The Count of Monte Cristo and Lord Ruthven

 I was just commenting again how much I would love to see a truly good rendering of the Count of Monte Cristo in film.  The seventies one was pretty good, I never finished the black and white that stands a good chance of being the most faithful adaptation in my experience, I never finished the French one with Gerard Depardieux who was too big and blond for Edmond Dantes, Gungutsou I did finish and it was brilliant in its portrayal....but was lacking a vital point.  These, though, I watched all via Youtube.  The shorter film, that is perhaps familiar to more people, does not do justice to the story or the characters.

I found this note from last October.

I finally read the story of Lord Ruthven.

Eerie and short. I understand why the Count of Monte Cristo was compared to Lord Ruthven and why the Lady, I forget her name was not fond of him.

He had learned to suppress his natural feelings of repugnance towards violence and terror and was pleased to see vicious people or people connected to evils falling prey to their vices. Lord Ruthven delighted in the fall of the innocent, whereas the Count takes a grim pleasure in seeing the downfall of the guilty, but if one does not know the guilt or innocence of an individual...It would look the same.

I still want to see a brilliantly executed Count of Monte Cristo, with gorgeous costuming, moody lighting, music that fits and transcends the time, dramatic looks and textures. Why, o why has none in the English speaking world that I am aware of drawn upon that imagery suggested in the book of the vampire and the gothic novel? And why have they not drawn on that rich symbolism of the freed prisoner before the cross? Why have they not explored how he becomes a monster and is saved by the love of good and honest people?

I think Gungutsou draws upon the vampire imagery, but he is left a monster and must die. The letter is still there at the end, but it is a letter from the past.

The book, more brilliantly, portrays a double redemption.

Not so honest debates and message driven storytelling

I listened to an annoying “debate” between Raphael Lataster and Trent Horn. The question presented was “Does God Exist?” Trent Horn argued the classic contingency case as well as making an appeal to recognition of moral absolutes. Raphael Lataster stated that those arguments didn’t measure up and that Mr. Horn needed to argue from probability and said that things like polytheism, pantheism, and deism could also be options on the basis of the arguments that Mr. Horn made. He also asked why God did not simply reveal himself, if he was all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful. He claimed that he was agnostic but not unfriendly to theism or Christianity in particular, that he was willing to believe if God would just reveal himself. This he described as “troubling”.

As the debate went on, Mr. Horn continued to explain deductive reasoning, give examples, defend his arguments and ask Mr. Lataster to make an argument. Mr. Lataster continued to make statements about the necessity of considering alternative theisms and his not needing to defend his position since his position was agnosticism while saying that Mr. Horn was not sufficiently proving his point and that he was using controversial premises and that God, if extant, ought to just show himself.

In the cross examination, though, it seemed pretty clear that he was not actually willing to see God. He favours pantheism and materialism, but is agnostic.

I then was listening to Dr. Taylor Marshall and Timothy Gordon talk about Tolkein and Thomas Aquinas on Analogy of Being. As they were talking about the story telling, and the ridiculousness of explaining in the midst of a story or a game the symbolic nature of something, Dr. Marshall said, “You have to let the person listening do some of the work and risk them not getting it.”

One of the comparisons they made was of playing with children (they have eight and five children respectively). If you are playing cops and robbers, you do not explain “Now, you realize this isn’t really a gun.” or “This isn’t really a jail, it’s a tree,” because that ruins the fun. The children know that the gun is fake, the tree is a tree, but for the purpose of the game, the tree IS a jail and the guns are dangerous.

Too often in Christian fiction and movies, the authors make things too explicit. They are message rather than story driven. Think of God’s not Dead. This one actually had some decent stories set up, but they allowed the story to be dictated by the message. The atheist professor had to be a jerk who kept his girl-friend waiting on the table of her superiors. He was an atheist because God did not heal his mother. They made sure to tell you, “God’s not dead,” but then, while they set up a premise of a debate happening in the classroom, they did not follow up on that by actually having a debate. And all the Christians go to the concert to sing “God’s not Dead” while the atheist gets hit by a car and is given the opportunity to say a death-bed prayer.

There is a reason Christian movies have a reputation for being cheesy and preachy.

I enjoyed Priceless more than God’s not Dead in the end, but even that one has the dude who just sounds like a preacher sermonizing rather than being the sheriff that he was supposed to be. Still, overall it was driven by the story of a man who took a job at a low point in life, only to realize it was a bad job. What happens next? They follow the story through.  It does have a happy ending, but they did allow the characters to grow and the story to build.

A Woman who communicated

        Arrival is about so much more than aliens coming to earth and a linguistics professor and a physicist working with their teams to try to communicate. It is pretty amazing.

So, Emily was probably going to pick this movie that none of us had watched and I blanked out on that bit of info and watched it on my own before we watched it together. It is a movie well worth a re-watch. In a way, it is like watching 6th Sense over again, I saw things from a different perspective having seen the ending, and consequently, I saw a lot more of what was going on. For that reason, I am not going to tell many details, I will however say that this shows an amazing development in the main lady, from desolate to really consciously living. She becomes captivating.

It is a quiet sort of movie; I recall very little vulgar or offensive language; the violence is second hand; and there is no excessive sensuality at all. What humor is present is quiet. The colors are quiet, often blue-toned, lending to a sort of melancholy feel. There were a few moments when the music seemed a bit heavy handed, but I can kind of understand why they would play those sounds when they did—thematically. It still drove me out of the scene a little. Speaking of scene, the filmography was beautiful. I loved the use of clouds and wind on the one hand and TV and intercom screens on the other.

On the writing, I loved how minor characters still felt like living people; they made good use of background and side interactions. One character speaks pretty dismissively of a lot of the people at the camp that is set up near the alien shell in Montana. It seems as though maybe the writer was not quite so dismissive. Rather in contrast to that is the attitude of the colonel who fetches the civilians who are helping out. He tells Ian, the physicist, and Louise, the linguist, after they started sparring a little over the importance of math versus language, that “That is why you're both here. And I'll get your coffee.” He seemed like he would be one of those heroes that nobody knows about; he just goes and does his best to do whatever job he has with the least amount of fuss and fewest casualties possible.

For Louise's part, she is pretty intense as she gets into this figuring out the aliens thing keeping in mind the end goal. It was interesting to watch that, especially as a teacher interested in languages. One of her first, though not the first, break-through moments with the aliens comes when she removes some of her protective gear and identifies herself with her name instead of just the generic “human” identifier. That really made the guys backing them up nervous-- “Do we abort?” While most were concerned about security, potential dangers, the aliens as potential threat, Louise saw them as beings with which to communicate, potential teachers, even. She personalized the communication, and that is what started the breakthrough to be able to understand the aliens.

Like I said, I do not want to give away to much about the plot, so I will leave you with those tid-bits and one more: the aliens are named Abbot and Costello.

Conformity in the "Mona Lisa Smile"

An art teacher from California goes a prestigious women's college on the East coast only to discover that it is a glorified finishing school.  This is after she discovered that her class already knew the material and at least a few of them did not consider her UCLA degree worthy of respect. Oh, yeah, the administration and some of the teachers are not fond of her either.  She it was with whom they were left when the preferred candidate took a job at Brown.

As the class already knew the names of the pieces of art along with their artists and the textbook described significance of each one, Catherine Watson decides to ask them “What is art?”  She presents them with modern pieces starting with the “Carcass” and asking, “Is this art?” Her next piece, though, is of a lamb on a field of green, primitive in style, very childish. The girls say that they suppose it must be art because it is being presented.  The teacher says that one person even identified it as a masterpiece. That person was her mother. She had painted it as a child. As she identifies the “critic”, the next slide is a photograph of her mother. She asks the students to consider whether the photograph is art.  They are more cautious now, and one half scoffs that it is “just a snapshot.” She asks them, “If I were to tell you that it was taken by *important name*, would that make a difference?” She sets a new goal for the class; they are going to study the question of what makes art art, who gets to say? They are also going to look at modern works.

One of the most powerful scenes in that regard comes when she takes them on a field trip to a museum or art gallery, but they do not go through the main halls. They go “backstage”, so to speak, where the artifacts are being brought in and unwrapped. There they are when this great, big crate is brought in. It could easily be a wall. They loosen a whole side of it, which then appears to be a sideways lid which crashes down to reveal a paint splattered canvas, immediately recognizable as by Pollock. The thing is, it is so massive. Miss Watson walks up to it with face alight. It dwarfs her. Her assignment to them is to consider the painting. She does not ask for a paper for this one, just for them to consider it. The view dips in close so we can see the textures and the depth of the paint, it takes on an emotional quality--the colors in soft lavender and gray over soft crimsons almost evoke a sunrise.

On the personal side, though, the stories take a devastating turn.  One could receive the impression that Miss Watson came here to clear her mind concerning a somewhat dominating lover.  The lady who runs the house where she is boarding is a very desolate woman whose fiancée left during the war, but stayed away to marry someone else. She never moved on. The other lady in the house is the school nurse, clearly indicated to have been had a female companion. She provides birth control for the students and is fired when she will not publicly apologize and promise to not continue doing so.  

Among the students, Betty Warren is a young woman groomed to be manipulative and controlling by her mother. She has a venomous tongue. She marries, her husband is unfaithful, and she lashes out at people close to her.  Joan is her best friend. Joan had an interest in going to law school, applied and was accepted to Yale, but she chooses to marry her boyfriend/lover and go with him to Pennsylvania.  She gives a powerful defense of choosing motherhood that is undercut by the way the scene is set up. Giselle is the bad-girl-with-the-heart-of-gold. She carries on two different affairs in the film, not concurrently, one with a teacher the other with an older, married man.  She flirts with everybody and is very affectionate, and very lost. Her father had abandoned her mother and her when she was young. She is the one through whom it is revealed that the nurse is distributing birth control. Then there is Connie. Connie is regularly put down by Betty and thinks she is not attractive.  She is attentive to others’ needs and is genuinely funny. One of my favorite lines comes from her. A young man was dancing with her and talked about how his mother said his life was opening up in front of him, just on the horizon. She says that he should tell her, “that the horizon is an imaginary line which always recedes as one approaches it.”  The dance being over she says good bye, but he asks if she is brushing him off politely. She thought he was just doing a favor in dancing with her, but he really wanted to dance with her. So they dance some more. Their story, even with a misunderstanding thrown in due to his cowardice and Kirsten’s maliciousness, is sweet.

Meanwhile, Miss Watson carries on an affair with the Italian teacher after breaking up with her former lover who was about to railroad her into marriage.  Her one condition to the Italian teacher is that he not carry on relations with students. She leaves that situation after she discovers that he has been living a lie. He had never actually left the states during the war, but because he knew Italian and did not correct people's false assumptions, he had the reputation of having served in Italy with distinction.

When it comes down to basics, the women are almost all of them either excessively domineering or excessively desolate and needy, and the men are almost all passive, with the exception of a couple of controlling and jealous men.  It was pitiful. Surely, there are good men and women in the world, even in the late 50’s in academia, but where are they? Lost.

I did enjoy the movie, and I appreciated the main character, though she seemed confused in her personal life.  The overarching message of “question everything, because tradition and traditional constraints are suspect at best and likely evil” combined with self-determination is not what we need to hear today.  We are perhaps too aware of 50’s conformity and lack an awareness of today's form of ironic conformity. “To question is the answer” is almost taken for a truism. Self-determination has been radicalized to accept people’s self identity even if that identity is delusional.  The message of the movie is generally accepted as truth with little questioning. And, oh, the pressure to conform!

The thing is to live a considered life, which is why I hated that they made Joan’s defense of her decision seem hollow.  She points out that Miss Watson had encouraged them to think for themselves and make their own decisions. Joan may want to study law, but she wanted to be a wife and a mother even more.  She also observes that being a wife and a mother did not make a woman less intelligent. She had learned much and was grateful for her education, but this was what she decided she wanted--to get married and raise a family.  She was not entering it blindly. In all, I think she could have been one of the better examples of femininity, but it seemed as though the directors wanted the viewer to think she was cutting off a part of who she was, rather than that she was simply choosing among different good options.  They, with Miss Watson, wanted her to take it all--Yale, career, marriage, family--and but for her boyfriend, they tell us, she could have. Maybe they are right about Joan, but maybe a woman can also have a highly satisfying and happy life as a wife and mother. Maybe a human can have a better, more whole life by giving up some dreams in order to live out the dreams they most desire.

Captivating women

I was trying to find a good movie that portrayed a positive femininity. I was not having good success and was actually being increasingly irritated by the search results. Sexy and “badass” came up a lot. Feminist themes and godly masculinity showed up as well. I really wanted a movie I had not seen that dealt with women in a respectful and captivating manner. I did not want a Kill Bill nor a My Best Friend’s Wedding kind of movie.  Joan of Arc? Sure, depending on the version. Mother Theresa? Yes. A Little Princess? Totally--except it is actually a mini-series that would last 6 hours, and  we were actually supposed to pick movies not mini-series.  

I decided ultimately to pick a movie we had at home--Nausicaa:Valley of the Winds.  This was lovely.  She displays compassion and courage. She views the world which holds much terror with an eye for beauty.In contrast there is the beautiful but bitter Kushana of the Tolmekians, who sees things through the lens of power and fear.  

Nausicaa is introduced as she is out adventuring in the toxic jungle looking for ohm shell and collecting spores.  She leaves the jungle only to discover  Lord Yupa being chased by an angry insect, which she stuns, charms, and sends back to the forest from the vantage of her glider.  Back in the village it is clear she is well loved and respected by her people and that she loves and cares for them.  

When the village is invaded by the Tolmekians, who could have simply peacefully retrieved their nasty giant embryo and wrecked ship, the king is killed.  Nausicaa initially went into a rage and killed and injured a few soldiers before being stopped by Lord Yupa, who encouraged her to hold on for the sake of her people.  She was then taken as a hostage, but spent her last moments encouraging a few little girls who were sad to see her go.  

Kushana is imperious.  She planned to grow the giant in the valley and rule herself from there. While taking the hostages back to Tolmekia, however, they were attacked by a lone Pegite fighter.  

The airships were demolished by the zipping little craft, that is itself taken down.  Nausicaa and the other hostages, along with Kushana survive.  Nausicaa and one of her people actually save Kushana, not that she displayed any subsequent gratitude.  The Pegite fighter, Asbel, also survived the crash, but nearly did not survive the insects.  After stopping Kushana from bringing angry ohm down on them, Nausicaa sent her men and Kushana off to wait above the forest for one hour while she attempted to rescue the Pegite.  
She did rescue him from the immediate danger of giant insects or falling to his death, but then the glider was wrecked by the cutting tail of an insect whose head they had just narrowly evaded. They crash landed, this time in what would appear to be quicksand. 

Nausicaa was knocked unconscious in the crash, but when she revived in the subterranean caverns she discovers what Asbel, the Pegite fighter/prince, has been delighting in already--the air is safe to breath and the water is clean. They have time to repair the glider and rest in safety before continuing on their journey. 
They must get Asbel back to his people and Nausicaa back to her valley, and maybe somehow find a way to stop the devastation of war that bringing a giant warrior back could cause.

Throughout the story you see her courage and compassion, but I won’t tell the end; you should go watch it.  You could not just replace her with a man and have the same story.  So, Nausicaa:Valley of the Wind--it is an excellent adventure story that also has an excellent female role model. 

(It also has lovely music which is likely to become stuck in your head :)

But would a Pharisee really wrestle publicly?

I watched a movie about Paul, and I must say I only almost really enjoyed it, but within the first few minutes it had me asking, "Did they even try to research this?"

The movie introduces Paul as a tent maker wrestling with a priest in an arena. They are in nothing but loin cloths and are jocularly insulting each other much to he entertainment of the crowd. Reuben, the priest, is a Sadducee though also a friend of Saul, the tent maker and Pharisee.  Reuben does not lose well,so it does set up dramatic personal tension between these two who are friends though having differing beliefs.
On their way home, Saul stops an armed robbery rescuing a man named Barnabas and his wife Hagar.    This Barnabas says he does not have much, but gives Saul a couple of melons. And here I thought that Barnabas was supposed to be very wealthy. In any case this scene serves to tell us that Jesus is dead over a month ago, and that Barnabas and his wife had hoped to meet him.

The apostles and the mother of Jesus are introduced praying for the power that Jesus had promised them and a wind blows in and the menorah is suddenly lit and they're in awe and thank God.  Next thing you know we are in what is supposed to be maybe the outer courts of the temple and Peter and John are there praying.  Peter expresses a desire to know if they really have the power Jesus promised and then gets up to speak to the people.  The sermon given in Acts 2 is way more interesting and convicting.  Peter is told he is blaspheming, he "proves" Jesus is really alive and God is with him by healing a lame man.  He is promptly arrested along with John and the lame man and dragged before the Sanhedrin then and there.
In this sequence, they have Gamaliel at one point saying that the Pharisees believe God allows each man to interpret Torah's meaning.  I decided to read up on the Pharisees.  That does not seem to be a good representation of their beliefs.  Oddly enough, the more I read about the Pharisees approach to Torah and Tradition, I am reminded somewhat of the Catholic Church, with the emphasis on the traditions of the fathers helping to explain the Torah.
Anyway, so the film combined a couple of trials before the Sanhedrin, and stuff, but they kept on not allowing Jesus followers to actually speak as articulately as they did in Acts.  They seemed to reduce the message to, "Jesus is really alive.  He ascended into heaven and will come again soon. He's the son of God.  You need to believe on Him to have eternal life. He really is the Messiah!" Say all of this in a few different patterns and with much emotion, and that sums up the teaching of the apostles as presented in this movie--wait, one more thing.  They also regularly insist that Jesus taught that now nobody need follow the law of Moses, all we need is faith in him.  This was particularly frustrating, since that is not what was taught, but from Pentecost onwards in the movie, it emphasizes that Jesus was the end of the law and the only thing that matters is faith.

Then we get to Stephen, standing up in the temple court and preaching. Reuben goes and confronts him, and seems to do a good job of bewildering Stephen with accusations of polytheism based on claiming that Jesus is God, but also that Jesus is the son of God. Reuben also mocks the idea of Jesus being present. Ultimately, Stephen is not brought before the Sanhedrin, he does not see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God, but is dragged off straight from the temple court to be stoned. Saul is presented as saying he agrees with the denunciation of Stephen and the followers of Jesus, but being loathe to participate in the stoning. He is handed a stone, but does not throw it. Reuben, who had handed him the stone, reproaches him with weakness, takes the stone from him and hands him his coat, at which point others give Saul their coats as they set about stoning Stephen.

Saul feels guilty and sets about his active persecutions. It has him get permission from Herod to go to Damascus. Of course there is the falling off the horse scene, interestingly done.  The movie then has Reuben be the driving force behind all attempts to kill Paul.  The  Hellenists are secondary, and the Judaisers are not even named as such.  There is a representation of the council at Jerusalem on the situation with the Gentile believers, but it does not do the council justice.

Ok.  If this were just based on some random book, I would still be a bit dissatisfied. I understand dramatic decisions like combining events, presenting a physical conflict to initiate the philosophical conflict, making a minor character take on multiple roles from a story to have fewer introductions, combining characters, chopping dialogue, but--they left the followers of  Christ as having nothing to offer in the way of explanation or reason, only emotion and statements to be accepted on faith.  They focused on jealousy as a motivating factor for people. They made James the spokesman for the Judaisers.  They had Saul be more a reluctant persecutor; he had to do this arresting stuff to prove his loyalty to the law to Reuben because he had made an oath to defend truth. I had hoped they would play on that when Saul became a defender of faith in Jesus, but they did not.  They relied on theatrics, burning the letter given to him for authority to make arrests before a select group of believers in Jesus.  That's another thing, in Acts Saul/Paul at least initially taught very openly in the synagogues.  There was none of that in this movie.

I have no particular complaints about the acting, dramatically I suppose it worked, but theologically and historically it was full of error. I could not recommend this film except maybe to a class who was planning to do a point by point analysis comparing it to what is actually said and done in Acts.