Valkyrie

Claus von Stauffenberg was a Nazi army officer who attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944. Stauffenberg was shot the next day as a result. The Nazis did not surrender until May 7, 1945, a few months shy of a year later, so Stauffenberg’s intent to end the war would have made a substantial difference in terms of the number of dead and wounded from World War II in Europe. The 2008 film, Valkyrie, chronicles the story in the genre of historical fiction, even though Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson play Nazi figures (without even German accents), although Tom Hollander does play a suspicious Nazi quite convincingly. Viewers could still be excused for approaching the film as a “Wagner meets Shakespeare in the Park” production. The film gets its title from the Valkyrie in Wagner’s opus: handmaidens of the gods. The sparce religious nomenclature in a few scenes of the film is easy to miss, and, I submit, the interlarding of religion is ill-suited to the political drama.

Lest it be concluded that God is against political dictatorship itself, and thus divine favor rests instead with democracy, efforts to apply religion to politics evaluatively come rife with pitfalls because the two domains are distinct; I would even say that the religious domain is unique, given the nature of distinctly religious transcendence. In reference to democracies, lest they be supposed to represent the Kingdom of God on Earth, it is notable that the U.S. dropped the first two atomic bombs on inhabited cities, and Israel committed a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and in 2026 its sitting prime minister even announced that he would run for re-election! The human condition is indeed far removed from the gods and their Valkyrie.

In the scene in which Stauffenberg presents his revised Valkyrie plan to Hitler for his signature at Hitler’s mountain retreat, Hitler asks him, “You know your Wagner, Colonel? The Valkyrie: handmaidens of the gods, choosing who will live and who will die, sparing the most heroic from an agonizing death. One cannot understand National Socialism without knowing Wagner.” Perhaps the implication is that the Valkyrie save Nazi heroes on the battlefield from agonizing deaths, and, moreover, that the Nazi Party is geared to esteeming heroes as they were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as strong, courageous conquerors, and, perhaps also by implication, riding society of the weak, whose very existence brings down the strong, if the statements by Joseph Goebbels and Hitler at the dinner table in the bunker in the film, Downfall (2004), accurately reflect Nazi ideology concerning strength and weakness: most notably, the eradication of the weak is necessary for the strong to be strong. Although seemingly drawing on Nietzsche, his philosophy merely counsels that a pathos of distance be maintained between the self-confident strong and the resentful weak who seek to beguile the strong. Nietzsche does not advocate that the weak be eradicated. Furthermore, unlike Hitler in Valkyrie, Nietzsche does not posit divine help via handmaidens for the strong; neither does Nietzsche claim that divine wrath is directed against the resentful weak who seek nonetheless to dominate even the strong. As for Hitler’s reference to heroes, it is not clear that Wagner’s Valkyrie would help Nazi “heroes” escape agonizing deaths because such a claim assumes that those heroes really were heroes rather than villains. The appropriation of religion is thus fraught with difficulties, given self-interest, ideology, and the limits of our ability to know the wills of the gods, especially as pertaining to political events. It is best to leave the gods out of our human internecine conflicts rather than conveniently assume that the Valkyrie favor one side or the other.

Given the horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis, the Christian motif of redemption is more difficult to avoid even in the political context. Speaking in a bathroom to General Erich Fellgiebel to enlist his help in the plot, Staffenberg reminds his compatriot, “You were involved in a crime against your country long before you met me. There may still be time to redeem yourself. Only God can judge us now.” Redemption would come by helping rid Germany of Hitler’s rule. Although redemption by killing Hitler seems obvious enough, is religious redemption—and the ensuing sentence regarding God as judge means that the redemption being referred to here is indeed religious in nature—really fitting with respect to a person having been unpatriotic? What about the unpatriotic protests in America when the U.S. was bombing Cambodia in the Vietnam conflict in the late 1960s through 1974? Because that conflict was premised on a lie involving the Gulf of Tonkin, unblinking patriotism may have been cause for redemption. In actuality, God may think little or nothing either way of our notions of patriotism and our political protests. Again, God may be quite distant from our notions of political good and bad, even if the Nazi and Israeli atrocities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, respectively, seem pretty cut and dry as state-sponsored evil against people conveniently deemed “subhuman.” Perhaps from God’s perspective, we are all subhuman, or, in Nietzsche’s phraseology, human, all too human. Hence the political domain can be distanced from that of religion, in that the former reeks of human pride and thus presumptuousness, whereas the latter goes beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion and is thus not centered on us.

Call Me by Your Name

The medium of film has the potential to not only to move audiences emotionally, but to speak to fundamentals in the human condition so that we may know ourselves (and each other) better on the subterranean level of essences. The 2017 film, Call Me by Your Name, is not “gay cinema” even though 17-year-old Elio falls in love with Oliver, a 24-year-old beginning doctoral student when the latter is staying with Elio and his parents at their villa in Italy during the summer of 1983. Falling-in-love, so unmistakable once it has hit, is so utterly human at the gut-level that the twists and turns in a narrative are but superficial in comparison, and even the gender of the beloved may come to matter less than would typically be assumed. In fact, both Elio and Oliver are attracted to women, and after his summer stay Oliver calls the Perlmans during a winter Jewish festival to announce that he is engaged; for even though Elio fell for Oliver, Oliver is not in love with Elio. Elio must take the unrequited love as a given, as about as hard as reality can be felt, and so Elio has the choice of whether to suffer the loss or "stuff it" emotionally by burning emotion itself from his very being.  Precisely this decision is the subject of a father-son talk that he has with his dad after Oliver has left. It is the substance of that talk that anchors the film firmly in the human condition, such that even the narrative, not to mention the fact that Elio has fallen for a man, is transcended. It is just such a transcendence that renders the medium of film so substantial, even meaningful, even if mostly just potentially. Parsing the father-son dialogue will lay bare this thesis.

At the commencement of the talk, it seems as if Elio’s dad does not grasp that his son has fallen for Oliver. “You two had a nice friendship,” his father says. “Yeah,” Elio wantonly replies. But his father is coy: “You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special what you two had was.” Falling in love with another person, unlike friendship—interiorizing another’s personality rather than merely liking it—is indeed rare, especially if such love is not overlaid by sexual attraction. Nor is falling in love just or primarily a matter of two intellects bonding. Accordingly, Elio’s dad says, “Oliver may be intelligent, but he was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. It was good. You’re both lucky to have found each other because you too are good.” Everything and nothing to do with intelligence—intriguing! It is the goodness of the two men, rather than their respective intelligences, that is so important in terms of achieving emotional intimacy without being eclipsed by fear (e.g., of infidelity or, even deeper, emotional betrayal as in abandonment). For trust is destined to be lacking between two bad people as well as between a good and a bad person, whereas emotional trust is naturally extant between two good people. Are people really so dichotomous, however, as being either “good” and “bad”? Has not humanity gotten beyond the stark division between heaven and hell, with nothing (but purgatory) in between? Would it not be more accurate to speak of a spectrum on which we all lie? Nietzsche would say definitely not.  

In regard to sexual “cheating,” for example, and lying in general, dichotomous categorization fits, according to Nietzsche, who asserts: “it is part of the fundamental faith of all aristocrats that the common people lie. ‘We truthful ones’—thus the nobility of ancient Greece referred to itself.”[1] Regarding the “most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank,” the designation of “good” included a character trait: “They call themselves, for instance, ‘the truthful’; this is so above all of the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece is the Megarian poet Theognis. The root of the word coined for this, esthlos, signifies one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true; with a subjective turn, the true as the truthful: in this phrase of conceptual transformation it becomes a slogan and catchword of the nobility and passes over entirely into the sense of ‘noble,’ as distinct from the lying common man, which is what Theognis takes him to be and how he describes him . . .”[2] It is “above all the liars” whom the strong regard as bad. “While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself (gennaios ‘of noble descent’ underlines the nuance ‘upright’ and probably also ‘naïve’), the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment.”[3] In terms of being in—and even beginning—a romantic relationship, the weak person who is a slave to momentary desire, who is not constitutionally strong enough to master whichever instinctual urge happens to be most powerful internally at a given moment, lacks being in being so expediently mendacious, so the weakness is more fundamental than merely being loosely tethered to truth. Behind the problem of achieving emotional intimacy with such a sordid creature is the fact that he or she is not fully there, hence not really with. To step closer to a person, look him or her directly in the eyes, and speak directly, meaning spontaneously and therefore honestly, is rarely achieved with such a person as one who lies as a matter of course. Such a weak, slavish person may even wonder aloud to a prospective romantic partner, I’m afraid I will be unfaithful and hurt whomever I am with. With? No trust, and thus no genuine emotional intimacy can be had with such a person, hence, no with. Accordingly, an abyss of pathos of distance ought to separate good people, such as Elio and Oliver, from such a sordid creature whose nature it is to hide in dark recesses of the soul rather than stand boldly, eye to eye, with another person.

Neither Elio nor Oliver would get involved with a trophy whore, for instance, who imposes his slave-holder’s openness to the trophy having separate sex even with romantic attachment onto a prospective real relationship characterized by genuine emotional intimacy. Such a promiscuous, narcissistic bad person is actually in dire need of therapy. A societal norm that eschews commitment and thus responsibility by imposing such a demand for one-sided promiscuity onto what would otherwise be a genuine relationship, even if such a norm is collectively proclaimed by the neurotic narcissists as legitimate and even “good,” and thus rightly to be imposed, actually violates human nature and is thus highly unethical. Yeah, I would feel uncomfortable if my partner told me he would be having sex with someone he has feelings for but knew before he knew me so I am supposed to accept it, a healthy, well-adjusted human being even in an open relationship would reluctantly admit, if only to oneself. Slaves to momentary instinctual urges simply cannot be trusted, and are thus incapable of emotional intimacy with a romantic partner. They cut themselves off from good people, and thus ultimately detest themselves, for even amid lots of sex, people who thwart commitment are alone. Even if they are formally in a romantic relationship, even if merely in being deluded so by their respective trophy-holders, they are alone. For only genuine emotional intimacy can bring relief from that plight, and refusing to master seemingly intractable momentary instinctual urges eclipses real connection and genuine emotion intimacy. Faced with life without these things, a person might as well pray for the end of time. 

Even though Nietzsche emphasizes that weakness and strength are inherently antipodal, a roadmap can be discerned or extrapolated from his writing even if he did not believe that the weak could become strong. For any weak-willed people who are interested in, or already in a romantic relationship with a good person whose will’s dominant instinctual urge is sustained rather than episodic promise-keeping even in the midst of momentary temptations, the following passage can offer clues on how a will can be strengthened from within.

To have “an active desire not to rid oneself [of an impression], a desire for the continuance of something desired once, a real memory of the will: so that between the original ‘I will’, ‘I shall do this’ and the actual discharge of the will, its act, a world of strange new things, circumstances, even acts of will may be interposed without breaking this long chain of will,” a person “must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from chance events, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and what the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute. [The person] must first of all have become calculatable, regular, necessary, even in his own image of himself, if he is able to stand security for his own future, which is what one who promises does!”[4] The impression not to be rid of is that of a promise made, and the continuance of something is precisely that promise being kept by an extension of will even through tempting forests. In other words, a promise-kept is retained in the memory of the will rather than forgotten as soon as a sensual temptation walks by and winks—as such a tempting fruit is a strange new thing that is fleeting, whereas a promise well-kept can indeed be long-standing in a human will and thus of great value. Parsing the quote further, a necessary event is one that sustains a promise-made whereas a chance event is like meeting an enticing stranger at a bar. To think causally is applicable in realizing that going home with a seductive temptress would cause a promise not to be kept, and thus to no longer be able to feel self-confident strength of will and be taken as such. To see the distant eventuality of one’s promise-breaking being discovered as if it were being found out in the present, and for such a disappointment to have more instinctual force in one’s will than does the pleasure of momentary pleasure, a person must be clear on how means are related to their goals (i.e., such as being taken by others and oneself as capable and actually reliable in promise-keeping), and in this way to be taken as regular, even calculatable in one’s conduct by others and oneself! In other words, rather than be engulfed by the present in a bar, a person whose will can support promise-keeping must be sober enough—serious enough—to keep in mind the distant eventuality of being dumped for having had momentary sex that counts as promise-breaking. The causation in this is clear.  By implication, cheaters (and promise-breakers more generally) need to practice thinking out causation practically. To be regular, even calculatable by others and oneself is to sustain a long-chain of will such that promises once made are kept. Practice being regular, and calculate out what effects can be expected to be caused by certain actions that are relevant to promises-made. If getting drunk or high put such regularity at risk, and give momentary pleasure with whomever more power than the instinctual urge of promise-keeping, for example, a person can practice limiting one’s intake. This is why active alcoholics and drug addicts cannot be trusted to be promise-keepers, for they are very susceptible to going with the flow in having a “moment” in preference for momentary pleasure in the present as itself being absolute. This is precisely what scares people whose feelings of endearment are oriented to a questionable promise-keeper, who too easily and conveniently loses sight of distant eventualities in the present.  

The typical constraint imposed on such a person is moral in nature, but Nietzsche does not advocate such a remedy. Societal cages are not compatible with self-confident strength (of will). Instead, his ideal is paradoxically the sovereign-willed individual who is not constrained by external ethical norms; instead, the constraint lies within a strong, independent will. The “ripest fruit is the sovereign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral (for ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will and the right to make promises—and in him a proud consciousness, quivering in every muscle, of what has at length been achieved and become flesh in him, a consciousness of his own power and freedom, a sensation of mankind come to completion. The emancipated individual, with the actual right to make promises, this master of a free will, this sovereign man—how should he not be aware of his superiority over all those who lack the right to make promises and stand as their own guarantors, of how much trust, how much fear, how much reverence he arouses—he ‘deserves’ all three, and how this mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all more short-willed and unreliable creatures?”[5] To be able to credit oneself rather than any external moral scaffolding in keeping one’s promises is to interiorize even as an instinct a sustained urge to keep promises that is more powerful than the desire to act on some momentary pleasure that would cause a promise not to be kept. The consciousness of self-confident inner strength, which I contend can result from practicing being regular, even calculable, is more powerful than the constraining power of external morality and even the resisting temptation. After all, it is the weak who seek to dominate who try to beguile the strong into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength by saying, “Thou shalt not!”

Ironically, a sovereign, self-confident will wherein the instinctual urge to keep one’s promises dominates urges to break one’s promises in slavish attraction to momentary pleasure can voluntarily bind itself to a beloved through promises that the beloved can trust. Although Nietzsche characterizes such a will as the completion of mankind, I contend that along with such a will, love that can be trusted represents and instantiates us at our highest. Hence Augustine wrote that God is love. Love that is not feared (e.g., as being betrayed) is sacrosanct. Figuratively, such love can bend even the time-space fabric, at least in the very perception of a person who is in love with a promise-keeper, given the density of unafraid love and thus unshakable faith in a beloved. Rather than being idyllic utopian dribble, such an ideal can indeed be actualized as the completion of humanity.

The reality of an authentic, close emotional connection between two people gives rise to the tragedy that is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, both of whom can be viewed as being sovereign individuals putting their respective promises of love above their petty feuding families that are at odds. Like Elio and Oliver, Romeo and Juliet are good people. How dearly such a connection lost is mourned, as if life itself were no longer deemed worth living without the very presence of the beloved. Indeed, such presence itself can be saturated with meaning. Relative to such a connection of unafraid presence, or being, mourning the loss of a bad, promise-breaking person is actually a blessing in disguise, and can come to be recognized as such in utter relief, as in, I actually dodged a bullet, with the ungenerous help of the beloved, whose heart is nonetheless as cold and unbendable as a hard rock in winter. A pathos of distance, as if over the dark oceans of time in the Book of Genesis, naturally separates such a cold, dispassionate person, who so easily severs oneself off emotionally even in the face of another's suffering, from Elio and Oliver, whose mutual warmth doubtlessly deserves the refreshment that swimming outside can provide on those long, meandering sunny days that summer in northern Italy.

So, I think Elio’s dad is on firm ground in highlighting how special it is that his son, a good person, has fallen for another good person. The goodness is evinced not only in that trust was a given for the two, but also by Elio saying of Oliver, “I think he was better than me,” to which his father replies, “I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you.” Elio in turn replies, “Yeah. He’d say the same thing.” With his assertion of mutual goodness demonstrated, his father observes, “It flatters you both.” How rare—how very special—a romantic relationship is between two good, emotionally well-adjusted people.

But unlike Romeo and Juliet, whose love is mutual (hence the tragedy!), Oliver does not fall in love with Elio during the summer, so even though the two young men are good, no lasting romantic relationship can, or even should, ensue. Ultimately, this asymmetry undermines emotional trust, and the movie ends with Elio suffering the consequences after Oliver phones to announce his engagement to a woman. Even between two good people, genuine emotional intimacy, and the trust that is requisite, require that each person loves the other; otherwise, the relationship is doomed in terms of intimacy and trust. Most likely, the person who is not in love will leave the person for another. The person left standing can either stuff emotion itself, which Elio’s father wisely warns his son against, or grieve the loss (for even love that is not reciprocated is real and the loss of the beloved must be grieved in emotional pain that, as shown in the final scene, is longstanding rather than episodic).

Therefore, we can say, how very rare, and how very, very special a relationship of mutual love between two good (promise-keeping) people surely is! Holding such a rarified gem between them, two people who are in love should move mountains to be and stay together. No job is worth separation. I would flip burgers, one person might say to the other in following him or her to another city. That Elio and Oliver could have been together permanently were they both in love with each other is implied in the film by the fact that an older gay couple comes to visit the Perlmans. The sad fact is, Oliver has not fallen for Elio, and Elio must intellectually and emotionally accept this reality. With respect to Elio, Oliver cannot be relied upon as a promise-keeper. Recognizing this, Elio’s father observes, “And when you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember, I am here.” Falling in unrequited love exposes us to human nature such that it is felt at its weakest, perhaps most painful, spot.

Here again, Elio’s father again brings up the dichotomy of good and bad people in how a person in Elio’s position choses to deal with the emotional pain—and it is the sort of pain that comes back unrelentingly every morning rather than quickly dissipates as soon as the wind changes. “Right now, you may not wanna feel anything, maybe you never wanted to feel anything,” Elio’s father says. “And maybe it’s not to me you’d want to speak about these things, but feel something you obviously did. Look, you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. . . . We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of 30, and have less to offer, each time we start with someone new, but to make yourself feel nothing, so as not to feel anything. What a waste.” 

Indeed, what a waste, for a sensitive heart that has not rashly eviscerated emotion itself due to past emotional pain is among the most precious gems that can be loved. Elio is sensitive, so his dad is worried that his son may flee from emotion altogether and thus be emotionally unavailable for future relationships; after all, Elio is only 17 years-old. Elio's father acknowledges something emotionally more than a friendship has gripped his son, and that that something is of such emotional depth that sensitive person could rashly decide to rip out emotion from one’s very being in order not to feel such pain. The dichotomy between good (meaning healthy) and bad (meaning weak) lies in the choice that the person makes: caste out emotion itself or accept the feeling of emotional pain as part of being fully human. I think it is at this point that the film becomes significant. Elio, being good, allows himself to feel the pain, and in fact the last scene of the film depicts him in a sustained camera shot looking into the fireplace utterly hurt because Oliver has just called to inform the Perlman’s of his engagement. That the camera-shot is very long is ingenious, for such is the nature of that hurt. A dull soreness can even come to be felt from the emotional grooves that form from ongoing hurt before time can act as a thickener, or, as Nietzsche would say, until forgetfulness can set in. Indeed, he states that forgetting is key even to be able to love one’s enemies, and is not rejection an enemy?

One implication from the film’s last scene in which teary-eyed Elio stares into the fire in a fireplace is that he will be able to be fully emotionally available when he falls in love again (he is just 17 years-old), for he has not severed his emotional life as if feeling emotion were somehow toxic and thus to be expunged. He deserves to fall for a person who is also good in the sense of being willing to take hard choices in not conveniently forgetting promises made in favor of momentary urges. Drug addicts and sex addicts need not apply, for they are slaves to momentary desire and thus do not mature. Elio can offer genuine emotional intimacy wherein emotional trust is a given rather than felt as a vulnerability as is the case when the other person is weak. Beyond the last scene being able to serve as a lesson, or guide, on how to deal emotionally with the loss of a beloved, the father-son talk plus Elio’s decision not to repress emotion itself gets at a fundamental in what it means to experience being human. It isn’t all roses, for sometimes we feel even excruciating emotional hurt from unrequited love—the point being that it is a very good decision to be willing to feel rather than repress the feeling even though it comes back day after day until finally time, acting as a thickener, allows for moving on naturally.  

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Sect. 260 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 395.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Sect. 5 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), pp. 465-66. Theognis of Megara lived in the sixth century, BCE. Nietzsche’s first journal article, written while he was still a doctoral student at Leipzig, was on the collection of Theognis’s maxims.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Sect. 10 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 474.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Sect. 1 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 494.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Sect. 2 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), pp. 495-96.

Anatomy of a Fall

The medium of film literally consists of “talking” pictures in succession; that is to say, sound and image. Amidst astounding technological improvements, audiences in the twenty-first century could not be blamed for losing sight of what the medium actually is. It is easy to get lost in the “bells and whistles” and miss the power simply in relating sound and visual images. It is perhaps less forgivable when directors allow themselves to get lost in the rarified computerized air at the expense of realizing the potential in relating sound and image. A strong narrative is of course also essential, and it is easy to find examples in which an orientation to creating visually astonishing eye-candy comes at the expense of creating a deeply engaging narrative. Nevertheless, here I want to focus on the power that lies in relating sound and image, both of which “move” in a motion picture (after the silent era, of course). In the film, Anatomy of a Fall (2023), the theory that sound should extenuate image to form a more wholistic unity in service to narrative meets with a counter-example. At one point in the film, the loss of an accompanied visual that goes with the sound (to be replaced by another visual) renders the continuing sound more powerful in triggering raw emotions. The point being made by the film at that point regards the viability of close-contact, long-term human relationships, given our species’ innate instinctual urges to be aggressive. After all, our closest relative is the chimp. It is possible that the “civilized” conception of marriage that became the norm presumably only after the long hunter-gatherer phase in which the vast majority of natural selection has occurred is not as congruent with how our species is “hard-wired” than we might think.

In Anatomy of a Fall, the word fall refers to not only a physical fall—that of a husband from either a balcony or an attic window (i.e., suicide or murder)—but also the decline of a marriage. As the multilevel meanings of fall hint, the film is deep both intellectually (as a mystery) and emotionally. Beyond the superficial yet gripping question of whether the wife kills her husband or whether he commits suicide lies the larger human matter of whether our species’ instinctual aggressive urges are compatible with long-term relationships in which two people are in prolonged close contact.

Having never been married myself, I have been astounded from time to time in hearing about married couples who do everything together, including in their work lives. My mother had a law practice with her second husband, and of course they lived and socialized together. When they married and announced that they would be partners of a law firm (with one poor guy as the third partner, or “wheel”), I thought even as teenager that it would involve too much “together time.” As the years passed, long after I had left home for college, I noticed my mother increasingly wanting to take solo daytrips to a nearby large city to “get away.” It was clear from her tone of voice that too much “togetherness” had taken its toll on her. He likely felt the same way, especially if I am correct that our species is not “hard-wired” to spend so much time with one person over a long period of time. On one visit, I got a glimpse of the real condition of the marriage. Nearly constant contact had seemed to extenuate arguments. After I showed the couple the long version of Cinema Paradiso (1988), in which the budding romance receives more emphasis, my mother thanked me, saying in a revealing tone, “We really needed that.” Her husband was silent, but they were sitting close together on a sofa.

It is no secret that romance, being “in love” with someone, is typically short-lived; fewer people investigate whether the residue of the desire for constant contact is consistent with human nature. Too much contact with another human being may be incompatible with our more unsavory instincts that can sometimes overwhelm us. Doing everything together is a romantic notion for people who have just fallen in love, but the reality of so much contact with the same person is quite another thing. Of course, some married couples doubtlessly really love each other, and perhaps some of these remain in love for decades. I am not contending that the instinctual aggressive urge in our biology overwhelms the instinct for emotional intimacy in every case. Constant contact, though, can try even cases in which a couple were in love at some point.

The wife in the film may never have been in love with her husband. She tells her lawyer that she married her husband because she believed he understood her by what he told her. She admits to the court that she has cheated on him, and, interestingly, she shows little empathy when asked if he was hurt when she told him. The lack of empathy is perhaps a hint as to whether she is guilty. The film highlights her lies instead.

Now we get to the crux of the matter concerning the film and human nature in the context of close relationships. In the trial, an audio-tape is played of an argument that the couple had not long before the husband’s death. A visual flashback back to the argument accompanies the tape until—and this is important—the violence begins, or, rather, the talking leaps to shouting. The sudden shift back to the courtroom matches this leap as well as that from the shouting to—just as abruptly—violence. Not being able to see it renders the incident more vivid and even real to the audience. Although less wholistic for the viewers, the effect on emotions, including fear, is greater. Hearing violence without being able to see it may trigger the primitive (reptilian) part of the brain of “fight or flight.” Seeing the source of violence may give us a greater sense of being in control of the violence; it is out there rather than possibly so near to be a threat.

At that point of the film, I noticed that the 250 people in the theatre were completely silent as we heard enraged shouts, glass breaking and a series of hard punches. Once the couple becomes violent, they are silent. Persuasion has given way to might, as if force itself could persuade. Hearing the deep thuds of the punches and claps of the slaps left me emotionally raw. It was as if the microphone were placed very near the points of contact. Seeing the violence as well as hearing it would have allowed the audience to situate the violence in space, thus eliminating the fear that the violence is indeed as up-close as it seems and therefore could encompass the viewer. Matching the visual images with the sound of the violence within a scene would normalize the violence in the context of watching any scene of a movie in which there is action and diegetic sound. The violence would be seen to be at a distance, even in spite of the up-close deep sounds of the slapping and punching.

The abrupt cessation of the visual of the argument as the sounds continue and then the coordinated end of the shouting with the beginning of the violence as if on cue demonstrates that the management sound and image is a powerful device by which raw emotions of an audience can be engaged at a deep level. Perhaps too often directors become consumed with the calls for more “eye candy” afforded by computer graphics and in so doing overlook the possibilities from cleverly relating audio to image. In other words, the basic level of the medium of “talking” pictures warrants attention.

The scene of the couple’s argument plays an important role in the narrative too, and is thus powerful intellectually. When the wife tells the judge that her husband was hitting a wall (rather than her hitting him), I was surprised that the prosecutor does not point out that the audio itself of muffled thuds hitting flesh is inconsistent with a human fist hitting a hard surface. The wife’s convenient claim is yet another hint that she is guilty, as is her lie that bruises on her arm are from brushing against a counter’s edge in the kitchen. If her husband was not hitting a wall during the argument (and hitting a wall during a violent fight seems implausible or odd even for someone considering suicide) and the counter cannot account for the bruises, then the evidence of prior violence could be taken as such by the jury.

Relatedly, I was also surprised that the prosecutor does not point out to the court that the son’s sudden realization that his father’s comments about making do once the family’s dog has died are actually made to prepare the boy for his father’s suicide. I could not find in the audio and visuals of the flashback of the boy riding in a car with his father anything that could be taken definitively to point to an intention to commit suicide. The prosecutor lapses, therefore, in failing to flag the son’s conflict of interest in wanting to protect his mother from going to jail—an event that would presumably throw the son into foster care or a group home.

Also subtly revealing is the fact that the wife is happy rather than in mourning while eating and especially drinking with her attorney at dinner after the non-guilty verdict. In fact, the two nearly kiss at one point. Back when she walks outside and sees her husband’s dead body in the snow near the house, she does not wail; in fact, she seems rather self-composed.  

The film does not reveal at the end whether the wife has murdered her husband. Nor does the audience get any indication of whether the husband repeatedly hit a wall during the argument. These “loose ends” are disconcerting, as is the chaotic music that the husband plays in the attic while his wife is attempting to be interviewed on the house’s second floor. The harsh, chaotic diegetic (sourced in the scene) sound is consistent with the out-of-control quality of human violence, and may even excite the wife enough to a physically attack her husband. This music is also consistent with the speechless audio of the violent stage of the argument. The emotional discomfort from the music pales in comparison with the emotional shock from listening to the savage violence.

That even a husband and wife can inflict on each other such violence as surpasses verbalizing a disagreement raises questions about marriage, given human nature, and, moreover, whether a person can really know another. How can a person be sure that something really is as it appears? In the New Testament, Jesus says of a couple to be married, “the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.”[1] Does unity imply being of one nature, and, if not, can two natures who don’t really know each other be one flesh? The Council of Nicea (325 CE) decided that Jesus has one essence (ousia) and two natures (hypostasis). Those natures are distinct, yet of the same essence. Can spouses be of the same essence if they can’t really know the other’s underlying nature?

Anthropologically, we can ask whether our notion of marriage is an artificial social-construction that is not fully compatible with human nature. If we cannot completely know another human being, perhaps an all-inclusive (i.e., constant) long-term relationship that monopolizes a person’s interpersonal relations is dangerous. Even if one person could truly know another, perhaps the strictures of social convention result in pent-up emotion that at some point explodes. A couple is suddenly in the “state of nature,” where the repressed aggressive instincts can be expressed. Perhaps they can be over-expressed from all of the pent-up pressure that has built up.

The film seems to marvel at the depths to which a marriage can fall, or deconstruct. This is not to say that the film is an indictment on marriage itself. Couples who fell in love and are still in love decades later can be differentiated from couples whose loveless marriage never knew love and continues “for the children.” Even so, it might be useful to investigate the extent to which the modern social-construction of marriage is consistent with marriage during our species’ formative “hunter-gatherer” period. Has marriage become too totalitarian for our nature? By this I mean both in terms on monogamy and spending so much time together, especially if this is at the expense of doing things with other people.

So it can be asked whether monogamy was pre-historical convention. Is monogamy over decades natural, given human instincts and even reason? In their argument, the couple in the film argue over sex—one person is depriving the other of sex. As Freud pointed out, repressed eros can suddenly explode in violence. Perhaps early humans in such a situation did not have a moral or legal inhibition against getting sex from a third party, as marriage certificates and churches did not yet exist. Furthermore, perhaps the hunter-gatherer couples did not spend so much time together. The lack of modern conveniences meant that more time was taken up with work. So it can be asked: Did couples spend so much time together, especially if exclusively, during the hunter-gatherer period?

To the extent that constant, long-term contact up close with a particular person is artificial, and thus contrived as an ideal or as normal, the social construction of the modern marriage may go too far. Why do so much together? Is it wrong to take breaks by doing things with other people? Are friendships naturally (assuming that married couples are friends) so monopolistic? These are questions that the film’s example of a marriage gone so badly wrong can raise. If sound and image are managed with sufficient foresight by a screenwriter, director, and actors, then the message as regards the human condition can be felt on a deep level in addition to be reflected on. The modern conception (and praxis) of marriage in the West may be ahistoric and ill-conforming to the human being. Perhaps we do not pay sufficient regard to the social distance that our human instincts require at times. Our closest relative, after all, is the chimp. We are animals, and though social, were are more than rational beings.

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1. The Gospel of Mark 10:7-8.

Hail, Caesar!

For anyone interested in filmmaking, a film that features the internal operations of a film studio—especially one during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood—is likely to be captivating. After all, as Eddie Mannix, the studio executive in Hail, Caesar! (2016), says, the “vast masses of humanity look to pictures for information and uplift and, yes, entertainment.” This film provides all three for its audience on what film-making was like in the studio system. With regards to the Christian theology, however, the result is mixed.  The film makes the point that theological information best comes out indirectly from dramatic dialogue rather than discussion on theology itself. In other words, inserting a theological lecture into a film’s narrative is less effective than an impassioned speech by which entertainment and uplift can carry the information.

Mannix’s meeting scene with clerics is harried and thus difficult for the viewer (and Mannix) to digest, but Baird Whitlock’s emotional speech on a studio set as the Crucifixion scene is being filmed conveys religious ideas in an entertaining manner. The speech centers on what is so special about the person being crucified. The information is carried on Whitlock’s emotive warmth, and thus the acting of George Clooney who plays the character. In contrast, emotion is sparing in Mannix’s meeting with a rabbi, Catholic priest, Greek Orthodox priest, and Protestant minister. Instead, the scene is energized by fast-moving theological points, but this is unfortunately of little use to the viewers as demonstrated by Mannix’s confused reactions as the clerics debate. This is ironic because the scene’s role in the film narrative is to make the point that Capital Studio’s management takes the informational role the film being made seriously. Whereas Mannix just wants to know if any of the clerics are disturbed by the Jesus portrayed in Mannix’s film, the inclusion of the clerics’ discussion of theology begs the question: can’t film do any better in expressly handling theological concepts through dialogue? The viewer has not yet seen the scene of Whitlock’s emotional speech at the Crucifixion, but that scene does not address whether theological dialogue is viable in film. After watching Mannix’s meeting, the viewer likely answers, not well. The example may not be a good one, however.

How good is the medium of film in portraying Jesus Christ and the story that encapsulates him? I contend that this is precisely the question that Hail, Caesar! (2016) attempts to answer, but falls short. The scene of Mannix’s meeting not only relegates theological dialogue as being beyond the reach of viewers, but also assumes quite explicitly that the best portrayal of Jesus is that which is the least controversial. Because Whitlock’s reverential articulation of Jesus is appreciated universally on the movie set on which the film within the film is being shot, the message is that impassioned meaning itself is enduring; it is also the least likely to offend. Does not the strategy of coming up with a portrayal that does not offend anyone run the risk of being drab? Is such a portrayal merely a copy of the default, which may contain problems? Moreover, does the inclusion of something controversial take away from the uplift and entertainment value?

Even though avoiding anything controversial fit the 1950s—the time when the film takes place—especially in American society, and thus Hollywood, viewers watching the film in 2016 likely perceived the strategy to be antiquated and even suboptimal. Some viewers may have seen controversial films on Jesus such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) for trivializing the story with pop music, Jesus of Nazareth (1977) for emphasizing Jesus’ human characteristics at the expense of his divine Sonship, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) for its moral stances and conflicted Jesus, and The Passion of the Christ (2004) for taking Jesus’s suffering beyond that in the New Testament. By 2016, the assumptions that explicitly theological dialogue is inherently beyond the grasp of viewers; such dialogue itself is too controversial; and films should rely instead on impassioned speeches could be reckoned as nonsense. Surely the controversy of King of Kings (1961) over the decision to show Jesus’ face would be deemed anything but controversial in retrospect. Hail Caesar! may be making the same point regarding the conformist era of the 1950s.

Perhaps the disappointment of Hippie idealism and the ensuing criticism of American government and society beginning in the late 1960s had accustomed Americans to viewing controversy as acceptable, and even finding it to be entertaining and uplifting in terms of ideational freedom (i.e., thinking outside the box). Studios may have been absorbed the cultural criticism in producing films like Jesus Christ Superstar that were certainly outside the box relative to the earlier films such as King of Kings. It could even be said that the medium was ushering in a new wave of historical theological criticism after that of the nineteenth-century Germans such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche. Put another way, perhaps their thought had finally percolated through or resonated with American society after 1968 such that studios could take chances precisely that are anathema to Mannix in Hail Caesar! and therefore 1950s Americana.

Of course, entertainment and uplift could not suffer; they were no longer assumed to be mutually exclusive with religious controversy.  Entertainment had been a mainstay of film since even before the medium partook of narrative. Fifty seconds of an oncoming train in Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896), for example, thrilled audiences. Sound would only have added to the fright. Both uplift and sadness or fear can be entertaining. In its de facto insistence on happy endings, Hollywood has neglected this point. Relatedly, an insistence on avoiding controversy out of fear that it would detract from the entertainment-value of a film neglects the possibility that controversy could add entertainment-value while providing thought-provoking information. Even thinking about abstract ideas after viewing a film can be entertaining for some people because those ideas came out of a narrative.

Generally speaking, the information/knowledge element is most salient in documentaries, but even fictional narrative is capable of carrying heavy weight in this regard. In regard to the religious content of Judaism and Christianity, Mannix says, “The Bible of course is terrific, but for millions of people, pictures will be their reference point to the story.” He predicts that film would even become the story’s embodiment. In other words, he predicts that from his time in the 1950s, film would come to supersede even the Bible itself because of the film medium’s greater potential to provide information, uplift, and entertainment. One of my reasons for studying film is indeed the medium’s hegemony and thus role in transmitting abstract ideas and even theories.

While I do not doubt the medium’s tremendous potential to present an experience in the story-world by means of visuals and sound, whereas a book is only text that must be read, Mannix omits the pleasure that can be afforded only by the human imagination without visuals and sound to constrict the imagination to a story world presented by film. Especially in the multi-layered genre of mythology (i.e., religious narrative), imagination can be stretched in a myriad ways and on many levels, given the scope for interpretation in myth.

On the other hand, even though film constrains imagination to within the contours of a story world, the mind’s ability to suspend disbelief allows for immersion into such a world, resulting in greater understanding as well as uplift and entertainment. A viewer can “enter” a film’s audio-visual story world cognitively, perceptually, and emotionally such that a sense of experiencing can be had. Experiencing the Biblical world can enable a viewer to better understand Jesus’ dialogues because they are in their contexts. To the extent that the ancient world historically can inform our understanding of the Biblical world, film can make use of historians and anthropologists in order to improve on how that world is being portrayed. To be sure, the Biblical world is distinct from history, and our knowledge of the ancient past is limited. Film carries with it the risk that viewers might take a portrayal as the world that a historical Jesus would have known rather than that of a faith narrative. The use of abstract dialogue does not suffer from this problem because the ideas being exchanged transcend the dialogue’s context. So the assumption that narrative-specific impassioned speeches are superior to such dialogue is flawed. Of course, this assumption in Hail, Caesar! supports the problematic assumption that controversy must at all means be avoided in order to maximize the entertainment value and uplift, which in turn relate to profitability.

I turn now to a scene analysis of Mannix’s meeting with the clerics in order to make several points, including that the scene is a bad example of how a religious film can effectively use abstract dialogue. The studio executive wants expert feedback both from within Christianity and outside of it to make sure that no viewers whatsoever will take offence to the Jesus being portrayed in Mannix’s movie—the film within the film. When Mannix first asks his guests whether they have any theological objections to the movie being made, the Greek Orthodox priest complains that the chariots in one scene go too fast. Even a cleric has difficulty turning to religious dialogue! The message to the viewer can only be that such dialogue is neither natural nor befitting a film-viewing. This point supports the film’s solution by means of an impassioned speech even if the implications regarding the use of abstract dialogue in film are wrong.

At the studio executive’s urging, the clerics finally focus on the task at hand. “The nature of Jesus is not as simplistic as your picture would have it,” the Catholic priest says. He is speaking theologically. “It is not as simple as God is Christ or Christ is God,” he explains. The portrayal should go further. It should show that Jesus is “the Son of God who takes the sins of the world upon himself so we may enter the Kingdom of God.” Indeed, the Jesus of the Gospels announces that his mission to preach the mysteries of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the screenwriter did not have the priest say anything about that kingdom (e.g., how to get in it). Instead, the priest’s focus, consistent with the history of theology, is left at Christ’s identity (i.e., Christology) in salvation (i.e., Soteriology) even though the less abstract teachings of Jesus on how to enter his Father’s kingdom, such as benevolence even to detractors and enemies, would be more easily comprehended by viewers.

After the priest’s abstract theological point, the clerics rapid-fire contending points so fast and without sufficient explanation to Mannix (who seems clueless even though he goes to confession daily) that the viewers are clearly not deemed able to follow a theological discussion. Yet the film makes a straw-man’s argument by presenting the dialogue at such a fast pace that little could be gained from the ideas expressed.

The Protestant minister says that Jesus is part God. The rabbi counters that the historical Jesus was a man. Mannix, a Roman Catholic, asks, “So God is split?” to which the Catholic priest answers, “Yes and no.” The Greek priest says, “Unity in division” and the Protestant minister adds, “And division in unity.” Such word games do not advance a viewer’s comprehension of the dialogue. As if standing in for the viewer, Mannix loses his concentration and admits, “I don’t follow that.” The best line of the movie comes when the rabbi replies, “You don’t follow it for a very simple reason; these men are screwballs.”

From the Jewish standpoint, the Christian clerics have gotten themselves tied up in knots because they are claiming something that a human being is both fully human and fully divine. Aside from a historical Jesus, the god-man character in faith narratives goes against the Jewish belief that a chasm separates human beings from God. The belief that God has an incarnate human form (i.e., a human body) smacks Jews as a case of self-idolatry.  As confirmed at the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.), Christian theology upholds that Jesus has two natures in himself—the divine and the human (except for sin). The two natures stay distinct in Jesus, so the divine is of the same substance (consubstantial) with the other two manifestations (or “persons”) of the Trinity; the human nature is unaffected by the divine except for the former being without sin. This is necessary so Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the Cross can be for other people rather than to pay the price of his own sin.

For the viewers, an analogy would have served better than the abstractions in the dialogue. Oil and water in a cup, for example, would have been more easily understood. The screenwriters fare better when the theological discussion turns to God (i.e., the Godhead). The Catholic priest claims that the Jews worship a god who has no love. “God loves Jews,” the rabbi retorts. Reacting to the unloving way in which Yahweh treats other people, the Protestant minister insists that God loves everyone. Yahweh’s statement that vengeance is His does not square with God being love. In his writings, Nietzsche argues that this incongruity discredits the conception of Yahweh in the Bible. It is the discredited conception that Nietzsche refers to in writing, “God is dead.” Fortunately, as St. Denis points out in his writings, God transcends human conceptions of God. The screenwriter could have had the Rabbi make this point, and moreover, that the Christian clerics are too obsessed with theological distinctions that assume the validity of the operative conception wherein a vice belongs to God, which is perfect goodness (omnibenevolent).   

As if channeling Augustine to refute the rabbi, the Catholic priest says, “God is love.” Calvin’s writings contain the same point, which can be construed as the core of Christianity. Whereas Augustine’s theological love (caritas) is human love raised to the highest good (i.e., God), Calvin’s is the divine self-emptying (agape) love. Whether or not human nature, even Eros, is part of Christian theological love, it manifests as universal benevolence (benevolentia universalis). In the film, the rabbi could have asked the other clerics whether humans are capable of self-emptying divine love (i.e., agape), and how the god of love handles the evil people, given that God is all-powerful (omnipotent). The clerics could have pointed very concretely to how a person can enter the Kingdom of God.

Instead, the Greek priest gets existential, insisting that the basis of God is love is, “God is who He is.” The screenwriter missed an opportunity for the rabbi to say, God is I Am. The implication is that theological love is divine existence, which transcends existence within Creation. God’s nature and very existence as love may thus be wholly other than human conceptions and experiences of love and existence. St. Denis made this point in the sixth century, and yet, as David Hume pointed out in the eighteenth century, the human brain is naturally inclined to view the unknown by attributing human characteristics to it.

The theological dialogue in the meeting scene could have brought the viewers to the point of appreciating God’s wholly otherness as transcending even the polished theological distinctions that we make. However, Mannix, who goes to confession daily, personifies the assumption that even religious viewers would get lost in theological dialogue in a film even though the rushed dialogue is rigged to support this assumption. The studio executive, for whom profitability is important, states up front in the meeting that he just wants to know whether the portrayal of Jesus in the film being made offends “any reasonable American regardless of faith or creed. I want to know if the theological elements are up to snuff.” Given the rabbi’s statements, however, the portrayal of Jesus as a god-man would be controversial at least to Jews. So Mannix really means to Christians. That’s all Mannix wants from the meeting, so to him even the theological bantering is a distraction. In fact, it could invite controversy for the film, Hail Caesar!, even though the film within the film is not controversial. On this meta-level, the religious dialogue is written as comedic perhaps for this reason, though by 2016 avoiding controversy would not likely be a concern. To be sure, even then for a cleric to suggest that divine mystery goes beyond the Christian understanding of Jesus being of two distinct natures would invite controversy. St. Denis’ claim that God transcends even our conception of the Trinity would certainly be controversial even in the early twenty-first century.   

Regarding the 1950s film within the film, Mannix asks at the end of the meeting scene, “Is our depiction of Jesus fair?” Without questioning Mannix's underlying assumption that fairness means non-controversial, the Protestant minister, answers, “There’s nothing to offend a reasonable man.” By implication, to present anything that offends a reasonable person would be unjust even if controversy would likely occur from presenting advances in theological understanding, including alternative views, which alter or question the default.  A reasonable person is almost defined as one who holds the orthodox (i.e., doctrinal) belief on Jesus’ identity (i.e., Christology). By implication, it is fair if an unreasonable man—a person who has a “deviant” Christological belief—is offended. Such fairness, it turns out, is not so fair; it is at the very least biased in favor of the tyranny of the status quo both as it applied to theological interpretation and the wider heavily-conformist American society in the 1950s.

Mannix represents the position that theology can and should be filtered through the lenses of business. That of the sacred that reaches the viewers must survive the cutting board of the profane. Because the Catholic priest says that the portrayal of Jesus in the film being made in Hail Caesar! is too simplistic, perhaps the message is that only simplified theology survives. While this point applies well to 1950s Hollywood cinema, the plethora of controversial films on Jesus since the utopian convention-defying days of the late 1960s in America suggests that controversial films can indeed be profitable, at least if a wider society is no longer so conformist. Indeed, societal judgments on what is controversial have varied over time. 

Even theologians’ views of profit-seeking have changed through the centuries of Christianity. Until the Commercial revolution, the dominant view was that salvation and money are mutually exclusive.[1] The rich man cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Willowing down theology to suit profitability would have been deemed anathema. With greater importance being attributed to Christian virtues actualized by profit-seeking followed by the belief that God rewards Christians monetarily for having true belief (i.e., that Jesus saves souls), Christian clerics in the twentieth century could be more accommodating of studio executives. The end of reaching a large audience, for instance, could have been believed to justify unprofitable scraps of theology on the cutting-room floor. The historical uncoupling of greed from wealth and profit-seeking, having been accomplished by the end of the Italian Renaissance, made permissible such an accommodation. Indeed, if God is believed to reward faithful Christians monetarily, as is held in the Prosperity Gospel, then a profit-seeking studio executive would be seen as being favored by God in using profit as the litmus-test for theology. 

Although in the film's period of the 1950s any explicit questioning and criticism of the operative assumptions in Hail, Caesar! would likely have been squashed like bugs, the screenwriter could have included such material (even the squashing) so the viewers in 2016 could have a better understanding of just how narrow, and even arbitrary, the film's historical assumptions are. Therefore, both in terms of theology and the related societal context, the screenwriter could have delivered more to both inform and entertain, with the uplift including what naturally comes from putting a theology and social reality (i.e., of the 1950s) in a broader, contextual macro- or meta-perspective. 

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1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (2015).

Son of God: Comparative Religion in Film

The 2014 film, Son of God, follows a familiar trajectory well-known to viewers who had seen films such as George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Watching the Passion story yet again, I could not help but take note of the repetitiveness from sheer likeness. Yet one scene sticks out among the usual denouement—that scene in which Jesus in the wilderness, the high priest in the Temple, and the Roman Pontius Pilate with his wife in their chambers pray in their own ways and with differing assumptions about divine intent toward a petitioner. The interplay of petitions plays like a tutorial for the ears and eyes on comparative religion, found here even within a religion.

“Father, I know it must be as you will it. Father, take this from me; spare me,” Jesus implores in a quiet voice nearly breaking in the emotionality of the intimate petition. God’s Will is here not in line with Jesus’s immediate comfort; indeed, following that Will would mean severe upcoming suffering and even death.

“Lord I know you are pleased with me, for you sustain me in sincerity,” the Jewish high priest announces as he looks upward, flanked by his fellow priests, in the stone Temple. In stark contrast to Jesus’s approach, an air of formality characterizes the Temple-centric relation. The chief priest finds himself benefitting from God’s Will, thanks to the sincerity the man finds in himself. Such sincerity, he assumes, must surely be based in a foundation beyond himself—namely, God.

In this back-and-forth film-making technique, the viewer is presented with polar opposites within Judaism. The mode or style of discourse with Yahweh and whether the Godhead’s will is convenient or to be grudgingly accepted are each pushed into two camps. Can organic creatures approach the source of existence intimately without dismissing the abyss between Creator and Creation? On the other hand, is formality nothing but puffed up human artifice? Furthermore, does divinely sanctioned suffering represent self-mortification writ large or is the existential angst a reflection of the dearth of pathos in a canyon so wide? On the other hand, is not the presumption that perfect being is so well pleased (and so conveniently) in a hardened heart in actuality an eruption of arrogance? With such questions boiling just below the surface, the viewer is then thrust out of Judaism, if only for a few seconds, and even out of monotheism.

“We thank you, our ancestors, for watching over us,” Pilote’s wife prays as her husband looks on. Ancestors in ancient Roman religion are like saints in that they can intervene to protect if petitioned. Unfortunately, the film overlooks the Roman pantheon of gods, such as Jupiter and Mars, that are roughly equivalent Yahweh. Even so, the petition to the ancestors presents the viewer with the suddenly odd combination of intimate relation and convenient alignment of wills.

“Father,” Jesus implores, whispering intimately. Coming off the convenience of the priest and Pilote, the viewer is suddenly confronted with a very painful misalignment---Jesus’s flesh being weak.

“Praise the Lord, God of Israel, everlasting and everlasting. Amen. Amen.” the high priest shouts. Coming on the heels of Jesus’s soft cry, the distance in the priest’s formality is transparent. Praise the god that is well-pleased in me. Were the priest in Job’s place, would he still praise the everlasting source that can allow for such unjust pain?

“If you will it, Father,” Jesus says in a quiet voice as a tear streams down his left cheek, “if you will it, your will is mine.” The congruence of wills even in the midst of still so much suffering to come severs Jesus from the high priest, and hence the fabric of Judaism would be ripped apart.

In short, this rather unorthodox scene-analysis demonstrates how an entertaining feature-film can present comparative religion in a very effective way. Even within a religion, comparative religion can be done. Perhaps the major pitfall to avoid is that of reductionism. The mature screen-writer and director bracket their particular preferences rather than cast all of the options but one as straw men designed to fail. The multiplicity teeming in human nature naturally manifests itself both in the myriad approaches to the divine in worship and the assumptions that we have regarding alignments and clashes of Will with will.