I Am Cuba

The film, I Am Cuba (1964), consists of four vignettes that depict what Cuba was in its pre-revolutionary day beyond the wealthy gloss of the American-owned casinos. Sugarcane is sweet, but it is also of tears.  Furthermore, the film explains the revolutionary ground-swell in the individual lives of Cubans whom the American tourists didn’t see from their luxurious perches near the beaches. The film proffers a glimpse of the extreme poverty and oppression so raw that it could (and did) foment a revolutionary change of regime through amassed violence against the police-state. The abstract message ripe for political theory is that once regime-change is on the front burner at the macro, or societal level, strong interpersonally-directed emotions that stem from particular cases of injustice will have had a lot of time to build up. Indeed, the latter is the trigger for the former. Abstract political principles on governance and macroeconomic policy on the distribution and redistribution of wealth, and even principles of distributive justice are not divorced from the interpersonal level, especially as between citizens and individual police or military employees of the state. Indeed, those philosophical abstractions gain traction in a revolutionary context through the sweat and tears of individual people.

In the first short story, the exploitation of a Cuban prostitute is evinced not only in the act itself, but also, and more so, in the fact that the businessman takes the woman’s cherished crucifix for a few dollars without her consent as she is watching. The man’s disorientation as he leaves her hut to discover in daylight the squalid living conditions of the Black, poor Cubans suggests that exploitation of labor is likely endemic and hidden from the view of Cuba as the land of nice, Americanized hotels.

In the story of the sugarcane farmer, the utter precariousness of economic position is most salient. The line that there are so many tears in sugar cane even as it is so sweet reflects the arduous labor that goes into cutting the stalks. That the landowner could refuse to pay the farmer who is harvesting a crop because the landowner has presumably just made a lot of money selling the land to United Fruit company demonstrates just how unfair economic laws can be. The sheer unfairness translates into radical, emotion-laden reactions, such as the farmer immediately ceasing his work and instead burning the crop so the land owner won’t profit from the farmer’s work. The depth of the unfairness, more abstractly, is capable of triggering radical (rather than “reform”) economic and political actions, including armed revolution. That the farmer dies of smoke inhalation gives the viewer an understanding that it is possible that both interpersonal and structural or systemic power and economic dynamics may be so unbalanced, and thus unfair, that a person on the losing end may choose to end one’s life rather than go on in such a condition. Abject humiliation alone can give prompt oppressed people to risk everything to “just say no” or hit back. The attacks from Hamas against Israel on October 8, 2023 can be understood, for instance, as a people pushed against a proverbial wall with nowhere to go to the point that they were willing to take rash steps to upend the status quo. This is not to say that violence is excusable; only that it is explainable.

The indiscriminate arial bombing of another farmer’s mountainous dwelling is unfair to him and his family, especially since one of the bombs kills one of his sons. The sheer unfairness, I submit, completely changes his political position from that of non-involvement with the revolutionary army near his hut to joining up to fight. He is not fighting to improve his economic lot; he dismissed such a motive when he talks with a soldier before the bombing. He is also not fighting to avenge the loss of his son, for the tone he adopts in telling his wife that he has to go has more of a sense of duty than anger to it.

The next story naturally transitions the viewer to the macro, political level of what is based on the economic struggles and hardship of individuals such as the people living near the prostitute, the sugar-cane farmer, and the subsistence-living mountain farmer. Out of the dire economic conditions of such people, who are also part of Cuba, emanates the political conflict between a regime and a revolutionary army. By this time, as the man sings, “It’s taken you too long; I can’t forgive.” The revolutionaries will not turn back; the ferment has gone past compromise and reconciliation. The injustices have been too harsh and have been allowed to go on too long for any signs of contrition to be credible. Slaves, once having made the determination to be stars, cannot put the new wine into the old bottles. The revolutionaries are firing at the past; not to kill. But is this really so when economic injustice is so harsh that strong emotions flash quite naturally in human beings?

Enrico on the left is furious at the policeman on the right for having murdered Enrico's friend and compatriot handcuffed in police custody. The intense emotions naturally triggered by witnessing an aggressor abuse his authority are the root cause of regime change by armed rebellion. 

Enrico, a young revolutionary from university, is clearly furious at the policeman who murders a friend who is already handcuffed and in custody. The agent of the state cannot tolerate even a prisoner making political statements in public. Enrico had resisted pulling the trigger on the chief of police because the man was with his wife and kids at the time; unlike the police, Enrico has a conscience and is flexible. Although Enrico understands that the struggle is against the system, which in turn can be viewed as the past, his rage is  against a particular agent, the policeman, of the unjust and violent regime that protects the exploitation by the rich of the poor. When the policeman who shot Enrico’s compatriot shots Enrico himself, he continues on as a walking wounded not because “to die for your homeland is to live,” but, rather, out of sheer rage against the unrepentant bully-policeman. It is personal. The source of a revolution is personal.  Abstract revolutionary slogans are too abstract to motivate a person in exacting retribution, or vengeance. Enrico is finally raw rage as he walks towards the armed policeman with only a block of concrete held up in the air. Enrico's pent-up anger has finally surpassed his conscience. The audience is surely rooting for him and against the policeman. Even viewers such as myself who oppose Socialism and Communism are rooting for him, for empathy naturally sides with the victims and their allies rather than with the bullies and predators. 

In summary, I Am Cuba is not just propaganda for Socialism and Communism. All that on a human level goes on before an armed revolutionary army is formed is visualized in four short stories. So much emotional pain built up over such a long time is packed into a radical political movement that seeks to completely up-end the status quo that once such a movement has begun on the macro level, the partisan movement is very difficult to reverse. The lesson for government officials is perhaps that there is time to stave off such movements because they do not pop up overnight. Moreover, preventing agents of the state or wealthy land- or company-owners from abusing their authority and holding those who do accountable is very much in the interest of a regime, lest it eventually fall all of a sudden by armed unrest. The lesson for revolutionaries is that the shift from the particular economic/power injustices that are interpersonal to a revolutionary party or army includes adopting a broader, more abstract perspective beyond the killing to fighting against the past as represented in the ongoing status quo.

Human nature is of course an indelible part of political and economic paradigm shifts via revolutionary movements, and the abstract political platforms are rooted in interpersonal emotions from particular cases of injustice. Revolutionary politics, including abstract slogans in the film’s dialogue, such as slaves and stars, firing at the past, struggle against the system, and To die for your homeland is to live, function along with an extant revolutionary army as landing pads for individuals who, had they not been the victims of particular agents of the state or the wealthy, would have resisted joining any army and not felt the slogans, being content instead to live life as it comes in poverty.

Rainbow

Rainbow (1944) is a Soviet patriotic propaganda film about the brutal Nazi-German occupation of a village in Ukraine. Filmed in 1943 while Ukraine was still occupied, the film was shot in the U.S.S.R. in central Asia rather than in Ukraine. The plot centers on the efforts of Nazi captain Kurt Werner to get a resistance (partisan) fighter to reveal where her group was heading. The woman is stark (strong), for she does not budge even as the Germans torture her both mentally and physically. I contend that the film pivots on a few lines spoken by an old Russian man in the village on the nature of power itself. Those lines stand out for being the only philosophical abstractions in the dialogue of the film. The film is about the nature of power.

The ubiquitous presence of German troops holding guns sends the audience a clear message that the basis of government is raw force: the ability to kill. A preponderance or monopoly of the use of force is decisive. Although the villagers vastly outnumber the German troops, both use of the guns to kill many people in succession and on the other side the (irrational?) psychology of passivity engraved in the Russian psyches and perpetuated by the decentralization of a village population (mass meetings being controlled by the Germans) maintain the status quo as if the village were a closed system until the Russian army liberates the village from the outside. Although it seems that if the villagers turned on the guards all at once, the German regime in the village would quickly fall, the Hobbesian instinct of self-preservation and the lack of a selfless ethic of sacrifice prevent what would be necessary: a group of villages to start “the ball rolling” in anticipation that an onslaught of villagers inside their houses would quickly join so the troops would be overwhelmed.

So we tend to equate power with actual brute force or the threat thereof. The real foundation of a government (i.e., a “state” in political realism) is its ability to kill threats to its very existence as well as its presumed entitlement to tell people what to do and thus be obeyed. Locally, this means that the last-resort basis of a city government is actually its police force, rather than its mayor or city council. The ability to shoot or arrest a person is the foundation of government. From this foundational vantage point, lofty speeches by heads of state seem peripheral and perhaps even luxuries.

The film, which is actually misnamed Rainbow because in extreme cold where ice-crystals are in the air, the sun’s rays hitting those crystals actually create “sun-halos,” proffers a different conception of power. In the few lines on power itself, an old Russian man tells a few other villagers in a basement that power is not holding a gun; rather, power lies in not saying a word when the Nazis want information. To resist even torture by not giving in so the aggressor gets what one wants is power. I contend that such power is internal, which admittedly can have external effects (e.g., the Nazi captain is not told where the partisan group is based), whereas holding a gun can be external power (i.e., getting another person to do something, or not to do something).

The interaction effect is significant. Holding a gun does not in itself give the holder power over another person; the interior power to resist temptations (e.g., to talk to save oneself or one’s child) can be sufficient to render the power inoperative. In the film, the villagers withhold bread even though the Germans have taken hostages. High external power and low internal power render the external power effective (i.e., power). The combination of low external power and high internal power is a worse-case scenario for an aggressor. High external power and low internal power is what an aggressor counts on in being able to gain or maintain power over another person.

Therefore, I contend that the old Russian man was only partially correct. Holding a gun is a case of power, assuming that the other person has weak or low internal power in being willing to resist temptations. Having the self-discipline or control sufficient to not say a word when an aggressor (bully) is using (the threat of) force to get information, as in the film, is also power. The Russian village is largely in a stalemate because no one is giving up bread or speaking to the Nazis and the latter have the guns (the ability to kill the villagers). Captain Werner kills (and has his troops kill) mostly out of frustration. The nature of power is not as one-sided as it appears; the force of will of the partisan villagers is strong as is the force of the German guns.

Valley of Peace

In Valley of Peace (1956), a Black American pilot and two Slovenian children head towards a valley in which the boy’s uncle lives—a valley of peace. In military terms, the valley has been designated as a “no-man’s” land, which means it is off limits to both the Nazi army and that of the Slovenian partisans.  As such, the peace of the valley is something more down to earth than the Biblical Garden of Eden. Even so, this ideal is a leitmotif in the film. For one thing, the two children repeatedly characterize that valley as not just where the boy’s uncle lives, but also as a utopia. I contend that the film makes a theological statement regarding the fallen world and the Garden of Eden. While only implicit, this statement is still more central to the film than is the significance of the race of the American pilot. I turn first to the fact that the American pilot who survives parachuting from a shot-up plane is Black.

The pilot’s name is Jim, which also happens to be the name of the escaped slave in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939). Both Jim-characters are fleeing violent people: Nazi troops and Southern slave hunters, respectively. Both characters are seeking freedom, so liberation is indeed a theme in The Valley of Peace. Even so, the Jim of this film, which was made after Huckleberry Finn, differs significantly from the ex-slave, who although moral did not show the strength of leadership and fight that the American pilot shows. The latter, for instance, fights along with a White partisan (Slovenian) soldier on an equal basis, whereas the ex-slave is never portrayed as commensurate with the Caucasians. So I think the emancipation theme is muted in Valley of Peace. Moreover, that theme is not central to the film, so claims to the contrary may be more about advancing an ideology than in being true to the film on its grounds.

More salient than the race of one of the characters is the contrast of the world of aggression in which the two children and Jim are trying to flee and the idyllic valley of peace that seems so utterly beyond strife that war could never interlard the serene mountain scenery shown in the last scene. The war-torn lives of the two children does not exhaust the aggression; even a dog bites the head off of the girl’s doll. This expansive application of aggression in an already war-torn film-world is more important than Jim coloring a doll-head black for the White girl. To be sure, the fact that she hugs that doll sets off American society by contrast, as does the fact that a partisan soldier quickly, almost instinctively welcomes Jim to the fight, in a “Hi . . . hi” quick exchange. But such cultural differences should be seen as being within the same paradigm: that of a fallen, deeply aggressive world where violence extends to other species (i.e., the dog decapitating the girl’s doll).

Step back from the internecine conflicts within cultures that themselves can be characterized as aggressive, and the wider chasm can be seen in the valley that lies between the fallen world and the mythic Garden of Eden. The film makes the point that the aggressiveness in the fallen, war-prone world that is populated by human beings is so strident that not even a valley of peace can withstand it and hold on for long. For the two armies do battle at the uncle’s farm in the valley of peace. The German commander says that the valley was merely a no-man’s land and, just like that, it is no longer off limits. The caprice of a mere decision can open the flood-gates of war over the hills into the valley of peace. 

The human instinctual urge of aggression must surely be salient in human nature, whereas any instincts supporting religiousity, which studies have shown are impacted by genetics (e.g., studies of biological and adopted kids), must sure pale in comparison. The Garden of Eden is itself just a no-man’s land in the film except to a child’s imagination. That archetypal emotion (peace)/image (fecund garden) is no match for the human propensity for violence. This, I submit, is the underlying message of the film. The valley of the (decapitated) doll dominates the valley of peace, which, it should be noted, is desolate. The horse is alone, and the uncle is gone. 

The implication is that peace is only possible where human interaction, and thus society, are absent. But it is not a case of moral man, immoral society, for the human being is an aggressive species, closely related to the chimp. Even within society, people can be isolated due to it. 

In Fassbinder's film, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Emmi and Ali are isolated by the hostility of their neighbors, friends, and even family due to auslander (foreigner) prejudice (he is Turkish), agism (she is older than him), and racial prejudice (he has dark skin). In that film, the nature of prejudice does play a major role. The passive aggression from all sides gets to Emmi, whose adult children won't even speak to her upon hearing of her intermarriage to a much younger man, so the couple vacation to get away from all of the anger surrounding them yet at a distance. 

Being alone within society is not like being alone in the valley of peace, yet in both cases the verdict runs against our aggressive species. If our species is a social animal, then perhaps only within a narrow compass. Whether we like it or not, strife is the human condition, as constituted by 1.8 million years of hunting and gathering and populating, over whose vast expanse natural selection gradually adapted our species to an environment not at all like our modern society with its artificial institutional security.

Subordinate plotlines and depictions of characters should not be hyperextended at the expense of the central leitmotif of a film. In the case of Valley of Peace, an ontological truth regarding the human condition transcends emancipation. Of course, as far as the human race is concerned, Christians insist that the stain of original sin mutes or limits any real liberation but for salvation in the risen Christ. The film obviously does not venture that far, but stays with the leitmotif of an aggressive world and a valley of idyllic peace that eludes the two children and us. We will never (again?) enter into the mythic Garden of Eden.

Even contending ideologies on race, which can stimulate the illusion that race is the central theme or intent of a film, are and have been mere fodder for the human instinctual urge of aggressiveness. That urge itself, plastered on the walls of a paradigmatic world known as the fallen world, can be juxtaposed with the calmer, peaceful inclinations that project a mythic place, whether that be the Garden of Eden or Oz, but the latter elude us as if separated from us by, as Augustine wrote of revelation reaching us, a darken church window made of distortive colors. I once looked up at golden angels in a high stained glass church window as the sun shined one Sunday morning, but then I looked down at the other people in the choir. 

In the last scene of The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy wakes up back in Kansas, shown in black and white rather than in color. The witch has been melted in Oz, so peace is presumably permanent there, but Miss. Gulch is presumably still alive in Kansas and she will most likely bike over again to take Dorothy's little dog, Toto, to the sheriff. Once when I was young, I saw the actress in person sitting on a giant rainbow chair on a lawn. Margaret Hamilton looked like any grandmother—no hint of Oz even in its dark side. The Emerald City was of course nowhere to be seen. 

Oppenheimer

An artificial sun rose on an otherwise dark night when the nuclear-bomb test named Trinity ushered in the era wherein our species’ aggressive instinct could render homo sapiens extinct. Given the salience of that instinctual urge—for we are related to the chimpanzee species—the wise (i.e., sapiens) species can be its own undoing. For it took a lot of intelligence in sub-atomic physics to invent the nuclear bomb, yet very little smarts went into deciding to use it against Japan, an enemy that would have lost anyway, in order to save American lives from having to invade the mainland (as if conventional bombs could not have reduced the casualties). Even less thought was put into the need to contain the proliferation of nuclear bombs. Expediency without heeding long-term risk is not a virtue. Kant wrote that even if our species were to institute a world federation, presumably having nation-states that would be semi-sovereign as a check against global totalitarianism, peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. This does not speak well of human nature, and this in turn renders the Trinity test something less than redeeming. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” In the film, Oppenheimer (2023), Robert Oppenheimer reads from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as a woman is on top of him in sexual intercourse. The irony of him being an instrument of mass destruction as director of the Manhattan Project and yet being engaged in potentially reproducing life with a woman is doubtlessly the point of that scene. Hindus who leap to the conclusion that Nolan is insulting their religion miss this point. Had the director included a scene in which Oppenheimer is praying, for example for the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time, a quote from the film, Gettysburg (1993) would have been similarly fitting. In that film, Col. Chamberlain of the Union army remarks, “What a piece of work is man . . . in action how like an angel!” Sgt. Kilrain replies, “Well, if he’s an angel, all right then . . . But he damn well must be a killer angel.” In the nuclear age, killer angel takes on added significance. The question is perhaps whether we have left angel behind as our species’ intelligence outdoes our species, whether in terms of nuclear war or rendering a climate unsuitable for us.

Even though Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, said that he had been unconcerned with whether people leave the theaters with something to think about, such as the ethical and political implications of nuclear weapons, including whether Truman should have used two such bombs against Japan; rather, the viewers are to be engaged emotionally in dramatic tension between the characters in the film. I consider this stance to be short-sighted, as it does not take advantage of the potential that the medium of motion pictures has to stimulate philosophical thinking, such as in ethics, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. This benefit of films is why I write essays on films.  Even in spite of Nolan’s intention, Oppenheimer is a good example of the salience of ethics and political thought in film.

Although Nolan overdoes too many and too brief visuals of quantum mechanics from Robert Oppenheimer’s imagination, no doubt because he used the giant-screen “IMAX” film, and jumps around too much from scene to scene in Oppenheimer’s life, the emotional engagement of viewers in the dramatic tension between characters, especially between Oppenheimer and his antagonist Lewis Strauss, is formidable. Especially given the salience of Oppenheimer’s emotional wrestling with the ethical and political significance of the bomb, it is easy for viewers to hate Strauss, and Nolan satisfies our instinctual urge for justice by providing scenes in which Strauss is denied Senate confirmation to serve on Eisenhower’s cabinet and Oppenheimer’s “contribution” to the U.S. in World War II and his hacked reputation are recognized as President Johnson gives the protagonist an award. In being able to stimulate strong feelings of anger and relief in the viewers, Nolan is a master story-teller. Nevertheless, the film offers so much more. Nolan has outdone himself, even if it was not his intent.

The debate on whether President Truman should have used nuclear weapons against Japan is well-known in both Japan and the United States. The film would have been deficient had Nolan excluded that question. Because Truman comes off as dismissive and rude in his meeting with Oppenheimer, I suspect that Nolan wanted the film to have a pessimistic attitude on Truman’s decision, especially given the air-time given to Oppenheimer’s concerns. His motive in getting involved in the Manhattan Project is originally informed by his Jewish identity and geared to stopping the Nazis. The Japanese come off as an ordinary military foe relative to the Germans, so Oppenheimer naturally concludes that the rationale for the bomb has passed by the time of the Trinity detonation. Even in the nuclear age, “regular” wars, such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and Russia’s war against Ukraine, have been fought without resort to nuclear weapons. Once Germany had been defeated and the horrific, mass-scale atrocities stopped, World War II could have been viewed as reverting to a “regular” war. If so, the use of extraordinary weapons could have been viewed differently—as expedient.

Indeed, even the value of saving American lives (admittedly at the cost of many Japanese civilians) pales relative to being the first country to use a nuclear bomb and, the “genie being out of the bottle,” risking an arms race to the bottom. I am the destroyer of worlds is not a scriptural passage to be taken lightly. As evinced by that line, the film raises fundamental ethical and political questions beyond that of Truman’s decision.

By the 21^st century, Israel, a small country surrounded by Islamic countries, had already acquired nuclear weapons, and in 2022, the president of Russia repeatedly threatened the West that he might use such weapons against Ukraine. The world took notice at Putin’s attempt to normalize the use of the atomic bomb in a regular war, but even so, the warning of a shot which would be heard around the world in its dire significance of portended ruin did not stir any political discussion between world leaders, at least publicly, on the more urgent need for global safeguards.

In Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer’s concern is valid that, given human nature, large-scale nuclear war is almost inevitable at some point unless nuclear powers agree to mutually give up the bomb. Even in this respect, Oppenheimer—both the character and the movie—are too optimistic, for an international power to enforce the treaties would be necessary, again, given human nature. Among combatants in a war, the first casualty is truth-telling. If our species is indeed the wise, or sapiens, species of the homo genus, then it should be capable of not only uncovering quantum mechanics, but also self-regulating our most sordid and destructive instincts. We are animals, after all. If we are angels with a biological instinctual urge capable of sensing the presence of divinity, then alright, it must also be said that our death instinct can now also be fulfilled.   

Agora vs. Fatima: Contending Christianities

The films Agora (2009) and Fatima (2020) contain very different depictions of Christianity. By depictions, I mean ways in which Christianity can be interpreted and lived. This is not to say that all of the interpretations are equally valid, for only those that contain internal contradictions evince hypocrisy. The sheer extent of the distance between the depictions shown in the two films demonstrates not only the huge extent of latitude that religious interpretation can have, but also just how easy it is even for self-identifying Christians, whether of the clergy or the laity, not only to fail to grasp Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, but also to violate the two commandments even while believing that Jesus Christ is divine (i.e., the Son of God). The human mind, or brain, can have such stunning blind spots (or cognitive dissidence) when it comes to religion that even awareness of this systemic vulnerability and efforts to counter it are typically conveniently ignored or dismissed outright. This is nearly universal, in spite of claims of humility and fallibility more generally, so I contend that the human mind is blind to its own weakness or vulnerability in the religious sphere of thought, sentiment, and action. Augustine’s contention that revelation must pass through a smoky stained window before reaching us is lost on the religious among us who insist that their religious beliefs constitute knowledge. I contend that this fallacy as well as the larger vulnerability to hypocrisy should be a salient part both of Sunday School and adult religious education. For the vulnerability is correctable, but this probably requires ongoing vigilance. That is, the problem is not that the divine goes beyond the limits of human cognition (as well as perception and emotion) as Pseudodionysus pointed out to deaf ears in the 6^th century; the human brain is fully capable of spotting and countering its own lapses in the religious domain. In other words, the problem here is not that of the human mind being able to understand the contents of revelation because must travel through a darkened window before reaching us; rather, the problem lies in grasping what Jesus preaches in the Gospels and putting the spiritual principles into practice, rather than doing the opposite and being completely oblivious to the contradiction, which is otherwise known as cognitive dissidence. The two films provide us with the means both to grasp this problem and realize how much it differs from a healthy faith that has the innocence of a child’s wonder.

Agora is set in Alexandria, Egypt from 390 to 410 CE, while Fatima is set in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. Both are based on historical events. Agora centers around Hypatia, a pagan mathematician and astronomer whom Bishop Cyril had his Christian brotherhood kill for having refused to convert, especially considering that she had considerable political influence locally. Historically, the brotherhood skinned Hypatia alive; in the film, her ex-slave Davus, who loves her, suffocates her before the brotherhood can stone her to death. He who has not sinned throw the first stone apparently does not apply to the members of the Christian brotherhood, who are no strangers to using violence. Earlier in the film, they throw stones at Jews at a music concert for listening to music and eating sweets, according to Cyril, on the Sabbath. This prompts the Jews to retaliate, and the brotherhood in turn with Cyril saying that even women and children should be killed.  Earlier still, the brotherhood is among the Christians who fight the pagans, who start the violence because Theophilus, the Christian bishop (or patriarch) who precedes Cyril encourages the Christian crowd to throw food at a statue of one of the Egyptian deities. Whereas violence used to “answer the insult” is not an inconsistency in the Egyptian religion, such a response contradicts Jesus’ second commandment, which includes serving rather than insulting one’s neighbor. The presence of God is most of all in love that is not convenient, and thus that goes against the human instinctual urge to retaliate.

In the Gospels, Jesus preaches on how a person can enter the Kingdom of God. In Luke (4:43), Jesus says, “It is necessary for me to proclaim the good news about the kingdom of God . . . because I was sent for this purpose.” Jesus attempts to orient his hearers to the Kingdom of God. The latter should be the focus of a Christian. Peace characterizes that kingdom, and the way to peace is through loving one’s enemies. More concretely, this means turning the other cheek, both literally and proverbially, but this is not enough. A person must go further to help, or serve, one’s detractors, which, incidentally, does not mean staying in an abusive relationship. Serving a person who insults Jesus, rather than retaliating, is an excellent way into the Kingdom of God.

In Agora, both Theophilus and Cyril miss an opportunity due to their hatred and prejudice against other religions. A person being served even as that person insults the helpful person’s ideals is more likely to convert to Christianity by grasping the humble strength that lies in voluntarily serving one’s detractors. The way not to convert is to insult, violently attack, and retaliate. The two Christian bishops are far from being able to enter the Kingdom of God. Like the Pharisees in the Gospels, the two patriarchs of Alexandria evince Jesus’ teaching that many who are first, or presume themselves to be first, are actually last—behind even the poor who suffer from illness (presumed even by Jesus to result from sin).

Humility, as is present in the willingness to serve even jerks and people whose political, social, or religious ideology contradicts one’s own, is shown by the three children who see and hear the Virgin Mary in Fatima. Those children suffer the hostile disbelief of the mayor and even Maria, the mother of Lucia, one of the children. Maria is a character of irony, as she seems so devoted to the Virgin Mary and yet is so hostile. As Paul wrote, faith without love is for naught. In 1 Corinthians (13:2), Paul writes, “if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” What sort of love?  Loving your friends and favorable neighbors is not enough. In Matthew (5:43-45), Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” The presence of the divine can be sensed by both the Christian and one’s detractor as the former helps the latter in spite of attitude of the latter toward the former. The Christian lays that aside and instead feels compassion in helping a fellow creature who is existentially so dependent on God. To view one of God’s creatures as such is to take on God’s perspective, and out of the sense of basic vulnerability comes the motive of compassion. A more basic bond between finite creatures can then be felt by both, and the presence of God is this bond because the dependence is so basic to a person’s being. Bringing this presence of God to humanity is Jesus’ task in preaching how to enter the Kingdom of God by loving one’s enemies.

Devotion to a deity or quasi-deity (for Mary is believed by Catholics to be in heaven in body and soul) is of no value and is even hypocritical if the person is not helping, but rather attacking people deemed as bad or as threats or antagonists. In Agora, Maria is convinced that her daughter Lucia is lying, and thus is needlessly and selfishly putting the family at risk of attack and financial ruin. Mobs are not known for their wisdom. Maria is only superficially a Christian. In actuality, she worships herself, as she presumes to be omniscient in knowing that the Virgin is not really visiting Lucia and the other children. That Maria’s devotion is for naught because she is cold rather than loving even to her daughter can be discerned from the fact that the Virgin is not visible to Maria while she is standing behind Lucia during a visitation. The implication is that believing in the Virgin Mary and even sacrificing to her in the misguided belief that doing so will cause Maria’s son to come back from the war alive are for naught if in heart and deed there is not love even and especially where it is difficult. The faith of the three children that the Virgin really is there and the willingness to pass on the Virgin’s messages even after the children are briefly imprisoned by the mayor evinces love that is difficult, and Lucia’s caring for her sick mother is a case of loving one’s detractors can thus be contrasted with Maria’s harsh mentality that is at best heroine worship. Maria imposes on her daughter a severe religious causality that merely supports Hume’s contention that we really don’t understand causation. Maria is consumed by getting the Virgin to keep Maria’s son alive in war, whereas Lucia resists the pressure of the priest, bishop, and mayor to tell them something that the Virgin said not to tell anyone. Far from insulting the Virgin by betraying her, Lucia protects her.

Whereas in Agora the Christians insult other gods, and then fight rather than serve those whom the Christians have insulted, in Fatima the Virgin Mary tells the children to pass on the message to stop insulting the Abrahamic god by sinning and not being sorry for doing it (i.e., repenting). Even the Christian bishops in Agora not only sin by insulting and attacking their enemies, but also fail to repent. The blind are leading the blind into hypocrisy and sin under the auspices of piety—serving Christ. Contrast the way in which the bishops serve (or defend) Christ with the way in which the three children serve the Virgin.

It is ironic that the Christians in Agora who arrogantly presume to know God’s will even as they violate it destroy the Alexandria’s great library, which a pagan says is “the only thing that remains of the wisdom of man.” Historically, had the Christians not destroyed that library, the world might have not only books written by Aristotle, but also early Christian manuscripts that have been lost. Again, the Christians in Agora are working at cross-purposes—not just given their desire to convert, but also in terms of learning more about Jesus’ preaching on how to enter the Kingdom of God. Pride and prejudice are indeed short-sighted.

Historically, Augustine borrowed from Plato and Aquinas was practically in love with Aristotle, and yet the Christians burned down the library of Alexandria in 410 CE to destroy pagan knowledge—Paul’s “wisdom of Athens.” Similarly, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain forbid her own sister the love of her life because he was divorced, but then allowed her own children to divorce their respective spouses, most notably Princess Diana. Elizabeth refused to give her stamp of approval, which was necessary, on her sister’s marriage to Peter Townsend because one of the queen’s roles is as the head of the Church of England, which did not allow divorces at the time. Where there is no act of love and mercy, however, faith and ecclesiastical position are for naught. In Elizabeth’s son’s coronation, the stultifying arrogance of exclusion evinced in the seating arrangement itself belied the new king’s claim of being a Christian, much less the head of a Christian institution. The invited guests in the farthest pews—those blocked by a screen-wall from being able to see the events in the ritual—sat in humility closer to the Kingdom of God than did the man sitting on King Edward’s throne.

The Kingdom of God is conceptualized differently in the two films. The Christians in Agora are oriented to a political Christendom without pagans, whereas the Virgin and the three children—and the children shall lead them—view the kingdom as a matter of not insulting God (i.e., not sinning). Whereas the former conception is externally oriented, against the pagans and Jews, and thus is earthly, the latter notion is of the interior, of the heart, within a person. The Kingdom of God is within. There’s no need to wait until the Son of Man comes on clouds.  Christendom viewed as a kingdom on earth led to the Crusades in which four popes raised armies to kill rather than love enemies. Alternatively, the popes could have sent Christians to serve the Muslims in the Holy Land. The land would then have been truly holy rather than the site of Christian hypocrisy.

In his tome, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes’s “Kingdom of Darkness” is none other than the Roman Catholic Church on earth—the same institution that has protected priests who have raped children and the bishops such as Cardinal Law who enabled the criminals rather than held them accountable. In doing so, those clerics, whether directly or, as in the case of Joe Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), by knowingly transferring a rapist papist priest to avoid scandal for the universal church, can be viewed as vicariously stomping out the innocent faith of the three children in Fatima. I believe there is a special place in hell for adults who snuff out the innocence of a child, whether or not those adults believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In The Da Vinci Code (2006), the last living descendent of Jesus tells a monk who murders for God: “Your God burns murderers.” Doubtless the descendent distancing the Christian god from herself is due to all the hypocrisy that often occurs because so many Christians erroneously believe that accepting Jesus as one’s personal lord and savior is sufficient. The Kingdom of Darkness has much to atone for, and transferring accessories to crimes of violence against children to posh Vatican positions (e.g. Cardinal Law) rather than having the corrupt clerics serve the victims who would permit it speaks volumes concerning convenience versus inconvenient love.

Bishop Cyril in Agora believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; this belief works against the bishop, as it had for Theophilus, as both characters use it to justify defending Jesus by violence against the non-Christians who are critical of the insulting Christians. Cyril preaches that Hypatia is a witch, which in turn sets brotherhood on a quest to kill her. It is ironic that the brotherhood had been set up to “safeguard Christian morality,” which ostensibly was needed because the splitting of the Roman Empire in two meant that that the end of the world was nigh. Cyril reads a passage from Paul that woman should keep silent. Hypatia has definitely not been silent; in fact, she has considerable influence on her former student Orestes, who is now the Roman prefect who governs the city. How dare a woman, and a pagan no less, have such influence!, Cyril not doubt feels as he characterizes Paul’s opinion women as “the word of God.” A human opinion in a letter no less is the Word of the living God. To regard an opinion as such is to reckon it as infallible truth. Such truth is immutable, and the role and status of women deemed proper in Paul’s world have changed over time and from place to place. In utter contrast to Cyril in Agora, the three children in Fatima listen to the Virgin’s messages rather than give their own opinions. The children regard the messages as different in kind. Indeed, the children resist considerable pressure in not revealing the Virgin’s message not to tell anyone something about the future. Unfortunately, the human mind has a proclivity to emblazon opinion with the veneer of truth, and then to seek to enforce such truth by imposing it on other people. The arrogance of self-entitlement can be guarded against by keeping in mind that the fallible and limited human mind should not be so sure of itself on religious matters as to regard itself as infallible.

The two films also differ on how the Christians approach forgiveness. Astonishingly, Ammonius, a leader of the brotherhood in Agora, rebuffs Davus, Hypatia’s the ex-slave who suggests that they should forgive rather than retaliate against the Jews. Ammonius declares, “Only Jesus can forgive the Jews.” Wrong! In Matthew (18:21-22), “Peter came up and said to him [i.e., Jesus], ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.’” Neither Patriarch, Theophilus or Cyril, are in the business of forgiveness, especially to the enemy.

In contrast, Lucia in Fatima forgives her mother after the miracle of the Sun moving around in the sky convinces everyone in the crowd, including Maria, that the children were right all along; the Virgin Mary really is there. Lucia still loves her mother in spite of Maria’s chilly hostility and refusal to trust her daughter even though the Virgin obviously trusts Lucia. But the latter’s faith is not perfect. In asking the Virgin to do a miracle so the crowd would believe the children’s claim that the visitation is real, Lucia succumbs to the sensationalistic undercutting of religious meaning or truth by the assumption that the validity of religious preaching relies on something supernatural happening. The innocent faith of the children is nigh eclipsed by the more sensationalistic need for verification of the Christian adults who gather in the field to personally benefit from the visitations. Pray for this, pray for that; this is human, all too human. 

The salience of the need for a supernatural, metaphysical miracle, even for the viewers of the film, to prove that the Virgin is really there in the story world, and, by fallacious implication in 1917 as a historical event apart from the film, almost eclipses importance of the childlike faith of the children in the film. Only after the miracle has occurred can the movie end; the viewers would not be satisfied otherwise. The need of Maria, the bishop, the priest, and even the mayor to know definitively that the Virgin is really there with the three children is a need that the film’s viewers have as well.  Even Lucia wants a miracle; even she lapses in giving the need to convince the crowd any importance, especially relative to the content of the Virgin’s message. The important thing is to stop insulting God. Cyril and his followers in Agora insult God with their hypocrisy in God’s name.

Interestingly, witness accounts in October, 1917 attest to the miracle of the Sun moving around in the sky and even coming closer as a historical event, which could be seen from as far as 40 km away. It is tempting to let the metaphysical or religious actuality of the Virgin Mary (or the historical or risen Jesus) be the focus; to be sure, such a deviation from the children’s faith and the Virgin’s message is much less damaging than is the violence by the Christians in Agora, for that is antipodal to the way into the spiritual space of God’s “kingdom,” or way of being. For it is God’s presence felt within and between people as love especially when such love is not convenient that is of value in itself. Even religious personages pale in comparison. In the Gospels, Jesus sets the Kingdom of God as that for which he is tasked with orienting people. Within that kingdom, the presence of the divine can be sensed, made possible by an inconvenient love that expands human nature itself such that the human instinctual urge for the divine can be more satisfied and perhaps even be fulfilled.

See: God's Gold

Fatima

The film, Fatima (2020), tells the story of the three Roman Catholic children in Fatima, Portugal, who in 2017 claimed to see and hear the Virgin Mary periodically over a period of 6 months. The film centers around Lucia, the oldest of the three children, and, moreover, the question of whether the children really encounter the Virgin, or are lying, hypnotic, or even psychotic. In the film, as well as in “real life,” a miracle is associated with the last visitation. In the story world of the film, the visitation really happens, and the multitudes watching the children come to believe this when the Virgin delivers on a miracle as promised. Historically, believers as well as nonbelievers who were present at the event have testified that the Sun moved around in the sky and even came closer. If this really happened as witnesses have described, then the empirical “proof” in the story world of the film is not the whole story, and the religious truth therein is not limited to the faith narrative, but holds in an empirical, supernatural sense. An implication is that Jesus not only resurrects in the Gospel stories, but also as an empirical event in history. But, then, why have such supernatural events been so rare since the “time” of Jesus?  And, yet, witnesses as far as 40 km away from the visitation of the Virgin reported seeing the miracle of the Sun.

Catholicism is not portrayed in the film without blemish. Lucia’s mother, Maria, which is ironic, believes that if she and Lucia suffer, then Manuel, Maria’s son, will return alive from fighting in World War I. Maria’s assumption that God wants believers to suffer ignores the point of Jesus’ suffering as a vicarious sacrifice to atone for others’ sins and thus close the gap between God and humanity, or at least the House of Israel. Neither the voluntary suffering of Lucia or her mother Maria save souls. Furthermore, Maria’s flawed sense of causation—that if she suffers, then her son will not be killed—demonstrates how superstition can take hold when the human mind enters the religious domain of thought. So in the film, Catholicism is hardly whitewashed. Moreover, the vulnerabilities of the human mind in contemplating religious ideas are not dismissed.

So the need for psychological testing of Lucia and the two other children is presented in the film as reasonable, and indeed it is. The children pass the test, but they could still be lying. So Lucia asks the Virgin to perform a miracle so the bystanders would know that the visitation is real even though only the three children can see the Virgin. The dramatic tension rises as the mayor goes so far as imprison the three children so they would miss a monthly visitation by the Virgin. Lucia’s mother, Maria, goes so far as to repeatedly hit Lucia for lying about the visitations. That a person who presumes to know how to keep her son alive at war—and indeed seems so “religious” in general—would then show her
true colors” in hitting her daughter for having a religious belief (i.e., in the visitations) is not lost on the film’s viewers. And the child shall lead them—not the bishop or the observable “devout.”

The esoteric messages of the Virgin to the children, rather than to the judgmental multitude ruining the family’s crop, the bishop, the mayor, and Lucia’s mother, is justified. “Some people will never believe," the Virgin tells the children. The mayor in particular is a good example. God is like the breeze passing by the mountain, rather than a great fire or earthquake, and it takes a religious sensibility—a sense of presence—to notice the passing of a breeze, metaphorically speaking. It is because of the hostility of the detractors, those to whom Jesus’ message and example of love and mercy has fallen like on hard stone, or hardness of heart, that Lucia asks the Virgin for a miracle.

Like a quiet breeze, the message of the Virgin, that people should stop insulting God by sinning without repentance, should not be lost as the more sensationalistic miracle gains the headlines, both in the film and after the historical event. The miracle is merely a means by which to aid in the quiet message by giving confidence to believers and convert others to not insulting God, which I contend is more important than the Virgin’s admonition to pray more as that is merely a means to the end, which is love. Even so, the miracle of the Sun, both in the film and as a historical event, arguably has momentous significance. In the film, the miracle means that the visitation was real, so Lucia and the two other children are vindicated. Even Maria comes around, though tellingly the mayor still does not. As a historical event, the movements of the Sun while the last visitation was occurring means that religious truth, or meaning, in faith narratives is not the whole story; those truths in faith narratives refer to spiritual things outside of the story world, in the empirical, historical world. It is thus extremely significant that believers and nonbelievers both testified as witnesses in 1917 to the movements of the Sun. Mass hypnosis can thus be eliminated as a possible explanation. The only alternative left is that of coincidence, or else that the reports are erroneous—that the changed colors and movements of the Sun were optical illusions after the heavy rain. The veracity of religious truth in a faith narrative is not affected either way, so I contend that such truth, like a light breeze, should be the object of faith without raising questions of historicity one way or the other.

That is to say, the veracity of religious truth in a faith narrative can be distinguished from, or even more radically does not depend on, historical events or persons. Even so, the matter of empirical events (e.g., the Resurrection) and persons (e.g., Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha) is not inconsequential, and, if answered even more definitively than either the film or the historical event of the Sun moving in the sky, then the modern conception of religion, which disavows any faith narrative correspondence with empirical or historical events and even persons, would be even more severely uprooted. It may be that the miracle of the Sun has already done that, and the film merely reminds or informs people of that, as well as the possibility that, as the Virgin says in the film, some people will never believe, even in the face of a miraculous empirical (i.e., supernatural) event.

Even so, many spurious miracles have been claimed in the history of Christianity, and so perhaps a miracle less subject to being reckoned as an optical illusion is needed before the question of whether the events and characters in the Christian faith narratives correspond to historical events and actual persons. Nothing in such narratives can confirm such correspondences because a faith narrative is not a historical account even if historical events are used (and modified to serve theological points). Fortunately, the ways to enter the Kingdom of God as described and exemplified in the Gospel faith-narratives do not depend on the question of historical correspondences of events and even characters in those narratives.

The value of helping detractors, such as Lucia tries to help her mother in the film, does not depend on whether Jesus was a historical man or merely a character in the Gospels; the truth wherein human nature is expanded, or turned on its head, does not so depend. Whether or not the correspondence holds, a person applying the example and preaching in the narratives will experience the spiritual dynamic. Faith is ultimately in the value of that dynamic. In the Gospels, Jesus says that he came to preach the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The astute viewer of the film, Fatima, transcends the sensationalistic leitmotifs of whether the visitations have a reality outside of the children and whether the Sun really moves in the sky and comes closer to discern the innocent faith of Lucia from the dogmatic, hypocritical “faith” of her mother, who ironically has the name, Maria. Entering the Kingdom of God in humility is like the innocent faith of a child. This esoteric message of the film is, I submit, the most important thing about the film, and yet even a believer could be excused for having a burning urge to know whether the miracle (i.e., not of the laws of physics) of the Sun really happened. We are merely human, after all, and so we have an instinctual urge for finality or certainty even though the human mind can transcend the limits of cognition, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotions). One thing is certain; the religious sphere is not an easy one for the human brain to inhabit.

On transcending even the ethical, see: Spiritual Leadership

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding.

The prosecutor, Tad Lawson, having liberated death camps, rebuffs the General Matt Merrin’s pressure, and the four defendants get life sentences.  Whether Merrin’s claim that the U.S. needs the support of the German people in the Cold War is valid or not, pressuring a prosecutor is clearly depicted as unethical and so Lawson comes off as virtuous in resisting the exogenous pressure even though he is in the American military. It is certainly ironic that the victor army would push for lighter sentences for the vanquished; typically the question is whether a trial by the victors can be fair. Israel’s kidnapping and subsequent trial of Eichmann brought this question to the forefront. A trial in Germany would have also brought up this question. Britain would have been a good choice that would have avoided the conflict of interest.  In the film, Lawson successfully resists exploiting a conflict of interest by deciding not to curry favor with the general by urging the judges to go light in sentencing the defendants.

To be sure, chief judge Haywood has an opportunity to give a light sentence to one of the defendants. Ernst Janning, an expert jurist before the NAZI period and the Minister of Justice under Hitler, is the only one of the defendants who should have known better than knowingly convict innocent people, including Irene Hoffman for having sex with a much-older Jewish man, and sterilizing others, including Rudolph Petersen for being mentally impaired. Janning gives an impassioned speech to the court in which he admits his guilt, and that he should indeed have known better. Haywood holds Janning responsible for the latter’s use of the judicial system to send Jews and Poles to the death camps anyway; the crimes are simply too heinous for justice to be ignored. In the final scene, Haywood tells Janning that he should have known that it would come to such crimes the moment he convicted a person Janning knew was innocent. Using the gutted-out infrastructure of a judiciary to enable the state to engage in mass murder seems to particularly bother the chief judge. That is to say: a jurist who has written juridical books has no excuse in making a mockery of a judiciary.

After the last scene, the film indicates that none of the actual defendants of the American trial of jurists were still in prison as of 1961, when the film was made. Janning is loosely based on Louis Schlegelberger, who was State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice. He got a life sentence for conspiracy to perpetuate war crimes and crimes against humanity. He instituted procedures for the persecution of Jews and Poles, and thus played a vital role in the mass extermination. As much as such severe harm deserves harsh justice, he was released just a few years after having been convicted for “health reasons” even though he died in 1970. Similarly, Rudolf Oeschey had his life sentence commuted to 20 years, but he was released in just 8 years. Guenther Joel, chief prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice, got a 10 year sentence but was released in 1951. The same for Ernst Lautz, the Chief Public Prosecutor of the People’s Court. Herbert Klemm, State Secretary in the Ministry, had his life sentence commuted to 20 years but was released after just 10 years. Oswald Rothaug, a senior public prosecutor in the People’s Court and Chief Justice of the Special Court, had his life sentence commuted to 20 years but was released in just 9 years. Justice was clearly not served, and the film acknowledges this frailty of justice “in the real world.” The implications are that none of the fictional defendants would actually serve a life sentence, and the American military, which had tried and failed to get its way in the sentencing, ultimately gets its way. Any relief from Lawson resisting the pressure to urge light sentences such that justice wins the day is short-lived as the viewers read the film’s caveat at the end that in the end, all of the actual defendants of the jurist Nuremberg trial were still in prison as of 1961.

Interestingly, Maximilian Schell, who plays Hans Rolfe, the German defense attorney who applies NAZI thunder in severely questioning Irene Hoffman—such zeal being objected to by Lawson but allowed by the chief judge—beat out Spencer Tracy, who plays the chief judge who comes down on the side of justice (and is fair in ruling on the objections during the trial) and thus resists manipulations by “friendly” former NAZI civilians and the American military and a U.S. Senator, to get the Best Actor Oscar in 1961. Spencer Tracy is so mild-mannered throughout the film that his acting was typical rather than exceptional, whereas Richard Widmark, who plays Lawson, should have been in contention with Schell for the Oscar. Both actors are impassioned and frustrated, hence they both drew on strong emotions in playing their respective roles. Perhaps both should have gotten the award. The world, however, is not so just, as the movie makes clear in the end even if justice momentarily has the upper hand.