Son of God: Comparative Religion in Film

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Emperor: Above the Clouds of Petty Protocol

In complex social arrangements, such as exist in governments, business firms, and religious organizations, a person must climb through many levels before reaching persons of sufficient height and occupational breadth that what had been said to be binding requirements suddenly become as though unfettered butterflies. Astoundingly, the mid-level subordinates may even object as the rules are relegated back to their true status as guidelines. Beyond the element of greater authority, a greater perspective in terms of what truly matters is profoundly important in this regard. Having many decades of lived experience, plus a certain maturity in place of pettiness, is also in the mix. A Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, may be more likely to pick up on a sincere heart of the sort Jesus would praise than run through a laundry list of doctrinal requirements. 

In the film Emperor (2012), religion and government are intertwined in the Japanese emperor, who was until shortly after World War II also officially a living god. Although his aides attempt to put General MacArthur into a straightjacket of protocol for the meeting with the emperor at the end of the film, both the general and the emperor are off sufficient maturity and perspective to disabuse themselves of the protocols and focus on the truly important stuff. To discern the petty from the profoundly important is a key feature of upper-echelon leadership.

In the film, Teizaburo Sekiya forewarns General MacArthur before the meeting with the emperor. “there are certain proprieties I’d better make you aware of. You may not shake His Majesty’s hand or touch him. You must never look His Majesty directly in the eyes. You may not step on his shadow. When you sit down with His Majesty, you have to sit on his left. You must never call His Majesty by his name.”

Upon greeting the emperor, General Bonner Fellers obeys the protocol, assiduously avoiding eye contact with the shorter man. General MacArthur begins likewise, looking above the emperor, and says, “It is indeed a pleasure to welcome you here, Your Majesty.” The emperor thanks the general, to which MacArthur thanks the emperor, making eye-contact with a warm-hearted expression and outstretching his hand. The emperor wears a confused look at first, but then gently shakes the general’s hand.

As if the general had not broken enough with protocol, he announces that he has arranged for a picture. The emperor motions to his aide not to object, and moves into position for the picture—the general standing on the emperor’s right.

After the picture is taken, the general announces that the translator is to stay but everyone else in the room is to go to the library while the general and emperor talk. Being excluded, and thus unable to enforce the protocol, Sekiya blurts out, “But that was not part of the plan.” The emperor says “Sekiya” in a way that lets his compatriot know that he is to comply with the general’s wishes. Only the general and the emperor appear aware of the political reality: the general rather than the emperor is running Japan. To the victor goes the task of rebuilding the foe.

The emperor takes his seat, with the general already seated to the left. The emperor then rises, and offers himself as solely responsible and as willing, therefore, to take all the punishment. “This has nothing to do with punishment,” the general replies. Even among two leaders in high places, one can lose sight of the truly important. The general had cut through the morass of thou shalt nots, which the lower and mid-level functionaries hold onto so tightly, to establish a sort of collegial intimacy that renders the two men much more alike than either to his respective subordinates.  Only at that high level can the sun shine above the clouds of minutia, such that eve the gods on Mount Olympus might be jealous of what man can accomplish. “I need your help,” the general beseeches with heart-felt concern for the emperor’s subjects as he looks directly into the man’s eyes. “So let’s see what we can do to get Japan back on its feet.” Both men doubtlessly know that this task lying before them is vitally important, as many Japanese are starving at the time.

The movie thus provides a good snapshot of organizational life being appreciably freer on the top floor and unnecessarily petty on the floors below. How to convince the narrow-minded gate-keepers that their levers are not so vitally important after all is a question in need of an answer. It is telling that Sekiya is so greatly disturbed by the general’s change of plan. MacArthur has used his experience wisely in not having argued with Sekiya as he promulgated the forbidden conduct; the general undoubtedly knew the true pecking order in Japan then, and that he could appeal directly to the emperor as both were unique having responsibility for the whole of Japan and thus would undoubtedly relate.

Behind the 2014 Summer Movie Flops: It’s the Narrative, Stupid

With box-office revenue in the U.S. and Canada expected to come in at only $3.9 billion for the summer of 2014, or 15% lower than the year before, and no film hitting $300 million domestically,[1] the question is whether the dip could be explained by a cycle or some larger, irreversible trend. I contend that two factors push the answer past the typical response that most of the movie franchises would be out in force in the summer of 2015.

Most importantly, the well-trodden recipe for box-office cash may have gradually willowed away good story-telling. The number of flops is astounding. They included “The Expendables 3,” “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” “Hercules,” “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” and “Sex Tape.” Out of twelve sequels, only three managed not to nose-dive. According to The New York Times, audiences had had enough with “same old, same old.”[2]

“Maleficent” did well because it proffers audiences “a revisionist story line with an unexpected twist.”[3] Of course, Angelina Jolie in bondage gear might have had something to do with the box-office success too. Likewise, Scarlett Johansson might have pushed “Lucy” to its $115.1 million in North American sales; her sulky voice had certainly stole the show in “Her.” Yet without fresh, captivating yet not overly complex narrative, the drought in so much of California at the time could easily be said of Hollywood too.

It is no secret that aspiring screenwriters are told both in print and by writers in the business that Hollywood producers look for certain kinds of scripts that are known to sell well, especially if they can be readily made into franchises. In The Screenwriter’s Bible, the author barely hints that stories can have bad endings; The ending had better turn out good if you want to sell your script in Hollywood. Such capitulation to distorting narrative to meet what has sold well in the past is often a “no-brainer” to beginning screenwriters who desperately want in the game. Perhaps they should not be so sycophantic—so much in need of Hollywood. Perhaps screenwriting is best pursued part-time, as a hobby that could wind up paying well, rather than as a career. Yet Hollywood too is to blame, for it has been too easy for producers to go the road most travelled at the expense of good story-telling and thus the film industry’s own best interest.

Alternatives stemming from online streaming, dvds, and better home screens increasingly push movie theaters to justify the value for price that they provide. Films such as “Gravity” and the “Transformers” franchise can justify their appeals to be viewed on the huge screens that only a movie theater can provide, whereas dramas lack such a rationale, and may be more comfortably watched in bed anyway. Films not meeting the raised bar visually probably will not see much action in theaters. Whether visually stunning on a mammoth screen or not, a film must have excellent narrative to draw audiences, at least ideally. The arteries can become blocked, however, as entrenched producers and screenwriters presume erroneously that only the deepest grooved paths lead to the Emerald City. The wizards, detached from the city’s other residents and thus the way things are done, are the screenwriters who dare think outside the box yet are not so far gone as to lose touch with the mainstream audience.

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[1] Andrew Hart, “Film Industry Has Worst Summer Since 1997,” The Huffington Post, August 29, 2014.

[2] Brooks Barnes, “Movies Have Worst Summer Since 1997,” The New York Times, August 29, 2014.

[3] Ibid.

Subtle Anticipations in Film Narrative: Foreshadowing in A Single Man

Tom Ford’s approach in screenwriting and directing his first feature film, A Single Man (2009), which is based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel of the same title, can be characterized as thoroughness oriented to the use of film as art not merely for visual storytelling, but also to probe the depths of human meaning and present the audience with a thesis and thus something to ponder. As Ford reveals in his oral commentary to the film, that thesis is that we should live in the present, attending to it more closely, because today might be our last day of life. George, the film’s protagonist, supposes that in intending to commit suicide at the end of the day covered by the film, he chooses the final day of his life—hence retaining and exercising some control over his otherwise hackneyed daily routine. Though an exquisite use of foreshadowing that subtly and vaguely anticipates his death, the film gains a depth of meaning that operates at different levels. The underlying meaning is nuanced, even multivalent, rather than entirely opaque and transparent. In this essay, I take a look at Ford’s use of hints anticipating George’s death. Being salient in the script, they serve as a good illustration for aspiring and even accomplished screenwriters who want to touch the unconscious as well as awareness.

The most transparent foreshadowing takes place at the beginning of the film, in the morning before work, in the kitchen. George’s heart disease suddenly clenches and he winces in a quick spat of pain. In Christopher Isherwood’s book of the same title, which Ford adapted for the film, the fit is a spasm—a mere cramp that George has on a regular basis.[1] The film begins closer to consciousness.

“I don’t see my future,” George says as our narrator at the beginning of what would turn out to be the last day of his life in spite of his last-minute decision not to kill himself. Sitting in his modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-based house in Malibu, California on November 30, 1962, he knows he plans on killing himself—an intent that is entirely missing in the book. The professor is genuinely perplexed, as if the lack of any envisioned future would be any surprise on his last day on earth. He is inexplicably stupefied even as he goes over his plan to commit suicide. In the book, George tells Kenny at the bar late that night, “The future—that’s where death is.”[2] It is all so open-ended, as if a blank screen so bright nothing on it can be seen.

Just as vaguely, George says “I’m going away” in answer to a hustler’s suggestion of “Maybe another time?” as the two look into the setting golden sunlight after work. Later that night, George answers his friend Charlie’s desire to get together again real soon with, “I think I will be quiet this weekend.” In the book, George nearly falls down stairs going out from Charlie’s front door, very nearly falling “ten, fifty, one hundred million feet into the bottomless black night.”[3] In retrospect, these remarks are chilling, even ominous, for they imply an insufferable, terminal void into which even a person’s consciousness and thought dissolve; and yet, as George lies prostrate on his bedroom floor, dying of a heart attack just before 3 a.m., his voice narration informs the audience, “And suddenly it happened.” Another foreshadowing, perhaps, though this one is for the viewers, who in answer to the anticipated void at the end of their own lives dare to hope.

The foreshadowing is also done by substituting awkward inexplicable reactions in place of the expected. The effect is to open up the narrative, as if pregnant with new-found potential directionality. Looking at George during cocktails before dinner at her stylish house, for instance, Charlie observes, “Darling, you don’t look well; remember that heart attack you had?  You don’t look so hot.” Even though George intends to put a pistol to his head later that night, I find it odd that he barely registers a reaction. To be sure, he has no incentive to run to a hospital for a stress test.

After dinner and an enjoyable dance, George lights two cigarettes and hands one to his former lover. “It’s not like smoking will kill me,” he deadpans. Charlie, her own drunken state doubtlessly being a factor, does not take the hint as she should. Is George unconsciously crying out for help? Rather than two people connecting, the two alcoholics are talking past each other even as they presume (and crave) emotional intimacy. George lost it a year earlier when his partner Jim died in a car crash in Ohio, and life was in black and white for him ever since—except for that last day, when George found himself amazed with the beauty in the ordinary and then unexpectedly connecting.

After leaving Charlie’s house, George goes to his neighborhood bar. Finding Kenny, a student clearly obsessed with his professor, curiously there (pensively waiting, in the book’s version), George confides to him (hence establishing emotional intimacy), “You know the only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile, has been those few times when I’ve been really, truly been able to connect with another human being.” The question is thus whether this new, unforeseen connection will mean a suspension or cancellation of the current plan.

The answer is not delivered directly or all at once. Once again, the narrative has depth, and thus reaches out on more than one level using foreshadowing. Back at his place with Kenny after their short swim in the Pacific Ocean after drinks at the bar, George realizes that his watch has stopped. “My watch seems to have stopped,” he says—again, strangely perplexed. A hint for us that time has run out for George, only he does not realize it even though he still intends to end his life that night; he is still under the impression that he is in control of when his life will end. Besides being a neat-freak, George has nearly suffocated himself tightly in controlling his interior and exterior, yet as a functioning alcoholic he is anything but in control of even himself.

Minutes after realizing that his watch has stopped, George passes out as Kenny looks on. In his recurrent dream of drowning, the depressed, still grieving professor finally gets to the surface and can breathe. This awakens him, and he finds and locks away his gun, no longer intent on ending his life.  No doubt the emotional intimacy with Kenny—finally connecting with another human being again—has brought color back into George’s life. Ford cleverly varies color saturation to distinguish the pallid world of George’s depression from Charlie’s liveliness and Kenny’s emotional connection. In fact, Kenny plays a savior role, rather than merely that of an obsessed student—even keeping his professor safe by holding the gun while sleeping on the couch after carrying George back to bed. According to Ford, although it is not clear that Kenny is interested in men, he willingly offers his body to George when the two return earlier from swimming.

Kenny has indeed saved George, at least in terms of suicide.  Yet the Fates, intimated for the audience by the sight of an owl taking flight as George opens his front door to glimpse the nearly-full ruddy moon, will have the last word in this affair we call life. As Ford points out in his commentary, the owl has long stood for death being not long in coming. George is in a state of suspended animation, for he finds himself ensconced in one of his rare, fleeting moments in which the universe and everything in it, including his own life and even his partner’s crash, make sense. “A few times in my life,” he narrates, “I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few, brief seconds, the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp, and the world seems so fresh; it’s as though it had all just come into existence.” Burning the suicide notes he had written to Charlie and someone else, he concedes that he can never make such moments last. “I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I’ve lived my life on these moments; they pull me back to the present.” With that, the thesis is transparent: live in the present, for today may just be your last. Such alignment is suddenly undercut, however, as George gets his wish even if he is no longer willing it.

Realizing that “everything is exactly the way it’s meant to be,” George reaches out for to his bed stand for water only to feel himself in the clutches of a fatal, all-consuming heart attack. Ford says George is even wrong about everything then being just right in his life. How cruel it is of the Fates to cut into one of those rare conditions of insightful equilibrium. The Fates will not be denied by what little control we think we can muster, or perhaps George pulled the trigger with all the years of smoking and drinking—a subtle and gradual means of suicide.

As he lay on the floor barely alive, we hear the slowing clicks of his alarm clock. The clock stops, and George sees his deceased partner lean down and kiss him on the cheek—the kiss of death—for “just like that, it came.” Suddenly the overhead camera shot turn to black and white; there is no longer any living in the now for George. We are left with what is perhaps the deepest level of meaning in the film—what now?

With George narrating his own death, his soul must exist in the film’s story-world. “And suddenly it happened.” People don’t usually say that death came. So I suspect that given the sense of amazement in “just like that,” George experienced something liberating, or at the very least a sudden change or transformation into another realm of existence in which his emotional pain could not go. He does not mention his dead partner, Jim, so I suspect that whatever suddenly came, it was existential rather than restorative in terms of human relationships. In effect, death relativizes them such that seeing earlier departed loved ones is no longer important.

Narrative visual art can indeed plumb the mind’s depths and thus register as substantive instead of superficial eye-candy. Films that leave an audience thinking and feeling deeply for a sustained period of time are themselves multi-layered, with multivalent symbols placed at various degrees of subtlety throughout the narrative to foreshadow. Such films register at various depths of human meaning and reflect its complexity through the use of linguistic and visual symbols, each of which contains by its very nature more than one loosely-related meaning. They play even with time by lending to human nature more omniscience than it has a right to. It as if the screenplays have been written as orchestral pieces, with more than one instrument group—each at its own level of subtlety and duration, and yet likely simultaneous with various others at foreshadowed intervals.

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[1] Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man , (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1964), p. 13.

[2] Ibid., p. 157.

[3] Ibid., p. 145.

Robin Williams: Comedic Creativity and Dramatic Depth from Severe Depression?

A month or two before Robin Williams' untimely and unfortunate suicide,  I read a piece whose author posited the possibility that much of the best writing has been penned by authors struggling with the disease known as major depression. I suppose the explanation would be that creativity is a way to break out of the dullness of the ordinary, to stimulate the mind out of its malaise. It is as if the suffering are reaching upwards, as if out of a sense of desperation known only to the unconscious. At the same time, the tendency of depression to dive deep within, to find or sink to a more meaningful, subterranean basis can easily translate into providing a narrative with depth. The combination of creativity and depth may be the hallmark of excellent story-telling, as well as the ravaging disease to which Robin Williams succumbed. In his acting, he was incredibly creative in his comedy even as he was fully capable of deep emotions in dramatic roles. In fact, behind the creative comedic façade may lie just such emotions, and in the dramatic we might catch the edges of a quick smirk that says, "Hey, don't take all this so seriously, even though I do. I can't help it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philomena

In the film, Philomena (2013), the audience is confronted with the spectacle of unjustifiable cruelty committed under religious auspices. Philomena is this victim, and she must struggle to come to terms with her past ordeal as a young mother at an Abbey as she goes on a search for her son in America. Her traveling companion, Martin, is a journalist writing the story from his perspective as an ex-Catholic. Philomena defends her faith against Martin’s sarcasm even as she comes to terms with just how cruel the nuns had been to her. In the end, she and Martin confront the nuns. The question is how, by which I mean, from what direction? The answer has value in demonstrating how outwardly religious hypocrites can be put in their place.  

In the true story, pregnant girls were taken to an Abbey. The woman had to pay the Abbey 100 pounds to leave after having given birth. Not having such money, the women had to remain for at least four years, working seven days a week to repay the Abbey. The woman could see their children only an hour a day. The nuns sold them to Americans, and had the girls sign away any rights to know of their respective children’s whereabouts. The girls willingly signed, the nuns having convinced them that they did not deserve the pleasure of seeing their kids on account of the dire sinfulness of having had sex outside of marriage. Even into adulthood, the women did not realize that a contract with a minor is unenforceable, as is a contract made under pressure.

In a flashback, with one of the younger sisters screeching for a physician as Philomena is about to give birth, the older nun in the room replies, “It’s in God’s hands now. The pain is her penance.” Later on, Philomena stands crying, looking out from a courtyard—clutching at metal bars—as a rich American couple drove her boy away, an old nun stands out in front, waving goodbye to the car and ignoring Philomena’s arduous cries, as if the pain of separation were part of the penance. Meanwhile, the Abbey profited from such sales, as well as from the work of the young mothers.

“I think what they did to you was evil,” Philomena’s daughter Jane remarks after hearing her mother recount the events.

“No, no, I don’t like that word,” Philomena replies, rebuffing Jane’s judgment.

“No, no. Evil’s good,” Martin, the journalist, says as he is still writing, “story-wise, I mean.” Yet later, in confronting one of the old nuns who had kept Philomena’s son from finding her, Martin would admit that he just couldn’t forgive the nuns. For not only had they refused the son visiting from America any information on Philomena even though he was dying of AIDs, the nuns had also burned the records listing the adoptive parents while conveniently retaining the contracts that the young women had signed. When Philomena approached the nuns later in life for information on her son, they lied to her, saying they would try and trace his location—knowingly giving her false hope.

While it is easy to find much evil in such cruelty and lying, the evil in the anger that keeps forgiveness at bay is much less transparent. That Philomena would forgive the sisters is anticipated in her response to Martin. “Some of the nuns were very nice,” she said as she put her hand on Martin’s wrist. Perhaps believing that her mother was letting the nuns get away with too much (she was, after all, too gullible in respect to them), Jane informs Martin that the nuns had refused to give her mother any painkillers in what was a breech birth—the nuns having decided that the pain was penance.

Rather than enabling the nuns, Martin confronts one of the culprits, Hildegarde, who is then an old lady. As he does so, the priest in the room tells Martin, “I think your whole manner is absolutely disgusting.” In protecting the other “religious,” the old priest presumes the nuns to be innocent and Martin to be culpable. “I’ll tell you what is disgusting,“ Martin replies, “lying to a dying man.” It is up to Martin to get at the truth—to train a light where the “religious” conveniently refuse to look. Looking directly into the old nun’s eyes, Martin asks her, “When you knew [Philomena and her son] were looking for each other, why did you keep them apart? You could have given him a few precious moments with his mother before he passed away, but you chose not to. That’s disgusting. . . . Not very Christian, now is it?” The old woman could not let that one go! Martin had just called her a hypocrite concerning the domain that was ostensibly most important to Hildegarde.

“I have kept my vow of chastity, my whole life,” the old nun replied. “Self-denial and mortification of the flesh, that’s what brings us closer to God.” Those girls have nobody to blame but themselves and their own carnal incontinence.” These last two words are riveted with anger and resentment that spew out like darts of spit. So sure of her knowledge of God, Hildegarde doubtlessly assumed she could not be wrong. No other ways exist. The girls had sinned such that they are unredeemable. Such is the mind of God, rather than a mere mortal. Yet there was Hildegarde, standing vicariously for us all in our various religious convictions. God wants this. That guy is going to hell. I’m here to save you. That’s just an opinion you have there.

Hildegarde is assuming, problematically, that the vow taken by every monk and nun in a Catholic religious order implies that a layperson having sex outside of marriage evinces carnal incontinence. The sister is forgetting that different standards pertain to religious orders and the laity. To understand this, a little history is necessary. Part of the price Christianity paid for being legalized then favored by Rome was the infusion of nominal Christians who were going alone to get along, rather than out of any specifically Christian or even religious fervor. The monasticism of the fourth and fifth centuries came as a reaction against the lower standards of discipleship being acceptable to the Church. Based on a bifurcation or split of Jesus’s ethical preaching into those that are necessary for salvation and others that are oriented to perfection, only the religious orders oriented themselves to both.[1] The laity, including the young women under Hildegarde’s care, are thus not duty-bound to comply with the more exacting measures geared to religious perfection. Hence the nun’s association of sex outside of marriage with breaking a religious vow is erroneous from a Catholic standpoint. Put another way, Hildegarde and the other sisters have been too exacting on the girls—even punishing them for not measuring up!

Concerning the presumed value of self-denial, Nietzsche argues that making oneself weak voluntarily is to reduce the strength a person needs to overcome the hegemony of one’s most intractable urge. Hence Hildegarde cannot overcome her hatred, or even her sense of omniscience. Furthermore, the place of penance in Christianity as it has come down to us may be exaggerated. The Renaissance scholar Lorenzo Valla has pointed out that “the summons with which the preaching of Jesus began did not say, as medieval misreading had supposed, ‘Do penance [Poenitentiam agite],’ but ‘Repent,’ that is, ‘Turn your mind around.’”[2] Hildegarde is quite resolute in respect to holding her mind firm where it is, putting insufferable penance above all else in her religion.

Martin, rather than the victim herself, demands an apology from the old nun, but none would be forthcoming from such a cold heart. In fact, the nun goes on to say that Philomena’s suffering, and that of the other mothers, “was atonement for their sins”—for having had sex once. At this, Martin has heard enough. “One of the mothers was 14 years-old!” Rejecting Martin’s criticism, the nun announces, “The Lord Jesus Christ will be my judge, not the likes of you.” Not only did the old woman know this, she also doubtlessly knew how He would judge her. Cruelty, in other words, defends itself with assumed omniscience, or self-idolatry.

Interestingly, it is not Martin’s anger at the Church that succeeds in stopping the old nun in her tracks; rather, her stupefied quandary comes from a surprising, and indeed very ironic direction—from her own religion, as evinced in Philomena’s instantiation of Jesus’s basic preachment to forgive one another. Taking the initiative, Philomena looks down at the nun in a wheelchair and calmly yet with active determination says, “Sister Hildegarde, I want you to know that I forgive you.” Suddenly it is Philomena who exhibits religious perfection, and the sister is like a layperson—and a nominal Christian at that. I don’t see an expression of “how dare you;” rather, Hildegarde may actually look a bit vulnerable—at least the anger is gone (likely replaced by astonishment).

As the nun sits in her wheelchair stunned, looking up at the inferior laywoman now somehow in unfamiliar territory above, Martin misses the subtle spiritual dynamic entirely at first; he assumes that Philomena has unilaterally disarmed in letting the old woman get away with all her past atrocities. Philomena meets this criticism that she would let such words suffice by arguing that forgiveness is not just words, “That’s hard; that’s hard for me.” Forgiving cruelty that refuses even to apologize is indeed hard, for the injury from the emotional abuse stings long after the infliction and forgiveness is unmerited. Yet in the long scheme of things, anger is harder, and mortifies the injury as if poking at the wound.

“I don’t want to hate people. I don’t want to be like you,” Philomena adds—with Hildegarde obviously witnessing the push-back against the secularized critic. Indirectly, this enhances the credibility, and thus force, of the forgiveness.

“I’m angry,” Martin admits. I would be too.

“Well, it must be exhausting.” With this, Philomena asks a younger nun to escort her to her son’s grave. As a viewer, I find myself reflecting on how exhausting even righteous causes against injustices are.

As Martin then leaves the room, he looks back at the old woman and says almost in a defeatist tone, “Well, I couldn’t forgive you.” Owing to Hildegarde’s hatred even years after having refused the dying son his wish, Martin’s line even now resonates with me, even as I side with Philomena.

Interestingly, before leaving the building, Martin buys Philomena a small Heart-of-Jesus plastic statue. In this gesture, Martin acknowledges his newly found respect for the true religious standpoint, which is far more valuable and powerful than either his anti-religion banter or Hildegarde’s brand of Catholicism.  Generally speaking, the best critique of so-called religious practice, sentiment, or belief is from religion’s own unearthed and forgotten spirit, rather than from an extrinsic or exogenous standpoint. Philomena represents the former whereas Martin instantiates the latter. In the end, although Martin still refuses to forgive the nuns (and Catholicism more generally)—and indeed they are not worthy of it—yet he does pivot 180 degrees regarding Philomena’s faith, going from sarcastic put-downs to pro-active respect. Like Francis of Assisi, Philomena is one who I suspect Jesus would resolutely say, “She is one of mine.”

I suspect that Hildegarde came away from her encounter with Philomena feeling less sure of herself with respect to Jesus Christ being her judge; perhaps she would fare better under Martin’s wrath. Lest we be too harsh on the old gal, I suspect that the human brain itself contains an over-reaching proclivity when it comes to what we assume we know for sure concerning religious matters. None of us are immune, and yet the inexorable denial in this brain sickness tells each one of us that we are.

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1. Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Harper and Row: New York, 1987), p. 114.

2. Ibid., p. 153.See Valla’s text, Annotations on the New Testament.