by Dean | Jun 12, 2018 | General
After the release of Antonioni’s Eclipse, some of Truffaut’s stuff and, Heaven help us, Godard’s movies, Ingmar Bergman decided to make a film that was weird. He made the soporific Persona (1967) with its weird opening montage and its weird bits and pieces. A complete failure, the film has very little significant meaning.
A Passion (U.S. title: The Passion of Anna, 1969) was better—at least it wasn’t dull—but, sadly, it was never enough to be weird (or unusual). It is quite evident that after the making of such films as Wild Strawberries and Winter Light, Bergman’s intellectual development became stunted; he was no thinker. Cries and Whispers (1972) was a candid intellectual fraud. Well did it depict human agony, but there were no real brains behind it. Face to Face (1976) was just as weak, and, for all its power, Scenes from a Marriage (1973) was unchallenging enough to have the Jan Malmsjo character, Peter, question superciliously the meaning of an old Christian hymn. This is because Bergman questions it. But it doesn’t much matter what the Swedish director questions since he mainly provides only emotional depth. He fashions art, to be sure, but so far (I haven’t yet seen Thirst or To Joy) it is only in Winter Light and My Summer with Monica that I can enjoy this art in full measure. I’ll be leaving Persona on the shelf.
by Dean | Jun 10, 2018 | General
Hendrick Ibsen‘s play The Lady from the Sea is about alienation from the self—in a woman named Ellida. Her own mind is resisting her marriage to her husband, Dr. Wangel, because she did not have “free will” upon accepting his years-ago proposal. But Wangel is a good man, and the home he has built for Ellida can be considered a home of love.
Alas, this may not be the kind of home in which Arnholm and Bolette, Ellida’s stepdaughter, live after they get married, for Bolette glorifies, to the exclusion of everything else, experiencing the world. Certainly she does not glorify Arnhom (her former teacher) because she does not yet love him. But in the future . . .? Ibsen’s play is heartening without being wholly happy. It is a small-scale work filmed, with impeccable acting, by the BBC in 1974. I greatly appreciate the production.
These days the plot of The Lady from the Sea is rather stale. Still, the play is interesting and probing. Eileen Atkins is histrionically authoritative, and beautifully sensitive, as Ellida. Denholm Elliott always knew how to enact a good man; he is masterly and never boring. Never false is the way to describe Michael Feast as an enthusiastic would-be artist. Carole Nimmons is a strikingly authentic Bolette. All the actors are great in this respectable TV mounting.
by Dean | Jun 7, 2018 | General
A British comedian and an atheist, Ricky Gervais remarked to a TV talk show host that if all the sacred books such as the Bible were to disappear, to perish, they would never be written again. By contrast, if all the science books that have been penned were to disappear, they would be written again since the facts contained in them would be re-discovered and re-established. But Mr. Gervais is wrong. He’s right about the Book of Mormon, wrong about the Bible. Biblical doctrine would emerge again because God would still be doing His salvific work. People would still find out about the Atonement and justification by faith, etc.—palpably they would find out—and the news would be rapidly written down, as it was in Paul’s epistles. Revelation would still exist. It would not be withheld.
by Dean | Jun 4, 2018 | General
“We locked eyes for a moment and felt the bond of sisterhood between two Christians who had hopes and dreams that seemed to have stalled right over the Bermuda Triangle.”
Not a bad descriptive sentence, this, from a born-again—and also talented—writer, Sandra Byrd, author of Don’t Kiss Him Good-bye (2010), the source of the sentence. The hopes and dreams are those of the narrator, Savvy Smith, an American high school exchange student living in London. They are the usual hopes and dreams, even for a Christian: the “him” in the novel’s title is a British crush called Tommy, a non-boyfriend for Savvy but not a non-Christian. Tommy, however, is involved with Chloe. Will Savvy even be able to attend the May Day Ball as something other a photojournalist for the school paper, London Confidential?
Er, when I picked Good-bye up, I thought it was the first book in Byrd’s series for young people, also called London Confidential; but it’s the third. Oh, well. At least the item enables me to see, when the subject of being “unequally yoked” with an unbeliever comes up, how nicely subtle a writer Byrd can be. And its being #3 in the series hardly left me lost.
by Dean | May 31, 2018 | General
It is said that our wretched national debt will lead to a crisis for Social Security Disability by 2021. It is said that it will lead to a crisis for Social Security in general by 2030. If this is true, what will U.S. politicians do about it? I don’t know. Probably something morally questionable (or wrong).
Are they still disinclined to radically reform the welfare state? Have they considered issuing vouchers to the poor and middle class for nursing-home costs—after abolishing problematic Medicaid, I mean? Is there any interest in providing the so-called “universal basic income”—say, $13,000 a year—to every adult citizen?
Don’t think crises won’t come. We all know, for example, they are coming apropos of people with dementia and their families.
by Dean | May 29, 2018 | General
Monsieur Hire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A reclusive man (Michel Blanc) who constantly spies on his neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire), in the French film Monsieur Hire (1989), may have murdered a young woman. A police detective suspects he has. What we learn, however, is that he has fallen in love—an un-eccentric act. Is it eccentric, or abnormal, that the Bonnaire character, Alice, might be falling in love with him?
Directed by Patrice Leconte, Hire reminds us that we can never predict what other people will do, except when we can. I haven’t read the Georges Simenon novel from which the film is adapted, but without a doubt, in my head, the film is worth seeing—and worthy. It isn’t dated and its cast fills the bill agreeably. In ’89 it proved French movies could still be respectable.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | May 27, 2018 | General
Make no mistake about it: as I have said before, the rich man in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16) represents the Jews of Judah. Judah the man, after whom the Israelite tribe was named, had five brothers, and Judah the tribe acquired great wealth, great privilege. If Mr. Sumptuous, upon dying, goes to Hell, almost all the Judah Jews of history go there as well. It isn’t enough for them to go through the Holocaust. They must also be placed in a locus of everlasting torture.
But it is hard to believe any Jew will be damned in Hell when it is declared by Isaiah that “all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord and will make their boast in him” (Is. 45:25, NIV). The prophet who wrote Ezekiel 37 seems to confirm this—seems to be teaching the universal salvation of the Jews. The words above from Isaiah 45 follow the staggering statement about ALL people swearing what is probably allegiance to God. Saul and Jeroboam are left out of this, and will simply suffer forever?
by Dean | May 25, 2018 | General
Cover of Loulou
In the 1980 French picture, Loulou, by Maurice Pialat, people drift (rather quickly) into intimacy and betrayal and pain as they lead dismayingly unconventional sex lives. Nelly (Isabelle Huppert) resists her unimaginative husband (Guy Marchand) and finds, or think she finds, both sex and love with jobless ex-convict Loulou (Gerard Depardieu). Loulou is a thoroughgoing catalyst, gaining male enemies, prompting a female acquaintance to voluntarily stand topless before him. He can turn anything on its head. Depardieu is right for the role but offers a little too much facial play, whereas Huppert’s facial play is proper.
Huppert is superb, making Nelly as ordinary as she is combative, as stubborn as she is weary. Marchand is marvelously true and subtle. Pialat’s direction never goes clunky or flat, and with Yann Dedet’s editing the film’s pace is good. I might add that Loulou also makes you feel like a bit of a snoop.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | May 22, 2018 | General
Blue Like Jazz: The Movie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Steve Taylor‘s Blue Like Jazz (2012) is based on a memoir by Donald Miller. In it, an evangelical kid—Miller—is so stunned by his Christian mother’s having an affair with a youth pastor that he flees to the Portland, Oregon liberal-arts college his pagan father has enrolled him in. The student body there is eaten up with leftism and tends to glorify sex and drinking, with the result that young Donald happily dismisses conservative evangelical belief. What we end up with is a basically Christian film, but one which expects Joe Christian (in this case, Don) to duly apologize to the world for the shabby conduct of the devout. This includes everything from the Crusades to “U.S. foreign policy.”
Nice try, Steve Taylor, but no cigar.
True, the film is reasonably intelligent, but not without many flaws. It seems to consider the Southern Baptist denomination a “strange church” (i.e., not liberal). The action of the story is rather forced, the characters are scantily drawn and, to me, Marshall Allman (Don) is not a very likable actor.
by Dean | May 18, 2018 | General
Boy, do the people in Cafe Metropole (1937) need—and want—money! And how careless and devious they can be in trying to acquire it! Even Tyrone Power‘s Alexis, so young and callow-looking, is a needy louse; he just doesn’t seem like one. The whole movie doesn’t seem to be about corruption and irresponsibility. Frothy, it isn’t satirical or mocking, but genial—and with inoffensive Loretta Young.
Teaming up again with Power (who is miscast), this time in a droll non-farce, she is deeply palatable. Unlike Power, she has charisma and can match the dignity of Adolphe Menjou, who is also in the film. Congrats to the supporting cast. CM is moderately entertaining.
