Strange River

Not every film has an implicit Thoreau signature reflective of the nineteenth-century Romantic turn from the age of Reason. Not every film brings to mind the Romantic painter, Joseph M. W. Turner (1775-1851), whose painting of nature’s green growing over classic Roman pillars as if to say, nature has the last word. The European film, Strange River (2025), is such a film. The key to making these connections lies not in the film’s dialogue, but, rather, in Jaume Muxart’s consistent choice to direct the film by ending several scenes with elongated camera-shots of nature. This leitmotif has Thoreau’s Walden Pond written all over it and is an implicit critique of rationality and the related artificial societies that mankind has constructed at the expense of being natural.

The film centers on Didac, a sixteen year-old boy who, as a typical teenager, is engulfed in the growing pains of self-discovery. This takes place on a family biking and camping trip along the Danube river. The film opens while the parents and three boys are biking near the mouth of the river, and ends with the family angst gone where the river is much larger; life has been more fully experienced, with the parents having reunited from being emotionally fraught, and Didac having had a brief fling (not including gay sex) on a small boat overnight with another boy. Boys will be boys; nothing definite should be extrapolated. Early on, Lena, the mother, tells Didac, “This might be the last summer that the family is together.” Two arguments between the parents bear out the mother’s prognosis that the couple might get a divorce, and her sexual fling with a young man one night during the trip bears out her desire to wander.

Meanwhile, Didac is initially aggrieved that Gerard, a boy from school on whom Didac has a crush, has been ignoring him. Didac speaks with his father, Albert, on “the frustration of not being desired.” Albert urges his teenage son to share how he feels with Gerard. Both parents support Didac’s romantic interest in Gerard. “You guys kissed,” both parents separately remind their son with winks. For something much deeper than an infatuation, frustration is an understatement, so Didac’s crushes on boys are clearly not very serious, and he may eventually be sexually interested in women. Put somewhat bluntly, the importance of the role that water plays in how Muxart depicts nature in the film, especially with shots of Didac in particular swimming naked, brings to mind the problem in nature wherein heterosexual sexual intercourse is naturally well-lubricated (if not rushed) whereas anal penetration is not, but Didac’s instinctual urges for boys sexually are natural too. Also problematically, the two elongated camera close-ups of Didac’s butt while he is swimming on two occasions almost creep out the wide shots of a boy swimming naked, which prima facie can be construed as showing a human being fully in nature, and thus natural (whereas wearing gray suits in bland offices in artificial skyscrapers is not). If the film can be characterized as a love story, it is that of a family, rather than two boys, and, moreover, a love story with nature. To be sure, Didac takes after his mother in that both engage in “extracurricular” flings during the trip. In fact, Didac sees Lena kissing a younger man one night at a camp-grounds. “Don’t look at me that way,” Lena tells her eldest son the next day; she goes on to tell him that she had had a romantic night with a stranger on the same route twenty years before the present trip. That foray took place on a small boat and the young man disappeared, and Didac has the same experience with a boy on the current trip. With that boy, Alexander, disappearing in the morning before Didac wakes up, the film lapses in skipping ahead to Didac being with his family on a large boat without accounting for how the 16 year-old boy gets from the small boat anchored in the large river back to his parents. If Didac’s brief, free-spirit, foray with Alexander is supposed to feel magical, Alexander leaving Didac alone on the boat is too much reality. In fact, rather than viewing the film as falling within the “gay cinema” genre, if there is such a type (try “romance films,” as falling in love is falling in love), I contend that Muxart situates the film as a family dynamic couched within nature, in and as a part of nature. Rather than being apart from nature, and thus other animals, our species, homo sapiens, is in the animal kingdom, and this is evinced both sexually and in how we raise our offspring.

During the trip, while at an empty school that Albert attended as a boy, he gives his wife and three boys, who are less than attentive, a lecture on the building’s architecture. Albert claims that the rationalistic style is relaxing, but this is undercut as an argument ensues. Significantly, that scene ends with the camera staying on a tree whose fine branches and leaves are swaying in the wind. Nature is relaxing. In fact, Muxart has the 16-mm lens changed as the trip goes on because the river is larger as the family progresses on the route along the river, and shots of the water are salient in the film and to its very meaning. In fact, the film ends with a wide, sustained shot of the wide river, as if to say that nature has the last word as image. That the family, or at least Didac, swims nude can be taken as saying that his teenage growing pains are natural—that he is part of nature. When he is masturbating on the bank of the river after swimming nude alone, the greenery around him is as natural as his facial expressions, especially his eyes, as he is stroking his penis. As he approaches orgasm, a long camera shot of the river water sparkling in the sunlight with emotive instrumental music makes the connection with nature clear. What he is doing is entirely natural, and thus good. Even after Didac and his dad have a father-son talk on Didac having kissed a boy at school, a homosexual encounter that Didac initially denies as he tells his father, “You are too old to understand,” a long camera-shot of the river, which is wider than at the beginning of the film, ensues as if to say, nature has the last word; Didac should go on his natural instincts rather than try to rationalize or justify his attraction to other boys. My point is that Didac’s homosexual urges are not the point of the film; rather, such urges serve as props for Muxart’s leitmotif that we as a species are a part of nature, rather than cast apart, as Albert says in the film, “When no one lives in a building, it dies.” We may design and build buildings, but we are corporeal, organic beings and thus a part of nature.

We can move figuratively to a larger “camera shot” by changing our lens to the nineteenth century, when Romanticism evinced both by the painter Joseph Turner and the philosopher Henry David Thoreau eclipsed the Age of Reason. To be sure, it had been during the eighteenth century that the Earl of Shaftsbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith wrote on ethics by stressing the sentiment of disapprobation as being ethical judgment that some conduct has been unethical. There is no hint of Kant’s ethical categorical imperative wherein a logical contradiction in universalizing a maxim can be taken as evidence that the maxim is unethical. Instead, the viewer of the film is looking out on the river perhaps as Thoreau looked out on Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Even Aristotle looked to nature, and so too does Muxart in making Strange River; we just need to look at how several important scenes end. Just as Albert and Lena do not move forward with divorce, so too, the family does not divorce itself from nature. 

I Want Your Sex

The 2026 film, I Want Your Sex, is ostensibly about sex, for the film is saturated with that leitmotif, but the narrative is actually a critique of California culture, with European culture playing a minor role to provide a contrast. Generally, comedy can be used by screenwriters as a means by which audiences can accept, or at least acknowledge criticism that would otherwise be met with ferocious denial befitting a drug addiction. In 2026, the sheer dogmatism of ideologically-soaked imposing at will, as if with facts of reason rather than the gloss of merely subjective opinion, was the mentality of the day afflicting (young) adults under 40 years-old in California. Film can expose such banality to the light of day and thus serve as a self-correcting agent for a societal or sub-societal culture, for the human brain, standing on its own as arrogance on stilts, may be woefilly and unretrievably vulnerable to purblindness when beliefs and values are in the grip of ideological idolatry.

The film’s plot centers around Elliot being hired by Erika Tracy, a commercial artist. Her art’s theme is sexual in nature, and it is not long before she enlists all-too-willing Elliot in sadistic-masochistic sexual fantasies, for Elliot’s girlfriend, Minerva, is cold as ice in bed—even going so far as to fake enjoying sex with Elliot. As the film’s narrative unfolds, Erika and her pretentious (and violent) assistant, Vikktor, temporarily frame Elliot for murder (of Tracy!) in order to raise the asking prices for the art. The two come to a working-agreement wherein both profit from business dealings with the other, and the film ends with Elliot and Erika separately having the same dream in which they get married and she finally reveals herself as a self-imploding demon, which may refer to the true nature of the culture being critiqued by the film.

Erika, Vikktor, and the film’s gay trope/slut, Zap, another of Erika’s employees, are so intensely narcissistic that even their external mannerisms come off as pretentious. Erika even tells Elliot, “People think only about themselves.” She also tells him that most people are idiots and cowards, so don’t worry about what they think. Arrogant self-vaulting, as if on stilts during a flood, looks down on the pathetic losers below. According to M. Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie, however, a sense of inner emptiness lies behind such pretention and narrow, selfishness along with a callous indifference to whether other people are suffering. Erika’s inner emptiness can be grasped in Erika’s statement to Elliot, “Sex is everything and nothing.”  She even makes fun of her European acquaintance for having told Elliot that sex is a dance and a language of touch, and thus of even emotional intimacy. “That’s why I hate Europeans,” Erika says when Elliot recounts what the European woman told him in her hotel room. But in reducing sex to impersonal S & M, which highlights pleasure from the inflicting of pain, Erika can be critiqued on her judgment on the European’s interpretation of sex. For according to Erika, “Sex is a drug, like every other addiction,” so a person has to “learn how to control it or it will control you.” Because sex is Erika’s life in terms not only of her art, but also relationships that might otherwise be romantic, the implication is that her life, and even her sense of self, is actually empty, encased in an addiction to inflicting pain through impersonal, and mechanical sex. Her admission to Elliot, “We’re both emotionally stunted and suck at communicating” actually applies only to herself, for Elliot is the proverbial adult in the room.

Erika’s superficial toughness does, however, have a benefit, in that she is able to criticize the young-adult generation that has been so coddled by parents that ideological discomfort itself is a trigger. Anything uncomfortable is attacked even though discomfort can spur psychological development—something the “woke” generation sorely lacks. Erika recounts to Elliot that a young adult using social media (Tic-Tok) complained in a comment because the person had not given consent to see a photo of two people holding hands!  The sheer presumptuousness evinces a puerile stage of psychological development and thus a proclivity to throw a temper-tantrum when “accosted” by the discomfort of a hated ideological stance held by another person as if such a stance were unlawful and incorrect. It is no wonder, Erika says, that 30 percent of that generation play video games rather than have sex.

The film’s director and writer, Gregg Araki, told an audience in person in 2026 that the 30 percent line is important to the film. What he did not make explicit is that a generation of emotionally-stunted and isolated judgmental people is not of benefit to a society. The sheer ideological intolerance and presumption exclusively to truth, which in the 1980s had been associated with evangelical Christians, had come to characterize “politically-correct” children-adults in California by 2026. To such enraged intolerance, the rest of us can be said to have a duty to reply to such primped arrogance on stilts, Deal with it. But as “woke” as the “politically correct” were in 2026, they were actually asleep in their presumption and abject, narrow selfishness, which pathetically defines truth itself from such a standpoint and regards differing people as capable only of mere opinion. How convenient. A person can be addicted to an ideology too.

 

Iván & Hadoum

As the protagonists in the film, Iván & Hadoum (2026), neither Iván nor Hadoum, who fall in love, are heterosexuals even though by all appearances, save the long surgical scares under Iván’s former breasts, the couple is a man and a woman, and indeed Iván psychologically identifies himself as a man and Hadoum is a woman both biologically and in how she sees herself. To claim that Hadoum is heterosexual simply because Iván views himself as being a man, even though Hadoum is sexually attracted to Iván’s vagina, would be utter ideological nonsense. Besides being gay or bisexual, and thus easy targets for discrimination by agriculturalists in southern Spain, the two people are of different national origins, for Iván was born in Spain whereas Hadoum’s family hails from Morocco. Additionally, Iván is Caucasian whereas Hadoum is an Arab, and Iván is Christian whereas Hadoum is Islamic. Even in terms of labor-management relations, the couple is ripe for division by other people, for Iván is on a management tract—the warehouse being still owned by his uncle Manuel—whereas Hadoum is a greenhouse/warehouse worker, and a disgruntled one at that. It would seem that Ian de la Rosa has written and directed a film in which many ethical tropes are in play; which one is subject to the most unethical harm goes unanswered. Even so, by including unethical conduct on all of them, the film takes a step in the direction wherein audiences can think philosophically in weighing the ethical harms relative to each other.

Iván is a fork-lift driver in the warehouse when the film begins, and Manuel promotes him to being a line supervisor with an eye to possibly making him the warehouse manager. Iván wants the position because he needs it in order to get a loan. Meanwhile, Hadoum sorts vegetables on a line alongside other non-supervisory employees. Manuel’s attitude and labor practices incur resentment, and even resistance, from the line-employees, including Hadoum even after she has fallen in love with Iván. Perceiving that the two are “thick as thieves,” Manuel becomes suspicious of Iván and even uses him to manipulate Hadoum into stopping the workers from undermining Manuel’s efforts to sell the warehouse to an interested buyer. Iván reluctantly agrees, on condition that Manuel not fire Hadoum, but Manuel does not keep his side of the bargain and Iván confronts Manuel in front of the buyer at the warehouse. Hadoum, already fired by that point, learns of Iván’s valiant act in defense of her and the trust requisite for genuine emotional intimacy is achieved in spite of the efforts of other people to separate the pair.

Besides being on opposite sides of a tense labor-management situation, Iván is a “female-to-male” transsexual who has been taking estrogen and is breastless, though still a woman in having retained the reproductive organs. Regardless, Hadoum and Iván have a lesbian sexual relationship because both have vaginas, even if the denial ensuing from a contemporary ideological agenda fights like hell against such a claim, even labeling it as incorrect. Even though a person’s psychological stance towards one’s gender need not be in sync with one’s genitalia, two people who are sexually attracted to the other’s vagina are not heterosexuals. That the homosexual relationship (or Iván being a transsexual) faces prejudice in the film is evident when Iván’s mother says that that Hadoum’s parents would never accept Iván. Also, Manuel’s son threatens Iván with violence if Iván were “a real man.”

The film also contains allusions to the fact that Hadoum’s family is Moroccan rather than European. Again, Manuel’s son is an antagonist, referring to Hadoum’s family as “different,” rather than one of us here in Spain. To be sure, Hadoum feels no emotional attachment at least to the region, for she wants to move on even though she has fallen for Iván by the end of the film. She is indeed a nomad, and in this regard she may reflect the indigenous culture of her native land in Northern Africa.

Over all, the most ethical deed in the film is Iván’s standing up to Manuel for having fired Hadoum. Even if the firing were justified, for she had deliberately removed the required cap while the interested buyer was present with Manuel, Iván’s self-sacrificial act out of love for Hadoum is laudable. Another worker informs Hadoum of Iván’s unexpected heroic act, and Hadoum goes from only having fallen in love to something even deeper.

As for the most unethical act (or comment) by any of the many antagonists in the film, this question is much more difficult to answer, and arguably the film does not go far enough in this regard even though providing an answer as a fait accompli would be counter-productive to fostering philosophical thinking in viewers during and after viewing. Of course, the particular controversies—labor-management, nationality, sexual orientation (which is tied to genital-attraction even if “gender”-“identity” is not), and transsexuality—were in the West so steeped in ideology in the West by 2026 that ideological hubris could also be expected to be triggered by the film. So perhaps in addition to going a step further in providing some stepping stones to comparative ethical analysis, Rosa could have included dialogue wherein ideological prejudices or biases are made transparent so viewers could exculpate them from thinking philosophically in assessing which unethical statement is “worst” ethically speaking. A character, whether a protagonist or antagonist, could be made to state an opinion and then insist that it is a fact, and thus that anyone who disagrees is incorrect rather than just wrong. “How arrogant! My opinion is just as valid as yours!” The spreading category mistake wherein some ideologically-soaked opinions are misconstrued (and misproclaimed) as fact could thus be taken on, head-on.

As for comparing the unethical, prejudiced “slaps in the face” waged by antagonists in the film, one argument, for example, could be in favor of the anti-transexual statements being the most unethical. It could be argued, for example, that whereas nationality and union-sympathy are de-personalized, Iván’s breast-removal operation and treatment of female hormone is intensely personal as both pertain to Iván’s body. In other words, being said not to be a whole man could hurt Iván more deeply than Manuel’s anti-labor comments to Hadoum and other comments that she is a foreigner (which is only vaguely hinted at in the film). Generalizing, even disparate unethical statements can be compared along the axis of how deep the resulting emotional hurt is felt. Perhaps a utilitarian argument would come to the opposite conclusion, with aspersions against a nationality doing the most harm to the most people, even if only as generalized to a population from comments made to one person such as Hadoum. Manuel’s firing her could be found to be most unethical from Kant’s principle wherein rational beings should be treated not just as means, but also as ends in themselves. Manuel is far from treating his workers as ends in themselves, which is why Iván is advised to remember as a line supervisor that the workers on the line are human beings. At a well-managed workplace, such a reminder would not be necessary. In short, different ethical theories or principles can lead to different answers. So it is important that a filmmaker not impose one, for that would be dogmatic in the sense of arbitrariness. The objective should instead be to prompt audiences to think. To the extent that ideology has tended to override rational thought in the world, stimuli to rational, philosophical thinking are of particularly great value.

Young Adult

Can meaning be extracted merely from living out an ordinary life in an ordinary town? Must a person be among the literary, political, entertainment, or business elite to feel fulfilled? Are the popular kids in school the happiest? If so, why does a sense of over all contentment and ongoing enjoyment seem to come easily to some people while being arduously difficult for people leading ordinary lives to attain? Are people in the elites necessarily or even just usually happier than people who live out ordinary lives by earning enough to put bread on the table and simply enjoy friends and family. Would so many people be content to live such lives without any publicized accomplishment that will outlast them if ordinary life itself were not very satisfying? The 2011 film, Young Adult, is notable for how it deals with these questions in a non-formulaic way. Aside from contrasting ordinary living in a small town with being an accomplished, albeit flawed, writer (and person) in a way that puts accomplishment above a life centered on local events like high-school football games on Friday nights and family birthday parties, the film can be read as providing a statement on how not to write a novel. That the screenwriting is so good makes this dimension possible even though the medium is film.

The main character, Mavis Gary, is a woman who is aged 37 and has divorced a man whom her parents still like. She writes short novels in the young-adult category of fiction and, in an interesting parallel, is a young adult, psychologically. That she is a heavy drinker of alcohol likely has something to do with her maturation having been artificially arrested when had passed on from having been a hot, popular girl in high school who had no time for those students-dubbed-losers. In the film, seeking in vain to get her long-past high-school boyfriend (with whom she had a miscarriage back then) Buddy to leave his wife Beth and infant daughter to rekindle the high-school romance, Mavis finds it difficult to complete the last novel in the once-popular series for young adults. Mavis’s manipulative ploys reek of young adulthood. So too, unfortunately, does her writing.

Writing does not come easy for her even though Mavis is a serial-published author. The film hints of this in the scene in which she signs one of her ghost-written books tellingly without the bookstore employee having made the request or given permission, the film’s sound amplifies, and thus hones in on, the scratchy carving of her pen into the paper of a page. By the hard sounds of the tip of the pen on the paper, the audience can get the sense that writing is arduous. In filmmaking generally, the magnification of particular, ordinary sounds by literally turning up the volume of a mic up in volume can be useful in storytelling and developing a character. As a byproduct, an audience is made more aware of ordinary things in daily life—like how the closing of a door sounds when sitting in a new car, how hard shoes sound on bricks, and even how silence can punctuate a typical conversation with meaning. Life has been an up-hill struggle for Mavis in spite of her having been one of the cool kids in school, and the scraping sound of her pen writing her own name in a book that she wrote not only suggests how she approaches writing, but also, metaphorically speaking, how difficult it has been for her to feel fulfilled.

All the manipulation that goes into Mavis’s attempt to wrest Buddy from his new family and back into her arms shows just how desperate she is to feel inner fulfillment, and she allows this angst to spill into her writing. For example, when getting Buddy back proves difficult and she realizes that she will have to take an active role in breaking up Buddy’s marriage to do so, she subverts her novel by writing, “Sometimes in order to heal, a few people have to get hurt.” Her operating assumption is that manipulation can bring about happiness rather than isolation and loneliness. The film’s screenwriter could have had Mavis repeat the line to Bill, who was one of the geek high-school  students and during the film applies superego-conscience to Mavis's manipulative selfishness He could say, “So it is ok to tell young-adult readers of your book that it is ok to hurt people in order to feel whole?” The extent to which Mavis’s mentality and values are warped would be more transparent to the audience.

Mavis’s written line speaks volumes about what not to do in writing a novel, which should not serve as a mere direction-pointer of what happens to be going on in the writer’s life, bad or good, when the writing is underway. Such a flow of consciousness is called an autobiography, not a novel. It is no surprise when the employee at the bookstore reveals to Mavis that her series is on display not because the books are selling like pancakes, but, rather, because “that series is over.” That she is writing the last book of that series nonetheless is itself a harsh verdict on her books.

It is only after Sandra, Bill’s sister who looked up to the popular Mavis in high school, recalibrates Mavis’s perception of herself on the morning after Mavis has had unsatisfying sex with Bill after having been humiliated by Buddy at his daughter’s “non-religious naming ceremony” that Mavis recognizes that even her own mediocre accomplishment was at least an accomplishment. Sandra points out that no one else in that small town of bars and fast-food restaurants—Mercury, Minnesota—has or could do anything as noteworthy as writing a series of books. Mavis has had no clue on just how ordinary, banal, and unaccomplished, and therefore meaningless, the people are in the small town. They don’t really care if they die, Sandra explains, because they know it won’t matter whether or when they die because they haven’t accomplished anything noteworthy. The attitude expressed by the film itself depreciates this kind of mere existence. “This town blows,” an astonished and awakened Mavis exclaims to Sandra, who is satisfied that her message has been received. At the naming ceremony, Buddy gives his wife a drum-set, after all. Oh joy! Any push-back from this critique of people who live ordinary lives of putting bread on the table is utterly lacking in the film. Instead, Mavis is portrayed as a heroine when she stands up in Sandra’s (and Bill’s) kitchen and announces that it is time to go back to the big city in Minnesota. She even puts Sandra in her place as fitting well in the ordinariness of Mercury by refusing Sandra’s plea, “Take me with you!” The film does not consider that Sandra and Mavis may be wrong in viewing the people who have stayed in Mercury as useless losers whose ordinary lives amount to nothing. The message of the film is that making a noteworthy accomplishment makes living fulfilling, whereas selfish manipulation and living an ordinary life are recipes for unhappiness. Even though it is good to see Mavis wake up and be suddenly refreshed about life rather than commit suicide or die from driving drunk, I contend that meaning from ordinary living is inordinately dismissed in the film.

A certain sort of fulfilment can only come from an un-noticed and relatively unassuming life of lifelong friends and plenty of extended relatives nearby and therefore of get-togethers. To be sure, the day-in, day-out drudgery of banal work, however, is much more difficult to justify. If only more people would know and be matched with their passion, the world would be a happier place. Aside from the drudgery involved in having to put bread on the table, retain health insurance, and save for the kids’ college-education, ordinary life can be fulfilling. If brought out more in the film, such ubiquitous, long-standing and thus subtle comfort could contend with the alleged happiness (or value of living) that is known only to an accomplished member of a societal elite. Hypothetically, a person raised as a spoiled, immature, and discontented child from Rockford, Illinois, for example, could go on to be a rich partner of a Hollywood talent agency and live with utter disdain for the people still living in the sordid rust-belt city of high crime and unemployment that lies to the west of even the outer suburbs of Chicago (and thus civilization); such a person could easily look down on her relatives even if they were not all merely ordinary in terms of noteworthy accomplishment. Even all the wealth and the contact with popular film actors (many of whom may, it turns out, be utterly unhappy as fakes, even amid all their earthly possessions) that unnaturally comes with working at a high level in Hollywood, and all the pleasure that comes from feeling distain and thus superior generally may not be enough to erase the inner and outer isolation and reach the level of fulfilment that simply requires a certain maturation and friendly continence.  Such rare finds can arguably be found amid fame and famine, in big, accomplished cities as well as in small, uneventful towns. In cheering on Mavis’ return to the mini-apple and blowing off the ordinary people who reside in Mercury, the film does not proffer enough balance to support a dialectic of two very different ways of being fulfilled (instead, the film is ideologically prescriptive). Had the filmmakers constructed a balanced dialectic for the film, the screenplay could have been written in such a way that the narrative could arrive at identifying the underlying substratum that undergirds happiness itself, with Mavis realizing a sense of comfort in her own skin regardless of the context.

The Scarlet and the Black

In the film, The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer face off as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Col. Herbert Kapper at the end of the film when the Nazi head of police in Rome abruptly changes his tune in challenging the Catholic priest no longer by threats, but by appealing to the priest’s faith of humble compassion applied even to one’s enemies so O’Flaherty will extend mercy to Kapper’s wife and children, who would otherwise fall into the hands of the Allied troops advancing into Rome. Before that dialogue, O’Flaherty and Pope Pius XII subtly debate whether the pope had been right in compromising with Hitler in order to keep the Catholic Church intact in Nazi Germany. The film can thus be viewed in light of the potential of the medium of film to convey and even thrash out contending theological ideas.

Before the Nazi head of the SS in Rome faces off against the monsignor oddly in order to ask him a favor, that priest walks with the pope though a cellar hallway packed with rare documents and other treasures safe below the war, which the pope calls “the inhumanity of man.” The pope’s message is that the Church must go on, even in such times of war. “Conquers may come and go, but the eternal Church must remain,” the pope says as a way into his claim, “My greatest single duty is to preserve the continuity of the centuries, the heritage and existence of the Holy Church.” It is as though that goal were an end in itself, and therein lies that pope’s vulnerability. “I have been condemned by many for not speaking out against the Nazis, for making a concordat with Hitler, which guaranteed the life of the Church in Germany.” Speaking out against the Nazis could have turned enough Germans against the dictator that a coup may have been more likely. Also, making a deal with a man who is arguably caught up in evil is problematic from a Christian standpoint. The pope himself admits to the monsignor, presumably in referring to speaking out against the Nazis, “Perhaps I could have done more.” Determined to keep the church doors open in the Reich, the pope could be saying that he could perhaps have spoken out more without jeopardizing the Catholic churches in Germany, or that not having spoken out enough may not be enough to keep the churches open there. “I’ve learned that Hitler’s drawn up plans to invade us and to create a puppet Papacy in Lichtenstein under his control,” the pope informs the priest whose active involvement in hiding escaped Allied P.O.W.s and downed airmen could tip Hitler’s decision in favor of invading and closing the Vatican. “Any activities that give the Nazis an excuse to invade our territory must be avoided at all costs. All such activities must cease,” the pope says. The clear message to the monsignor is to immediately back away from hiding the 4,000 men in and around Rome.

One of the pope’s assumptions is that “the essence of statesmanship is compromise.” Even in politics, this claim can be disputed, for not all political differences can be reconciled; sometimes, a clear choice must be made wherein one option is chosen and the other is rejected. In religious terms, the relevant question is stated by the monsignor: “What is our duty when we come face to face with evil?” The pope instinctively answers, “We must fight it.” The implication is that compromising with Hitler’s regime was a mistake from a religious standpoint even if it worked politically. The monsignor closes the loop by asking the pope, “If we must fight, how can we compromise with it?” The pope answers with, “In the abstract, we cannot. In practical terms, it is sometimes necessary to proceed slowly and with caution.” But the monsignor’s question on how to deal with evil face to face is not in the abstract; it is an applied question. Also, in compromising with Hitler and not speaking out, the pope was not proceeding slowly; rather, his conduct was static rather than dynamic in order to keep the churches open in Germany. So, the pope’s answer doesn’t really work. The monsignor picks up yet another problem with the answer in asking, “But isn’t that the same as saying, it depends on the circumstances?” Sometimes it is necessary, the pope claimed. But any necessity bearing on political expediency would of course be extrinsic to religion, rather than from the nature of evil manifesting differently. What about “doing what is right, come hell or high water, and God will give you the upper hand?” This is the monsignor’s position. “Sanctus simplicitus, for some it is easier than others,” the pope replies. Holding to divine simplicity in the face of evil, the pope is saying, has not been easy for himself. It can be tempting to apply situational ethics instead of maintaining a religious true north. So, the monsignor asks, “Is it ever right to see innocent people in mortal danger and turn your back on them?” The priest informs the pope that 4,000 men in hiding are under his care, and the pope is visibly astonished at the number. “Do what you think is best, considering what I have said, and with God guiding your decision,” the pope advises. The monsignor’s questions have had an effect, as the pope has shifted from telling the priest to cease all such involvement so the Nazis will not invade the Vatican and set up a puppet Papacy. It is indeed a judgment call; even if compromising with evil is abhorrent to religious tastes, the pope was not wrong to see to it that the Catholics in Germany could still have Masses to attend in order to be spiritually fed liturgically, especially when the Allied bombing of German cities was underway. To say that the pope’s responsibility is only or even primarily to the institution whereas the monsignor’s is to God would be unfair; both men are trying to do what is right even though they favor different strategies. This commonality does not apply later in the film when Kapper has one of men fetch the monsignor from his bedroom for a private, informal meeting at the Roman Colosseum in the middle of the night. That dialogue between the antagonist and the protagonist represents evil pitting against holiness.

The sheer arrogance of evil is on display when Col. Kapper, who wants his wife and kids to be sneaked out of Rome to safety in Switzerland by means of the monsignor’s network, admits upon seeing the priest, “nothing would give me greater pleasure” than to shoot him. The monsignor is unfazed. “Well,” he says back, “when it comes down to it, a bullet is your answer to just about everything.” It’s “the only argument you’ve got.” Rather than deny this, Kapper replies, “I had my orders. I’m a soldier. I do my duty.” It is interesting that the head of the Nazi police in Rome views himself as having been a soldier in a war. The priest scoffs, “You can’t hide behind that, Kapper. Don’t debase the word duty.” Conflating municipal police with an army on a battlefield, Kapper replies that in a war, his duty includes “whatever it takes.” The duty to do anything a person likes lacks any constraint, and his thus not a duty. The priest misses this point, and instead goes after the defense of the duty to follow orders. “And you think that absolves you of any responsibility?” “Yes!” Kapper snaps back. “What is important is the Reich, not Rome.” At this point, the monsignor could have pointed out that Kapper was not following orders when he lied to the Jewish leaders that by paying him in cash and gold, the SS in Rome would leave the Jews alone. Just as Eichmann was not under orders to march Jews out of Hungary to an infamous concentration camp in Poland, in the film, no one ordered Kapper to trick the Jews. So, following orders doesn’t hold up as a defense, and neither does duty, for Kapper sought to enrich the Reich and likely even himself by giving the Jews to have an incentive to collect money and gold.

Regarding the importance of the Reich, the monsignor asks rhetorically, “How many murderous dictators have talked that kind of rubbish?” Regarding Rome, he says, “The Church is still here,” whereas in a few years, “a few broken stones” will be all that is “left of your Third Reich.” Because Kapper knows that the Nazis’ pull-out from Rome likely means that the Reich will likely fall, he does not dispute the priest’s prediction. Rather, he tries to treat both men as equivalent in being subject to superiors. The oddness of insulting the priest while wanting to ask for a favor comes up again when Kapper tells the monsignor, “You crawl to your pulpit, obey his orders, just as I obey mine.” Kapper is referring to orders from the pope, rather than God. The monsignor conflates the two in replying, “You compare obedience to Hitler with the faith a priest owes to his Church? You think that’s the same? In the name of God!” The priest’s reply can be criticized because faith to the Church is distinct from following orders from another person, including the pope even though the Papacy is believed by Catholics to hold a special position in relation to Christ (so it could legitimately be asked, by the way, whether Jesus would have compromised with Hitler as the pope did or stand on principle against the evil). Nevertheless, the monsignor is right to object to Kapper’s claim that following orders from a pope is normatively or in religious terms equivalent to following orders from Hitler. The monsignor is so utterly disgusted by the comparison as if both men were simply following orders that he begins to walk away before Kapper says, “Wait!” It is only then that, for a bit, Kapper’s tone softens; he must now ask for the priest’s help.

Picking up on Kapper’s reason for the informal meeting in the middle of the night, the monsignor asks, “What is it you want from me, Kapper?” The latter replies, “They say you [priests] can’t pass a beggar or a lame dog, but that you see yourself with some sort of obligation to look after anyone in trouble. You help British and American prisoners, Jews, Arabs, refugees, anybody. It’s part of your faith. Is that right?” “Well, I wouldn’t deny it,” the priest answers. “That’s why I became a priest.” Kapper has been told that the faith is one of “brotherly love and forgiveness.” Forgiveness “is the other half of what you believe, true?” “True,” the monsignor admits. “Well, I’m glad of it,” Kapper says almost warmly, “because I have three more for your mercy wagon.” Yet again, the odd strategy of insulting the person even while asking him for a favor is evident. Kapper notes that if the Partisans get a whole of his wife and children, they would be killed. Sounding like he is demanding mercy for his family, the SS man says, “I want them out of Rome and safe; that’s what I want from you, priest.” Again, this is not the politest way of asking for a favor. Astonished, the monsignor asks, “You’re asking me to save your family?” Kapper tries to manipulate the priest. “If you really believe what you preach, you’ll do it.” Still astonished, the monsignor says, “You expect me to help you after what you’ve done? You think it comes automatically, just because you want it?” Even the Nazi realizes that he has no right to ask for mercy for himself. “I’m not talking about myself,” he says. Even so, the priest is astonished. “You turned this city into a concentration camp. You’ve tortured and butchered my friends. You violated every principle of God and man! I can’t believe it, after all you’ve done, you want mercy?” Again, not denying the accusations, Kapper replies, “I told you, for my family.” But “they’re just part of you,” the monsignor replies. “Part of what you stand for. They’ve taken whatever they could get without a thought for the suffering all around them. And now, you demand that they be saved? I’ll see you in hell first!” The priest knows that Kapper is correct about the Christian faith, that Jesus says in the Gospels, forgive seven times seven, including enemies, so in refusing Kapper’s “demand,” the priest is willing in the moment to go to hell rather than help the Nazi’s family. Picking up on this, Kapper says to himself of the monsignor, “No, you’re no different from anyone else. All your talk means nothing. Charity, forgiveness, mercy? It’s all lies. . . . There’s no God. No humanity.”

So, when Kapper is caught and is informed while being interrogated that someone, perhaps with a network, has gotten the Nazi’s wife and children to safety in Switzerland, the hardened SS man is surprised. Although the film does not include the man’s eventual conversion, the beginning of his turning away from the Nazi ideology to the Christian faith begins when he realizes that the monsignor has not even taken credit for the act of mercy, which implies unconditional forgiveness for Kapper’s family even though they benefitted financially while other people suffered greatly.

That neither brotherly love nor forgiveness of one’s detractors is conditional is clear from the Gospels. Even when demanded by an enemy who has not turned from evil, God’s love can reach into the dark, for otherwise how will God vanquish evil in the end? Is this not the ultimate telos of faith in the three Abrahamic religions? As much as evil deserves to be punished, and of course can be subject to divine wrath, for “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord,” it is up to us to pour love as humane, humble compassion where doing so is hardly convenient. To say that helping Col. Kapper’s wife and children is not convenient for Monsignor O’Flaherty is a gross understatement; after all, the monsignor risked being captured by Kapper’s SS men when he went, disguised in a Nazi uniform, to visit his friend, Fr. Vittorio, who was in jail and severely ill from having been recently tortured. The neighbor-love evinced in risking one’s own life to compassionately minister to a friend’s humane needs, as well as in hiding P.O.W’s who could otherwise be captured and killed by the Nazis instantiates the presence of divine love, but what many Christians do not realize is that an even richer presence of theological love lies in compassionately serving the humane needs of enemies and even people whom one dislikes or is disliked by oneself. What the monsignor does for Kapper’s wife and children, and thus really for the SS police chief himself by extension, dwarfs the religious significance, from a Christian standpoint, of hiding 4,000 men from the Nazis and ministering to Vittorio. In short, “love thy enemies” goes beyond “neighbor-love” in realizing the kingdom of God within. Compassion for one’s friends, one’s neighbors, and finally one’s enemies can be seen along a trajectory of decreasing self-interest.

As the film winds up, the penultimate scene centers on a brief dialogue between the pope and the monsignor. “No need to rise,” the pope says as he enters the room. “In this imperfect world,” he tells the monsignor, “you may never receive the honor that is due to you. But I wanted you to know that in my heart, I honor you.” Because the world would not honor the monsignor for getting Kapper’s family to safety, the pope must be referring to the monsignor’s role in running the informal network that hid thousands of men from the Nazis in and around Rome. Referring back to the discussion in the cellar, the pope said, “I talked to you once of the treasures of the Church. Perhaps I deceived myself. The real treasures of the Church, what makes it imperishable, is that every once in a while, someone comes to it, my son, like you.” That the pope is referring to the treasures in the cellar, which symbolize the value in protecting the institution from the Nazis, is another indication that the pope is referring to the monsignor’s role in hiding enemies of the Nazi state with whom he sympathizes rather than to the monsignor humbly acting in compassion, in unconditional forgiveness, by moving Kapper’s family to safety in Switzerland. It follows that the pope has more reason than he realizes to honor the monsignor. At an esoteric level of distinctively Christian faith, the monsignor, in using his free will to decide to have his network get Col. Kapper's family safely to Switzerland, Monsignor acted out of strength rather than weakness, and could feel the presence of the divine nature more deeply than from helping Vittorio and all of the men in hiding. In honoring the priest on the basis of the neighbor-love that the priest took risks to manifest in compassion to Vittorio and the 4,000 Allied soldiers in hiding, the pope can been understood as taking the Christian faith only so far. 

The Reader

The film, The Reader (2008), captures a frame of mind that may be so frequently overlooked when it is observed because it is so bizarre in its impact on reasoning that it difficult to explain, let alone grasp for what it is. The phenomenon is not of artifice; rather, it is a natural vulnerability of the human mind, or brain, due to its susceptibility to ideology that is highly unethical in its content, including a circumscribed and even warped mental framework and very unethical prescriptions for conduct. The ideology at issue in the film is that of the Nazi Party in Germany from 1933 to 1945.  The truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely does not fully account for the cognitive warping that is evinced by Hanna Schmidt during her trial in the film.

The plot centers around a sexual-relationship between Hanna Schmitz and Michael Berg during a summer more than a decade after the end of Nazi Germany. Because Michael is only 15 years old when Hanna, a middle-aged adult, seduces him sexually and gets him to read stories to her, she starts off the film as being culpable criminally, assuming that sexual intercourse with a minor is illegal in the film. To be sure, not even astute viewers would predict that her seduction of a minor means that she had worked as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp from 1943 until the death-march from Hungary in 1944, especially because Michael willingly returned to her apartment several times to read to her and have sex with her. As the film goes on, viewers quickly realize that her sexual crime is dwarfed by her crimes as a guard in Nazi Germany.

A portion of professor Rohl’s lecture in his law-school class in which Michael is enrolled as a law student years after his summer of sex is a useful way to contextualize Hanna’s Nazi crimes. Rohl begins by noting that out of the 9,000 people who worked at Auschwitz, only 19 have been convicted, and they were convicted according to law rather than morality. “The question was not, was it wrong, but was it legal, and not by our laws, no, by the laws at the time” and “intent must be proved.” One student observes that the law is narrower than is holding people to the dictates of morality. Professor Rohl readily agrees. To be convicted, Hanna and the other five guards with whom she worked must be found to have violated the relevant laws of Nazi Germany. So just following orders, which count as laws, is a viable defense.

In his trial in 1961 in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann was convicted precisely because he had violated Himmer’s order not to march Hungarian “enemies of the state” to Auschwitz. Eichmann violated the laws of Nazi Germany knowing that people would die as a result, so he could be convicted and even sentenced to death.  The film, The Reader, refutes Israel’s claim that former Nazis could not get an unbiased trial in West Germany. Both the Israelis and the Germans could be expected to hold biases regarding the Germans who were, or worked for, the Nazis, yet in the film as well as in Eichmann’s historical trial in 1961, jurisprudence passes the test in maintaining its narrow, and thus rigorous standards even against biases one way or the other.

In the trial in the film, Hanna admits to having been one of six female guards who selected 60 prisoners each month to be sent from their camp to Auschwitz even though the guards (and the prisoners) knew that the 60 people sent would be killed. Unlike the other women on trial, Hanna is honest in her testimony. Answering the chief judge’s question on why she selected 10 prisoners each month to be killed at Auschwitz, she answered, “but there were new arrivals arriving all the time, so the old ones had to make room for the new ones. We couldn’t keep everyone. There wasn’t room.” In Hanna having been oriented to the flow of prisoners being optimal, Hanna Arendt’s description of the Eichmann trial as showcasing the “banality of evil” in the bureaucracy of the Nazis applies here too. In the film, the chief judge is astonished at Hanna’s lapse concerning the obvious ethical problem: “But you knew you were selecting people to be killed.” Hanna replies, “What would you have done? Should I have never signed up at Siemens?” meaning to be hired by the SS. Hanna’s answers are themselves worthy of reflection, for they evince an absolute indifference to the plight of the chosen prisoners. In fact, she puts space-limitations at her camp above, as if justifying, the (necessary) plight. It is not as if she seems to have been wallowing in the power she had at the camp; she seems to have viewed herself as a manager working as if a hotel manager oriented to managing vacancies so no one arriving would be turned away, as if that were ethically more objectionable than sending prisoners to their death at the death camp in Poland.

Any such managerial excuse is belied when the judge turns to Hanna’s role in the march of all of the prisoners to Auschwitz when the camp in Hungary was closed. Hanna and the five other SS guards with whom she worked locked the doors of a church where prisoners were sleeping one night on the journey even though the guards knew that that church was on fire from a bombing raid. The chief judge asks Hanna, “Why did you not open the doors? In the written report, which you all signed, you claim you didn’t know about the fire until after it had happened. But that isn’t true, is it? . . . Why did you not open the doors?” Hanna quickly responds in a way that suggests that she thinks the judge has just asked a stupid question. “Obviously,” she says defiantly. “For the obvious reason. We couldn’t. We were guards. Our job was to guard the prisoners. We couldn’t just let them escape.” Her judgment that keeping the 300 people in the church, in which case they would all, except for one girl, die, was better than letting them out even if they would try to escape evinces something more than a warped moral compass. To be sure, letting prisoners escape is ethically preferrable to keeping them from evading death, but her reasoning too is flawed. The job of guarding prisoners does not in itself include playing a role in their respective deaths.

The judge next wants to assess whether Hanna and the other five guards feared for their lives should the prisoners have escaped from the burning building. “And if they escaped,” he asked Hanna, “you’d be charged? You’d be executed?” Hanna, hardly a defense attorney, answers emphatically, “No! If we’d opened the doors there would have been chaos. How could we have restored order? . . . and if they had all come out, we couldn’t just let them escape! We couldn’t! We were responsible for them!” That being responsible for prisoners could include deciding to let them die when they could be saved is, I submit, not just a moral lapse as if contributing to the death of 300 were morally better than letting them escape. Perhaps equally of concern, her reasoning—her cognition—was infected as if with computer malware. This can be more easily grasped from following statement, which is similar to what Hanna answers: We let the prisoners die because we were responsible for them! Her premise that the guards’ responsibility as guards is only to forestall escape—meaning that the responsibility of the guards was to the Nazi regime rather for the prisoners—even if that responsibility meant forcing the prisoners to be burnt alive is unsound and narrow; hence it may be the product of brain-washing.

It is not that being willingly enveloped by a political ideology spares a person from culpability. So, the judge tells Hanna, “So you did know what was happening. You did know, you made a choice. You let them die, rather than risk letting them escape.” She was neither forced nor insane; she knew what she was doing in keeping 300 people in a burning church. Hanna’s problematic mentality goes beyond the ethically problematic hierarchy of escape as being worse than being burned live. Even though she had obviously been “supercharged” into focusing narrowly in her job on escape being the worst thing possible, she was once again indifferent to the severity of the plight of other people. Both the narrowness and the sociopathic indifference were part of Nazi culture. In fact, the strong preference for order and aversion to chaos has arguably remained a salient part of German culture even though the Nazis’ ideology has been refuted. In the film, the judge does not question Hanna on her aversion to chaos or the high value she puts on order. This lapse is odd, considering that the judge may be guilty of scapegoating Hanna with a life sentence while giving the other five guards only four and a half years in prison. The other five guards contributed to the scapegoating, but the judge seemed not to realize this point.

Even though Hanna has answered the judge’s questions with an amazing forthrightness, the judge does not believe her when she denies that she wrote the report on the church fire. He even ignores her valid point that it doesn’t matter who wrote the report because all six women signed it. None of the six opened the church doors as the building burned, and there was no evidence that Hanna was in charge of the other guards. He should have relied more on Hanna’s testimony regarding the other defendants rather than say that it is easy to spread the crime to include other culprits. Furthermore, that Hanna does not give the convenient answer that she feared that the SS would execute her for letting the prisoners escape and that she answers honestly goes to her integrity, when supports my claim that she had been indoctrinated by the Nazis when she was hired to believe that the lives of the prisoners do not matter, especially as against them being able to escape (even from a burning building).

Lest it be concluded that only Nazi ideology could be so severely warping in terms of morality and reasoning, the claim of the Israeli army late in 2025 that a 3 year-old Gaza resident had to be shot because the child walking from a tent to an Israeli tank nearby was a security threat. So too, the claim by officials in the Israeli government, including Israel’s president, that all residents of Gaza were culpable of the attack inside Israel proper by Hamas is warped, both morally and cognitively. Israeli soldiers playing the game of who can shoot the most kids in Gaza, soldiers raping 6 year-old boys (and doubtlessly numerous Gaza women) in the name of security, and the Israeli government’s presumptuous and erroneous accusation of collective responsibility of everyone in Gaza for the attack carried out by a political group such that more than a million people were intentionally subjected to starvation, no medical care, and even homelessness all evince the toxic mental imprint of a sordid ideology of hatred every bit as sordid as the Nazi ideology had been. Shooting babies who had not even been born in 2024 demonstrates the utter irrationality in the statements of some senior government officials that all of the residents of Gaza deserve to suffer—that not even death is good enough for them. I contend that this last part renders the mass atrocities a holocaust rather than just a genocide. Subjecting over a million people to severe deprivation and thus horrid suffering, and killing over 60,000-75,000 residents outright through 2025 mean that the statements were not merely rhetoric. That the deaths of less than 1,500 Israelis in the attack in Israel in 2023—an attack of utter frustration contextualized by decades of being subjugated and occupied by an enemy state—could justify so many more deaths and the starvation of many, many more people in Gaza demonstrates not just severely flawed ethical judgment, but also corrupted reasoning as if such an imbalance could possibly be justified even in terms of state security. Were the Israeli officials intellectually honest, they would simply admit that they were simply unleashing their hatred of a “subhuman” people who are like dogs. Similarly, Nazi propaganda films portrayed Jews as rats infecting Europe. It is perhaps out of a global sense of guilt about the first holocaust that the unbalanced Israeli application of collective “justice” did not trigger a coalition of the willing among nations to rid Gaza military of the Israeli army, and that the equivalence of the Netanyahu and Hitler administrations has not been recognized and acknowledged. Ideology can indeed warp moral judgment and even cognition/reasoning as well as perception of world events.

That susceptibility of the human mind can operate “beneath the radar,” especially in regard to the severity of the depravity. The judge in the film tells the court that Hanna is in another class of criminality even from the five other guards. I submit that he is wrong about the five other guards, for they are just as culpable criminally because none of them were willing to open the church doors and thus were fine with 300 people being burned to death. Nevertheless, the judge aptly perceives Hanna’s “reasoning” as partial at best and her values as deeply problematic morally. They were our responsibility; we couldn’t just let them escape, so we decided that they would have to die. The 300 prisoners in the church did not have to die; they died because the six SS guards chose not to open the doors. It is conceivable that those guards could have opened the doors and maintained order while minimizing escapes by surrounding an open space and shooting the first person trying to flee.

Contemporary implications of the film include the point that the recognition of the subjectivity-based warping of the human mind by ideology means that the world needs more than the impotent UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold back aggressive regimes such as those of the Nazis and the Israelis. Although not so ideological, the foray into Ukraine by President Putin of Russia based in part on a vision of a resurrected Russian empire (not the USSR) also deserved to be turned back by more than an imagined coalition of the willing in Europe. To the extent that the Russian officials viewed the Ukrainians as subhuman, thus justifying women being raped by Russian soldiers and children being sent deep into Russia, the ideological culprit at work in the Nazi government in the twentieth century and the Israeli government in the 2020s can be detected yet again. The vulnerability of the human mind is thus no accident, but is intrinsic. Therefore, the admixture of human hatred with political (and religious) ideology comes with a such steep toll that the ongoing system of international relations based on absolute national sovereignty can be deemed to be wholly inadequate. International means with military-enforcement power have been needed at least since the 1930s to restrain toxic regimes from inflicting severe harm on people presumed ideologically to be subhuman. 

The underlying problem is not merely humans being drunk with power; even though absolute power corrupts absolutely, and thus institutional checks and balances are advisable both within a government and between every government and the international community institutionalized in an organization or government with real enforcement power, the subjective human mind is too vulnerable to being brain-washed by ideology and this itself is a problem especially because the warped mind is typically impervious to correction both morally and in regard to its own faulty reasoning. In the film, there is no indication whatsoever when Hanna is imprisoned for 20 years that she comes to grips with how wrong she has been ethically and how flawed her reasoning was in her choice not to open the church door. During the trial, the limits of her ideologically-constrained reason are clear when she draws a blank and asks the judge, “What would you have done? Should I not have signed up at Siemens?” The significant imprint of a flawed ideology can readily be inferred. The system of international relations can and should be informed by just this inference that the film astutely provides.

Shadows in the Sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

Passengers

In line with the films, The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001), Passengers (2008) centers on the (hypothetical) question of whether the walking dead have to be convinced that they are indeed dead rather than still living. In all of those films, and even Ghost (1990), the dead who stick around as ghosts rather than immediately pass on to another realm have something to come to terms with, or work out. The astute viewer of these films is apt to wonder whether in the story-worlds of the films, as well as in real life, all that is going on is really just in the dying brain of the dead person, which is the case in Jacob’s Ladder (1990). We know that a dying brain secretes a hallucinatory hormone. As for whether there is even an actual afterlife, such a question is still beyond our reach, at least before death. I contend that Passengers hinges on whether the entire movie takes place in Claire’s mind. The answer hinges on the nature of the existence of the other characters who are dead. If they have their own agendas rather than are around to help Claire come to terms with the fact that she is actually dead—that she was on the plane that crashed with no survivors—then the film posits the existence of ghosts in our world rather than just in dying brains. The issue, in short, is existential and metaphysical.

Passengers centers around Claire and her love interest, Eric. Initially, Claire thinks she is a therapist called in to do group counseling with the few survivors of the crash. The mystery of whether the airline is spying on the survivors and Claire to make sure than none of them reports that an engine had exploded, rather than that the crash was conveniently due to just pilot error, is actually a red herring or diversion designed to keep the film’s viewers from figuring out that Claire is really dead before she realizes it in the film. The strategy is ingenious.

Arkin seems to be an executive at the airline, but he is really the dead pilot of the plane. His agenda—what he is being held back from heaven or hell for—is to come to terms with the fact that he had not even been in the cockpit when the engine initially caught on fire; perhaps he could have put out the fire before the explosion. Talking with Claire, he keeps insisting that there was no explosion; it was just due to pilot error. We don’t suspect that the error was actually his own. His coming to terms with this does not fit with the reason why Claire is being “held back,” so his existence as a ghost cannot be just in her brain’s working out of her own death.

Similarly, Shannon, one of the crash survivors who is in Claire’s therapy group, does not help Claire. Rather, Shannon is obviously disturbed apart from anything going on with Claire, and it is only when the ghosts of her relatives come to her aid that she no longer attends the group; she has moved on. This is yet another “data point” supporting the theory that in the film’s story-world, ghosts do exist rather than merely being figments in dying brains.

Not every dead character adds support for the contention that ghosts do exist in the story-world, however. Toni, the excessively helpful older woman who lives in the same apartment building as Claire does, and Perry, who ostensibly is Claire’s boss, do not have their own agendas and thus can exist only in Claire’s brain, or as ghosts, as they are there to help her rather than come to terms with their own dilemmas. Toni is actually Claire’s aunt and Perry is one of her elementary-school teachers who have come back as ghosts (presumably from heaven) to help Claire realize that she is dead.

Eric is an interesting case; he has his own issues, but he knows he is dead and he patiently waits for Claire to come to the same realization about herself. His brazen recklessness in front of a car and then on the tracks in front of a train may be geared to helping Claire realize that he, and thus herself, are actually dead. “You had to realize it on your own,” he tells her as soon as she realizes that she had been a passenger too, and thus is dead. She is at peace as she goes sailing with him, and, as in Ghost, the screen turns to white, suggesting perhaps that her existence in the world has ceased or that her brain is finally completely dead. Whereas in Jacob’s Ladder, the soldier has been dead on a slab all along, the independent agendas of Arkin and Shannon are strong evidence that the dead do not exist in the film only in Claire’s mind.

Unlike “mind in a vat” solipsism, which is evinced in The Matrix (1999) albeit not involving dead people, the ontology of ghosts in the world, or in another world with some vague, tenuous ties to the world of the living is a metaphysical point that we continue to exist after the death of our respective bodies. The materialist death of the human brain is distinct from positing the reality (i.e. ontology) of ghosts, and the astute viewer of Passengers may pick up on this subterranean question after having watched the film. That the medium of film can trigger such a fundamental question is my underlying point as to the potential of film to “do” philosophy, and with a greater reach than any book on philosophy can have in a non-studious culture.

True Confessions

The film True Confessions (1981) centers around a priest who is the heir-apparent and assistant of the cardinal of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. Even though the priest is a precise bureaucrat and liturgist, I contend that he lapses in what can be said to be the true mission of a Christian priest, and thus in the essence of Christianity. Moreover, the film is deficient in not making this point explicit.

The priest, Des Spellacy, enjoys a cordial yet emotionally distant relationship with is brother Tom, who is a homicide detective. Tom is working on the murder of a prostitute who was sent to a porn-maker by Jack Amsterdam, who has profited from several commercial real-estate deals with the archdiocese. Although Tom knows that Jack did not kill the prostitute, the homicide detective hates Jack and wants to pin the crime on him anyway. That Jack has profited in his dealings with the Church even while engaging with prostitutes offends Tom, given the hypocrisy. Indeed, the Cardinal and Des are in the midst of cancelling an upcoming deal with Jack. But Des does not go after his brother for intending to arrest Jack even though Tom admits in the confessional to Des that Jack may be innocent of the crime. Using the confessional to talk with his brother, Tom says that he is about to arrest Jack. “Did he do it,” Des asks repeatedly. “I don’t care if he did it or not,” Tom replies. Des says nothing.

I contend that Des, a monsieur in the Roman Catholic Church, misses an opportunity to hold his brother to Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. At the very least, Des could go after Tom’s abuse of police power as being antipodal to Jesus’ example and teaching. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Des does not even mention the word vengeance to his brother. As a priest, Des is called to resist even brotherly attachment to proclaim Jesus’ commands; being a priest is not merely knowing how to perform rituals.

At the end of the movie, when Tom and Des are old men, Des tells his brother that he has finally come to understand the mission of a priest. I demure. Being a quiet, peaceful person is not the mission. In fact, just as Jesus goes after the Jewish hypocrites, including the money-changers in the Temple, priests should stand up to seemingly pious hypocrites. No priest should be a punching-bag in the face of hypocrisy. I submit that Tom’s hypocrisy is much more egregious than is Des’ own ‘worldly ambition” to become a bishop and ultimately a cardinal.

I contend that the film would evince the Christian message were Des to urge Tom to let go of his hatred of Jack, for we are all flawed, as well as the urge to abuse police power, and to go even further in helping Jack by befriending him while not shying away from calling Jack on his hypocrisy (while Tom admits his own to Jack). Two struggling men both in touch with their respective depravities in the context of Tom the Christian helping Jack as a friend (without enabling the hypocrisy) is what the filmmaker could have shown were the film to esteem the specifically (and uniquely) Christian ideal. Having Des relegated to a parish in the desert for a silly reason pales in comparison to depicted why he falls short of the mission of a priest.

The Case for Christ

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The journalist attends a debate between two scholars of religion, Singer and Habermas, on the historical Jesus movement in Biblical hermeneutics—that is, on what the Gospels, as faith narratives, can tell us about Jesus as a historical person. Singer denies that information in a faith narrative, or myth, can be taken as historical evidence. Logically, to treat a religious text as a historical account is to commit a category mistake (i.e., ignoring the distinction between two categories). For one thing, the incorporation of history into a faith narrative serves religious points, which are of a higher priority than historical accuracy. In writing a religious narrative, the writer’s intent is not to provide a historical account; historians do that.

For example, the synoptic Gospels differ on when the Last Supper takes place relative to Passover. Different theological points are being made. Jesus being crucified during Passover likens him to the animals sacrificed in Exodus. Jesus is the Lamb of God. Were the authorial intent to provide a historical account, this theological point could not be made if the historical Jesus was crucified after Passover. It makes sense that a writer who is religious would be more faithful to his theology than to history. The Gospel writers selectively appropriated historical accounts without verifying them as historians would have done. In fact, the writers would even have been inclined, given how important their faith was to them, to take sayings passed on orally as unfettered (i.e., unbiased) historical accounts.

A Gospel writer (and Paul) could have written things as if they were historical to make theological points. Paul’s miraculous experience on the road to Damascus provides the man who had prosecuted Christians with status in Jesus’ inner circle. The historical nomenclature tends to crystalize over centuries as the historical “fact” eclipses Paul’s religious reason for portraying the miracle as having really happened (i.e., as an event in empirical history). That is, the authorial intent in making an event seem historical by using historical nomenclature is often overlooked by faith-readers, especially in an era in which empirical facts are the gold standard covering even religion. Therefore, Singer’s position is that the Gospels cannot be assumed to be reliable sources of historical information.

Habermas answers Singer by claiming that the Gospels are indeed reliable sources of historical events. As a public event, the crucifixion would have had witnesses—sympathizers and critics. Habermas points out that an atheist school of thought “now believes that the earliest known report of the resurrection was formed no later than three years after the Cross.” Habermas cites a book by Gurd Luderman, which discusses the report. Unlike Singer, Habermas believes that the obvious faith-interest of the sympathetic witnesses in the resurrection having really occurred would not cause them to lie. That many witnesses saw Jesus after he resurrected adds to Habermas’ confidence.

It is interesting that in using the word, really, to refer to history, I have just committed a common error wherein even in religious matters, the historical criteria trumps, or is more real, than religious truth, whose reality comes to us by symbol, myth, and ritual. The religious truth of the resurrection is contained in the Gospels, whose theological truths transcend history, just as the Creator transcends Creation.  

Implicit in Habermas’ position is the rhetorical question: why would people of faith lie? Why would people deeply motivated by religious truth violate truth itself by fabricating their historical accounts of Jesus after his resurrection? Habermas would likely dismiss the “ends justify the means” rationale for doing bad things for a good outcome. Fundamentalists may be particularly susceptible to this way of justifying doing bad things in service to a faith even though an objective observer would see the hypocrisy. The two scholars may thus be debating, at least in part, how human nature interacts with religion.

The journalist’s initial position rephrased is that if the resurrection did not happen historically (rather than only in the faith narratives), then religious truth in the faith narratives would have no value. In other words, faith serves history rather than vice versa in the religious domain. To be sure, it can be argued that if the historical Jesus did not “really” resurrect in physical body and spirit, then his true followers will not resurrect after their physical death. The religious truth necessitates the historical event, yet no reliable (i.e., independent of the faith narratives) historical account exists. The journalist and Habermas are thus diametrically opposed.

Historians overwhelming contend that the Jesus passage in Jewish Antiquities, written by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who covered Jesus’ period in Judaea, was actually added subsequently in order to include Christian faith claims that go beyond what a historian would include in writing history, and what a Jew would believe and thus proselytize through writing “history.” The journalist would strongly agree that historical accounts that are separate from faith narratives can be susceptible to interpolated (i.e., injected) faith material that is portrayed as historical. Josephus mentions Jesus and his followers, though “close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two or three centuries after Josephus.”[1] Specifically, Josephus’ uses of “the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the passage on Jesus.” They are “different than the forms that Josephus uses in other [Pontius] Pilate episodes, and these differences amount to a difference in genre.”[2] The passage on Jesus is close to the Gospels, which are faith narratives, whereas the other events involving Pilate are written in verb forms used by historians to write histories.

A Jewish historian such as Josephus would not have been inclined to include Christian faith-claims, especially as part of a historical account. For example, the parenthetical () “if indeed one ought to call him a man” is not a historical fact and not something to which a Jew would subscribe. Furthermore, Josephus did not use the literary device of parentheticals except in his passage on Jesus. This suggests that a later Christian editor or copyist may have inserted material within sentences to include elements of the Christian faith (even inserting phrases within sentences distinct from the sentences’ contents) morphed into historical content by means of historical nomenclature (i.e., using words that make something seem historical). That is, the interlarded additions in the passage on Jesus conflate two distinct genres, faith narratives and historical accounts.

As a Jew and a historian, Josephus would not likely have written that Jesus was a teacher to people willing to “accept the truth.” This is not a historical statement, for truth is not a historical event. This applies also to the statement, “He was the Messiah.” Finally, the statement that after three days, Jesus was “restored to life” (i.e., resurrected) is not something that a Jew would take as a historical event.[3] Interestingly, not even Habermas sites Josephus; rather, the religious scholar relies on witnesses in the Gospels, thus conflating the two genres: myth (i.e., faith narratives) and history.[4] Singer points out that taking witnesses in a faith narrative as providing historical evidence is invalid by the criteria of history.

In short, Josephus would indeed have been a very unusual Jew had he believed these faith claims to be valid; he would have been a deficient historian had he viewed them as historical accounts rather than faith claims.

Justus of Tiberius, a rival historian, did not include Jesus even though this historian “wrote in great detail about the exact period of Tiberius’s reign that coincided with Jesus’s ministry.”[5] Therefore, even the validity of Josephus’ mention of Jesus as a historical person living in the Middle East can be contested. Perhaps the entire passage of Jesus was implanted by a later editor or copyist sympathetic to Jesus. If so, then no historical record exists to support the claim that Jesus existed historically rather than only in the faith narratives. We could not know whether Jesus’ resurrection really happened by appealing to historical evidence (e.g., witness accounts separate from those in the Gospels).

After the debate, Habermas and the journalist sit down for a coffee. “How can anyone talk about historical evidence for a resurrection when the resurrection is by its very nature a miracle?” the journalist asks. “We all know miracles can’t be proven scientifically.” The source of a miracle is outside of Creation, and thus its natural laws and processes. “We don’t have to prove a miracle in order to prove the resurrection, Habermas replies. “You just have to show that Jesus died and was seen afterwards.” Interestingly, Habermas uses the word show rather than prove. This may suggest that he has already ceded some ground on how difficult it is to prove that an event happened empirically two thousand years ago. The journalist seizes on this vulnerability of historical studies. “Right,” he says, “but the very people who claimed that they saw him are religious zealots. In my line of work, we call those biased sources.” We are back to the problem of the selective use of history in faith narratives, and in taking Josephus’ historical account as valid historically.

Habermas dismisses the problem of biased sources and declares, “I care about the facts.” The journalist cleverly hinges on the problem of what constitutes a fact. “So what are the facts, Dr. Habermas? The resurrection narrative is more legend than it is history.” To be sure, that the resurrection is in a myth does not in itself mean that Jesus did not resurrect historically (i.e., it was a historical event). Even if neither the witnesses in the Gospels nor even Josephus’ historical account suffices under historical criteria, historical events have surely gone unreported by historians. In effect, the journalist is using his stance in the discussion as a fact. Habermas spots this fallacy and replies, “Really? Not according to historical records. Did you know that we have a report of the resurrection from specific eye-witnesses that dates all the way back within months of the resurrection itself? That source also adds that five hundred people saw Jesus at the same time.” However, because Habermas is relying on witnesses in a faith narrative, or myth, we cannot count them as historical witnesses. In other words, he is conflating the two genres and not offering a counterargument to the problem of biased sources. Even the journalist falls victim to conflating the two genres.

Replying to Habermas, the journalist says, “That’s still just one historical source—the Bible.” Habermas replies, “Wrong, there are at least nine ancient sources both inside and outside the Bible confirming that disciples and others encountered Jesus after the Crucifixion.” Notice that Habermas refers to ancient sources inside the Bible. The word ancient is a historical term. Habermas is likely invoking Josephus’ historical account, which as discussed above is problematic in itself as a historical source. If the scholar is counting other historical accounts, he would have to confront the consensus among historians that Josephus provides the only mention of Jesus in a historical account (as well as the consensus that Josephus’ account is problematic as a historical source). It would be presumptuous of Habermas as a religious scholar to claim superiority over historians in deciding what constitutes a valid historical account (i.e., by criteria in the discipline of history). Would the historians then have superiority over scholars of religion on religious questions?

Pointing to the problem of biases sources, the journalist claims that the disciples and others who encountered Jesus after the Crucifixion “were already followers of Jesus.” This gives us an idea of what would be needed to have a valid historical source. Such a witness would have be verified as independent of Jesus and his followers, and mentioned in a historical account, which itself would have to be authenticated. This is not to say that Jesus’ followers could not have witnessed an event such as the resurrection and reported it orally to others. A historical account would need more support; however, as such witnesses would have had a faith-interest in reporting the event as empirical even though the resurrection has religious truth-value in the faith narratives alone.

Strangely, Habermas uses Paul, a zealot for Christ. “Think of Saul of Tsaris,” Habermas says. “He originally was a persecutor of Christians.” However, Paul’s letters are from the perspective of Paul as a devoted follower of Jesus. How could Habermas possibly think that because Paul as Saul had been against the Jesus movement that he would be unbiased after his conversion? Indeed, Paul’s own written account of his conversion experience is subject to the point that he could have added in his miraculous vision to legitimize himself as an apostle even though he had not met Jesus. Also, just because Paul’s letters are historical artifacts does not mean that their contents report historical events. Paul was not writing historical accounts, and so his religious messages and religious-interest could have used historical events selectively and even invented some. The warping effects of religious ideology on cognition (and ethics) can be significant.

Habermas next accepts the journalist’s initial premise that if Jesus’ resurrection is not a historical event, then the Christian faith would collapse. This is so because it depends on that historical event. Nevertheless, that faith has not collapsed, or been discredited, and in fact Christians have even been willing to die in its service. “If the early church fathers knew that the resurrection was a hoax, then why would they willingly die for it?” Habermas’ assumption can be critiqued.

Firstly, that Christianity has not collapsed does not necessarily mean that the theological resurrection in the faith narratives happened historically. Christianity could have endured due to the intrinsic value of the religious truth that is in the faith narratives (and Paul’s letters). It may have been enough that those narratives depict the resurrection as a historical event without the event having taken place empirically (i.e., outside of the narratives).

Secondly, Habermas assumes that if the resurrection did not occur as a historical account, then the early Church fathers would have known that the resurrection as a historical event was a hoax. This assumption too does not hold, for the fathers could have erroneously assumed that the historical nomenclature (i.e., wording) used in the faith narratives is sufficient to guarantee that the resurrection was also a historical event (i.e., apart from its mention as such in the Gospels). That is, the portrayal in the Gospels of the resurrection as a historical event does not mean that the resurrection “really” happened. Furthermore, to put so much emphasis on whether the resurrection really happened eclipses the value of the resurrection’s religious truth-value in the faith narratives. Lastly, Habermas assumes that if the resurrection were not a historical event, then the church fathers would have known it. They were not omniscient, so it is possible that the historical event did not occur and yet the fathers assumed from the historical nomenclature in the faith narratives, casting it in a historical light, that the resurrection must have happened as a historical event.

Habermas then brings up the Christian assumption that Jesus’ resurrection must have “really” happened (i.e., historically) for Christian souls to subsequently be able to enter heaven. Without that empirical event having taken place, no souls could go to heaven. “I know that I’m going to see my wife again someday,” Habermas says. He is committing a category misstate, however, in claiming that knowledge rather than belief pertains to faith. The religious studies scholar Joseph Campbell once asked why faith would be needed at all if were knew that heaven exists and that we would go there. Empirical knowledge, unlike belief, requires the certainty that scientific evidence can make more likely than can faith-claims. Such claims are true in a religious sense, and thus provide certainty as to religious truth, but not to empirical facts. The hold of Habermas’ religious ideology on his epistemological knowledge (i.e., what counts as knowledge) is responsible for his embellishment of religious belief as knowledge. The added certainty that knowledge provides is without merit, but this is of no concern to Habermas as the assumption of certainty conveniently aids his religious ideology.

Habermas nonetheless declares, “What I want and what I don’t want has no impact on truth. That said, if Christ’s resurrection means that I get to be with Debbie again, then I have no problem being happy with that. Sometimes truth reminds of us of what is really important.”

I submit that what a person wants does have a bending impact on one’s hold on truth. That is, even though religious truth itself is changeless, by definition, concepts of religious truth in a human mind can wittingly or unwittingly serve the ideological interests of a mind (i.e., person). Habermas assumes that his desire to be with his wife in heaven has no impact on his belief that Jesus’ resurrection in the faith narratives refers to a historical event, and, furthermore, that the historical resurrection made it possible for souls to go to heaven. In other words, a historical event made possible a spiritual (i.e., nonempirical) state that is outside of history. This belief is based on an underlying belief: that of the Incarnation (i.e., God made flesh in Jesus).

Putting aside the matters of people who had died before the historical resurrection and non-Christians thereafter that challenge Habermas’ belief-claims, Christian theology contends that the Crucifixion in the Gospels, as also a historical event, makes it possible for souls to enter heaven. Jesus’ vicarious atonement made possible by his willingly sacrificing himself even though he is innocent makes possible the reunification of a human being with God. Specifically, Jesus’ death pays the price of original sin. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection as “first fruits” means that the saved souls that are in heaven will someday be bodily resurrected. Therefore, even though Habermas claims to know that Jesus’ historical resurrection made going to heaven possible, Christian theology begs to differ; the historical resurrection made bodily resurrection possible. Habermas is thus overstating the importance of a historical resurrection in regard to him being able to be with his dead wife again. Put another way, even from the standpoint of theology, we can see that embellishment can result from self-interest, which includes the matter of the veracity (i.e., truth) of a religious ideology even hyperextended to cover historical empirical facts.

After speaking with Habermas, the journalist makes an appointment to speak with a Roman Catholic priest whose specialty is biblical manuscripts. Especially because Christians rely so much on the faith narratives in believing that the resurrection was also a historical event, the question of the manuscripts’ authenticity is highly relevant. Specifically, the question can be raised as to whether the manuscripts we have are accurate copies of the originals. Just as a Christian copyist may have added the non-historical faith claims to Josephus’ reference to Jesus and his followers, copyists may have embellished the biblical manuscripts by adding miracles and even claiming that they “really” happened. That is, copyists may have used history as a justifying basis for religious truth rather than in sufficing to treat the latter as being intrinsically valid in its own domain, and thus as needing no validation from other domains.

The journalist first points out to the priest, “Just because I write something down and bury it in dirt, it doesn’t make it true. How can we be sure of the reliability of these manuscripts?” The priest answers, “The same way we authenticate any historical document—by comparing and contrasting the copies that have been recovered. It’s called textual criticism. The more copies we have, the better we can cross-reference, and determine if the original was historically accurate, and the earlier they come in history, the better.” If a biblical passage is in all of the extant copies—and even better, word for word—then the chances is higher that a copyist did not tamper with the passage. It would still be possible, however, for changes to have been made by a copyist that are reflected in all of the extant copies available now. This would be increasingly possible the earlier the copyist. It should be noted that the historical accuracy of a copy of a manuscript refers back to its original manuscript, rather than to whether the events in that original really (i.e., empirically) happened. Even if a Gospel’s original writer used historical nomenclature to describe an event in the narrative as being a historical event does not mean that the event in the narrative corresponds to a historical event outside of the narrative. Historical nomenclature itself is a narrative device in service of the narrative’s theme or point.

The writers would have known themselves to be writing faith narratives rather than historical accounts because the writers wrote primarily of religious belief-claims that go beyond history, and thus the writing of historical accounts. The proof of the genre is in the writing itself (i.e., what is written). Writers of religious belief-claims rather than historical accounts would not have felt obliged to record only historical events. In fact, the latter could be selectively appropriated and even invented to suit the construction of the faith-narratives. A major drawback of this device is that readers may assume that religious truth needs historical verification to be valid. This fallacy is especially possible in an empirical-fact, or scientific era. Therefore, cross-referencing manuscripts to get as close as possible to the original manuscript can only get us so far if our aim is to ascertain the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection outside of the faith-narratives.

For example, the Gospels do not have the same women discover Jesus’ tomb. To be sure, the Gospel writers may not have had access to the same information. Even the accuracy of historians’ accounts can suffer from this problem. Alternatively, in writing faith narratives, the Gospel writers may not have been motivated to obtain the information and verify it as historians are. Instead, the writers of the faith narratives may have chosen characters to make theological or ecclesiastical points.

Because women in ancient Jewish culture (i.e., historically) were deemed to be unreliable witnesses—as a religious studies scholar tells the journalist—the Gospel writers’ decision to specify that the witnesses at the tomb are women has been taken as support for the historical veracity not only for the witnesses, but also the resurrection itself. “Why else, the religious scholar from Jerusalem asks the journalist, would “all four Gospel writers record that it was women who discovered the empty tomb?” But were the writers recording? Historians do that, whereas the writers of faith narratives make religious points to serve a religious theme, or faith.

Perhaps the Gospel writers, who differed in their choice of which women are at the tomb, made their respective choices to support different theological or ecclesiastical points. There were, after all, factions in the early church. For example, Paul is said to have differed from the Jerusalem church on whether converts must be circumcised. Whether or not to include Mary Magdalene as a witness at the tomb (all four Gospels do, but Paul does not) and whether she is first among the women has ecclesiastical implications both concerning her status as an apostle and whether women should hold leadership positions in the church. Considering Paul’s opposition to this and the fact that he excludes women at the tomb, we cannot conclude that he was oriented to providing a historical account; his agenda was ecclesiastical.  Similarly, rather than recording an account from historical research, the Gospel writers could have been pushing back against Paul by providing a basis on which women could have legitimate authority in the early church.  All this is in line with the point that the Gospel writers were writing faith narratives rather than historical accounts, and that Paul’s letters are not historical accounts, but, rather, preachments.

In fact, given the clear difference between the two genres, the writers of the faith narratives would have known that their readers not assume that they were reading historical accounts. Yet many evangelical Christians in the twentieth century disregarded both the authorial intent and the early reader response—both being in the faith-narrative genre—in assuming that the Gospel writers were operating as historians as well as men of faith. A further assumption is that the faith role does not have any impact on the historian role, so the Gospels can be taken literally.

In biblical hermeneutics (i.e., methods of interpretation) until the twentieth century, figurative, symbolic, analogical, and literal interpretations were generally understood as equally valid and thus as useful—the objective being to use the one that fits best for a given biblical passage in deriving religious truth. With science propelling technological advancement, and thus dominating Western society by the mid-twentieth century, the literal (i.e., “historical fact”) kind of interpretation enjoyed a presumptive place for any biblical passage that could be taken as historical. This new predominance would have been unknown both to the Gospel writers and to interpreters prior to the twentieth century. That is, the Gospel writers could scarcely have anticipated the overarching role for literal interpretation even when they were using historical nomenclature to make religious points in their faith narratives.

Distant culturally and through oceans of time from the writers’ world and literary context, we can unwittingly reflect our culture in approaching the Gospels. Of course, we do not know how the writers would react were they alive today because much of their intents, especially for particular verses, are lost to us today. Instead, we supply our own intents onto the page and presume that the authors had the same intents. In our era, empirical facts are hegemonic (i.e., on top), so we naturally assume that history plays a salient role in the construction of a faith narrative. We even subordinate religious truth in a faith narrative to the extent that it is not supported by empirical, historical facts. By implication, we are of little faith in scarcely believing that  religious truth has its own intrinsic value and is therefore not in need of historical justification and sanctification.

Perhaps we cannot help remaking an ancient religion in our own societal image. Perhaps religious ideology bends space and time to reflect what is acceptable to us. The medium of film, being in our era rather than that of the founding of an ancient religion, can operate as a facilitator. Helped by the suspension of disbelief, we believe that we are “in” Jesus’ world, and thus closer to his story and its religious meaning. What we see of ancient Judaea on the screen only reflects what the filmmakers construct, based on the faith narratives and what historians have uncovered of that locale back then. Film viewers are not in Judaea as it was. They are not in the garden and at the crucifixion. Yet the viewers naturally feel that they have never been closer to them. Furthermore, the illusion and related suspension of disbelief that the medium of film has can lead the viewers to assume the historicity as factual rather than conjectured. For example, seeing the dramatic coming of dark clouds as Jesus dies on a cross can result in a false sense of historical accuracy as in, so that’s what it was really like. Future Good Fridays that are sunny may not even feel like Good Fridays.

Additionally, what conjecture that film can give us of the story world as historical too combines with the religious interpretation or ideology (i.e., a set of aligned interpretations) driving the film to present the narrative’s point, or theme. This can uplift the faithful or give them reason to subject their faith to critique. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A faith pruned of bad assumptions can become a healthier mature tree. What need of childish things does an adult faith have? A film can aid in this process.

I contend that The Case for Christ falls short because the pruning tools provided are not strong enough. The character arc of Lee, the journalist—that is, his transformation or inner journey over the course of the film narrative—goes from an atheist stance to an affirmation of evangelical Christianity. In spite of this protagonist having a critical stance toward religion (and Christianity) through most of the story, he suddenly decides that the resurrection was indeed a historical event. This can be taken as the filmmakers’ desired stance, at least as far as the movie goes. I have emphasized the critique of this stance precisely because the film does not give the arguments enough credit. In other words, the film makes a “straw man” argument against the resurrection being a historical event. The case against Christ is too easily pushed aside by the case for Christ. So I lean here in the other direction, not because I personally take the anti-historical-event side, but, rather, because moviemakers and viewers alike would benefit by understanding that the dialogue on Christianity could have been better written, with better arguments on the skeptic’s side, so that the viewers, whether atheist or theist, could have a better grasp of the difficulties involved in using faith narratives to make historical claims. 

For Christian viewers, a more realistic stance could prompt a realization that religious meaning or truth is inherently or intrinsically of great value. For example, the spiritual value of turning the other cheek, or, even better, helping people who have insulted or even attacked you does not depend on historical facts. In other words, such value need not stand on the stilts of history. In fact, religious truth transcends history. The means that Jesus teaches, such as turning the other cheek or loving enemies, are so foreign to human nature and history that the source of the value can be viewed as being beyond human nature and history, and thus divine. If the medium of film can facilitate a recognition of the sui generis (i.e., unique) nature of religious value (of religious truth or meaning) as distinct from and independent of historical facts, the medium is indeed more valuable than perhaps we realize in handling deep meaning.

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[1]   Paul Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii: 63, In Linguistics and Literary Studies, Monika Fludernik and Daniel Jacob, Eds. (Walter de Gruyter, 2014), pp. 147-170.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Testimonium Flavianum, in Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3, section 63, translated by Louis Feldman (The Loeb Classical Library).

[4] On this distinction in Judaism, see Von Rad’s two-volume History of Israel.

[5] Paul Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus.