Shadows in the Sun

Challenging the dichotomy between reading a book and watching a movie, a film can include writing lessons within a narrative that is oriented to a romance and the business of a publishing house signing a writer for a second book. In the film, Shadows in the Sun (2005), Jeremy, a young employee of a major publisher, is sent by his brass, business-minded boss, Andrew Benton, to sign Weldon Parish, who lives hundreds of miles away from London and has retired from writing due to his fear of failure. In resisting Jeremy’s efforts to manipulate him to sign, Parish agrees to talk shop with the young writer. Although by no means a major part of the film, Weldon’s brief lessons and exercises can be of use to viewers. Film can indeed serve the cause of writing rather than merely draw readers away from books to the screen. In fact, astute viewers can critique the brief lessons and thus actively make use of film for intellectual and vocational purposes. Going through the lessons and exercises in the film can illustrate such an active engagement.

The first lesson occurs when Weldon and Jeremy are looking out at a beautiful sunset over an impressive landscape. Weldon suggests that Jeremy think of words as colors, and the paper as the canvas. The accomplished, elder writer demonstrates how words can be utilized as such, by describing the sunset in the following words: “The sunset, slowly, (is) igniting the sky in fiery shades of red and orange; in the distance, dark clouds rolled over the horizon, riding the summer winds. Soon day will give way to night, and with it will come the silence that washes over everything.” Besides the problematic grammatical lapses, which I submit are problematic even if done for stylistic purposes, Weldon goes off topic when he slides into describing the night, which obviously does not include the sunset. Regarding the sunset itself, the clouds are arguably not dark. If he is overstating the darkness here, perhaps the shadows in his published book, Shadow Dancers, are also overstated. On a macro or “meta” level, perhaps the film’s title, Shadows in the Sun, overstates the salience of the metaphor of shadow in the film. Weldon misses completely the beautiful colored reflection of the sky on the fields below. Those colors are as vibrant as the orange and yellow part of the sky nearest to the sliver of sun. In fact, the colors in the sky and on the fields make for a rustic overall hue. In hurrying into the night, the writer’s “painting” of the sunset in words falls short.

The inattentiveness to detail is all the more significant because of what Weldon teaches Jeremy on the importance of drawing on one’s own experiences in writing. “If you’re writing a fight scene,” Weldon explains, “it helps if you have been in a fight.” Weldon then asks Jeremy to describe being hit in the stomach. Not impressed, Weldon proceeds to punch his de facto apprentice so Jeremy can experience being hit in stomach. Sure enough, Jeremy is then able to flush out the details that he had missed for lack of experience, like snot coming out of one’s nose and the watering of one’s eyes. The film’s screenwriter could have had Jeremy subsequently ask Weldon whether a writer should be bound by one’s experience; Weldon himself mentions the role of imagination in writing.

The lessons then move beyond technique to what makes a writer great. Such a writer finds that part of oneself that has something to say. “You know when you’ve found it,” Weldon says. Jeremy has not found it in himself, so he is dissatisfied with his writing. Weldon tries another way of making his point. “Art is not something you choose to do; it’s something that chooses you.” Good writing comes out of an irresistible urge to say or express something in particular; both the urge and the content lies within, so the challenge is to find or realize it. Even if experience does not limit what a writer can write about in detail, that which a writer is passionate about is limited, it does not come from the will, as if a writer could choose that which must be written. In writing short essays, I try to restrict myself to points I feel strongly about expressing; I resist writing just to keep the essays coming.

Knowing that Jeremy has fallen in love with Isabella, who is one of Weldon’s daughters, Weldon asks Jeremy to describe her face. The point is to try to put in words that which one is passionate about. Jeremy makes the following attempt: “Sunlight frames her body in a golden glow of honey light while the wind dances gently through the long strands of her hair. Her face is strong, proud, with eyes that don’t easily give away their secrets. It’s a face that doesn’t call out, but softly beckons.” Although Weldon is impressed, this coloring with words can be critiqued. First of all, Isabella is framed by grass rather than any “glow of honey light”—this description of light may itself be overdone. Sunlight does not frame her body; rather, green grass does. Furthermore, her hair is not long, and she has it in a pony tail so it is not dancing with the wind. As for her strong, proud face, her broad jaw bones do give that impression. As for eyes not giving away their secrets, her facial expressions vividly and straightforwardly show her disproval of the mischief of her father and Jeremy and then her affection for both men, obviously different in kind. In fact, her blue eyes sparkle such that they fill out her marvelous smile, but Jeremy misses this rather obvious point. As for a face that does not call out, I must confess that don’t know what a face that calls out looks like; I’m equally at a loss with regard to a face that softly beckons; usually people beckon with their arms and hands. So maybe it is for the best that I don’t write novels.

My point is that potential and even actual writers can learn how to write better from Weldon’s mini-lessons and exercises in the film by interiorizing these and going on to critique them. The medium of non-documentary, fictional film can be actively engaging for viewers both intellectually in terms of added knowledge and vocationally in terms of improved work-product.

The Physician

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

Rob Cole’s crime is the desecration of a human corpse by dissecting it. It may be that dissection does not count as desecration because the study is done systematically and for the beneficial outcome of progress in medical science, but this argument is not even presented to the imam in the film. Even though the old man agreed to the procedure just before he died in Ibn Sina’s hospital (and medical school), and Cole’s purpose was to save lives by discovering human organs, the imam sentences not only Rob, but also Ibn Sina to be executed for having “violated Allah.” Presumably the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish deity is against progress in the science of medicine such that sickness is not so often a death-sentence. Holding to a dogma nonetheless demonstrates one of the fallibilities of the human mind when it enters the domain of religion. It is not as if Cole’s dissection and study would cause death and destruction—two things that are typically associated with evil. In fact, Rob, with Ibn’s assistance, which alone is an interesting role reversal, successfully operates on Shah Ala ad Daula, the king of Isfahan, using the knowledge obtained during the dissection of the corpse. That operation in turn enables the Shah to survive the next day, when his presence is needed as his army sets out to fight a radical Islam-only invading force to which the local imam is allied. That force is against the presence of the Jews in the city, and would certainly against the Shah pardoning Cole and Sina. In short, the Shah was too secular and tolerant for the imam and the related invading king.

The “religious” rationale for finding Cole in violation of Allah’s law should be treated as more problematic in the film. Cole, Sina, or even the Shah could engage with the imam during or after the “trial” on the validity in religious terms of the injunction against medical science advancing by study of human internal-organs, for what is scientific—and thus of that domain—is being claimed by the domain of religion. Hence it is assumed by everyone in the film except for the medical student and his teacher that religion can legitimately override medicine even in the domain of medicine.  I contend that this overreaching is invalid—it is akin to an invading army taking over a city—because religion’s coverage should fit within its borders. In other words, religion has primary jurisdiction over that which is distinctly religious. The overall domain of a religious deity holds sway within the religious domain, just like a king’s authority only extends throughout his kingdom even if he claims to be ruler of the world. Kings of other kingdoms could rightly object to the latter claim by insisting that another king’s authority extends only to the borders of that king’s realm. This does not invalidate the meaning of “ruler of the world” within that realm, just as “God is omnipresent and omnipotent” has meaning in the religious domain even though science and other domains, including metaphysics, psychology, and history, do not yield to the authority that is in the religious realm. Paradoxically, by overreaching, the credibility of that authority is diminished even within the religious domain. In the film, the validity of Cole’s dissection of a willing corpse is stronger than that of the religious decree against “desecrating” human corpses regardless of any benefits from it in other domains. The egocentric over-reaching of religion can be likened to a bully, who, once made transparent, is typically viewed as less than credible.

The gap between whether Cole (and Sina) should be applauded or punished is so large that they can be said to manifest from different social realities. Cole and Sina heal the Shah as a result of Cole’s dissection and his teaching thereof to a very enthusiastic Sina, yet the local imam ignores or dismisses the value of this progress and its benefit—perhaps not just for religious reasons as he is politically against the ruling Shah. Cole utterly dismisses the validity of the Imam’s ruling and sentencing on the basis of Cole and Sina having offended or violated Allah. Whereas Cole and Sina may have been religious, the narrow, and one-sided ruling makes sure that even if the two men survive, they would never be fully religious again. Running a hospital as a physician back in London at the end of the film, Rob Cole surely looks at religion itself more skeptically than he did before hearing the imam’s narrow ruling.

The upshot is that confining the authority and validity of religion to its own domain so it does not over-reach with the presumption of legitimately being able to overrule the innate authorities in other domains in those domains is a good thing. This does not mean that the distinctly religious belief that a deity is sovereign without limitation is rendered invalid in the religious domain. Likewise, claims that everything is political and religion is really just psychology (e.g., Freud) or a function of means of production (e.g., Marx) are valid only in the domains of psychology and economic philosophy, respectively. Religionists are not the only guilty party in terms of over-extending the authority of their domain onto others even over the authorities in those domains. Within a given domain, I contend that the substance and criteria of the domain is worthy of respect in itself rather than as a subsidiary of another domain’s substance and criteria. Disrespect in this respect may even contribute towards a mental habit that thwarts interreligious dialogue and peace. Even respect between people may be diminished.

In the film, Hope Gap (2019), Grace attempts to use the Roman Catholic Church’s religious injunction of legal divorce to undercut the validity of her separated husband’s request for a divorce. Edward’s request is unhinged from any reality, Grace insists (as if by even her faith she is omniscient with respect to realities). That she has been contemplating suicide suggests that she may be the person untethered from a viable reality. From the standpoint of a legal system of a country, the religious dictate of one party of a marital separation should not be allowed to overrule a law that permits divorce even if the counterparty (Edward) is religious. In the office of a lawyer, the substance and criteria of the law should prevail, just as the substance and criteria of distinctly religious meaning should prevail in the office of a priest, imam, minister, or rabbi. Those four functionaries have much more in common, being in and of the same domain, than they may realize. In fact, they could help each other to resist the power-aggrandizing temptation to overreach their religious authority in usurping the authority of authorities in other domains. Then the substance and unique criteria of the religious domain of human experience would be more respected. At the very least, humility and self-discipline—“coloring within the lines”—naturally earns respect.

Lest this critique be misconstrued as secular in nature, the upshot is that the stuff “within the lines” of the religious domain (i.e., distinctly religious phenomena, such as religious meaning that does not depend on history or science, as is not reducible to ethics or psychology) deserves to be uncovered from underneath the weeds that have hitherto been allowed to grow and even thrive from seeds that have drifted over from other gardens. In the film, the imam may not even understand what desecration means in a religious sense, and yet he is quick to interlard a religious belief as if it deserved to be decisive and thus hegemonic in the political and (related) jurisprudential domains. Similarly, I wonder whether people who deem themselves capable of accusing others of committing abominations as if the word itself warrants death know that the word only means “disliked by God.” This is distinct from “hated by God,” of which evil unequivocally qualifies. To be sure, in the religious domain, such activities that are disliked by the deity are not recommended, for the actual point is likely to obey God, but the commonly held dire connotations of the word as if dislike were equivalent to hate misses the mark and yet precisely such “making mole hills into mountains” has given rise to much suffering and harm historically. The sheer presumptuous of ignorance and what it feels entitled to, is, I suppose, hated rather than merely disliked from the perspective of the very condition of existence, or Creation, even when that condition or ultimacy is personified as a deity with divine attributes even if they anthropomorphic in appearance. Film has amazing potential as a medium through which such thoughts can be projected and put in dialogue with some depth and extent beyond what is typically done by filmmakers who want to hurry a plot as if skipping a stone quickly on the surface of a lake.

Hope Gap

Organized or institutional religion as the Roman Catholic Church is in the background in the 2019 European film, Hope Gap. Even with such names as Grace and Angela, religious connotations are present. In fact, the film can be interpreted, at least in part, as a critique on religion in general and Catholicism in particular. The medium of film can indeed play a vital role in critiquing sacred cows from the vantagepoint of an oblique angle or a safe distance.

Before turning to how religion is portrayed and critiqued, I turn briefly to the film’s narrative, or plot, which centers around Edward leaving Grace, his wife of 29 years, for Angela, the parent of one of Edward’s students. Edward has had enough of Grace’s violence and rigidity, but he is gracious enough to explain to her as he is leaving that they are very different people. Although the early years of their marriage had been good, he leaves her convinced that he had picked the wrong woman for him. So, Edward moves out to live with Angela, while the product of the marriage, Jamie, is left to care for his mother, Grace, whose hope that Edward might someday return must inevitably fade because he is in love with another woman. Unfortunately, Edward and Grace both use their son rather than confront each other directly to work out differences in the marital separation. Fearing that Grace might commit suicide, Jamie is the good son and draws her out of her hopeless shell by means of poetry rather than his mother’s religious faith.

That faith comes across as dogmatic and rigid, rather than as open like spirit. When Jamie first visits, Grace is not at all tolerant of his atheism or agnosticism—that we invent God to deal with life, which is miserable and unfair. Believing in God cannot be forced, according to Grace; she knows she cannot tell her son to believe in God.  Interestingly, she totally agrees with Edward’s claim that you feel love; you don’t tell love, so you can’t tell God to another person. “God is a conviction,” Edward says. He has faith, for instance, that his love for Angela is not illusory. The core teaching of Paul and Augustine that God itself is love is the foundation of Edward’s religious faith, and yet he has no interest in going to Mass. Rather, his faith in love is lived out as he moves from a woman whom he does not love to one whom he does love.

The irony is that Grace goes to Mass regularly and yet the way she treats Edward is not out of love. For instance, she has a history of violence against him (but not vice versa), she orders him around, and she even explicitly rejects and forbids him his “reality” that includes divorce. To her, marriage is a life-long sacrament. To commit a loveless, even possibly abusive marriage to such a rigid standard fails to take into account the human condition. Not even Angela is an angel, for she tells Grace that she has taken Edward because then only one person, rather than the three, would be unhappy.

Another way of viewing Grace’s need to dominate even to the point of arbitrating between “realities” to her own advantage is by looking at her efforts to manipulate Jamie for information on how she might contact Edward even though he is refusing to have any contact with Grace, as well as her decision to drive to Angela’s house and even enter it without even knocking at the door to confront Edward (and Angela) anyway. Her lack of basic respect for Edward belies her claim to love him, and it makes a shame of her attempt to foist her notion of the sacrament of marriage as applicable to their marriage. Her highhandedness even shows in her complaint about there being too many requests for mercy in the Mass. Obviously, she doesn’t believe that her religious faith warrants any mercy from God, even though of all of the main characters in the film, she is arguably farthest from God as inconvenient love even to one’s detractors and enemies.

To be sure, Edward’s notion of religious faith in God as felt as a conviction rather than to be imposed on other people is not perfect. Implying that Grace is weak, in that she will not accept the fact that their marriage has been over for a long time and it is best to split up, he voice-overs a poem that includes, “by abandoning the weak, the strong survive. It may seem brutal, but what the point of everyone being dead.” Abandoning Grace is what he needed to do to stay alive, whether literally or in terms of being able to love. It is ironic that Grace complains of too many references the need for mercy in the Catholic Mass, and yet Edward could stand to be more merciful to people who are vulnerable. His offer of friendship to Grace made as she is leaving Angela’s house comes off as fake or naïve.

The poem that Jamie reads to his mother at the end of the film is better. Strength and resilience are exactly what Grace needs to hear, and Jamie even provides her with a website by which she can post poems for other suffering or grieving people. It is through poetry, rather than her Catholic faith, that she finds solace. As she finds through poetry and volunteering at a secular charity that she is not alone in struggling and suffering, both Edward’s survival of the strong (by abandoning the weak) philosophy and Grace’s own rigid, imposing religious faith and church attendance recede into the background. Unless a religious organization can provide a place for the living, such that spiritual natures can ascend rather than being tied down by rules that should not be applied uniformly to human complexity, parishioners will look elsewhere even for spiritual food, whether that comes in the form of a dutiful, loving son, poetry, or something else that provides hope out of severe loss and suffering.

Suffering as a means of spiritual progress should not be applied to people who already grievously in emotional pain. Sacraments should be applied where liberating rather than felt as painful, destructive chains. The distinctly Christian kind of love that can be applied to Grace and Edward has to do with the compassion and mercy that each of them could extend to the other while they are separating. Such love does not necessitate that Edward drop or sacrifice his personal boundaries, and it does not give Grace license to violate them even in the name of compassion. Nor would mercy justify Edward in violating Grace’s need for emotional (and physical) space at the end of the film.