating any original Greek word, without sufficiency. Why, the site is more flawed than First Reformed.
by Dean | Jun 23, 2018 | General
Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed (2018) gives us a paster, Ernst Toller, with problems.
Enacted by a well-cast Ethan Hawke, Toller does pretty good pastoral work for First Reformed, a church in upstate New York, but he lost a son in Iraq, is divorced from Esther (Victoria Hill), who still loves him, and is ill and often spiritually weak. Schrader meant the film to be derivative—it is a little too derivative—of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and Bergman’s Winter Light, but it is also very different from those movies.
After the suicide of a parishioner’s husband—the parishioner is an important character named Mary (Amanda Seyfried)—Toller becomes a temporary madman/radical activist who intends to commit mass murder; but here the film goes astray. Nothing before this suggests that the pastor is unstable or even eccentric; nothing prepares us for his nutty behavior. As a character study First Reformed starts limping, although its ending is fascinatingly fine.
The movie boasts themes: mortification (or laceration) of the flesh, the conflict between spirituality and moral stumbling, love and the human spirit. But shadows of the Bresson and Bergman films perpetually fall on this product because Reformed is certainly a lesser work. I disagree with Kenneth Morefield, a reviewer for Christianity Today, that “Paul Schrader has always been a great writer,” but I do think the current picture is riveting.
by Dean | Jun 20, 2018 | General
U.S. astronauts reach the moon, in the 1950 Destination Moon, only because they choose to defy the government, which has ordered them to stay on the earth. The public fears radioactivity after liftoff, but the determined astronauts slip away and take their historic flight regardless. After they land on the moon, they are distressed to discover that getting home just might be a nonstarter.
Adapting one of his novels, Robert Heinlein co-wrote the movie’s script, so the frequently spot-on technical information is no surprise. And for 1950 the sets are admirable, even though the outside rescue of an astronaut adrift is hopelessly stagy (and with plenty of silliness). To be honest, DM is marred by much, but it is Hollywood earnestness at its most entertaining. Too, I found it nigh spellbinding, and not only in the outer space scenes. Watching it, I got a hankering to read Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel, which will at least spare me, as this movie does not, the presence of Woody Woodpecker.
Directed by Irving Pichel.
by Dean | Jun 18, 2018 | General
The 2003 Peter Pan is pretty good, except for the boringly routine fight scenes. P. J. Hogan‘s film version of the 1904 British play (very old) captures much of playwright Barrie’s sophistication and all of his high spirits. It concentrates on Wendy Darling’s youthful affection for Peter Pan and is aware of Peter’s inability to love, albeit he does know how to grieve for a dead or dying Tinkerbell. . . It dazzles the eye and, almost as much, enchants the mind.
Jeremy Sumpter (Peter) is one of those child actors who, to borrow another critic’s truthful phrase, merely follow the director’s orders, nothing more. Not so Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy: she’s spontaneous and unmannered. In a double role—that of Mr. Darling and that of Captain Hook—the versatile Jason Isaacs is thoroughly engaging, while Lynn Redgrave never sounds a false note as the Darling children’s aunt.
by Dean | Jun 14, 2018 | General
However charitable, the churches do not pay close attention to what the Bible is saying. They often speak and behave as though they believe the words of Bill Wiese were scripture: You gotta correctly use your free will so you can stay out of Hell. They are never tempted to think that maybe, just maybe, since the Bible teaches the Predestination of souls, salvation is not a matter of human free will; it is therefore the unelected people who are slated for damnation. If damnation exists.
Dear me, the churches say. What’s all this Predestination stuff?
It’s Biblical doctrine, that’s what. But since the churches fail to give heed to Psalm 22:27 or Romans 11:32, they would naturally distrust the following words of Jacques Ellul: “There is indeed a predestination, but it can be only the one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved.” Hence the unelected do not go to Hell. True, they are chastised (or judged), but so are Christians. Why, however, should there be damnation for a humanity about whom the Bible affirms, in Romans 9, that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy”?
