Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

I contend that the film does a bad job of adding events to Mary’s life—filling in gaps, as it were—but the film does a good job of evolving her spirituality, or spiritual strength, and an even better job at intimating the nature of religious or spiritual transcendence. The failure, I suspect, have more to do with wanting to titillate audiences with fight scenes and even special effects, such as when Mary and Joseph ride a horse through a wall of fire to escape a fight scene. As there is no hint if a miracle, the entire scene adds nothing theologically and thus it can be easily tossed. Similarly, killing off Mary’s father in yet another fight scene adds nothing theologically and can thus be written off as another appeasement to keep movie-goers entertained by action and drama. Mary’s years spent growing up in the Temple scrubbing floors and presumably being educated are more useful, however, because her stint there cements Mary’s association with religion, which in turn helps support her as a major, though not the central, character in the Gospels. In this way, the film can be considered to serve as a foundation, or basement, for the Gospel narratives, which of course focus on Jesus, the Christ-Messiah.

The principal ways in which the film evolves the story by providing background to the Gospels are subtle and few. The first does not even involve any lines. Mary’s spiritual strength can be seen literally in how she maintains eye-contact when she comes face to face with Herod. He is the one who looks away; she does not. The implication stated by one of Herod’s guards is that Mary has “special powers,” and is thus a threat. The assumption is antiquated in the modern world; we would say Mary has fortitude. More than once in the film, she does not cave into the demon who is trying to tempt her. Her spiritual—not just ethical!—strength is evinced in her standing up to evil entities, human and otherwise. This hints at Jesus’s line to Pontius Pilote, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” Mary has that same faith, so there is a spiritual connection between mother and son. Considering all the antagonists facing Mary in the film, her faith that her role in the saga by which love will conquer the world by means of her son will succeed is truly amazing.

That faith is explicitly thought by Mary as the last line in the film. “But in the end, love will save the world.” Love will prevail. That may sound strange to people living in 2024, given the horrendous and large-scale aggression that were still being unleashed by certain governments, which of course are comprised of human beings with power. Mary’s faith may seem woefully or downright utopian. In the film, Mary believes that her faith that love will save the world has a lot to do with the fact that she chose her son just as God chose Mary to bear Jesus, and she would make the same choice even in that last scene after hearing a prophesy in the Temple from an old man. Holding baby Jesus in his hands, the man tells Mary and Joseph, “This child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel, and he will be opposed, and the sword will pierce your soul, Mary, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Even in spite of this future, Mary says, in effect, bring it on; the goal is worth it.

Parsing the prophet’s statement can provide us with the theological meat of the film. The haughty will be brought low by Jesus’s preachments and example of self-less, humble love, whereas the presumed lowly yet humble Hebrews of pure hearts will no longer be presumed to be sick or sinful (or both). It is easy to grasp that the sword refers to Mary watching Jesus’s excruciating death on a cross and having to mourn the death of a son; it is more difficult to understand what is meant by the sword that will pierce Mary’s soul being necessary “so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Christians watching the film may expect something like, “so that many will be saved.” Revealing the thoughts of many people whose thoughts were presumably hidden is a curious expression. Is the revealing of the thoughts of many part of, or necessary for, love to save the world? At its conclusion, the film raises an interesting puzzle that, in pertaining to the future, presumably has to do with the content of the Gospel narratives, including Jesus’s preachments and life. In the Gospels, does he or his actions facilitate the revealing of the thoughts of people? What thoughts, and of whom?

It is perhaps in the nature of religious truth that it is not in a film’s action scenes, but like the breeze that passed by Ezekiel on the mountain—a breeze that eludes the grasp of our finite fingers. Distinctly religious transcendence is not exhausted within the limits of human cognition, perception, or sensibility (emotion), so wrote Pseudo-Dionysius in the sixth century. The film is perhaps most of value in affording us an experiential glimpse of such transcendence as we try innately to figure out the prophesy.

Obsession

Brian De Palma’s film, Obsession (1976), harkens back to Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo (1958) primarily in that resemblances between a character-contrived myth, or story, and the closely related (though different in key respects) social reality in the film (i.e., what’s really going on in the film’s story-world) trigger perplexed reactions for the character being duped by other characters in the film. I thought she died, but there she is . . . or maybe that’s another woman who looks like her—so much so that I believe I can will the woman to be her. The human mind may be such that it convinces itself of even a supernatural explanation rather than admits to have been fooled by someone else’s cleverness. At the very least, doubt as to what is really going on can be stultifying. The human mind is all too willing obviate its uncertainty by either resorting to a supernatural explanation or making something so by force of will, as if believing something to be the case is sufficient to make it so.

The European philosopher, David Hume, wrote a text on the natural history of religion in which he suggests that we mere mortals have an innate tendency to add familiar ornaments onto divine simplicity; we innately anthropomorphize the wholly other so it looks human. Then we believe that our artifices are ontological, or real, and even divine. De Palma’s Obsession explicitly draws on religious iconography and even dream-like mysticism in conveying Michael’s vision of Sandra as Elizabeth brought back from the grave. Viewers may resist the religious cross-over because it is easier to accept that a distraught man believes someone is his deceased wife than that our minds are just as prone to lapses when we enter the domain of religion. This is not to suggest that religious meaning is thus invalid, or even that symbol, myth and ritual cannot be useful in enabling religious experience; rather, Obsession can, if we allow it to do so, gently show us what our minds may be up to in making metaphysical and ontological leaps in matters of religious faith. At the very least, the human mind ensconced in the religious domain regularly confounds belief with fact, whether epistemologically or ontologically. Similarly, we conflate two distinct literary genres: faith narrative and historical non-fiction as if the respective purposes were the same even to the respective writers themselves. We are much better at distinguishing films that are fictional from those that are based on a true story. Even a fictional film can hold a mirror up to human nature as it exists in us. I submit that the human mind is not as goof-proof as we think. Both in Vertigo and Obsession, the minds of the protagonists are definitely put under stress by observation of resemblances that don’t make sense yet are extremely inviting.

In Vertigo, Scottie thinks he recognizes Madeleine even though the contrived story is that she jumped to her death at a convent. In Obsession, Michael thinks Sandra, whom he sees priming for a painter in an Italian church, is his former wife, Elizabeth, whom the contrived story has as having died in a car more than a decade earlier. Whereas Madeleine really is Madeleine, Sandra is not Elizabeth, but is actually Michael’s (and Elizabeth’s) daughter, who is in on the scam that is being perpetrated by one of the kidnappers and Robert, Michael’s very patient real-estate partner.  Sometimes investments like swindling jobs can take over a decade before the returns come in.

In Obsession, it is not just the resemblance—though curiously not adjusting for the difference in ages—of Sandra and Elizabeth by which De Palma conveys isomorphic (i.e., of the same shape or form) resonances throughout the film The images shown at step-wise distances as the open credits are shown are of a church on a hill in Italy. Michael and Elizabeth first met there, and this is where Michael sees Sandra during a business trip with his business partner over a decade after Elizabeth died. The visual resonance of the church is found in the large memorial structure that Michael has erected in a park for his dead wife and daughter. That even as a real-estate developer he refuses to carve up that part is a testament to how dear that monument is to him. The church and the memorial edifice are also isomorphic with the top of the wedding cake in Michael’s dream of his wedding to Sandra, who, uncomfortably, it turns out, is really his daughter, Amy. That incest may have occurred by the time the couple return to America is left up to the audience, though that Michael has his arm around Sandra in a taxi connotes a certain physical intimacy, especially given the changed sexual mores in the 1970s. The ethics aside, any discomfort felt by viewers can be said to have its source in the obvious lapse in Michael’s will of wish-fulfillment as being sufficient, to him, to render the young Sandra as a replacement or even incarnation of Elizabeth as if from the grave. Willing it so does not make it so. Michael’s dull gaze at Sandra when she is on a painting riser in a church full of religious iconography not only shows the suspension of his rational mind, but also the implication that religious devotion is also susceptible to such a lapse.

One way in which myth touches us emotionally and even spiritually is in the resonances between symbols in myth and things in the world in which we live. The human brain makes use of such likenesses in dreams, such as the one that Michael has of his wedding to Sophie. Whether intentionally or not, De Palma converges myth with the dream in portraying Sandra as translucent and even other-worldly as if she were a goddess. Sandra is vicariously Elizabeth, who has come back from the grave to give her inattentive husband another chance. Michael believes this to be so even in his waking state, and his temporally elongated gaze at Sandra at several points in the film resembles how a person might look at a religious statue, such as that of the Virgin Mary, in adoration. Sandra gains goddess-like standing in the myth, which Michael accords as real empirically.  Therefore, myth can also touch our world in that a person thought to be real (in our world) has mythic resonances. In Christianity, both Jesus and Mary are typically believed to have existed historically and also in a distinctly religious state (i.e., heaven) while maintaining human form via the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the bodily assumption of Mary.  

I submit that the salience of Christianity in the film allows the viewers to grasp that the myth in the story-world, which Michael believes is real in his waking daily life, resembles distinctly religious myth as it is believed in as real by religionists. Of course, one big difference is that viewers find out what is really the case in the film, and this bursts the story’s credence, whereas religious people are not debriefed as to whether the characters of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the Gospel stories are merely nominally real in the stories or actually existed historically. The debriefing in the film can be understood as giving the audience a psychic payoff in lieu of the one that never comes in religion.

Perhaps such a payoff in religion is not really what we want; after all, at the end of the Da Vinci Code (2006), Robert asks Sophie whether it is worth deflating the faith of Christians by revealing that Jesus was married and had at least one child—thus implying perhaps that Jesus was a man rather than a god-man. The religious meaning in Sophie’s spiritual, inherited qualities is not deflated, but the faith of many Christians who have not been debriefed on the relation between the myth and history could be expected to take a hit to the extent that the basis of their faith is the divinity of Jesus Christ rather than, say, compassion itself to people one doesn’t like (or don’t like the person).

If the reality is different than the myth, does the distinctly religious meaning in the latter necessarily or inherently collapse? Not so for Mary Magdalene in the film, Mary Magdalene (2018), who tries in vain to convince Peter in the last scene that the kingdom of God is within, and thus starts with the transformation of one’s own heart from compassion toward others, rather than with Jesus coming on clouds in the future to defeat the evil Romans and free Israel. Michael’s debriefing by Robert in Obsession is like wish-fulfillment writ large for an audience that is not accustomed to finding the meaning of a religious myth in the myth itself, rather than in other domains, such as history, astronomy, and even moral science.

Obsession is embellished with ornate religious settings and even meaning, especially with Sandra appearing like a goddess of sorts in Michael’s dream—his dead wife being de facto a goddess. As in the domain of religion, there are stories and there is the world in which we live out our daily lives. Resonances between the two give us pause, as we are not really sure what is going on—and what is really real of the two, or what the resemblances mean. Michael’s bubble is burst, but he comes out just fine in realizing that his daughter was still alive and that they have found each other in something more tangible, perhaps even more real, than the world of myth that Robert had foisted on Michael in order to swindle of him of his money. To be sure, the world of myth can come in handy, for surely there is some sense of reality that goes with the claim that Robert, once killed in his climatic fight with Michael, is in hell.  

La Dolce Vita

Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts run away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream." Jeremiah 17:5-7

Levi Strauss theorized that the function of a myth lies in reconciling basic contradictions, whether they are felt within a person or at the societal level. Such contradictions, and even dichotomies, can be used to energize a story’s dramatic tension and for comic effect, such as through misunderstandings. Typically, contradictions are reconciled in the denouement of a narrative; if so, the audience gets a psychic payoff. Otherwise, the audience is left with the uneasy feeling that the world is somehow not in order. I don’t believe that Fellini reconciles the contradictions in his film, La Dolce Vita (1960). The last scene, in which the film’s protagonist, Marcello, a young and handsome single man who is a tabloid columnist, turns back to follow his high-society drinking friends, who are leaving the beach. He makes the choice to return to his life of late night parties with empty socialites rather than to walk over to the only sane, available woman in the film.  Marcello does not find or establish an equilibrium, but goes on as a lost soul. Although religion is not much discussed by the characters in the dialogue, the film’s structure can be described in terms of going back and forth between two contradictory basic principles—one represented by the Roman Catholic Church and the other by the Devil. In spite of the back-and-forth, which even includes the visually high (overlooking Vatican Square) and low (in the basement-apartment of a prostitute), the main characters remain as if in a state of suspended animation between the dichotomous and contradictory relation between God and the devil. If commentators on the film haven’t highlighted this axis, the verdict could be that film as a medium could go further in highlighting religious tensions and contradictions than it does—not that going beyond religious superficialities to engage the minds of viewers more abstractly necessarily means that the contradictions must always be resolved or sublimated in a higher Hegelian synthesis and the dichotomies transcended.

In La Dolce Vita, Marcello parties the nights away for seven days while contending with an emotionally needy and suicidal fiancée. His hero of sorts, Steiner, seems like a pious man but ends up shooting his kids and committing suicide. Marcello realizes that he has barely known his father, but is not able to turn that around. The utter lack of emotional intimacy in his life is clear, and he goes on as a lost soul, with God being suggested as very distant—the Virgin Mary’s appearance to some kids amid lots of hype being dubious at best. Steiner’s piety turns out to be dubious as well. So too, Jesus, or at least the statue, is literally distant as it is up in the sky being taken to the Vatican by a helicopter in the film’s first scene.

A prostitute and a crept are much closer to Marcello, though he does not succumb to either. Although he hits on beautiful young women, including a movie star from America, he does not have enough sex to label him as a male slut. That he returns in his sports car at dawn to pick up his fiancée, whom he had stranded during an argument, distinguishes him from the empty, promiscuous women at the parties. Yet he is interested enough in other women that he realizes that at least for now, he is not the marrying sort. I submit that this, and even Fellini’s comedic satire on Rome’s contemporary party scene, can be situated within two polarities in which religion is salient in the film.

The lack of resolution or higher synthesis in the film’s narrative is epitomized by the continued back-and-forth between religious and devilish themes through the film. In the first scene, the flying statue of Jesus sets the tone for the film in the sense that religion will have a role. The scene picturing the idyllic Jesus is followed by one in which Marcello and a woman he has met at a party go to a prostitute’s flooded basement apartment to have sex. This is followed by a visual overview of Vatican Square, after a climb up a staircase, vicariously from the dark basement. This scene is followed by a night-time party outside, with large mounted torches in the background—whose fires connote hell. Then Sylvia, the movie star whom Marcello is after for sex, goes into one of Rome’s huge fountains. Both that she is wearing white and water connotes purity and even baptism brings the viewers back from hell. The purity doesn’t last, for in the next scene a jealous boyfriend slaps his girlfriend who has been hanging out with Marcello and beats him up. Then Marcello is in a church, where Steiner makes the film’s main dichotomy explicit in saying, “Priests aren’t afraid of the devil.” Then, just in case the audience has missed this point, Marcello says, “Where the devil is this place?”

Not only do the devil and Jesus have roles in this film, the Virgin Mary ostensibly puts in an appearance for two children (and their father, who takes tips). The people at the site are so desperate to see or be healed by Mary that that the viewer is able to take stock of the mob itself as if it consists of rabid wild animals. Why would the Virgin deign to make an appearance among a pack of hungry wolves? Marcello, and a priest who is there too, are skeptical as to the veracity of the two kids, especially when they whip up the crowd into a frenzy by saying, “She’s over there,” then, after sprinting to another area of the field, exclaiming, “She’s over there!” It is significant that there are no supernatural visuals in the film’s story-world. Ironically, if the reports of the “Sun miracle” associated with the Virgin’s appearance to three children in Europe in the twentieth century are empirically valid, then the non-supernatural, secular story-world that Fellini constructed may be regarded as partial, and even biased. Even in the seance in which a woman is seemingly possessed by the soul of a dead person, Marcello is not convinced that ghosts do in fact exist. The dichotomy between the Virgin Mary and the possessed woman is yet another instance of the back-and-forth structure of the film. If there is a metaphysical realm of the sacred, it is not in Fellini’s story-world. Marcello and the rest of the main characters are on their own, and there is scant any character arc in the film, even after Steiner’s suicide and murder of his kids, which would be enough of a shock emotionally to motivate Marcello to find peace and meaning.

The audience is left on its own too, assuming resolution and synthesis are naturally sought by the human mind when faced with contradictions and dichotomies, as exist in the case of the realms of the devil and that of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In terms of religion and what is typically associated with the devil (e.g., suicide, orgy-like parties, prostitution, sex), the film shows first one then the other, und so weiter. The utter futility in transcending the dichotomy and resolving the contradiction between God and evil while in the secular world of socialites and fame may have been Fellini’s (at least unconscious) point in making the film. It is no Rosemary’s Baby, in which, by the way, the contradiction in having sweet Rosemary give birth to a creature fathered by the devil is finally resolved when she finds that she can love the baby without becoming a Satanist because her mother’s instinct is healthy.

Fellini’s protagonist does not “find” religion; nor does he leave his party-circuit socialite friends and the world of hollow fame. Presumably Marcello goes on, after the last scene, with alternating views that can connote religion and hell, respectively, while he is a static entity wandering somewhere in between. The interior settings are hard, with bland walls that do not exactly connote warmth or emotional intimacy. Perhaps that world is none other than modern secularity, wherein meaning is futilely sought in drinking, sex, and our careers. Were Marcello to say, for example, "I am a tabloid journalist," would that capture the essence of his self? An affirmative answer wherein functionality is definitive would, I submit, be worse than chasing the gossip of the famous. Therefore, Fellini's masterpiece can be understood as going well beyond a critique of the debauchery of the socialite Roman society of his day.

The Devil’s Arithmetic

The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999) can be classified superficially as a coming-of-age film, for Hanna, the protagonist, starts out being immaturely contemptuous of her family’s ethnic and religious heritage and current practice. She tries to skip the Passover Seder at her grandparents’ house. That her aunt Eva had been a prisoner at a Nazi death camp makes no difference to Hanna—that is, until she is transported back as her aunt’s cousin (for whom Hanna was named) and experiences the camp herself. Whether she is really transported back in time (and if so, how?) or is merely dreaming is answered in the end but not so blatantly as would insult the viewers’ intelligence. Then again, it’s not every film that has allusions both to theology and The Wizard of Oz. The different ways in which that movie is incorporated and alluded to in this film are actually quite sophisticated in extending the viewers’ sense of synchronicity beyond the film’s narrative.

In the first scene, Hanna is getting a tattoo; it’s a flower; the tattoo she gets later is of something else altogether: a number at a Nazi death camp.  At the tattoo parlor, she derides Passover as “a cracker thing;” driving home, she turns the radio from a station immediately when a man starts to describe what Passover is. Been there; done that. She is so over it. At home, she asks her mother if she has to go to the Passover Seder at her grandparents’ house. Her mother replies, “We’re going because it’s important; it’s important because I say it’s important.” In other words, the ritual is important to Jews, and she is Hanna’s mother. Period. But not end of story.

Hanna does go with her parents, and once at her grandparents’ house, she asks her aunt Eva why she never talks about her experience at a death-camp. Her aunt explains that the experience at the death camp was so far from Hanna’s world that it would mean nothing to her. In other words, Hanna has no idea how good she has it, and how bad it can get—how astonishingly bad humans can treat each other out of hatred. This can be taken as the baseline for Hanna’s character arc (i.e., to measure how much she is to change).

During the Seder meal, Hanna’s grandfather says, “We would still be enslaved had God not brought us out of Egypt.” This is of course figurative; even if historical evidence were to be discovered of Moses (and that he was in Egypt), no Jews alive in the 20^th century were old enough to have lived in ancient Egypt. So it is not “they” literally who would still be enslaved. Aunt Eva’s lived-experience of being enslaved, however, is quite literal in the film’s story-world, and quite consistent with historical accounts by actual prisoners. It is important, I submit, to distinguish story from experience. This is not to deny that stories cannot have valid religious and ethical meaning; it is to say that the film goes beyond that.

During the Seder, Hanna doesn’t want to get up to open the front door to let Elijah in. Prodded to do it, she goes to the front door of the house, opens the door, looks outside, then slowly walks backwards before turning sidewise to walk down a hall that heads away from the dining room, where the people are. The hall becomes the dream, if it is a dream. After walking a bit, she is in another house. The camera doesn’t look back, so we don’t know if there is a portal that closes, or if she walked through a wall, or suddenly appears in the room. He aunt Eva is there as a teenager and is with her mother. Hanna inhabits Eva’s cousin, who also lives there, as her parents were taken away by the Nazis. Hanna is of course surprised when Eva tells her that she has been sick and that they are first cousins, and she has no idea that Eve is the same person as her aunt in New York. Hanna was named after Eve’s cousin and is said to have a similar appearance.

The two young women go to an outdoor wedding, and Eve’s mother joins them there before the Nazi SS shows up to take all of the Jews immediately to Auschwitz. “You don’t need to go home to get your things; all your needs will be provided,” the commander lies. At the camp, Eva and Hanna stay in the same bunkhouse for some time. To calm the fears of the young children, Hanna tells them stories at bedtime. Hanna tells part of the story of The Wizard of Oz, an American film released in 1939 whom Eva’s cousin could not possibly have seen; hence Eva thinks her cousin has a very active imagination in telling such a story. At one point, Hanna tells the kids that Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.” Everyone in the room could relate. There’s no place like home. Aware of her distant “other life” in America, Hanna says out loud, “I used to think this is a dream; now, I’m not so sure.” Eva seems to question her cousin’s sanity at that point. This is an instance of excellent screenwriting, for the film not only loosely follows the framework of The Wizard of Oz in that the protagonist is transported to distant place in what might be a dream, but also has Hanna explicitly reference the earlier film in the dialogue!

Film has great potential in terms of multiple layers, or levels traversing both dialogue and a basic framework in that this gets the mind thinking beyond what the narrative itself can stir up. A sense of synchronicity can be experienced by the viewers that goes beyond the narrative because something empirically extant is being referenced. More on this later, so hold onto this idea.

Hanna’s character arc is moving while she is at the camp, and this arc does not revert when she “wakes up” back home in her bed surrounded by her relatives (which Dorothy does too!). At the camp, Hanna asks the guy who asks her out, “Will you teach me to pray?” He is not sure how to pray. This is perhaps the film’s indictment of modernity. Of course, a religious topic is not the typical dialogue one would expect from two teenagers discovering their mutual sexual attraction. The guy tells Hanna that he and some other men will try to escape. Now, Hanna’s uncle Abe, Ava’s brother, said during the Passover meal that an escape attempt had failed in the camp, so Hanna, now at the camp, makes the connection and tries to stop her new beau from going. In fact, she warns all of the guys planning to escape. They don’t believe her, just as Eva doesn’t believe that she lived in America. How the guys or Eva know any of this about Hanna? Her “previous life” could only be known to her. Similarly, in the Book of Genesis, to everyone else, God’s decree to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is not revealed to other people, so they would naturally doubt Abraham’s theological claim; accordingly, Abraham could only be guilty of attempted murder. Hanna could hardly convince anyone in the camp what letting Elijah in led to or that the escapees would be caught and killed.  

The escapees are indeed caught and hanged. Hanna is distraught and the rabbi wails in Hebrew, calling out to Yahweh in existential anguish. Back in the barrack, Hanna tells Eva, “It’s too painful!” Eva tells her not to wish she were dead. “Your stories are keeping us alive; they give us hope.” Victor Frankl writes that even in such a dire, elongated circumstance, the human mind still seeks after meaning.

Three of the other prisoners are stretched to their emotional limit when the camp’s commandant comes into the barrack to take one woman’s baby away from the mother. “If you don’t let me go with my baby,” she tells the man, “I will kill you.” Another woman, Eva’s mother, tells him that he will burn in hell. He admits that he probably will, without caring much at all about that. She tries to attack him physically, but is too weak and falls into him. The Nazis take the baby, the mother, and Eva’s mother. Eva is obviously beside herself.

The next day, Hanna tells the rabbi that she wants to have a Seder later at the barrack. Hanna’s character arc is really moving! In the meantime, a Nazi guard teaches another guard how to shoot at close range to kill by having him aim his rifle at Hanna’s bent-over back at close range as she works outside. Eva talks the guard out of killing her cousin, saying, “She’s a good worker.” That night, Eva tells Hanna, “I call myself Rivka.” This is her secret name; no one else knows it. Hanna gives Eva hope, saying “You will survive; I promise you.” At her Seder that night in the bunkhouse, Hanna actually volunteers to open the door to Elijah. Before, at her grandparents’ house, she resisted going to the door because she wasn’t into the whole religion thing; at the camp, she is hesitant because she is risking her life in doing so. She is risking her life for religion. Sure enough, when she opens the door, a Nazi guard is right in front of the door and sternly tells her to shut the door.

The next day, while the prisoners are outside working, Eva is coughing. If the Nazis notice, they will assume not only that she would no longer be able to work, but also that her continued sickness could compromise the health of the workforce. Knowing this, Hanna coughs so she rather than her cousin will be taken to be gassed. Hanna even walks up to the Nazis to take their attention off Eva. The sacrifice is made; Hanna is gassed with the sick prisoners and Eva survives. The selfless compassion that Hanna feels and acts on while she is at the camp stands out, especially to Eva, whose compassion is also evident. Similar to how Gandhi’s compassion, or at least helpfulness, extended even to individual British officials even while is was strongly opposed to their policies, which included putting him in jail, the film’s screenwriter could have had Hanna and Eva extend their innate compassion to individual Nazis at the camp. The human need for meaning can be met by such inconvenient compassion and helpfulness. It would be interesting to see how such a movie would play out.

In the actual movie, Hanna wakes up as soon as she is dead in the gas chamber. Like Dorothy, Hanna is in a bed surrounded by her relatives. Black and white film is used in Hanna’s scene, just as it is when Dorothy wakes up back in Kansas. Admittedly, there are some notable differences. The scene of Hanna waking up gradually goes back to color, whereas Kansas is always in black and white in The Wizard of Oz. Also, whereas Hanna wakes up from having just experienced dying, Dorothy wakes up having just discovered that it was in her power all along to go home; she just needed to click her ruby red slippers three times and say, “There’s no place like home.” Hanna was vanquished by the Nazis, whereas Dorothy vanquished the Wicked Witch of the West.

Nevertheless, the allusion to The Wizard of Oz is conveyed—the macro “dream plot” and Hanna telling part of Dorothy’s story at the camp being the other two allusions. Being three different ways rather than only in the dialogue, the cinematic devices are more profound in terms of viewer experience. Qualitatively different modes (i.e., different in kind) expand the significance of a film to the viewer while it is in progress because the film becomes transparent in being a film and is related to “the real world.” The Wizard of Oz exists empirically, rather than just as part of The Devil’s Arithmetic. The synergy thus extends beyond evoking some of the narrative of the former film in the latter. The drawback, or cost, is that the suspension of disbelief—being in the story world psychologically—is breached.

Once back, Hanna realizes that her aunt Eva is the same person as Rivka at the camp, so Hanna reveals to her aunt the secret name that Eva only used when she was young. There is no way that Hanna could know it, and Eva knows this. Hanna provides even more proof to her aunt (and to the viewers who are trying to figure out if Hanna, like Dorothy, merely had a dream). Referring to Eva’s cousin, Hanna says, “She saved your life and went . . . “Eva interrupts with jaw-dropping astonishment, “instead of me. How do you know this?”  Hanna replies, “Maybe it’s from my imagination; maybe it’s from a dream I had. I don’t know. But what I don’t understand is how so many people could be punished: men, women and babies.” The compassion that Hanna has discovered deep within amid dire circumstances of immense suffering transcends her metaphysical curiosity—and perhaps even any curiosity she might have about whether letting Elijah in means that Elijah used a supernatural miracle to save Hanna from herself, in which case she was really at the camp, transported back in time to inhabit (or possess) another person (Eve’s cousin). Aunt Eva seems to sense something supernatural has occurred, so she asks Hanna, “Do you know how to talk to God?” Hanna answers, “So quietly that only God can hear me.” Eva says in a profound tone, “Oh yes.” Both women realize that it was no dream; that she was actually at the camp. “And I will always remember what happened. Always,” Hanna says. Her aunt admonishes her, “Yes, remember always.”

Perhaps in opening the door at her grandparents’ house to Elijah, Hanna opened the door to something supernatural, which is commonly associated with religion via myth. The film’s narrative is a story that contains a supernatural element, and this can be a powerful way of conveying deep meaning. As much as the supernatural makes for a good story, I submit that it is Hanna’s selfless compassion for the other prisoners, including Rivka, that in the end defines and differentiates Hanna not only from the other prisoners, but also from the person whom she was at the beginning of the story. In her own mind once she is back home in her grandparents’ house, her compassion transcends questions of the supernatural. To some extent, this might be because finite beings bound by the laws of nature (i.e., natural science) cannot know whether a certain event is supernatural; it may also because the point of the supernatural in stories is to inculcate compassion. It is no accident that the film ends with Hanna happily singing at the dining room table with her relatives. She may have died at the camp, but her compassion lives on.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) is known for being the first Hollywood movie in which the face of Jesus is shown. From the standpoint of the next century, the scandal in showing Jesus could only seem antiquated, if not outright silly. Rarely can such perspective on a scandal exist as it is occurring. In its own time, a scandal seems all-important and critically in need of being addressed lest life as we know it would otherwise come to an end. Ten years earlier, Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, had also been controversial, as was the 1988 film of the same name (and based on the novel) because Jesus imagines himself in the sexual act and he may struggle with mental illness. This scandal was more serious than was that which greeted The Greatest Story Ever Told even though the Jesus of Last Temptation ends up rejecting the temptation to avoid the cross and is thus faithful to his Father in the end. The viewer is left, however, without a decisive answer as to whether the film's Jesus suffers from mental fits because the film ends with Jesus dying on the cross. The theological validation of Jesus is made in Greatest Story, though curiously not chiefly in the usual way this is done in narratives about him. I submit that this deviation makes the film highly significant in that it emphasizes religious experience as a reaction.

The two parts of The Greatest Story are separated by an intermission. The climax before it outdoes the one that comes at the end of the film. Ironically, the focus in the first climax is on the disciples' reactions rather than Jesus' face. Jesus walks up a hill to Lazarus' tomb to bring him back to life. Although we briefly see Jesus' face as he looks into the tomb, the chief shot is from the perspectives of the disciples downhill looking up. In fact, we only know that Jesus has succeeded by the reactions of the people watching the event from afar. We never see Lazarus. Seeing the reactions--verbal and nonverbal--is a more powerful way of conveying the significance of the event in religious terms. The astonishment and urgency to tell others we see suggests that the event was not just unusual, but more crucially supernatural and thus sourced in divine power intervening through Jesus. The reaction of the disciples to Jesus' resurrection at the end of the film is muted in relative terms. For viewers who are very familiar with the Passion Story of Jesus, the emotional reaction at the end of the film may also be muted.

In retrospect, some viewers may notice that the reactions of the disciples (and others) at Lazarus coming back to life (as distinct from being resurrected) are not the reactions that are typically seen in Churches during worship. Although in John (20:29) it is written, "Blessed are those who have not seen [me] and yet believe," it is also true that human reactions from witnessing a miracle of the significance of Lazarus would naturally be more intense than from hearing about miracles from the lectern in a church. Indeed, because Christians down through the centuries have not witnessed any such miracles of that magnitude personally, but only through a book, muted reactions have been the norm.  That is to say, relative to the reactions of the disciples and others in the film during the first climax, the intensity of Christians has been less in merely hearing about the miracle. Christians may notice that the miracles that evince a supernatural aspect are believed only in the narrative. This is not to say that the miracles were not empirical (i.e., historical) events; rather, my point is that Christians through the centuries have as their source the Bible, whose inerrancy pertains to belief rather than knowledge. Empirical facts, as from historical accounts written by historians, count as knowledge; belief does not. For such Christians, a miracle can be a literary device because the belief must come out of a book. The device, I submit, lends authenticity to the principles that a religious narrative conveys, rather proffers proof of an empirical event in the past. In short, Christians since the eye-witnesses such as those depicted in the first climax of the film have been dependent on the Bible sans direct experience.

I do not mean to suggest that religious experience from a miracle depends on being an eye-witness. This is where the film has particular value. The narrative device can trigger a distinctly religious reaction (i.e., experience). Watching the reactions from the Lazarus event, which itself was largely hidden from the viewer, the viewer may have a reaction that transcends emotions. Such a distinctively religious reaction, as for instance from feeling the hair raise on one's arms, is itself a religious phenomenon that exists even if miracles are only a literary device without having happened historically. None of us can know whether or not they did.  It is amazing that a mere literary device can trigger such a distinctive spiritual (rather than emotional) reaction. Generally, symbols, myths and rituals can trigger religious reactions. The reaction to a significance of a type that transcends our realm is distinctly religious or spiritual, and thus part of the human experience even if miracles are not. 

In short, the film's visual point-of-view assumes an unusual vantage point as Jesus is performing the miracle on Lazarus by focusing on the onlookers and thus their respective reactions. In contrast, a traditional vantage-point is assumed as viewers look at the raised Jesus talking with his disciples. Containing these two different perspectives in the two climaxes of the film, it points greater attention on the Lazarus miracle than that of Jesus' resurrection. The greater attention is itself distinct because the reactions that people would have to witnessing a significant, empirical miracle are highlighted. As a result, some viewers in turn may have a novel reaction that is distinctly religious and yet does not require that miracles occur outside of being a literary device. The reaction itself may point to the human propensity to transcend the limits of perception, cognition, and even emotions and thus to have a distinctively religious or spiritual experience. Such an experience, rather than major figures, may be the point that religions try to convey.  

The Ninth Gate

Released in the last year of the twentieth century, The Ninth Gate is a film about the use of a book to conjure up Satan. The book's title is The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. Between three copies exist nine engravings appropriated from a book written by Lucifer. The person who gets all of those engravings can conjure up the devil. The Kingdom of Shadows presumably refers to Satan's kingdom. At the end of the film, Dean Corvo, a dishonest book dealer, rather than his client, Boris Balkan, is welcomed into a castle in which Satan is located. As the castle's main doors open, a blinding light shines outward into the night. Although Thomas Hobbes castigates the Roman Catholic Church as the kingdom of darkness in his text, Leviathan, Satan's realm has typically been depicted as dark in Christian art. Indeed, the film's own reference to Lucifer's kingdom as that of shadows follows this motif. Yet how can we account for the white light inside the castle? 

Some commentators of the film have suggested that the light casts shadows in our earthly realm, but this does not answer why Satan is surrounded by light, especially as the devil is associated with lies, which do not thrive in the translucent disinfectant of light. Furthermore, Leibniz's notion of God as perfect being implies that the darkness of nonexistence is furthest from God. In the Gospel of John (1:4) is written, "In Him was life, and the life is the light of men." Furthermore, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome" (1:5). Finally, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world (8:12). Seeing Dean Corvo enveloped in bright light as he enters the castle in which Satan has been conjured up does not make sense; the devil is not the light.

Some commentators of the film have argued that the light represents Dean Corvo's enlightenment. After all, he is the one who gets to see Satan. This raises the question of whether knowledge of evil can constitute enlightenment. The Gnostic Gospels refer to Christ as enlightening. From The Gospel of Truth (18:12-14) is written, "Through the hidden mystery Jesus Christ enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and show the way, and that way is the truth he taught them." Being enlightened thus brings a person out of darkness. Truth and darkness are mutually exclusive. So even though Dean Corso comes to know more about Satan, this cannot mean that he is enlightened. We are here at the point of a paradox in which Corso comes to know more about ignorance (of truth). To be sure, seeing a supranatural religious entity would be stunning; such a person would know that such entities really do exist even if the entity seen is the master perpetrator of lies, ignorance, and forgetfulness of God.  

Perhaps the blinding light illustrates just how qualitatively different the supranatural religious realm is from our own. It could even be that when the two realms come in contact, a clash-point exists such that high intensity energy is released in the form of light. The bright light may be indicative of such an interface, and thus point to the qualitative difference between the realms of the religious supranatural and our own natural world. In the film, Dean Corso wins the contest in being able to see the devil. What he has access to (i.e., the supranatural) is distinct and rare in even the film's story world. 

Going outside that world, to the authorial intent, Roman Polanski says in his commentary to the film (on the dvd) that he was making fun of the supernatural in films, such as in leaving it unclear to the viewer whether "Green Eyes" has supernatural powers such as flight. Polanski's ironically "dark humor" includes Boris Balkan's expressionistic facial expression while he strangles Liana Telfer in the film. Not every viewer catches that kind of humor, Polanski admits. His choice of piercingly bright light as the door to the devil opens could thus be a deliberate use of a motif that is generally related to God rather than the devil. If so, my musings about on why light rather than darkness could be associated with the devil are for naught; they are eclipsed, or overridden. 

Similarly in the case of the Bible, authorial intent can eclipse the story world. For instance, the latter may portray some features as historical facts. If the authorial intent is to make religious points rather than provide a historical record, the veracity of the "facts" in the story world should be subordinated to religious appropriation (and misappropriation) of said empirical facts. If two Gospels differ, for example, on when, relative to Passover, the Last Supper takes place, the supposedly historical disagreement is really, given authorial intent, the authors making different theological points. In short, the depiction of events as historical happenings serves theological points so such depictions can legitimately be fabricated. This is not to say that a theological point cannot make use of historical events, but even here, an independent historical account is necessary to verify that the events really did occur as depicted. 

Are Today's Horror Films Hollywood's 'Canary in the Coal Mine?'

In the lackluster box-office summer season of 2014, Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations thought audiences might have been suffering from fright fatigue. “Once something hits big, it doesn’t take studios long to jump on the trend and start churning them out.”[1] Hence, Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo opined that the deluge of films in the “found-footage” subgenre may have already run the well dry by that summer. “Five years after (the first) paranormal Activity, this particular technique has finally wore out its welcome,” Ray concludes.

Faced with the herd mentality, the biggest challenge for a horror-movie screenwriter is “coming up with ideas that isolate the protagonist, and still giving audiences something new,” says Eduardo Sanchez, co-director of the original found-footage film, The Blair Witch Project (1999), which made $141 million. If this sounds cyclical to you—that the next “something new” will eventually become as overplayed as an Elton John album from the 1970s—you will appreciate Sanchez’s line of thought here. The horror genre itself may be cyclical, Sanchez continues. “Horror movies are like roller coasters: After the first ride, it’s not as thrilling. You have to build your coaster bigger and faster. That’s what movies are facing: finding that new surprise.” In other words, a sort of inflation may exist in the genre, such that not only innovative story-telling is needed, but also ever increasingly intense emotional punches intended for the audience. Of course, like a shot of pure sugar or caffeine, as in one of those energy drinks, an overly intense story quickly burns itself out, so the addicts demand more and more drinks of more and more of a kick. Meanwhile, deep, thoughtful story-telling is marginalized, and perhaps even forgotten.

Screenwriters who want to distinguish their work as riveting in terms of meaning and being thought-provoking can look to myths (living or dead), literature, and even dreams to gain depth and uniqueness. The narrative above is based on a dream I had in which I could fly (until I found somebody on my back). In the dream, I broke through the natural-looking canopy. Fortunately, I woke up just as I realized that a serial killer was up there, coming after me. Even in thinking about the dream the next morning, I did not make the connection to “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

The lesson here may be that drawing on even well-known fables or myths need not deprive us of crafting unique stories that audiences will not view as formulaic. Put another way, a screenwriter is perhaps most fecund when he or she draws both deep within and on stories that have stood through oceans of time and thus are etched into our collective unconscious. To illustrate this mixture, I provide a bit of narrative here that may seem rather different, yet somehow quite familiar.

Jack has discovered that he has a rather unique ability; the tall, thin adult can fly by fluttering his outstretched arms up and down rapidly. To be sure, the lift is gradual for all the effort he must put into the exercise, and to do it he must be running quite fast. On one occasion, he wanted to show off this ability in front of a couple other college students. One of them had the bright idea of jumping onto Jack’s back, holding on to the two upper straps of his back-pack. Naively, Jack thought he could get air-borne nonetheless—but, alas, he could not. Too much weight. Shedding his passenger, he was indeed able to show off. The others were absolutely astounded to see a human being in the air.

Jack got a little carried away in showing off his uniqueness—his specialness. He gradually made it up to the clouds (something I tried to do with a kite when I was ten or eleven) and kept pumping his arms to go even higher. The mist got thicker and thicker until he ran up against a dirty-cream-colored solidified gel ceiling that from Jack’s vantage point seemed to separate the top half of the cloud-bank from its lower half.

Getting up some slow upward momentum, Jack poked at the rubber-like half-inch of gel until his hand and then arm broke through. He used that hand to pull himself through. As about a quarter-inch of water was on the top of the ceiling/floor, Jack got himself pretty wet. Walking on the surface, he likened it to walking to a slushy iced-over lake in late winter. Like such ice, the mix of water and gel acted to reseal the hole that Jack had made.

As Jack stood in amazement, being careful not to get too close to the “new ice,” he glimpsed a figure running over to him. I can only describe the old man as looking like an international business professor I had as a MBA student. Professor Farmer had a wild theory about trading toilet paper and light bulbs with the Middle East. He had inserted his little theory into a short book of fiction he had written. The eccentric academic reminded me at the time of Hume Cronyn, a movie actor who was married to Jessica Tandy, when he was a short old man with only some hairs on his head. Similarly, the man whom Jack took note of was nearly bald, but obviously did not have a barber up there in the clouds.

As the figure got closer, Jack could make out a machete in one hand; the old man was waving the large knife around feverously as he shouted incoherently. This would not be a friendly visit, Jack quickly concluded. If you have tried to run on an ice rink with a layer of water on top of the ice, you know that running is neither fun nor easy. Yet Jack found himself suddenly running for his life. If there was a silver lining to those clouds, Jack would have to find it and quick, for the “floor” was not so easy to break through from above; it could, after all, support a man’s weight.

This glob of narrative may be recognizable; I picked “Jack” for the protagonist’s name, given the association with “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Rather than having to contend with a giant, my Jack has to deal with a serial killer loose on some cloud. The story may resonate given the fairy tale, even while being fairly unique. I am using the vignette to illustrate the value of, and, indeed, the need to think up new plots and characters especially in the horror genre of film. Put another way, screenwriters who wish to be excellent must avoid the herd-animal mentality, which has plagued the genre.

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[1] This and all other quotes are from Scott Bowles, “Horror Films Falling Under a Frightful Spell,” USA Today, July 16, 2014.