by Dean | Apr 24, 2018 | General
Rembrandt – The Mennonite Minister Cornelis Claesz. Anslo in Conversation with his Wife, Aaltje (detail) – WGA19143 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Taking the existence of God for granted, Silent Light (2009) is a truly religious picture—and a superlative one. In it, the head of a Mennonite family living in northern Mexico has confessedly fallen in love with another woman (“confessedly” because he told his wife about it). That the wife is as understanding and tolerant as she is just might strain credulity, but so be it. What’s important is Carlos Reygadas’s poetic filmmaking for the crafting of something spiritually, metaphysically meaningful.
The first half of this long film is partly about the illusion that sin is some kind of summum bonum—evident in the scene of outdoor smooching between the two adulterers. Assuredly the second half is about sin as well, but the theme of grace also emerges. The “silent light” of the title—since light never makes a sound, it must be a metaphor—is a divine miracle near the movie’s end. It may be a miracle hard to accept, but Reygadas is intimating that the concept of the Deity in control should not be hard to accept.
Silent Light is a Mexican film whose dialogue is in the Mennonite low German language.
by Dean | Apr 22, 2018 | General
For a long time now, the United States has had imposed on it the concept of Salvation By Bureaucracy. Not spiritual but material salvation. Welcome to our welfare state. It isn’t the kind of welfare state we should have, since these bureaucracies are inadequate and wasteful and very expensive, and government deficits are still rising. Every year 70 billion Medicare and Medicaid dollars are lost to fraud and improper payments, which means every year 70 billion is poured down a rathole, thus we often have Salvation By Bureaucracy for people who don’t need to be saved.
I say we ought to do what Charles Murray has proposed: abolish Medicare and Medicaid and all other transfer-payment programs, and replace them with an annual grant of $13,000 to every adult in the nation, 21 and older. The grant would be reimbursed through a surtax placed on what are by anyone’s estimation decent salaries. This way, Salvation By Bureaucracy is attenuated. This way, low wages are less of a burden. This way, Social Security and Medicare never become unspeakably insolvent. This way, bargaining for a particular salary can be a sure thing.
My own view is that at the same time there should be nationwide federal propaganda teaching the American people to use this money for health care, assisted living, car insurance—the important things. It should stress that this is all the government money they will be getting, unless the states are stupid enough to provide some welfare dough of their own. Many will not listen, of course, but others will; and why, in any case, should we have a government which babies American adults? Bureaucrats regularly decide things for low-income people, as though they alone possess the smarts for this. They won’t be propagandists; they’ll be—and they are—nannies. But nannies can’t prevent the staggering debt that will spring up when, in the span of two decades, millions and millions of Americans start receiving Social Security and Medicare. What politicians have recently done is cut taxes by $1.5 trillion, but, well, what’s going on is not exactly economic conservatism.
by Dean | Apr 19, 2018 | General
To redeem us, Jesus Christ did not need to do what condemned sinners are said to do: suffer forever. In Hell. No way. Jesus suffered temporarily. If it wasn’t necessary for the Paschal Lamb to suffer forever, why is it necessary for the unsaved?
From Psalm 22: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him” (NIV).
The New Jerusalem Bible translates the words for “all the ends of the earth” as “the whole wide world.” The whole wide world will remember and turn to the Lord. All humanity? Seems that way. From Psalm 65: “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.”
by Dean | Apr 15, 2018 | General
Isaiah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear” (Isaiah 45, NIV).
This is strong language. What fanfare! But why? Why is it so important that God has uttered in all integrity the not-to-be-revoked “Before me every knee will bow”? A number of Bible translations render the last part of this passage “every tongue will swear allegiance.” Allegiance? Yes, to God. Remember Philippians 2:11 (“every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”). Again, why the fanfare? Is it because all people will ultimately be saved, that this is what it means for every knee to bow, etc.?
by Dean | Apr 12, 2018 | General
Christian women, like other women, chat about past gatherings with relatives, as on holidays. Obviously they mention mothers and fathers and grandparents and others who have passed on, liking the stories they tell about them, getting a laugh because of them. But some, or many, of these relatives were not Christians; they never converted. They died in their sins. Thus the church would have to regard them as being damned in Hell. Yet I inexorably sense that these women (men too) secretly believe that their relatives died in grace, that somehow God went ahead and saved them. Perhaps they wouldn’t converse about them if they didn’t. It’s like this: They had a grandpa who never lived a Christian life—never—but it’s okay. God didn’t allow him to go to Hell. He will be judged, yes, but not damned. Why should they believe such a thing?
They do, however, or they behave as though they do. Are they secretly noticing an outrageousness in the damnation doctrine? Do they suspect (I more than suspect) that the traditional church is wrong?
by Dean | Apr 11, 2018 | General
English: Folio 18 recto, beginning of the Epistle to Thessalonians, decorated headpiece (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So: the anti-Christian persecutors of Second Thessalonians 1 will receive “everlasting destruction.” The teaching has long existed that a more proper translation is “destruction of the age,” or maybe “age-during destruction.” That is, a destruction belonging to an age. The Koine Greek word for everlasting, aionious, does not mean everlasting. It refers to a period of time. “Everlasting punishment” in Matthew 25 is punishment of the age.
Where does this leave Hell?
by Dean | Apr 1, 2018 | General
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Movie poster of The Ten Commandments. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The acting in Cecil DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments is not always good, so it’s a wonder the thespians manage to exude as much true spirituality as they do. Not that it is never artificial—of course it is—but the artificiality of the entire picture fails to upend the spiritual feeling DeMille was after.
- Since the ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods, cats included, surely it is unsurprising to find an Egyptian woman, Anne Baxter‘s Nefretiri, worshipping a handsome non-god, Moses (Charleton Heston). Baxter is beautiful, her acting nicely precise in its dreaminess. Debra Paget and Yvonne De Carlo are beautiful too, but do not have much impact here.
- It was inspired of the screenwriters to have Joshua (John Derek) paint lamb’s blood on the doorposts and lintel of the house where Lilia (Paget) is being kept by middle-aged Dathan (that pig!) It means firstborn Lilia doesn’t have to die. Ah, Moses, however, tells the stricken Nefretiri—nothing really goes right for her—that he is unable to save the life of her small son, and yet this is not true. He simply needs to urge her to arrange the painting of lamb’s blood on her doorposts and lintel.
Cropped screenshot of Anne Baxter with Yul Brynner from the trailer for the film The Ten Commandments. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Mar 28, 2018 | General
Pickup on South Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Sam Fuller film, Pickup on South Street (1953), is probably the only movie ever made in which a prostitute, or former prostitute, is accused of being a subversive Communist. But the woman in question, Candy (Jean Peters), simply doesn’t know the company she keeps, and is, it turns out, badly roughed up by a Communist. Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), a cynical thief, gets rough with her too—welcome to New York City—but later the two become, er, committed lovers.
Fashioned under the studio system, Pickup is better directed, more polished, than Fuller’s White Dog, and just as absorbing. This despite a couple of defects in Fuller’s screenplay: e.g. Thelma Ritter‘s character never would have stayed alive as long as she does. I like most of the acting, except that Murvyn Vye, as a police captain, never changes his scowling expression.
by Dean | Mar 25, 2018 | General
Film poster for True Crime – Copyright 1999 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Clint Eastwood miscast himself as a newspaper reporter in the 1999 True Crime, but a bigger problem is the weak plot. Based on an Andrew Klavan novel, the film’s serious subject is the death-row conviction of an innocent man (Isaiah Washington). Steve, the reporter, interviews people for his paper but he also likes to play Dick Tracy, and he doesn’t understand how a male witness, after a homicide, could have seen the innocent convict’s gun through a rack of potato chips. Nice try, but this won’t fly as a plot device.
On the positive side, the anguish of the convict and his family is handled movingly, and there is a powerful scene of marital breakup featuring Eastwood and an extraordinary Diane Venora. Both these scenes belong in a better movie—one, in fact, that doesn’t rely on constant profanity and obscenity to hold a viewer’s attention. (Thanks, Clint, for your use of James Woods in this regard.) True Crime is somewhat of an offense.
by Dean | Mar 19, 2018 | General
Poster for ”La Règle du jeu, directed by Jean Renoir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the late 1930s, film artist Jean Renoir was not happy with French society, which he exposed in La Regle du jeu (1939)—The Rules of the Game—as unserious and self-seeking and infernally adulterous. Curiously, class distinctions take a step back (both Christine and her chambermaid cheat on their husbands), but the camaraderie we see is usually limited to one’s own class. And yet this camaraderie, such as that between Christine and Genevieve de Marras, quickly departs, and certainly without it, there is mayhem.
For all this, The Rules of the Game is a “pleasant” movie (Renoir’s word, translated); it is pronouncedly comical. It is a classic, made so partly by some excellent acting. Marcel Dalio, for example, looks right as the Marquis Robert, but is also unerring with the character’s casual decadence and tired vigor. Mila Parely, another example, cleverly plays Genevieve, the marquis’s mistress, displaying a range of emotion as admirable as her poise. But why was Rules Renoir’s last great film?
(In French with English subtitles)
