Film - Think

Reviews of films by people like Spielmann often resort to words like "clinical," "cold," "sterile," and other quasi-backhanded descriptions for an approach to filmmaking that banks on long static takes across uncluttered narratives. This kind of pacing and mise-en-scène appears to consist of a detachment that results in that odd kind of cinema transcendence or functions as a set of artificial barriers against the confusing excesses of expression and emotion. This detachment feels like a broken current between director and actor, or director and this world within the lens. Or more specifically, the director and everything that exists in their neatly constructed universe conjured out of the barest minimum of narrative material and set in motion even thought it feels a bit incomplete. Too soon it seems, because we want more to sink our teeth into. So we say: sterile, clinical. They seem detached in the same way that Paley's watch is disconnected from the Watchmaker, but with less moving parts.

And this kind of detachment is often mistaken for some kind of clinical or cold attitude in the director's work, which I have noticed in reviews of Revanche. But often the opposite is the case, and Revanche is a great example of how this works. Spielmann's camerawork is completely controlled and moves in unadorned angles across its planes of action. It spends long periods of time watching its central character chop wood, traveling, thinking, etc... Whether via Tarkovsky's plaintively spiritual pacing or Dumont's steely resolve to resist expressive embellishment, these kinds of films are not as much about ideas and gestures as they are about passing time in a particular way - in Revanche for example, passing time after a staggering personal loss. And it isn't quite the case that Revanche is completely controlled because there are several instances in which the camera begins to move of its own accord. In the most striking of these, Spielmann tracks with a car turning off into the forest, but at the apex of the turn the camera continues moving forward, slowly, into the trees beyond and then it sits for a moment and stares blankly at the trees.

This momentary lapse in Spielmann's grip on the film is telling. It tells us that his control over the lens isn't sterile, or clinical, or cold. It is actually very compassionate and benevolent. It directs the entirety of our focus to the gnawing despair felt by its main characters, and allows us to track the fragile spread of pain and loss throughout the film as plainly as possible. This particular scene comes at the awful moment on which the rest of the film pivots, Spielmann's small personal gesture here echoing loudly in its spacious interior. It is a sad moment, this drift the cinema equivalent of speechless shock. Spielmann's frame by frame decision not to rifle through the emotional toolbox for pat soundtracking, editing, or similar devices is actually very impassioned. His apparent detachment is the only way that these images can actually contain the unruly mess of real emotions that are at the center of the film. So Spielmann isn't clinical as much as he is sacrificial, abandoning personal flourishes for the sake of his agonized characters. We wouldn't be able to see them as clearly through the haze of less exacting edits. And what we are left with is a study of that kind of despair that leaves us reeling, confused, and unwilling to be part of a life that works like it does in Revanche. It is not really about coping with trauma as it is about how silly it sounds when people talk about "coping mechanisms" after certain kinds of tragedy.

For more on what Revanche is actually about, Robert Koehler has a great review.

"Christian filmmaking is coming of age. Christian filmmaking is coming of age!"
(Doug Phillips, SAICFF organizer)

"...not all things are profitable."
(1 Cor. 6:12)

So I was sitting there in my car early on Saturday morning listening to NPR and all these Christians start talking. It was disorienting to say the least. The "fly-over state evangelical Christian" is one of NPR's most cherished stereotypes, and many of the people interviewed in this segment did little to contradict this set of assumptions. Wagon-circling? Check. Moralizing? Check. Polarizing? Check. Gobs Of Money To Blow? Oh most definitely, check.

It was the much-discussed bit on the St. Antonio Indpendent Christian Film Festival, which recently handed out prizes to films in a range of categories. The $101,000 prize went to The Widow's Might, a film by 19 year old auteur John Robert Moore about a woman about to lose her house to foreclosure and the people that help her keep it. Apparently there is a lot of singing in it, which means I will watch it. I am a sucker for any film in which people sing lines that could otherwise be spoken (though I doubt it has much in common with Honore's Love Songs, which is the best recent film of this ilk). And I will also watch it, because if someone associated with the festival is to be believed, The Widow's Might represents the adolescence (see above quote) of an industry that took its wobbly fledgeling steps with... that Left Behind movie? Spare the rod, spoil the child. More on that later.

Here are some choice bits from the vision behind the festival:

When a people worship sensuality or embrace dark visions of reality, it is always evidenced in the arts. There is no neutrality! On the other hand, when a nation fears and loves the God of Holy Scripture, their religious commitment is evidenced in the music they play, the way they dress, and their vision of family life... The future of our culture will be waged in the hearts and souls of the people of this nation. The vision of the Jubilee Awards and the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival is to make one of the many steps needed to lead men to Christ, to train Christians to actually think like Christians, and to take back the culture for the Lord Jesus Christ in the area of film by encouraging, motivating, and rewarding those uncompromising, creative, and innovative filmmakers who are willing to take the narrow path... More than ever before in the recent history of our nation, we have access to the tools for waging a new form of cultural guerilla warfare against the elites who would redefine the biblical family out of existence and present a dark and nefarious vision of reality to the future. We need Christians to challenge the present culture of death, infidelity, perversion, and ethical malaise by boldly proclaiming the crown rights of Jesus Christ over every sphere of life and thought — including film. God has given us a tremendous window of opportunity. We must seize the day!

All boilerplate culture wars stuff. There is so much to respond to here that it is difficult to distill my discomfort with this kind of visioneering into an easily readable blog segment. For starters, I am not so sure Christianity isn't about embracing "dark visions of reality." I can think of few descriptions of reality that touch the desperation at the heart of the Bible's holistic narration of sin and its effects in the world. It is only in the context of this "dark and nefarious vision" that the unthinkable largesse of the Bible's parallel description of grace takes shape. The gospel embedded in the span of story, poetry, and prose from Genesis to Revelation takes on a stunning range thematic shapes and forms. It is expressed by murderers, bitter depressives, diseased flesh, prostitutes, broken bodies, and any other contemptible thing it can think of between the Garden of Eden and the crystal streets of the New Jerusalem. It is terrible and wonderful, destructive and creative, ugly and beautiful all at once. If we want to start drawing thematic lines in the sand, the gospel and the Bible aren't going to be much help in finding valid starting points. The Bible is just as violent (Revelation 19:13), sensual (Proverbs 5:19), and dark (Mark 16:8) as it is hopeful and edifying.

The truth is that vision statements like this aren't making Biblical distinctions at all. This simply isn't how the Bible works. They are not even cultural distinctions. They are marketing distinctions. By framing the differences between Hollywood media and Church media in these kinds of a-biblical thematic terms, this vision statement isn't drawing the dramatic line between spiritual life and death that it thinks it is. It is simply drawing a line between two different kinds of products: We don't want to see your filth, Hollywood. We are going to make our own films. We are going to leverage our market. We are going to buy tickets and go to them. We are going to award them prizes! Then we are going to buy them when they come out on DVD. We are going to do this until until the pile of our products over here is bigger than your pile of products over there. This will be our signal that we have won the hearts and minds of the* culture. We will gain total thematic dominance over your dark and nefarious visions one DVD and related study guide at a time.

Is this really the "narrow path"? If so, why does it look exactly like the broad one that has led Hollywood to destruction? This kind of Christian film marketing is theologically insane. In the NPR story, Fireproof producer Stephen Kendrick explained why the film was such an instant success: "We did a lot of screenings showing the film to 'influencers,'" he explained. "That would be pastors, ministry leaders, those would be people who speak to the audience." The worst effect this envisioned Christian Film Industry would have on American christianity has little to do with these films themselves. I have no problem with people having family friendly media around. And the loss of narrative intelligence that accrues from being immersed in such didactic media is easy to deal with. The most deadly fallout is the culture that appears in the wake of Pastors and other ministry leaders being thought of as "influencers," which is an awfully Orwellian euphemism for "advertisers." This subversion of the Church by business in the guise of evangelism isn't worth whatever it produces.

*N.B.: Not just culture, but the culture. Far more ominous. It's what we drive through on the way to church.

Some Questions:

1. Is Christian filmmaking really coming of age? The lack of historical consciousness in such a statement is alarming. There may be a certain market coming of age, one that is linked to the success of things like Left Behind and Fireproof. But theology and the entire symbolic network of Christian thought have been at the center of cinema ever since David Livingstone toted magic lanterns all the way down to Africa. Tarkovsky, Bazin, scattered all through Film-Think are key figures in film history that had a very imaginative and culturally influential Christian impulse. Ingmar Bergman spoke often about how even though he became agnostic, all the Christian images he had picked up in his devoutly Lutheran home lurked in the recesses of his narrative consciousness. This indomitable presence of Christianity can be readily tracked throughout the last century of film history. And then, of course, there are the numerous Christians that are working quite successfully in the American film industry already. Christian filmmaking is as old as the medium itself.

2. Should a Christian ever spend 200 million dollars on a film production?

Parallel to a different Top Ten of 2008 films, Christianity Today has posted a 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2008 list. Intrigued by the idea that I could also create two lists this year, I have gone ahead and written one as well: my 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2008. Surprise! It is exactly the same as my original list. My list is already packed with moments of redemption in every sense of the term on the theological spectrum from Guiterrez' overly political construction to Aquinas at his most bridal mystic. Cinema has an inherent capacity for redeeming spaces - street corners, buildings, entire cities - from the accretion of degrading myths about class and commerce (Still Life, My Winnipeg). Its ability to actually see people rescues them, and by extension ourselves, from the awful fate of being unknown or unheard (Red Balloon). Its immersive potential confronts us with biblical images and allusions in culturally significant ways, an immediate form of piety (Silent Light) that redeems biblical images and concepts from their overuse in the Hollywood system. Like the theological concept of redemption itself, cinema is bold enough to tangle with abortion, war, and religious oppression and actually win (4 Months..., Aleksandra). I have a vested interest in redemption, in its multiple and master-narrating biblical forms, and these kind of redemption-critical thoughts are what help me discover good film every year.

Christianity Today describes their reasoning on the list as follows:

So, what's a "redeeming" film? The definition varies, but for our list below, we mean movies that include stories of redemption—sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so. Several of them literally have a character that represents a redeemer; all of them have characters who experience redemption to some degree—some quite clearly, some more subtly. Some are "feel-good" movies that leave a smile on your face; some are a bit more uncomfortable to watch. But the redemptive element is there in all of these films.

So they are honoring films that contain a "redemptive element" that can be traced through a redemptive figure, theme, or narrative structure. I can buy that. And I can buy it despite all the problems that are part of talking about what makes something "redemptive" in the cinema. As a matter of fact, I also consider "redemption" to be a controlling critical factor in what I think of as "good" or "bad" cinema. But I would want to expand it, even redeem the term "redemptive" from the way it is so easily tossed about in evangelical cultural criticism. By now it is subject to Walker Percy's condemnation of how generic Christian vocabulary has become: "The old words of grace are worn smooth as poker chips and a certain devaluation has occurred, like a poker chip after it is cashed in." It can be used in the same sentence as "movies that leave a smile on your face." It can be disassociated from other critical concepts enough that it becomes the umbrella term for yet another list chosen of films from a given year. It has become a catch-all self-identifying term that appeals to a rapidly growing market of evangelical film-goers. What happens when "redeeming" becomes a successful market index?

Let's face it, we often cash redemption and all of its cognates in pretty quickly, when we could be spending its capital on those things that the Bible heaps it upon so lavishly. All those beautiful hopeless Ruths, the enslaved, the solipsist Gomers, the spoiled lands, etc... In film terms, redemption has an international scale and an aesthetic pulse. It redeems the world's poor and oppressed from their representation in a disorienting, dishonest TV universe of news bites, special interests, and marketing strategies. As a critical concept it looks for those marginalized voices out there with cameras and handfuls of shooting scripts, artists filling out festival schedules with independent productions of fragile human ideas, and unadorned reminders that people and places can actually be rescued, reconciled, adopted, and all these great verbs that are associated with redemption. And it buys back, bit by bit, all those weak ideas about redemption that have become so watered-down and denuded by Hollywood's use of the image as an easy narrative device, a handy way of tying movies up in neat packages, or something that lends depth to otherwise flat characters.

If we want to use "redeeming" with all of its Christological force as a certain way of looking at films, then we will have to go far off the beaten track, see things we don't want to see, and spend time and money on things that studios and publicists are telling us are worthless.

Regardless, here is the CT list. (Nice to see Wall-E, The Visitor, and Shotgun Stories on the top bit):

1. Wall-E
2. The Visitor
3. Gran Torino *
4. Horton Hears a Who
5. Rachel Getting Married *
6. Fireproof *
7. The Dark Knight
8. Shotgun Stories *
9. Slumdog Millionaire *
10. Man on Wire

The Ones That Got Away:

As We Forgive (Mark Moring) *
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Russ Breimeier) *
Defiance (Camerin Courtney) *
Doubt (Josh Hurst) **
The Fall (Brandon Fibbs)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Brett McCracken)
Iron Man (Alissa Wilkinson)
Ostrov [The Island] (Steven D. Greydanus) **
Pray The Devil Back To Hell (Todd Hertz) *
U23D (Jeffrey Overstreet) *
Wendy and Lucy (Peter Chattaway)

I just recieved an email this morning with news that Dr. Laura Copier (Universiteit van Amsterdam) is looking for papers on the representation of Rome in Film for the International Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Rome this upcoming July.

It is nice to see ISBL picking up some more film related topics, especially with Laura Copier's name attached. I met her briefly at the 2007 San Diego meeting and was thrilled to discover an actual film critic at SBL. She told me all about her dissertation ("Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema 1980-2000"), which must have done well in defense. Abstract:

My project focuses on the recycling of Biblical images and narrative structures regarding the Apocalypse and its conceptions of martyrdom and self-sacrifice in contemporary Hollywood cinema. I examine to what extent representations of martyrs and self-sacrifices are informed by traditional religious notions of Apocalyptic martyrs and self-sacrifices, and how these notions are reproduced, but also transformed and redirected in the process of transmission. Hollywood cinema can be regarded as a site of re-use and re-interpretation of Christian and non-Christian visual and linguistic traditions. However, these adaptations and interpretations are performed by a secular, not (explicitly) religious system. In her book Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History Mieke Bal provides a methodological framework for integrating visual and linguistic traditions of interpretation. She proposes the term ‘quotation', which consists of both iconography and intertextuality. Taking my cue from Bal's theory of quotation, Hollywood may recycle certain elements of the original texts; the discourse of the historically precedent text still exerts its power in the new text. Therefore, I examine the influence of the precedent text. Once the historical source is traced, I analyse in what ways the new text is an active intervention in the earlier material. And finally, I attempt to define the transfer of meaning from past to present and from present to past. This implies a radical rethinking of Hollywood as a mere duplicator or recycler of ‘original' images and narrative structures. Here, one could perceive the original to be functioning as an after effect caused by the images of Hollywood cinema.

I won't make it to Rome this year, which is depressing as both this and a nifty papyrology session will be underway. But I would love to talk about the cruciform indictment of paparazzi in La Dolce Vita if I could.