The Kids Are All Right

As with all my Film Reflections, watch out for spoilers.

Kids_credits_KCalifornian couple Nic and Jules have been together for twenty-something years. Nic is a doctor (the two met at college, when Jules came to the hospital where Nic was a resident), and Jules quit her job when the two had children.  We learn early on that they had their two children, Joni (18) and Laser (15), with the help of a sperm donor since they are not biologically compatible. Now that the kids are older, Jules is starting a new business – landscaping.

The film follows the family through the so-normal-it’s-dull growing pains of a 21st century family. Joni is leaving for college at the end of the summer, and is trying to figure out how to be her own person. Laser is friends with a guy who is a bully and leads Laser to make increasingly bad decisions. Both kids know that their ‘father’ is actually a sperm donor, and since Joni is 18, she makes contact. The kids meet Paul, a late-30s, never-married organic restaurant owner, and are instantly taken with him. He begins spending more and more time with the family, which causes problems…

Nic and Jules have been growing apart.  Nic is the quintessential micro-manager to Jules’ free spirit. Their lives and their marriage has become routine, so when Paul hires Jules to landscape the backyard of his newly purchased house, their inevitable affair is no surprise (again, so cliché it’s bland). The climax of the film showcases the inevitable implosion of the nuclear family, and ends on a positive note; even though the family is physically displaced by Joni’s departure for college, we get the sense that Nic and Jules and their kids are going to be all right.

Bland. Boring. The kids’ rebellion (the height of which is Joni riding a motorcycle with Paul, which Nic has expressly forbidden – gasp!) is boring. Nic and Jules’ marital problems are the stuff of stereotypes and sitcoms – two people who love each other have grown apart and are trying to figure out how to reconnect. Even Paul, the donor dad, is so banal as to be forgettable. He’s a basically nice guy who’s maybe still a little juvenile. Nothing about the story is especially compelling or memorable.

Oh, except for the fact that Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians. (The whole film in fact, from the excellent acting to well-written script, seem to pursue the banal and stereotypical precisely for this reason.) Nic and Jules’ sexuality is nearly an afterthought in the film. No one – not the kids, not Paul (Mark Ruffalo), no one! – thinks that Nic and Jules shouldn’t be married or have kids. No one thinks that Joni and Laser are going to grow up sexually deviant (Joni seems almost totally uninterested in sex, and Laser is grossed out when he discovers that his moms think he might be gay).

In fact, the film’s strongest argument is its most subtle: a person’s sexuality doesn’t define her (or him). Lesbian couples have the same problems as anyone else. Kids raised by same-sex couples are pretty much normal kids. In short, the film is arguing that gay people really are people too.

What’s probably most sad to me is that this film even needed to be made. Especially Evangelical Christians are notorious for demonizing gay and lesbian persons. In “discussions” of same-sex marriage, we often claim that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will destroy the fabric of heterosexual marriages (this while we allow our divorce rates to climb over 50%). The Kids Are All Right argues that a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether a marriage will be healthy, or for that matter whether children will be healthy. While it should go without saying, the film argues that gay and lesbian persons are just as capable of love and commitment – and no more susceptible to temptation – than a ‘normal’ heterosexual person.

While it should go without saying that gay persons are people too, fully human and no more defined by their sexual orientation than a heterosexual person, it doesn’t go without saying because we Christians need to hear and learn that so badly. Our marriages have problems because we’re people, not because someone’s gay. Our kids struggle because growing up is tough, not because of ‘the Gays’. The Kids Are All Right is trying to say, Hey everybody, can we all calm down a little bit and start talking about what we have in common instead of what makes us different?

The debate over same-sex marriage in this country is far from over. We would all do well to listen to this bland, boring film and reevaluate our own rhetoric. If we can’t engage those who disagree with us as whole persons, equal conversation partners, then our discussion cannot move forward.

Bottom Line: The film isn’t that interesting as a story; its power comes from the conversations it generates in the wake of its viewing.

Have you seen the film? What do you think of its stance on same-sex marriage and/or parenting?

The Lamb’s Wedding Feast (Medium-Rare)

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 19.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-19.

After all that, I heard what sounded like an enormous multitude in Heaven, and together they said,

We pledge allegiance to God!  Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
Because his judgments are true and just.
He has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her adultery,
And he has given her what she deserves for the blood of his servants.

And they cried out once more,

Pledge allegiance to God! She burns forever, and the smoke rises up like a just incense forever.

Then the fifty congresspersons and the four living creatures stood, placed their hands over their hearts and pledged allegiance to God who is seated behind the desk by saying,

This is truth! We pledge allegiance to God!

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Black Swan

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Black Swan yet, consider yourself warned: there’re lots of spoilery bits ahead in this refraction!

The super-creepy Black-Swan-Nina doesn't make her apperance until the last few minutes of the film, and the wait is WORTH IT! Black Swan is the latest trippy thriller from Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Pi, Requiem for a Dream) and like most of his films, you’re lucky if you know what’s real and what’s not by the end.  What we’re promised in Black Swan is a fairly straightforward offering: young ballerina Nina Sayers (Golden Globe-winning Natalie Portman) wants the lead role in her company’s production of Swan Lake, but her quest to gain – and keep – the role might cost her her sanity, or even her life.  It could easily have been an by-the-numbers sexy-thriller whose only real twist is its setting (that being the gritty, no-holds-barred world of professional ballet).

What we get instead is a profound exploration of the nature of perfection and the complex relationships surrounding innocence and art.

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Lady Liberty’s Funeral

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 18.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-18.

Then I saw another angel descending from Heaven, wielding incredible authority.  His beauty lit up the whole world.  He cried out,

Fallen, fallen is the Third Reich
It has become a home for demons, haunted by every kind of evil spirit, every disgusting bird and awful creature.
All the world’s nations have drunk the juice of her adultery,
The politicians have committed adultery with her,
And the corporations of the world have gotten wealthy from the power of her luxury.

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Lady Liberty

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 17.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-17.

Next, one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came to me and said,

Follow me, and I will show you the judgment of the great whore who looks out over the ocean.  She’s the one with whom all the politicians have committed adultery.  The one with whose juice of adultery the world’s peoples have gotten drunk.

So he carried me away in the spirit to a desert, and I saw a woman sitting on a Beast that was covered with blasphemous names, and it had thirteen heads and fifty dollar signs.  The woman wore a green robe and a crown that looked like a sunburst.  With one hand she held a cup like a torch in the air, and it was full of abominations, of the juice of her adultery.  In the other hand she held a book, on which was written a mysterious name: “The Third Reich, Mother of All Whores and Abominations”.  The woman was clearly drunk on the blood of the saints and witnesses to Jesus.Continue reading

Armageddon

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 14.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-16.

Next, I saw another awesome sign in heaven: seven angels that had seven plagues (these are the last plagues, because once they’ve been unleashed, God’s wrath will be fulfilled).  I saw what looked like a sea of molten glass, and along its shore, sitting at organs or playing Taylor guitars, stood all the peoples who had conquered the Beast and his image and the number of his title.

They sang the song Moses – God’s slave – wrote, and the Lamb’s song:

Lord God, General of Heaven’s Armies,
What you’ve done is wondrous and amazing!
President of all countries,
Your policies and ways are always just and correct.

Lord, who doesn’t respect and give you your due honor?
Because you alone are holy and righteous.
Every country and people in the world will come and worship you,
Because your judgments have finally been revealed to everyone.

Then I looked and the Temple (which is really the Tabernacle in Heaven) was opened, and out came the seven angels that had the seven final plagues.  They were wearing bright white graduation robes and they had beautiful golden sashes across their chests.  One of the four creatures gave the seven angels seven golden offering plates full of the eternal God’s wrath.  God’s glory was so bright that the Temple seemed to be filled with a smoke or haze, and so powerful that no one could enter until the seven angels’ plagues had finished.

A loud voice from the Temple called out to the seven angels:

Go and pour out onto the Earth the seven offering plates of God’s wrath.

So the first angel poured his bowl onto the Earth, and anyone who had the Beast’s mark or worshiped its image developed a putrid, painful sore.  The second angel poured his bowl into the ocean, and it turned into congealed blood, and everything in the oceans died.  The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and they turned to blood.  At this, the angel that commands the water said,

Eternal Holy One, you have judged these things and your judgments are just.
They shed the blood of saints and prophets, so you have given them blood to drink.
It’s what they deserve.

And I heard the altar respond,

Yes, Lord God, General of Heaven’s Armies, your judgments are always just and correct!

The fourth angel poured his bowl into the sun, and it was allowed to burn them.  They were burned by the sun’s fierce heat, but they cursed God, who had authority over the plagues.  They didn’t repent or acknowledge God’s supremacy.

The fifth angel poured his bowl on the desk of the Beast, and its nation fell into darkness.  The peoples’ sores were so bad they gnawed their tongues and cursed the God of heaven… but they still didn’t repent.

The sixth angel poured his bowl on the Pacific Ocean, and its waters dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the Orient.  I saw three evil spirits like snakes coming out of the mouths of the Dragon and the Beast and the False Prophet.  These are demons that work miracles and go to the kings, presidents and prime ministers of the whole world to call and assemble their armies for battle on the great Day of God the General of Heaven’s Armies.

Watch! I’m coming like a thief!  The one who says awake, ready and dressed, is blessed.  Don’t go around naked and embarrass yourself!

The demons assembled the world’s powers at the place that in English is called “The Meadows” and in Spanish is “Las Vegas”.

The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice called out from the Temple,

It is done!

Lightning fell like hail, thunder crashed like jets flying overhead, and an 10.0 earthquake struck – worse than anything anyone’s ever experienced.  The great city split in three and all the great cities of the world fell.  God didn’t forget about Babylon – he made her drink from his cup, the juice of his furious wrath.  Every island sank and every mountain fell.  Huge hailstones the size of Volkswagens fell on people from the sky, and everyone cursed God because the hail plague was so horrible.

True Grit

Spoiler alerts! If you haven’t seen True Grit, you may want to shy away from this review, as it’s got quite a few spoilers (major and minor) in it. You have been warned…

True Grit PosterTrue Grit is the latest offering from the Cohen brothers (The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men), and it’s an adaptation of the same Charles Portis book as the 1969 film for which John Wayne won his Oscar. The film is a profound meditation on what vengeance, redemption and justice look like in a world without God.

True Grit opens on a dead body lying in the snow, while the old gospel song “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” plays in the background. A 40-year old Mattie Ross tells us that the body is her father, and that when she was 14 years old, he was murdered by the outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). This, then, is the story of how Mattie (played at 14 by Hailee Steinfeld) avenges her father’s death. Mattie – who is quickly revealed to posses a bravery and self-assurance rare at any age – justifies her quest to her audience by claiming that

There’s consequences for everything we do in this world, one way an’ another.
Nothing’s free but the grace of God.

Mattie sees herself as God’s instrument of justice – justice in this case being Tom Chaney’s death. This conviction steels Mattie against the adult world she encounters: her bravery may in fact be the ignorance of the innocent. Mattie is convinced she lives in a world of black and white, where right is right and wrong is wrong, and where no one can escape the consequences of their actions. She pursues the outlaw Tom Chaney with the conviction of the righteous, telling her mother not to worry because

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
the creator of all things watches over me.”

Mattie knows that Chaney must die in order for her world to be right, and she is also well aware that human law may fail her. Thus she is willing become that instrument of divine judgment, delivering to Chaney the right and proper punishment not according to the laws of humanity, but the laws of God. When asked what she plans to do with her father’s gun, she states plainly,

I aim to kill Tom Chaney. If the Law fails to do so.

This is a child, an innocent, in an adult world. As she prepares to follow Chaney, Mattie dresses in her father’s clothes, tailoring them so that they’ll fit her well enough. Throughout the rest of the film, they serve as a reminder that she is a dove among serpents, a sheep among wolves.

Chaney has fled into the Indian Nations, so the local law will not pursue him; Mattie seeks out Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (the Duke’s role, now played masterfully by Jeff Bridges), the meanest U.S. Marshal around, to apprehend Chaney with her. Rooster is a drunk Civil War veteran who’s missing an eye and prefers killing men rather than trying to bring them in alive. But even Cogburn bends to the righteous will of little Mattie Ross. Mattie and Cogburn move steadily into the wild of Indian Territory and closer to the inexorable confrontation with Chaney (accompanied sporadically by Matt Damon’s Texas Ranger LaBoeuf – pronounced ‘La Beef’).

Finally, Mattie stands atop a mountain, gun on Chaney, ready to enact vengeance, mete punishment and acquire justice. Even here, Mattie’s righteous self-assurance never wavers. Without batting an eye, Mattie demands,

“Tom Chaney, stand up,” and fires, killing him.

The force of Mattie’s shot, the very action of vengeance-taking, knocks her back into a deep cavern. She’s caught by a root, hanging upside down, struggling to get free. She reaches for a dead body on a ledge near her, wanting its holstered knife to cut herself free. But as she drags the body towards her, the ancient clothes tear away, revealing a brood of rattlesnakes hibernating in the corpse’s chest cavity. One of the snakes bites her hand, sentencing her to Death.

Finally the visual and thematic elements of the film congeal into some version of the Christian story. Mattie kills, and that action destroys her innocence. That sin casts her into a pit from which she cannot escape – in fact, every action only brings her closer to death until a snake bites her. Mattie’s Messiah comes in the form of Cogburn, who rappels down into the cave, sucks the poison out of Mattie’s hand and races her to a doctor.

Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) as he recognizes Mattie Ross. His identifying black mark is visible beneath his left eye.At the beginning of the film, Mattie claimed that,

There’s consequences for everything we do in this world,
one way an’ another. Nothing’s free but the grace of God.

Certainly this is true for the characters that inhabit True Grit, and the consequences are born on their bodies. Rooster Cogburn is clearly a grey character, and is missing an eye. LaBoeuf nearly bites off his tongue and speaks with an impediment for the rest of the film. Chaney has a black blemish under his eye – his defining mark in the film. A dentist buys a dead body, removes the teeth and offers to sell the body to Mattie and Cogburn. An outlaw has his fingers cut off by another outlaw just before Cogburn shoots him in the face, prefiguring Chaney’s blemish. As the film closes, we see that Mattie Ross has borne the consequences of her vengeance as well – the snakebite cost her her left arm.

Mattie is no longer a dove; she has become a wolf.

Imperfect vengeance and incomplete salvation seem to be the best characters in the world of True Grit can hope for. While Mattie gives lip-service to God’s grace, it’s nowhere to be found in this movie. Justice only comes to those who are strong enough to take it. And the best savior they can hope for is half-blind and drunk. All-in-all, it’s a far cry from the promise in the film’s theme-song.

“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Refrain: Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Bottom Line: The film is typical Cohen Brother brilliance. Everything is spot-on, from the actors to the sets and costumes to the score. A+, all around. Go see it. And please let me know what you think.


The Merciful Harvest

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 14.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-14.

Next I saw another angel flying through the stratosphere – it proclaimed Good News to every person on the planet (every nation, ethnicity, language and people group, now and throughout all of human history).  He announced loudly,

Fear God and give God glory, because it’s finally time for God’s judgment.  Worship the One who created the entire universe – everything from stars and galaxies to atoms and quarks.  The sky, earth, salt and fresh water.

A second angel followed the first.  It said,

Defeated!  The great Babylon is defeated!  She has made all the peoples of the world drink her juice (which is really the consequences of her unfaithfulness).

A third angel followed the second.  He announced loudly,

The people who worship the Beast or its image (on TV) – anyone who received its mark on their hearts or wallets – all of them will also drink the juice of God’s wrath.  The wine is poured undiluted (it’s 160 proof!) straight into the cup of God’s anger.  They’ll be punished with fire and burning sulfur in front of the Lamb and the holy angels.  The smoke from their punishment rises into the sky forever and ever.  It’ll be 24/7 – the people who worship the Beast and its image and receive its mark won’t get a break.

Saints – if you keep God’s commandments and hold to the faith of Jesus – pay attention!  This is a reminder for you to stick it out and stay faithful!

Then I heard a voice from heaven say,

Write this down: “Anyone who dies from now on and believes in God is fortunate.  The Spirit agrees, ‘They’ll get to retire from their work because what they’ve done speaks for itself.’”

I looked and saw a white cloud, with someone sitting on it.  But it wasn’t an angel with a harp.  It was someone like the Son of Man.  He was wearing a gold medal and was driving a combine.  Another angel came out of God’s Temple, and yelled to the one on the cloud,

Put the combine in gear and start harvesting.  It’s harvest time and the earth’s harvest is ripe.

So the one on the cloud dropped the combine into gear and drove it over the earth, and harvested the whole round ball.  Then another angel came out of God’s Temple (in heaven), and he also drove a combine.  One more angel came out of the altar (it was the one that commands fire), and he yelled to the angel in the combine,

Put your combine in gear and harvest the earth’s vineyards – the grapes are ripe and it’s time!

So the angel drove his combine over the earth, gathered the grapes and tossed them into the great Welches factory of God’s wrath.  The Welches factory (it was outside the city) crushed the grapes to get their juice, and blood flowed from the Welches factory deep enough to cover a doorway, and covered the earth from East to West.

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