Top Ten Films of 2010

The financial crisis of 2008 is partly to blame for the mediocre year that was, 2010. From The Fighter to True Grit to Winter's Bone, 2010 was definitely a year filled with films that we, the audience, were "supposed to like" more than we actually did. Apart from documentaries (and there were many great ones this year--see a few lines below), the story-department seemed to run a bit dry. Nevertheless, I've narrowed it down to the best-and-my-favorite films of 2010. Although my number 10 spot could've gone to many (Catfish, She's Out Of My League, Inside Job, Exit Through The Gift Shop, or Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work), I decided to go with the one (I think) will be looked back on and regarded as a very special cultural text---a film about humans and where we now live. So here we go. Number 10.

10. The Social Network: "We lived in farms, then we lived in cities and now we're gonna live on the internet." This line uttered in the final minutes of David Fincher's The Social Network sums up why, in a sentence, critics are praising this 'film-for-our-times.' It couldn't have been made 10 years ago, and it couldn't be made (like this) 10 years from now. It's our generation's Network. It's entirely and utterly a-movie-of-and-for-the-moment. With a zippy, razor-sharp, feels-like-fists-are-swinging screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (the Oscar is his to lose), an ominous, chilling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and a talented cast led by the always wonderful Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, Adventureland and his best film, The Squid & The Whale), The Social Network isn't the best film from a (pretty) weak film year, but it is one that will go down in history, studied and remembered for being a film that sums up a generation. My generation. For this is where (and how) we now live. Friending. Tagging. Facebooking our way into life, as we now know it.

9. How To Train Your Dragon: The sleeper hit from early 2010 ('thank you' audience word-of-mouth buzz, which put the film at the number one box office spot weeks after its initial release--an unheard of feat) turns out to be one of the dreamiest, most giddily entertaining films of the year. What stood out to me most, while watching the film was its mature, sage perspective on 'what and who is evil' in this world. There's a fantastic theological conversation going on in How To Train Your Dragon, and one question that keeps haunting our protagonist Hiccup's mind: mainly, 'why is the dragon the enemy'? From the Vikings' perspective, it has to do with fire, death and destruction. But once Hiccup seeks to reach across the island waters and understand the dragons (and where they came from), something cinematically (and narratively) enlightening emerges. As a metaphor for our globalized, pluralistic and increasingly big/small complex world, How To Train Your Dragon reveals what it will take to understand one another today, tomorrow and in the future to come. Of course, as Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, this sort of message and movie can only come at us in the realm of fiction, and fantasy. And what a grand, provocative fantasy this is.

8. The King's Speech: The year's biggest surprise, The King's Speech sounds like typical made-for-TV-movie melodrama but it's not. It's a throwback to the golden age of cinema. It's as conventional as the very best mainstream movie can be yet, its heart (and script) are in a very good, very true place. The theme of finding one's voice is not new to contemporary cinema but here, it gets a colorful (literal) makeover thanks to solid performances from Colin Firth (his second knockout performance in two years, following last year's tragic A Single Man) and Geoffrey Rush (his best work since Quills). While watching the film, I couldn't help but think "How was this not made into a movie sooner?" For it feels--almost effortlessly--like the perfect piece of cinema: entertaining, enlightening and (in its own soft-spoken way) enthralling. Kudos to the perseverance of screenwriter David Seidler for a script that honors the incredible spirit (and providential humanity) of history. For a story he's been wanting to write since 1980, and someone who dealt with a stammer himself, it's not hard to see why The King's Speech leads in Oscar nominations this year.

7. Inception: Christopher Nolan's dream-within-a-dream film has been criticized on many levels. My wise film friend Eugene Suen said this to me after seeing Inception (we argued for over two hours about the film until 3:30 AM on a Friday night, after I saw it a second time): "There is so much damn exposition about the logics of its own universe." I agree. But I defended the film, saying, "The particular dream world that was constructed needed this type of exposition. It needed a setup that explained the inner working-world of Cobb's (Leonardo DiCaprio) dreams." Call it cheating. Call it bad screenwriting. Call it whatever. But for me (and millions of other people), it worked. It engaged me. I was entertained. It made me think and reflect on dreams I've longed to get stuck in (and forget about) since childhood. And I liked the un-reality of Inception. For dreams aren't supposed to be about reality, but they're about what reality can't reveal to us. In Inception we see a man so troubled and traumatized and tricked by his own love for dreams, his life (literally) disappears before our eyes.

6. Last Train Home (归途列车): Lixin Fan’s laborious documentary about a migrant workers’ family journey home once a year for the Chinese New Year festival celebration is not just an exploitation of China’s economic boom (and its back-breaking, painful side effects on the family at hand) but it’s a global snapshot of a world (and a people) just trying to keep up. The last half of the film is so emotionally taxing, you begin to sense what it must feel like to be one of the 130 million migrant workers (who make your jeans, your t-shirts, your shoes, your pretty-much-everything—e.g., “Made In China”), living in a world that’s forgotten them. Fan—who also served as cinematographer here—pays visual homage to Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence and Edward Burtynsky’s photography in the way he captures a people literally held captive by the world’s economic demands. Uncomfortable, disturbing yet wholly cinematic, Last Train Home is a portrait of a family being severed, slowly. In a year filled with wonderful documentaries--from Inside Job to Exit Through The Gift Shop to Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work--Last Train Home is, I think, the best of the best.

5. Another Year: On paper, Another Year looks like an impossibility; a film that just 'couldn't work.' Its central characters--a rock-of-calmness-and-goodness couple played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen--are flawed, but there's little gloating over their flaws, just gloating over their hospitable gentleness. They're that rare cinematic couple that seem to have learned (in their old age) how to love, accept and live in and with each others' brokenness, while never seeming to be fixated on them. A cinematic (and real life) rarity, indeed. Additionally, I think they're the kind of elderly couple so many of us aspire to be--youthful, playful, and in love with life, with this earth and with each other. So it's a surprise to see that the conflict arises not so much from within them but within the lonely people woven into the vocational and familial relationships they have. Director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky) showcases an exactitude for the mundane and transforms it into the remarkable. By creating a cast of normal people who feel so real, their very idiosyncrasies reveal the inner world as physical world, Leigh's created his smallest and quietest great film in years. It's better and stronger than Happy-Go-Lucky, and stays with you longer than Vera Drake did (as it's not merely about an issue or social problem but a universally felt, common human experience). This is at the heart of Another Year's wisdom and drama. I loved eavesdropping in on this world. Perhaps because, minus the aged wisdom, it resembles my own.

4. Undertow (Contracorriente): The 2010 Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Audience Award) winner deserves all the praise it's been getting. Peru's Undertow (Contracorriente) is a ghost story like no other. It's about cultural and religious traditions, gender roles, masculinity, family, God, and being gay, yes, but it's much more than this. At its heart, it questions the very things in life that weigh us down and literally, drown us--day by day, night by night, tear by tear--til' the day we return to the ground from which we came. Writer/director Javier Fuentes-Leon's brilliant (yet small and quiet) first feature film is that rare piece of cinema that knows what it wants and goes for it. A parable like no other--and far better than Brokeback Mountain, a film it's often compared to--Undertow is one of the most moving films of the year, and one of my favorites. For a glimpse into a world many people rarely visit or experience, see the achingly beautiful Undertow.

3. Mother (마더): Mother is a movie that's brimming with cultural satire, family melodrama and swift suspense. There's not a wasted scene and the payoff at the end, is nothing short of (visual) brilliance. From the opening scene to the haunting final shot, we know what this film is about and yet, we're also completely lost with nearly every scene unfolding more unpredictably than the one before it. It makes sense but it doesn't, it's heartbreaking but maddening, melodramatic but mesmerizing. Mother is the year's best, genre-bending, cinema-as-paradox film. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host) proves he's one of today's great directors as Mother is his grandest and greatest achievement to date. It's like his earlier nuanced, Seven-meets-Zodiac, Memories of Murder remade, 10 years later. Only better. In some sense, it's a film that gives us a glimpse of the future possibilities of cinema and narrative storytelling in a digital age. By tapping into themes of savvy adolescent techno-literacy, poverty, and a Korean mother's (a dazzling performance by Kim Hye-ja that makes Natalie Portman in Black Swan look like amateur acting, a shame she was snubbed in the Best Actress Oscar race) relationship to her one-and-only son, Bong Joon-ho has made a thriller like no other. If Alfred Hitchcock directed Memento, Mother would be its movie-child.

2. Toy Story 3: Jürgen Moltmann would be proud. This is, basically, his theological treatise book, "Theology of Play," translated onto the 21st century big screen. If that means nothing to you, then let me just say this: this movie is loads of fun, entertaining and giddily funny, and in the end, reminds us all never to lose that child-like sense of wonder and, well, play. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) has crafted another comic masterpiece, combining the light and dark sides of humanity into one, seemingly effortless cinematic story. It's the most surprising (and the most touching) of all the Toy Story films, as it comments not just about the loss of childhood, but the loss of play (and imagination) in today's society. For the most beautiful story-metaphors, look no further than to Pixar's Toy Story 3. To quote one of my favorite critics from Entertainment Weekly, the film is a "salute to the magic of making believe." By the film's end, we all do.

1. Blue Valentine: When I walked out of Blue Valentine, I didn't see it as the year's best film. It has its flaws, its story structure issues, its emotional holes here and there. But it's a film that lingers and stays with you, in the most uncomfortable (and surprising) way. Drawing slightly (stylistically/in editing) from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and in mood/story from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Valentine is the kind of experimental, art-house film that breaks your heart, the way a Tom Waits song does. Yet, through its relentless, raw flashback-flashpresent narrative, there's a kind of romance presence here that is bursting with chemistry and full of life. There are moments--several scenes, in fact--that made me smile like I was watching the most romantic moment from my life played out right in front of me, courtesy of two of the year's most underrated performances (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams). This is what movies are supposed to do, and Blue Valentine does it well. At the same time, there are other moments that make you cringe, the inner felt aftershock of a blow to the stomach. Blue Valentine isn't so much a story as it is an experience. An experience into the past of a relationship (and every past/present-romantic relationship of its audience) juxtaposed against the future all tied together with a song that (although it is 'their song') quickly becomes our song, too. It's like a symbol standing for the hope that exists between any couple who are too battered and beat up and tired to find hope within their love again. Or perhaps, for the first time. Although it's an extremely difficult film to watch (and is for adults only, to be sure), it captures the spot as the best and my favorite film of the year because it's so paradoxically human. A film that will haunt me and stay with me, forever.

It's All The Love I've Got

"When I die, when I die, I'll rot. But when I live, when I live, I'll give it all I've got. Well I have known you for just a little while. I feel I must be, wearing my welcome, I must be moving on. For my intentions, were good intentions, I could've loved you, I could've changed you. I wouldn't be so, I wouldn't feel so, consumed by selfish thoughts. I'm sorry if I seem self-effacing, consumed by selfish thoughts. It's only that, I love you deeply, it's all the love I've got." -Sufjan Stevens, from the song "Age of Adz"

I've heard this song for months. It's eclectic. It's beautiful. It's grungy-meets-ballad. And apocalyptic. Sort of post-love, post-human, post-break-up-esque. Post-so-many-things, really. Like the album of the same name, it's all over the place. A lovely noisy mess.

But I've never heard it like I did tonight. Every line hit me. It knocked me out-of-balance and I had to shake my head to make sure I was hearing the lyrics correctly. I now know exactly what the end of this song, "Age of Adz" is saying. I understand this place. I get it. I hear who Sufjan was crying out for (himself, perhaps, or maybe everyone who's had their heart broken so swiftly, so quickly).

"Well I have known you for just a little while," starts it all for me. It's the beginning of the impending end, it seems. A haunting little hint-of-a-sentence. It makes me cringe every time I hear Sufjan sing it. The opening line to the song. The way he feels like he knows the person. Before. "Before the earth was split in five." And yet, he knows it's ending. It's not going to last. It's almost over. And he feels it.

I think I feel it, too.

the Maybe World

"Listen to the exhortation of the dawn. Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence, the glory of action--the bliss of growth the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day. Such is the salutation of the dawn."-Excerpt from The Holy Quran

After the storm, comes the sun.
After the fire, rain.
After the hurt, joy.
After the past, future.
And then, there's the present.

What does it mean to welcome, to salute, to dance into the dawn of today? So much of living in the present moment usually depends on us choosing the past, focusing on it, and living from within it. It's not about moving on, letting go. It's about being held. Captive, almost. Like you're stuck inside two worlds and you can't escape to the one called 'life' and 'living.' Sort of, 'stuck in a moment' you can't get out of, as U2's song recalled. It's that place between a "Beautiful Day" and one's "Elevation" (yes, this is where Track 2: "Stuck In A Moment (You Can't Get Out Of)" falls on their CD--after the day, before the elevation).

Living in the present is so hard, at times. I think it's because we only see it as a place where we're somehow, in some way, stuck, and a not a place we see as being open to the possibility of joy, bliss, and love.

Ironically, though, this is where these things exist. Not in the past or in some distant future, but right here, right now. This is what the wise old Rabbi teaches his disciples. If you can't touch, feel, or love what's right in front of you, how can you learn to love yourself, others, and God? Much more, life? This is what Lisa Germano is referring to (I think) in her lovely song (from the album of the same name) "In The Maybe World."

We all seem to want to live 'in the maybe world'. It's safer there. In this world, we don't have to leave our pasts, our fears, or worries behind. In this world, we choose safety over risk, past over present, control over love. We don't want to take, what (my favorite author) Madeleine L'Engle calls "the fearful gamble" of actually living a life of love, in love, for Love.

Here's to moving beyond the 'maybe world.' As hard as that may be.

Joy

"Alone, even with all the wisdom in the world, we are powerless: castaways adrift in an impersonal ocean. You can't love a computer or a software program or even a book as you can love another person. Sometimes you just need a human." -Tim Sanders, Love Is The Killer App

My last post just after Thanksgiving focused in on 'hurt'. In it, I was approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, from a sea of ambiguous faces all trying not to say what I really wanted to say. It was a bit maddening. I wanted to write within my current state of disappointment, darkness, and distressed anxiety, but it was difficult. After all, how do you articulate the hurt that so (unassumingly) creeps up on you? How do you put into workable words ideas so steeped in emotion, pain, suffering?

Sometimes, writing feels like a bi-polar, inner-self dance. A dance between the writer's insecurity and their own (failed) attempts to get out the right words, to speak the appropriate truth. The truth, that exists, just in that moment.

Since that day after Thanksgiving, when I wrote about the subject of 'hurt,' I've experienced--particularly in the past week--a grandiose amount of joy. From so many angles, it keeps piercing me, like an unexpected rush of good fortune, good cheer, goodness. Like the word 'Radiant' webbed by Charlotte to save her dear (pig) friend Wilbur, I feel--in some weird way--like the last 5 days have been a gift. A gift so undeserved, blessed, and profoundly overwhelming, I feel as though I can't take it. I'm speechless. In awe. So struck by the beauty and gift of the moment I have to scatter around on the floor in my head to catch my breath.

Blindsided by joy, if you will.

In the Psalms, the writer writes, "My heart leaps for joy, and I will give thanks to him in song." I like this image. Joy leaping up at us via song. One of the first songs that comes to mind after reading this line is the lovely Mac Davis tune, "I Believe In Music." The chorus to the song, says it all: I believe in music, I believe in love, I believe in music, I believe in love.

I think this is partly what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I wrote. My hurt was a loss of faith. A loss of love, in a way. Love for myself, love for my voice as a writer, for my humanness. We all have such a hard time loving ourselves, I think. We don't think we deserve it. We often choose people to love who don't love us well because we don't think we deserve a love worthy of who we really (truly) are. So we settle. Settle for lies over truths, productiveness over playfulness, criticism over kindness. But it's never too late to see it a different way.

Catholic priest Brennan Manning calls the lack of love for self, 'self-hatred'. He believes it is the antithesis of God. The ultimate slap-in-the-face to creation, humanity, and love. Author Donald Miller believes it's one of the most difficult concepts to grasp in life. The still-small-sinking-sick voice telling us we're not worthy, we're not good enough, we're not lovable, often drowns out the simple love-of-self voice within us.

Thankfully, people come into our lives sometimes who help us see the love we're too stingy to give ourselves. For me, this came in three forms (and then some) this past week: 1) a screenwriting professor, 2) a kindred spirit sharing a wonderful art piece with me courtesy of U.P.S., and 3) a new, breath-of-kind-and-fresh-air, friend, who loved on me in a way only a person who doesn't know you can. All seemed to come out of nowhere, yet, all (also) seemed to connect with me at just the right time, just the right moment. It's baffling to me now, even still. I feel joyful, but writing that seems so silly. So insignificant in capturing the rapturous feeling of ecstasy it has brought me.

I've come to realize (this feeling) is more than joy, really. Much more. It's a joy, transformed; transformed into utter gratitude. A gratitude that thanks God, karma, and all the other broken-people-humans out there who've been so gracious, so wise enough to love on me when I can't seem to love myself.

This is when one of Anne Lamott's two prayers is all that can be expressed, at the end of a week like I've had. I must simply close my eyes, sit and silence, and utter: "Thank you, thank you, thank you." That's all I feel now, too. My heart feels full, drunk on gratitude, spinning over too much love, too much grace, too much goodness, kindness, gentleness, happiness.

This is pure joy. What often comes after the hurt.

Hurt

It's hard to feel thankful when you're hurting. When you're grieving, it's even more difficult. Growing up in the church, I often heard people talk about 'giving thanks in all circumstances.' It's in the Bible, yes, it's the way many Christians say we're supposed to feel, supposed to act, supposed to supposed to supposed to.

Do you ever feel tired of living in the 'supposed to' world?

In screenwriting, everything moves because of conflict. Without it, no one would go to the movies. Yet, so many of us avoid conflict, dodge it, suppress it (within others, within ourselves) because we think it will make our life better. But what if the opposite was true? Not 'what if we just made people's lives hell'. Certainly not. But what if we didn't avoid conflict. What if we faced it. They say in movies, audiences are attracted to characters who do the things they only think of doing. For example, if someone cuts you off, gives you the finger in traffic, your inner self may scream out loud and imagine following this person to the nearest Whole Foods to confront them and tell them how 'unacceptable that was.' But who does this? Really? Who has the guts to put into action the thoughts of millions of scared little broken people?

People in the movies.

This is (partly) why we care so much about cinema, about story, about characters. This is why conflict isn't so bad after all.

In Nine Inch Nails' brutal, cut-to-the-core-of-humanity song, "Hurt", Trent Reznor sings: "I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / The only thing that's real." Conversely, there's a line pictured at the end of the film Into The Wild wonderfully summarizing Christopher McCandles' self-realization at his journey's end: "Happiness only real when shared." This was McCandles final entry into his diary before he died.

Two things are posited here as being real: pain and happiness. Like life, both cannot happen alone, in a vacuum. Pain often happens because of others, because of conflict, because of interactions and confrontations with the world. Happiness, according to McCandles, happens only with others. It means nothing to be happy if you're all alone. So why do so many of us avoid pain and believe happiness can happen when we do what we want to do, on our own terms, for the good of ourselves, for the good of what society, parents, friends say we're 'supposed to' do? So many people live lives married to the hope of pleasing others, of not letting our parents down, of being (in a deeply inner sense) found out. We don't want others to know how hurt we are or how much we need them. Of course, there's some good to this. I'm not expecting people walk around all day expressing their deepest hearts' desires to people with whom they don't have a relationship with. Yet, at the same time, it'd be nice to encounter a few more risk takers out there (myself, included). It'd be nice, just once in a very long while, to talk to a person who doesn't let what they're 'supposed to do' dictate what they really should be doing.

I think this is what the writer of that famous (overused) New Testament phrase 'give thanks in all circumstances' was getting at. Giving thanks the for hurt. Why? Because it's real. And because, happiness cannot be felt without it. Friedrich Nietszhe' words first pointed me to this truth, but I don't think I was ready to receive it then. No, I think before you can receive something like this (and when I say receive, I don't mean possess for I'll probably forget this truth in a few years and have to rediscover it in some other place, in some other person and learn it all, over and over again) you have to surrender to the hurt, to the pain, to the suffering inside your own head. It's similar to what John Carroll argued in The Existential Jesus. Like Christ, we all must face the pain of our own mortality, or own deserted, desperate (and painfully lonely) isolation, at times. If we don't, we will break.

Someday.

We will lose it. We can't fight it. We must surrender and accept, not run away and hide. For we won't be able to live with the power of denial and the refusal to see pain and suffering for what it is: real.

This is the water I'm treading in right now (and I have been for the past several months, I think). At times, it's exhausting. At night in bed, it can turn into a kind of all-consuming fear, a morbid sense of detached lifelessness. And then, there are moments (brief glimmers, really) where Joshua Radin's song lyrics struggle to the surface. Where I trust and hope and believe that one day (even though it's not today nor anytime in the foreseeable distance) "everything'll be alright." Where hurt morphs--in a surprise spark of illumination and transcendence--into happiness.

This is 'giving thanks in all circumstances'. When hurt is not marginalized and happiness is not exalted, but both--in all their mystery--are held together, closely. A kind of glorious song and dance of emotional conflict.

Some call this being crazy. I think it's just being.

A (Christian) Reality Check

"It is far easier to ask forgiveness of a god we can't see than from a person we can see." -Philip Gulley, If The Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus

I'm just finishing up Philip Gulley's new book, If The Church Were Christian, and it's been a breath (blast, at times) of fresh air. Sure, I disagree with some of what Gulley puts forth as 'the values of Jesus,' but for the most part, he's dead on. His latest book might make Matthew and Luke raise their eyebrows (I imagine Mark and John would be smiling all the way through, though). Why? Because this book has a Rabbinic flare to it, in that, it addresses what the Church has too often neglected: today's world, today's people, today's hurting souls. All too often, Christian orthodoxy focuses on future eschatology while leaving John's understanding of realized eschatology far, far behind. It's almost ironic the Left Behind series are called that; for that is exactly what they have done to millions of people. They've left behind an understanding of Jesus, an understanding of living life today, now, here, present in hopes of gaining some personal (eternal) security.

Years ago, I had a thought: "Doesn't heaven sound like the most selfish thing a Christian could ask for? Wouldn't the most sacrificial, love-act be (if love really is laying down one's life for a friend) to lay down one's afterlife, then, as well?" It seems counter-Christian to be so consumed with eternity, yet, this is the way of most church folk.

But that's getting me off track (this is the last chapter of the book, so perhaps that's why I jumped to talking about it because I just finished reading it). In essence, this book is a wake-up call for Christians who want to be real, who want to do good, who want to take life seriously, who want to not check their brain at the door in order to follow Jesus. Some people will tremble and go a little mad after reading some of what Gulley is questioning but this is to be expected. Throughout history, any re-imagining of what Christian Orthodoxy entails has always been met with a firm fist (and sometimes a sword). But Christians need to let go and let loose a bit, and stop thinking that the world rests on their mind's doctrinal stances.

One thing I really loved about the book? It reiterated (within me), why the topic of 'women in ministry' is so important (and still, so behind-the-Jesus-times in so many growing churches). Are we really still telling people that women can't lead--in those most high places--of churches? Are we really still saying their gender has to take a back seat as far as leadership ability goes when it comes to churches? If we are, shame on us. For if we can be so selective of what we will modify (and not modify) within scripture, God help us for what else we are capable of reading (or not reading) into. This book reminded me of the amazing nuances of scripture and how easily we brush over them in hopes of constructing a manageable, livable faith life. How sad it is when people say they're 'living by the good book,' while making slight changes and modifications to their interpretations along the way (and yet, still thinking in their mind what they've done is "absolutely scriptural").

Newsflash: it isn't. So please, don't kid yourself by telling yourself 'this is living like Jesus.' We could all use a lot more humanity, a lot more humility when following Christ. This is the way of Jesus. Additionally, as the book so refreshingly suggests, we need more people willing to follow Jesus and less people who simply want to 'worship him on a Sunday morning.' True discipleship is worship. Maybe that's what the Church has been lacking for so long.

The Beauty of Being Indirect

"He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting." -from Oscar Wilde's short story, The Selfish Giant

There are a handful of people from history I would love to share a meal with; Oscar Wilde is one of them. When I first came across his short story The Selfish Giant, I did so because I heard he often read it to his children before bedtime. According to one of his sons, Oscar would always start to cry come the story's end. Once upon a night, his son Cyril asked his father why he always cried at the end of The Selfish Giant. Oscar replied, "Because really beautiful things often makes me cry."

Sometimes, these 'beautiful things' can only be approached through story, through metaphor, through a roundabout way. Maybe that's why a movie like The Passion of the Christ didn't affect me personally as much as the movie The Wrestler did. The first is a straight story of the cross. It's about what happened, it's about going through the 'facts' (or, at least, the facts we have come to know), and the lives of Jesus, Mary, and the disciples. The second, however, is a metaphorical story of the cross. It's about the emotional, spiritual undertones. Pain. Suffering. Exclusion. Isolation. All these play into the scenes of the ripped, torn (human) flesh. All of them are as much about the physical as they are about the emotional, the spiritual. Many would argue that The Passion of the Christ succeeded in being about this, too, but I would heartily disagree. The Passion of the Christ gave us torture, gave us violence, gave us torn flesh, but the context was so stooped in religious controversy (and in religious historical debate), the story failed to connect with many people. And why? Because it was too focused on the facts, rather than the spirit and the truth of Christ's lived experience.

In The Wrestler, we see how scared, how confused, how alone Christ must have felt. It's similar, in a cinematic sense, to what Nikos Kazantzakis did in his fantastic novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. In it, Kazantzakis understood what human beings were missing when they were reading the Gospels. They constantly sought out Christ's divinity without every giving much thought to his humanity, his finite nature. That's not wrong or anything, but I don't think it's much help to us in terms of how we live, how we feel, how we love, or how we forgive. Furthermore, there's a distance that's created from the former approach compared to the latter. When you watch The Passion of the Christ you rarely think, "I am like Jesus. He understands my pain." No. All you (can't help but) think is, "I'm sinful. I would have killed Jesus, too. I could never do what he did for me." But when you watch The Wrestler, one is eerily empathetic to "The Ram's" plight because, well, we've all felt like he's felt before. We've failed in relationships, we've let our family down, we've abused our bodies for the sake and pleasure of others and ourselves. The loneliness, the drugs, the wrinkles in our faces. They all reveal time's toll on us. They all reveal the fact that we will one day die.

To take the analogy one step further, it's as if The Passion of the Christ was all about overcoming death and looking towards eternity, and The Wrestler was mostly about facing death and accepting one's own fate, one's own path into eternity. And what does this have to do with Oscar Wilde and The Selfish Giant? Because in it's final sentences, I was reminded of this narrative, literary, metaphorical power. The way you can hear the same story a thousand times and then, hear it told indirectly and finally 'get it.'

I still don't think I've 'gotten it,' but I do think Wilde has helped me see the Passion story in a new light. In the spirit of hospitality, charity, and comforting the week, the lonely, the down-and-out, Wilde has crafted a simple, short, beautiful story that reminds us (through a different type of garden encounter), of how to be human.

And this, Wilde believes, is what makes us divine.

Harvard

"I spent my high-school years staring at the pine trees outside my classroom window and picturing myself on the campus of an Ivy League university, where my wealthy roommate Colgate would leave me notes reading, 'Meet me on the quad at five.' I wasn't sure what a quad was, but I knew that I wanted one desperately. My college friends would own horses and monogrammed shoehorns. I'd spend weekends at my roommate's estate, where his mother would say things like, 'I've instructed Helvetica to prepare those little pancakes you're so fond of, but she's had a devil of a time locating fresh cape gooseberries." This woman would have really big teeth that she'd reveal every time she threw back her head to laugh at one of my many witticisms. 'You're an absolute caution,' she'd bray. 'Tell me you'll at least consider joining us this Christmas at Bridle Haven; it just wouldn't be the same without you.' I fantasized with the nagging suspicion there was something missing, something I was forgetting. This something turned out to be grades. It was with profound disappointment I discovered it took more than a C average to attend Harvard. Average, that was the word that got to me. C and average, the two went hand in hand. I was sent instead to a state college in western North Carolina where the low brick buildings were marked with plaques reading ERECTED 1974, and my roommate left notes accusing me of stealing his puka shell necklace or remedial English book." -David Sedaris, from the chapter "The Incomplete Quad" from his book, Naked

If you haven't read this book, you should. Everyone needs to laugh a little more in life than they currently do. Including me. Including you.

Angels

"Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the room's light. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't." -Neil McCormick in Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

I know this quote probably means nothing to people who haven't read this book (or seen the film adaptation), but it's amazing to me how sometimes, a film can capture the very essence of the written word. It can enhance, enlighten and illuminate the words so brightly, so pitch-perfectly, you feel as though what you're seeing is exactly as you imagined it would be. The tragedy of this scene--in film and written form--is so overwhelming it (almost always) takes my breath away. Brian and Neil, two of the literary world's deeply wounded characters, emerge like angels from heaven, clinging to one another as if their life depended on it.

Something tells me it does. Maybe that's why this scene is so powerful to me. It's where I want to live. Where I want to be. Where I feel safe, inside my own (and some other wounded soul's) mysterious skin.

Existentialism

"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could've been yesterday." -Albert Camus, The Stranger

Albert Camus' existential literary masterpiece begins with these (haunting) words. On today, Mother's Day, this quote came to mind. I thought, 'how could someone be so detached from life, from family, from reality to be so nonchalant about his or her mother's death? To not remember the day, the hour, the moment? Obviously, this is a bit of a stretch in the writer's world of this novel as it serves to engage with the reader's thinking, questions, ideas about reality and humanity and life. I know this. But I still find it interesting (and haunting).

It's not just an existential question or problem. It's a human one. And we really should be asking more questions like this, about ourselves (if we want to be really honest) more often.

Dying

"The first step to eternal life is you have to die." -Tyler Durden in Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

I like the idea of death being linked to eternity. I especially like the idea of this as it relates to reality and our present-day-existence (and living fully in that brief present-day-existence).

I was talking to a friend last night about death as it relates to churches and how funny it is that so many churches (and Christians) fear death as a sort of closing chapter or finality to a life and world in which they have little control over. We talked about how things--and people, and institutions, and ideas--need to die, how it's part of the natural process and a natural (evolving) world. It must happen before anything new can sprout up in its place. Sometimes, before anything good can grow, too.

But for some reason, many of us are surprised, aghast, and even offended when death comes in various forms to ourselves and our ideas and old ways of living our lives (as if we didn't think it was possible to ever end). My friend was telling me how he would go to Catholic church with his parents and how so much of it was just rigid, unchanging, elderly people--a sea of white heads clenching tight to the old ways of living (which are not to be confused with the ways of Scripture, for they are completely different than this). "They mean well," he said. "I know they do...but..." It's not going to last forever. Sooner or later, that physical building, that physical space, that relentless refusal to adapt and learn from life's new lessons (and God's new and ever-changing world) finally caves in and collapses. No more structures. No more budgets. No more people. At least, not in this particular place anymore.

Many Christians are afraid of these days (and claim it's a sign of the apocalypse). Me? I think it's just a sign that we've been doing church wrong for way too long and that our forms of spirituality are not connecting (at all) with the creative surge of life and humanity. And I think it's a good thing, I think it's what needs to happen before this world will be made anew. Before the so-called New Jerusalem will be a place right here, right now, on Earth. Theologians call this a realized eschatology; I call it living life, eternally. Dead, but really, alive.

Gilliam

"The first movie that really got me was Paths of Glory, which I saw when I was sixteen at a Saturday matinee in Panorama City, with kids running up and down the aisle. Suddenly, with Paths of Glory, there was a movie that was about something--about injustice--with themes and ideas, and the good guys didn't win in the end. That film completely changed me and I went around trying to get everybody I knew to see it." -Terry Gilliam (director of Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) in Gilliam on Gilliam, edited by Ian Christie

I just recently saw Paths of Glory, and still, there are scenes I can't shake away. Like most of Stanely Kubrick's films, the last act just blows you away. Everything comes together. Everything starts to set in, sink in, and simmer from within. From the story's inside-out perspective, Kubrick's direction allows the words (from soldiers who are sentenced to be killed for not following orders, for not respecting authority, by their own generals) and the actions of his characters to bleed a kind of naked vulnerability. I think this may be what Gilliam is talking about. And I think, this is partly why, I enjoy his films (and Kubrick's films) so much. There's an electricity to the dialogue. It feels real, yet it doesn't, all at once. Like a Wong Kar-Wai film, it transcends the space inside the cinematic frame and moves beyond it. Into the audience. Into the living room. Wherever you may be viewing it. And then, out of nowhere, it hits you. And you know you're watching something important and not just another Saturday matinee special.

Silence

"Time is life's fundamental necessity but has become the ultimate luxury--the most expensive and extravagant thing we have. We're in a time famine; we don't need more free time as much as we need more time that is free from desires and demands. No matter what we may think, technology doesn't so much give us more time as enable us to do many more things in the time that we have. In addition, technology makes us more enslaved to work, not less. You don't have to walk far on a crowded beach to find somebody busy at a laptop. What we need is more sabbaticals--time to learn and explore the secrets of the soul. I am not talking about the 'year-off-for-research-and-study' type of sabbatical. I am talking about mini-sabbaticals that are skinny-dips in the fountain of youth. There are three important s's for sabbaticals: stillness, silence, and saying no. Music encompasses and embraces silence though it is made of sound. The rests are what make notes possible. It's the same with life. We need lots of time with nothing to do. Souls are drawn to stillness the way objects are drawn to the ground, the way sounds are drawn to silence." -Leonard Sweet, Summoned To Lead

I've struggled for years with saying, 'no.' At first, it was difficult and then gradually--when my self began reaping the benefits of what saying 'no' meant for it--it got much easier. I think people, in general, are on a continuum when it comes to saying 'no' to others with respect to their own time for silence and solitude: there are those who risk being overly isolated and those who fear isolation at any cost. I think years ago, I was in the latter category. I didn't know how to appreciate alone time, silence, even. As Madeleine L'Engle would say, 'I knew how to be a human doing, but not a human being.'

In today's technological boom-of-an-age, I can't help but think how more interaction through technology and social networking sites doesn't give us more time to be with people, or relate socially, but less. This is not a slam at today's world, only a minor critique of it (and of myself). In a way, we're so connected (and are determined to stay so connected) to our phones, our emails, our computers, we forget what to do (or rather, how to be and live life, in silence, in conversation, in the company of others), when we're away from these devices.

How many times have you been sitting on your couch and for no apparent (pressing) reason, you've thought, "I should check my email." Even though you've been checking it all day long, there still is that need, that urgency, to stay connected, to stay in touch. Ironically, I wonder how out-of-touch this is making us. Not just as people but as societies.

Maybe that's why I like the line in Sweet's book, "We need lots of time with nothing to do" so much. It speaks to everyone of us and is something to remember the next time we're sitting in front of a TV not knowing what we're watching or we're reading Wikipedia on our iPhone trying to find out what "pumice" is, or we're simply scanning through emails and spamming the ones we don't want to read. All of these acts maybe something but they turn to nothing at the end of the day. Whereas, Sweet argues, nothing (or stillness and silence), is something that wouldn't turn to nothing by the day's end.

Branded

"Marketers have convinced these kids that they need a specific set of physical attributes, and that their own qualities must be obviated. For the large subcultures of teens who self-brand into look-alikes with tiny waistlines, bulging biceps, deracinated noses, and copious breasts, the supposed freedom of self-creation is not a freedom at all. What they have is consumer choice, no substitute for free will. Imagine the dark day for marketers when kids look for things that are neither bought nor sold." -Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

Some may read this quote and lament: "Oh, isn't it horrible how hard teens have it these days?" or "Life was much simpler way back when I was young...," and so on. But in reality, this isn't productive thinking or helpful, in my opinion. Perhaps Alissa Quart oversimplifies (and over-blames) marketers' control over teen's free will, but I think the general observation is accurate. Teens aren't left with the freedom to self-create who they desire to be, but rather, they're left with consumer-controlled choices that are carefully constructed to encourage a greater appetite for consumer culture bent self-creation. But what if teens longed for things neither 'bought nor sold?' What if a world such as this, was possible? Will we reach this world in 20 years time, 50 years, 100?

The experiential, the spiritual, the ecstasy of emotions, are all attributes/descriptions that, in and of themselves, are 'not for sale' things in our world. The only problem is they're almost always tied to contexts (and services) that cost something (e.g., concerts, gaming, and plastic surgery, to name just three). But what, in today's branded society, isn't up for sale? I would challenge Alissa Quart's thesis and say that once teens go that route, marketers (and many others) will find away to charge what cannot be 'bought or sold.' This is the underlying problem. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once wrote, "I think, therefore I am." In today's cultural marketplace, it's shifted to "I shop, therefore I am," where are actual identity is so intertwined with an identity of consumption, it's nearly impossible to separate/sever one from the other. Until we recognize the power of living within a culture of consumption (and its affect on our shaped/evolving identities), we'll never move beyond the branded and buying and selling of teenagers (and ourselves).

Unity

"I doubt whether justice, which is a forerunner of peace, will ever be pulled out of a hat, as some suppose. Justice will find a home where there is a synthesis of liberty and unity in a framework of government. And when justice appears on any scene, on any level of society, man's problems enjoy a sort of automatic solution, because they enjoy the means of solution. Unity is no mirage. It is the distant shore. I believe we should at least head for that good shore, though most of us will not reach it in this life." -E.B. White, from the essay, "Unity," in Essays of E.B. White

Jesus' words, 'A kingdom divided against itself will surely fall,' is probably the one sentence that gets me through debates and divisions within the church. Sometimes I feel like we're all getting pushed out towards the fringes, to disagree for Disagreement's sake. Other times it seems there's nothing more we want than to not get along.

In Sara Miles recently published book, Jesus Freak and her earlier memoir, Take This Bread, she talked about how all are welcome at the table. A similar analogy was used by author Bruce Bawer some years ago, as it pertains to gay individuals in modern society. In his book, A Place At The Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, he asks the heterosexual readers if they've ever wondered how it feels to be gay when it comes to showing affection in public. From showcasing photos in office cubicles to going for a walk hand-in-hand with your loved one some cool, summer evening, Bawer argued that it was out of fear of exclusion from society that gay individuals couldn't express love to one another (at least, not in public).

Maybe things are a bit different now, but the principle still remains the same. But I think Jesus and E.B. White's quote is talking about something beyond simply protecting people from exclusion; he's writing about bringing peace through reconciliation and inclusiveness. We can't merely think that the solution--in any social context--is for our position to win out or the majority (or minority) we belong to, to triumph. This is not on the road to that 'good shore.' The way to reach that shore, I think, is by telling ourselves, 'it's not about finding one solution, but about liberty and unity,' and, like the Pledge of Allegiance ends, 'justice for all.'

Penguins

"'I want you to know how much I appreciate your offer of putting my birds in the movies. But I am afraid I have to refuse. I do not believe the life in Hollywood would be good for penguins.' Then Mr. Popper turned to Admiral Drake. 'Admiral Drake, I am going to give you the birds. In doing this, I am considering the birds first of all. I know that they have been comfortable and happy with me. Lately, though, with the excitement and the warm weather, I've been worried about them. The birds have done so much for me that I have to do what is best for them. After all, they belong in a cold climate. And then I can't help being sorry for those men up at the North Pole, without any penguins to help them pass the time.'" -Mr. Popper from Mr Popper's Penguins, by Richard & Florence Atwater

I first heard this story read aloud to me in 2nd grade by Mrs. Rexford. Then, it was a tale of loss with the an undercurrent of love streaming all the way through it. In a sense, I think I loved (but just didn't know it yet) this story because it so resembles the story of King Kong, as well. Despite a different ending, the film is ultimately about society trying to turn a profit on nature, on beauty. In Mr. Popper's Penguin's, it is similar. But the difference is, the penguins are let free and Kong is held captive and dies. Thus, the story becomes a charming, graceful, and lovely little picture of how true beauty needs to stay true to its source, its inherent, creative life. When humans abuse beauty in such a way that it disrupts or degrades its source, humans lose out while the object of affection loses the greatest. Even death, at times.

But not so in Mr. Popper's Penguins. No, in this story, we're given hope that one's admiration for something (in this case, some talented little penguins) doesn't have to turn into mere profit, mere exploitation, mere entertainment. It can--and should--be a catalyst for love. Maybe I wasn't getting all this at the age of 7--when Mrs. Rexford flipped through the pages, her face animated and joyful, her expressions real and empowering--but I'm starting to get it more now. I'm constantly in awe of how beauty (and the subject of beauty) is so instrumental in our daily life. So instrumental in pushing us forward to do good, to give love. It just all depends on what we do with the beauty we're given.

The great Russian writer and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky once uttered, "Beauty will save the world." I think Mr. Popper, and Mrs. Rexford, might just agree.

Work/Art

"The aim of 'work' in modernity was to produce materials necessary for modern life: food, clothes, homes, cars. In modernity, there was a sharp dichotomy between the puritan work ethic and the hedonistic 'leisure ethic' of self-expression and self-improvement which only a very few could afford to pursue. Society reaches a postmodern condition when 'work' turns into art, that is, when more and more areas of life are assimilated into the logic of the marketplace, when the economy is increasingly geared to providing entertainment, and when the business of America is leisure. In a post-industrialist postmodern economy, goods are produced not to supply pre-existent needs, but to supply needs that are themselves created by advertising and marketing strategies. What gets marketed is not an object so much as an image or lifestyle." Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology

This makes me excited to be alive today.

Nature

"Nature is never constrained to change, and that which is once formed cannot simply will to reverse itself wrongly, since desire is not nature. Desire can alter the character of something already formed, but it cannot remake its nature." -John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

One of the most fascinating things about people is their capacity for adaptability. In the film Boogie Nights, director P.T. Anderson explored this and the extent to which one would alter and adapt him/herself to fleshy abuse in order to gain a sense of belonging, a sense of being accepted. I wonder how much this is true for the history of homosexuality and the Church (or rather, churches). How often have we marginalized, compromised, or idolized the very nature of the self the Church declares is imago dei? In what areas (besides homosexuality) can we see people mistakenly seeing nature as being synonymous with desire? All too often, it seems the discussion of nature--as it relates to our violent propensities--quickly moves into carnal desire-talk territory because of how we assume that it's in our nature. But what if it wasn't in our true nature? What if that was only mere desire?

As the Church continues to dialogue, debate and argue over the issues of nature with respect to homosexuality, I wish we'd also spend similar energy toward healthy conversation over our views of war and violence, and how this relates to our true nature. It seems, to use Boswell's analogy, we've spent far too many centuries trying to remake nature through our desires (and presupposed ideas of who a person is and what is their purpose) rather than critically looking at the varied nature (and natures) of the human species, and separating what is mere desire (what can be slightly altered) and what is fixed (what cannot be altered). The latter, I think, is the most difficult to articulate and accept because behind our desire (in this) is a growing need to be autonomous and self-sustaining rather than limited and interdependent. The former is our desire, the latter is our nature. Or at least, that's the way I see it.

The Top Ten Films of 2008

Since this is the year of me graduating from Fuller Seminary---where I'm continually thinking and writing in theological language about films and music, art and culture---I decided to write this list in the spirit of a true seminary spirit suggesting that each film on my top ten list carries with it a true (serious and thought-provoking) kind of theology. So here we go. Here's the list, take it or leave it. (Thanks Nate for pushing me to finally publish this stupid thing---it feels good to have it done).

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10. MARLEY & ME: [THEOLOGY OF LIFE: AS SEEN THROUGH THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES, AND ONE SMALL NAUGHTY PUPPY]
The number 10 spot is always hard to pin down. I could’ve put a number of films here: the darkly subversive and sexy Woody Allen comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wong Kar Wai’s lush (but uneven) ode to America My Blueberry Nights, or Oscar’s pick and American audiences surprise sensation favorite Slumdog Millionaire, that reminded me again just how pure and wonderful an audience is to the total experience of cinema watching. But I went with my gut and heart on the number 10 spot. I went for the Frank Capra lover in me (director of classics It’s A Wonderful Life, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and It Happened One Night). Frank Capra is one of my favorite “Golden Age of Cinema” directors. I know, I know, some people may call me a sentimentalist, a Carpri-corny film geek, but I don’t care. I love when films feel like an ode to life wrapped up in 2 hours of screen time and this is what Marley & Me is. At first glance, it looks like another Beethoven movie but it’s so far from this I feel like I’m insulting the filmmakers for even suggesting such a thought. Marley & Me is a pitch-perfect movie about life and its many messy details. It’s a cinematic ode to nostalgia, sure, but it’s a throwback convention film that’s worth going back for. There are good people in this very imperfect world and Marley & Me reminds us of this. Also, it’s Owen Wilson’s best film since The Royal Tenenbaums and Jennifer Aniston’s best work since The Good Girl. Both actors lend credibility to a story that feels so close to home, you’ll be in a bittersweet state of bliss after watching it. I was and in a strange way, still am.

9. UP THE YANGTZE: [THEOLOGY OF FINITUDE]
If anyone wants to know what I learned after living 2 years in China, see Up The Yangtze. This is one of those stories you wouldn’t believe if it were fiction. Its drama is that penetrating, its human subjects that real, its scope—epic, larger than Earth—is that wide. Through masterful direction, editing, and cinematography—where the seemingly insignificant and commonness captured in one single, sweeping shot takes your breath away—Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang has created the documentary of the year, and one of the best films of 2007 and 2008 (it was released in some countries in 2007, but screened first in the U.S. at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the year I attended). Up The Yangtze is a visual cross between Hiorkazu Koreeda’s beautiful Nobody Knows and Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photography in Jennifer Baichwal’s exceptional documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. But Up The Yangtze is better than both (or maybe that’s the China bias in me talking), for its story isn’t just about being displaced or living in manufactured factories and socialist-capitalist landscapes created for the good of the country rather than the good of the people. More than this, it addresses poverty, grief, home, faith and greed with gripping clarity and an ultimate sensitivity. This is the real China. Take it or leave it.

8. SILENT LIGHT: [THEOLOGY OF RESURRECTION]
It’s so appropriate to be posting this list on Easter Sunday when it comes to this unseen gem of a small film that is Silent Light. This slow, gorgeous, moving, and unbelievably unforgettable work of cinema does what few great movies do: it makes believers out of skeptics and (simply) surprises. Believers in what you may ask? I’m not going to ruin the surprise (and there are many) that this film has to offer. I’ll only say this: I really hope we haven’t heard the last of director Carlos Reygadas, a man who embarked into a Mennonite community in Mexico, filming non-actors, and non-manufactured landscapes, and came away with something of a miracle: a post-Easter film merging sound (silent) and sight (light) in an act of creative and narrative genius.

7. THE VISITOR: [THEOLOGY OF CLASS]
There were two great films in 2008 highlighting the subject of class in our world today. One was the Cannes recipient of the coveted Palme d’Or award and Oscar nominated Best Foreign Language Feature aptly titled, The Class; the other (and better film in my opinion) was Thomas McCarthy’s small wonder The Visitor. The movie is just about perfect. Hilarious. Touching. Tragic. It's about finding the beat and rhythm inside yourself and syncing that beat with the friends you grow to love, yes, but it’s also about answering that age old Genesis question, “Where is your brother?” God asked this of Cain and The Visitor asks this question of all of us. Where is our brother? Who is our brother? What are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of another human, in another class, from another country? The Visitor asks similar questions that McCarthy’s first feature, The Station Agent asked in 2003, but this is a much better film than that. It’s more complete, more universal, more personal, in every way. When I saw it at Sundance Film Festival 2008, it received an overwhelmingly unanimous standing ovation. With over 1200 people cheering and applauding after that haunting final shot, I knew right then that The Visitor would find its way onto my top ten list of 2008. So here, at number 7, it is.

6. DOUBT: [THEOLOGY OF DOUBT]
Doubt is practically flawless. The cast is dynamite, the cinematography fantastic, the direction strong, and the story is timely and yet, timeless. It's a fantastic meditation on the Church, as a whole—hierarchy, holiness, and the hell we often experience between them—that will surely spark discussion as to what this story (and the church) is all about. But one of the things I loved most about it (after seeing it three times in theaters with different people each time) was how varied the interpretation on the film was. Kudos to stage writer/director John Patrick Shanley for his acute attention to detail in every scene; he shows us (in nearly every frame) the two sides to the power/importance of doubt in faith. It can enhance and mature us while serving as the catalyst to divide a community, and tear down unity in the body of Christ. Perhaps this is what a double-edged sword looks like. For this really is a total theology of doubt—from the beginning sermon to the final closing one.

5. MILK: [THEOLOGY OF HOPE]
Milk came at the perfect time (especially when it comes to California, and its heated October/November 2008 post-election protests over Proposition 8—doubly titled, Prop. H8TE, by many of its opposers). In a way, it’s a reminder of how a film is as much about the now as it is about the story it’s telling (or in this case, re-telling). For me, it took two viewings of Milk before I was able to see it for what it really was: a pivotal, turning point movie for America, highlighting not only the new Obama administration, but a new depression era, a new era for the Church to redefine itself from the inside out. Harvey Milk as seen through Gus Van Sant’s lens, is in-your-face and humble, in one unrelentlesss breath. It will undoubtedly be remembered as a turning point; a time when people really re-think what it means to be human and to be homosexual in this world. As Milk (the movie and the man) reminds us, hope is a movement. And as the late Harvey Milk would say, he’s here to recruit us to join in that movement. So will we join? Will we step up and enter into the real discussion? It matters little what side you come into the discussion/movement on; what matters is that you simply join the movement.

4. IN BRUGES: [THEOLOGY OF HELL]
As my professor Barry Taylor posited, In Bruges is a meditation on hell. Bruges is a place, and as the title suggests, both two main characters (who are hit men) are stuck in it. Stuck in hell, so to speak, and can’t seem to find there way out. But as one character indirectly asks, how do you find your way out of hell? What can possibly resurrect you out of this dark dream, this unending nightmare? How do you, simply, get out? Atonement is one of In Bruges answers, and its fascinating to see where this conversation goes in a film that (on the surface) looks like just another revenge thriller, just another buddy-bad-guy-shoot-em-kill-em-caper flick. But writer/director Martin McDonagh isn’t interested in staying within the traditional film genre. In his Oscar nominated screenplay, he entertains a world where most stereotypes are true, where most people are more evil than good, and where life (really and truly) can only be redeemed in and through death.

3. WALL-E: [THEOLOGY OF ESCHATOLOGY VIA ECOLOGY]
Andrew Stanton’s dark and somber feature (his best since Finding Nemo) plays off like added pages to the book of Revelation. The strangest feeling one gets while watching WALL-E is a sense of possibility. Seeing a future not too removed from our present age is unsettling, to say the least. Graciously, though, Stanton uses Earth’s inevitable apocalypse premise to recall a sense of wonder, beauty and messiness in life. Rather than simply attacking sterility, security, and shopping (which WALL-E does do), it moves into a homage to cinema, an ode to the great comic geniuses (Charlie Chaplin) and visionary filmmakers (Stanley Kubrick). It’s a movie about the love of movies, a movie about the love of earth, and a movie about the special (wonder) of chemistry and connection. Is it ironic that the new Earth is ushered into existence through two characters who aren’t even human?

2. THE DARK KNIGHT: [THEOLOGY OF EVIL]
Not much more needs to be said about Christopher Nolan’s disturbing, motorcycle ride into-the-abyss-of-what-it-means-to-be-human film that is The Dark Knight. Like every masterful work of cinema, it’s best just to experience it for yourself. Evil has rarely been this clever, this well thought out, this insightful into our own psyche, our own minds and hearts as human beings.

1.THE WRESTLER: [BODY THEOLOGY]
“It’s all about the sacrifice of the body. Everything in life is about the sacrificial lamb.” These two sentences haunt Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s character in Darren Aronofsky’s deeply moving and poignant The Wrestler. From the first time I saw this film, something about it haunted me. It stayed with me. Something about it would not escape my mind. This is what movies you love do, isn’t it? Refuse to leave your mind no matter how hard you try to force them out of it. In this case, part of this is because of its two characters, Robin and Pam, struggling to find their name, their place, their title in life. Stripper? Mother? Butcher? Father? Failure? Lover? Hater? Wrestler? Notice “The Ram” has many names he’s called in this film (Robin Radnzinski, Randy, “The Ram,”), none of which he’s comfortable with. But this is exactly the point. Labels aren’t too helpful, but this beautiful film helps us see something special beyond this: that behind every label, every name, every act of marginalization, is one very lonely person. Not since 2002’s Talk To Her have I felt such a powerful take on the subject of loneliness. This is my favorite (and the best, I think) film from 2008. It’s the perfect reflection of the state of our country, here and now; a country filled with lonely people filling up lonely bodies, looking for their name, their place, their calling.

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P.S.THE 2008 ODE-TO-CINEMA AWARD:
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
It's an import from Sweden and it's a damn good one. A vampire story like no other, Let The Right One In explores love and sacrifice in a way that my favorite film of the year also did. And I'm sorry to disappoint all you Twilight fans out there, but this movie is the real deal--a serious and thought-provoking (and beautiful) expose on vampires, first loves, and the dangers of letting too much light into hospital rooms. And why is this film worthy of this yearly award (one I started years back with Three Times)? Because it reimagines a film genre, it reinspires the traditional horror movie with wit, class and a scary sophistication. Maybe that's why Newsweek magazine named it "The best film of 2008." It isn't just another vampire movie; this movie has bite and you don't need fangs to see that.

Imagination (Part 1)

Thank you, God, for giving us minds.
Thank you, God, for giving us ears.
Thank you, God, for giving us love.
Thank you, God, for giving us tears.

Jesus is the Incarnate One. The one who we turn to when we're depressed, lonely, down and out. Sometimes all we feel we must do is get out. Get out of all our boxes, as Lauryn Hill would say. Jesus, like 2Pac, was a rebel from the underground, a Savior so completely different than what the majority of Christians accepted, he was hung for upsetting people's perception of his reputation. When people, particularly in the majority, are convinced something is 'wrong,' it takes a pretty huge leap to overturn that line of logic/thinking. It takes generations really. It took over a hundred years for people to even consider the idea that slavery (as America practiced it) was wrong. Inhumane. Disrespectful. Wrong. And we're still reaping what we sowed. We still are in the process of unlearning.

Sometimes I wonder how much imagination it will take for us to unlearn all the misinterpretations we've been fed from Scripture. From the practical to the academic level, there are lies floating around everywhere (sure) but there are also lies being masked as lies, yet, they are really true. Can we spot these? Can we see the Bible as Whole enough to see these sections of Scripture illuminated only by the Holy Spirit?

I think I'm more in agreement with the Gospel of Mark and Nick Cave on Jesus' redemption for our lives, really. I think he did come to save us, yes, but he also came to give us back our imagination. He came to ignite in his a passion to look out for the poor, the needy, the broken, the tired, the weary. I don't know about you but I haven't been doing too much of that lately. I've been saying I should, but I haven't.

I talk, yet don't walk.
Speak, yet don't listen.
Law, yet don't love.

How do I begin to unlearn this? With the help of Christ, yes...but what does that look like? How does God see me? How do I think God sees me? These are some of the most telling questions we can answer if we want to truly know who we are (and if we want to catch a glimpse, of who God is).