Worst. Ending. Ever.

I contemplated leaving those three words as the summation of my review, but thought I should qualify it with a little bit of explanation.  I was a huge Lost fan, and thought it was some of the best television ever done over its six year run. However, after six years of building an intricate and elaborate mythology and incredibly well developed characters, each of whom started out as wonderfully flawed beings whose stories of personal redemption made the show so compelling over the course of six years…

The last ten minutes of the finale blew it all out of the water.

It was perhaps the worst ending of a television series since Bobby was found in the shower and an entire season turned out to be “a dream”, it was perhaps worse than the Sopranos quick cut to black to the sounds of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”.  Lost’s writers chose similar ignominy with a schmaltzy, quasi-religious ending that was the worst possible way to conclude such an epic series.

For me, the real kicker was the stained glass window (and if you’ve seen the finale, you know what I’m talking about) behind the deceased father of the main character, Jack. With it’s Yin & Yang symbol, Islamic crescent, Star of David, and Christian cross — there were a few more I couldn’t make out, too — it was a paean to squishy, postmodern spirituality, with the message that “all religions are but paths to the same place”. Not only did it do an utter disservice to the story by shortchanging all the answers to the Island mythology questions so many fans were eager for, but it also turned the man-of-science vs. man-of-faith theme that was a central undercurrent of the show into nothing more than a COEXIST bumper sticker.

To have the cross on that stained glass window was to ignore the exclusivity of the message of the gospel, an exclusivity that has always been found an offense, in all times and all places. There is only one way to the Father, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. Period. There are no other paths, truth is not multiple choice, and that’s the exclusive Christian message stated plainly in the words of Christ himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6).  Any other path will simply leave one lost…

So the new Michael Jackson film “This Is It” hits this week, and I just heard the new M.J. song from the film and forthcoming album of the same name. I didn’t find the song particularly new or interesting, it was fairly run-of-the-mill and could easily have been a “B-side” track from any of his albums circa 1985-1992. But as I’m listening, suddenly this line hits me:

“I’m the light of the world…”

I had to hear it again to be certain I really heard what I really heard. Ummmm, for those fans of Jacko who wonder why that’s a problem, I’d urge you open your Bible to the Gospel of John. Check out John 8:12 and also take a look at John 9:5.

Sorry, M.J., but I’m afraid the position of Messiah has already been filled.

The title gives away the ending, no surprises or spoilers in this review. The Stoning of Soraya M is a fact based drama that tells the story of a woman falsely accused of adultery in a small Iranian village, in 1986, in the years after the Iranian revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini and his fundamentalist Islamic regime to power in Iran. The film is based on the 1994 best-selling novel of the same name by French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, with an adapted screenplay and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote the outstanding docudrama The Path to 9/11.

Some of the people behind the production of this film are the same people who brought us The Passion of the Christ, and it shows. There is a similar style between the films, a similar look, the music for both was composed by John Debney – even Jim Caviezel has a small but central role in this film, playing journalist Freidoune Shaebjam’s character. I found myself drawing many mental parallels between the two films as I watched, from cinematography, to certain individual shots, to the spiritual currents running beneath Soraya M and how much they stood in contrast to those of Passion, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

I’ll start out with a few words of warning – this is a chilling and disturbing film on many levels and not for the feint of heart. If you were disturbed by the violence in Passion then you should know that what takes place in Soraya M, in my opinion, makes The Passion of the Christ look like Miracle on 34th Street. (Maybe I’ve just seen Passion enough times, now, that I’ve sadly become a bit numb to the violence in it, or maybe it’s the fact that in Soraya M we are seeing the violence directed at a woman.) There is a level of brutality that comes at the end of this movie that feels like a personal assault – like it comes right out of the screen at you. It’s a visceral, physical thing and no matter how hardened you think you are, trust me, it will get to you.

The story begins when the French journalist Freidoune (Jim Caviezel) is traveling toward the Iranian border and his car breaks down outside a small Iranian village. When he arrives in the village to obtain repair for his car, he is approached by a middle-aged woman named Zahra, who we learn is the aunt of the Soraya of the story’s title. Zahra is played magnificently by the Iranian born actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. Aghdashloo conveys a sense of urgency, pain, and a rage for justice that is so compelling throughout the movie that you never take your eyes off her when she’s on screen. I have seen her in a few minor roles, but if this performance does not earn her a Best Actress nomination, it would be a disgrace. Zahra is desperate to get the story of what took place just the day before in the village, the stoning of her niece Soraya, to the world – she is desperate for justice. Freidoune follows her to her home and there she asks him to record her story and he agrees.

Freidoune presses “record” on his tape-cassette recorder and from there the central story takes place as a long flashback showing the events that lead up to the stoning. We are introduced to Soraya (Mozhan Marno) and her husband Ali (Navid Negahban), again played in powerful performances by Marno and Negahban, as they are in the midst of marital strife over Ali’s desire for a divorce. Ali wants to marry the 14 year old daughter of a wealthy prisoner at the jail where he works as a prison guard and Soraya has become “an inconvenient wife”. It is to Negahban’s credit, and his supreme acting talent, that he pulls Ali off as one of the most chillingly evil characters I’ve run across in recent cinema – nothing Snidely Whiplash about him, no cackling, no Muslim stereotypes – he plays Ali as a ruthless, cunning, cold-hearted monster who never once comes off as a caricature. When he levels a cold stare at Soraya, at a critical point in the film, you can almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he recognizes an opening to accuse her.

What follows from this simple set up is a powerful story about human nature, hypocrisy, injustice, and the evils of the draconian and inhumane punishments under Islamic Sharia law. This film doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to Islam and Sharia Law. It’s on full display. What is heartbreaking is to realize that what takes place in this story goes on all the time in Islamic countries under Sharia law – this story isn’t anything unique, that’s the wrenching thing about it. Through the character of Zahra, who knew Iran before the revolution, we see a cultured Persian woman who once had freedom to speak her mind, to smoke, to dance, even to laugh it seems, now begrudgingly forced into submission under a repressive religious system dominated by men – a system where she has virtually no rights, where she can be flogged for smoking, or struck on the face just for talking back to a man. We also see how the women live in a society under Sharia – they live in nearly constant fear of how they dress, who they speak to, where they go, or, in Soraya’s case, worry about how they will even earn enough for their children to eat without a male figure of some kind to provide for them or without having to prostitute themselves. I was glad to see that the filmmakers did not give in to the usual Hollywood kowtowing to the forces of political correctness on this account. Because of the courage of the writer and director, the actors, and the producers, the women living under these repressive laws have a powerful voice through this film.

Once Soraya makes it clear to her husband that she will not grant him a divorce (for fear of being unable to support her daughters), we see Ali set out on a deliberate and methodical path to rid himself of her. When his early efforts to persuade Soraya fail, Ali approaches the local Imam and draws him into his plan to get rid of his “inconvenient wife”. My friend Tom described the story of Soraya M as progressing from banal evil to the demonic. I couldn’t agree more, as that accurately describes what follows. Because from the point Ali begins his plotting with the Imam, to the films climactic event, it is one long, slow build up from the banal to the demonic on the evil-ometer. We watch with clenched teeth and clenched fists as Zahra races between the parties involved, desperately trying to stop the monstrous from occurring and knowing in our hearts, as we suspect she does too, that it is all in vain and is only an attempt to delay the inevitable.

I won’t bother to describe the stoning itself. Suffice to say that however bad you think it might be, it’s worse. You’ll just have to trust your reviewer on this one. One thing that I couldn’t help doing through the last act of the film, though, was drawing a constant parallel between what was occurring on screen as Soraya is being led away to be stoned, and the story of the woman caught in adultery from the Gospel of John:

2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”

6This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

The parallels were inescapable as I watched Soraya led, calmly and numbly, to her fate – where Soraya’s father must be the first one to throw a stone at her – and the words of Jesus that kept racing through my head from the above passage, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” What could be more monstrous or more inhuman than a system of law that convinces a father he should throw the first stone at his own daughter as she lays in a pit, buried up to her shoulders, helpless and defenseless? As I watched Soraya looking about for any pity and finding none, not even from her own father or her own children, the image up above flashed in my head – the adulterous woman clinging to the feet of Jesus. We watch an innocent woman caught up in a system of religious law with no mercy, without anywhere to turn…then we remember the guilty woman who clung to the feet of Jesus and found grace, mercy and forgiveness. The contrast of light and darkness couldn’t be more striking.

I was in a fairly full theater and heard lots of sobbing around me, even outbursts of cursing as the film reached its climax. I saw a few women get up and leave because they couldn’t endure it, I suspect. Yet this film deserves to be seen by those of us who live in the West, especially by women. This is one of the best pictures of the year, and it will be sad if it is not recognized come Oscar time. I urge you to go see this movie – you will never forget it.

• So Megan Fox seems to have an issue with middle America? Really? I suspect many of them are her potential “Transformers” audience. #

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WARNING: This review contains some spoilers!

Coming on the heels of Angels & Demons, Up was a palate cleanser of the first order. In a long list of consistently great films from the kids in Emeryville at PIXAR, Up is perhaps the best film they’ve done. In fact, I don’t believe PIXAR has ever made a bad film – certainly some are less memorable than others – but I cannot recall a single film they’ve ever done that I would consider mediocre or sub-par, let alone bad. And Up tops them all.

On a movie web site I frequent, one reviewer said of Up, and I paraphrase, “this is the last Indiana Jones movie”, and I couldn’t agree more. This story unrolls like it was the last Old Indy adventure. Carl Fredricksen, the septuagenarian hero of Up, is one of the most memorable characters in movie history. His sidekick, a young boy named Russell, is equally memorable, and the duo make one of the most interesting and unlikely (and often times hysterical) pairings I’ve seen.

The movie opens with a ten to fifteen minute introductory sequence (which in itself is a masterclass in visual storytelling – and better than most 90 minutes films I’ve seen) in which we see a young Carl Fredricksen meet his childhood sweetheart, Ellie, through their common passion to become explorers, like their hero, the world famous explorer Charles Muntz. We watch snippets of their life as they grow up together – Ellie wants to travel to South America, to the place where Muntz disappeared, Paradise Falls, and she wishes for a house right there next to the falls. Carl “crosses his heart and hopes to die”, promising he will take her there someday. We see them work together at a local adventure park where he is a balloon salesman and she is a tour guide. As we watch them marry, live their life, and plan for the day they will take a trip to South America to see Paradise Falls, we also watch the burden of every day life take its toll on them, and on their dream. Carl never seems to make enough to afford their trip, and by the time he purchases tickets for them to go to Peru, Ellie becomes sick and is taken to the hospital. Finally, after Ellie passes away, never having achieved her dream, we see a weary and empty Carl left alone.

And that’s just the beginning.

Carl, now in his seventies, lives alone in the house that he and Ellie built together. A construction company is moving in, and he is pushed into giving up his house, the only tie he has left to his wife. So instead of leaving, in a moment of decision, he ties thousands of balloons to the top of his house, and sets off on a trip to South America. Along for the ride is Russell, the young “Wilderness Explorer” scout who needs to do a good deed for an elderly person, and ends up trapped on Carl’s front porch as the house takes off.

What follows is one of the purest, sweetest, most uplifting (no pun) stories I’ve seen in quite a long time. Carl and Russell make it to South America, and end up encountering a rare bird that Russell nicknames “Kevin” – a bird we later find out the explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by the brilliant Christopher Plummer) was hunting for and over which his claims about its existence led him to be discredited and disgraced, causing him to disappear in the South American jungle in pursuit of the animal. Our duo also run into one of Muntz’s trained pack of dogs, “Doug”, who is decked out with a “talking” collar that lets human’s hear what the dog is thinking. This is inspired and highly entertaining, especially when Doug decides that Carl is a better “master” than Muntz.

Carl and Russell finally encounter Muntz himself, and at first Carl is thrilled to meet his childhood hero – but Muntz has been driven insane by his self-imposed exile in the South American jungle and he makes a truly nasty villain for the rest of the story.

In the end, this movie is really about dreams – you’re never too old to have them and you’re never too old to pursue them. That your life itself is an adventure, and sometimes not what you dreamed or expected but just as marvelous in its own right, and maybe even better than what you hoped. It’s about letting go of the things that don’t matter, and always being open to the things that do matter. And it’s interwoven messages about hope, friendship and never losing faith, will stay with you long after you leave the theater.

PIXAR has created a little masterpiece with Up. It’s a movie with no sex, no violence, no cursing, and a wonderful message. The rest of Hollywood could take a lesson from PIXAR. I highly recommend Up. Go see it!

Magnus

• A new review of Angels & Demons has been posted at http://www.hollywoodandthevine.org #
• Just saw “Up” today…perhaps the best Pixar film yet. I think the kids in Emeryville have a perfect record, thus far. Go see it! #

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So what are we to make of the second entry in the Dan Brown canon to hit the silver screen? I must admit that the hype, combined with my viewing of the various preview trailers over the months leading up to the release, had prepared me for another “DaVinci Code”…meaning I walked into the theater with a sense of dread, prepared to be met with another all-out Hollywood assault on the Faith. However, a few minutes into the film my apprehension was dispelled by a few soft chuckles…and by the end of the film, laughter. Is the new film a dire threat to Christianity or the Catholic Church? Uh, not so much. But it is hardly possible to discuss the new film without comparing it to the first film, hence a digression into “The DaVinci Code” and the Dan Brown phenomenon…

I had read “The DaVinci Code” prior to seeing the movie and I actually found the film better than the book. At least in the film I got to hear the seemingly endless pages of what I took to be Brown’s monologuing on his belief system, through the Teabing character’s dialogue, spoken in the pleasant tones of Sir Ian McKellan’s voice. If I have to listen to risible falsehoods and distortions about the New Testament and church history, it might as well be delivered by a world class thespian, simply to make it bearable.

The DaVinci Code movie benefited from the phenomenon of the book that launched Dan Brown into megaselling author status. Knowing a little bit about the book when it came out, and at the urging of friends, I finally broke down and read it. My opinion of the book was that it was a poorly conceived story which only succeeded due to a breathtaking pace that kept the reader moving along such that they would overlook the myriad plot holes and utterly contrived conveniences that betrayed a badly thought out structure. In other words, I thought it was a bad airport novel. And most surprising of all to me, in light of the book’s success, was that Brown’s writing style, in my opinion, was so incredibly juvenile.

But I think I was most disturbed (as I think most informed and knowledgeable Christians probably were) by the fact that Brown presented such amazingly misleading and twisted accounts of the New Testament, the development of the Canon, and church history, in such a way as to lead the reader to believe it was factual (just read his introduction to The DaVinci Code). The idea that so many people were reading this book and accepting as fact what Brown was spoon feeding them was frustrating to many believers, and to watch it echoed and parroted by the media and endless History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and Discovery Channel specials was a staggering and galling experience at the time.

The DaVinci Code film was able to smooth over the weaknesses in the book, and A-list actors like Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan were able to lend weight and credibility to Brown’s agonizing dialogue. Even in the movie, though, it was hard to stifle a guffaw during the “flashback” to the “Council of Nicea”, which took place in 325 A.D., that portrayed the bishops decked out in medieval vestments – mitres and all – violently arguing, shaking their fists, and screaming at one another. So far as history is concerned, the only violence at the Council of Nicea came when St. Nicholas of Myra – yes, Santa Claus himself – slapped the arch-heretic Arius in the face.

These kinds of errors and distortions, in my opinion, are what bother Christians so much, not because they are done in ignorance, which would be bad enough, but because they are done with full knowledge and driven by an agenda that is decidedly anti-Christian. It is precisely because Christians believe the intent of the director and the original author are to manipulate, that they are agenda driven, that is the cause of so much resentment. The sad reality that so many people would see the film, just like those that read the novel, and walk away from it thinking something along the lines of, “wow, what a bunch of liars those church people are, Jesus wasn’t really who he said he was, the church just made all that up”, is a truly wrenching thing. It is wrenching because we know, just as I suspect author Brown and the director know, that most people won’t take the time to really investigate the “facts” for themselves – that in our dumbed-down, information saturated culture (think about that for a moment and the irony will come through) most people get their “history” from movies and television – they get it from the currents and memes of popular culture and the entertainment mediums. And with this knowledge comes the agenda that, in my opinion, drives all this – tearing down people’s beliefs and discrediting the Christian faith and the Church – that people won’t seek answers for themselves to learn the truth, instead they’ll read the book, watch the film, and accept the things they are told as “facts” and that this will weaken or destroy their faith.

Which leads us, finally, back to Angels & Demons. Because the book was written before The DaVinci Code, its agenda isn’t as overt, but neither is it even nearly as coherent in structure (which isn’t saying much). Having not read the book, I will stick to the film. Tom Hanks is back in the role of Robert Langdon, “symbologist” from Harvard. We are told a “progressive” Pope has died and just as the Vatican’s cardinals are about to go into conclave, a mysterious group kidnaps the Preferiti, the four cardinals with the best prospects of becoming the next Pope, as I understood it. In the meantime, we witness the theft of “anti-matter” from the C.E.R.N. laboratory in Switzerland. Langdon is drawn into the story when he is contacted by the Vatican police who present him with evidence that a mysterious group calling itself “The Illuminati” have threatened to kill one of the Preferiti per hour, finally ending in the detonation of an anti-matter device in the Vatican.

Still with me? Good, because I’m not even with me, after that. Yes, the premise is exceedingly silly. In fact, that’s how I sum up the entire film. Silly. Laugh out loud funny, at times. I won’t give out any spoilers, but suffice to say that we are met with similar plot contrivances in this story as in DaVinci Code. There is a female physicist character who is witness to a murder at the C.E.R.N. labs who somehow ends up a part of the story and we’re never quite sure why. She seems to exist solely to provide whatever knowledge the Langdon character needs at the time. She is never developed as a character, she just dutifully follows the Langdon character about Rome in a “race against time” dropping out bits of exposition. At various points in the film she is a physicist, a pharmacologist, a Latin expert and a forensic pathologist. While the objectives of the chase were clear in DaVinci Code, no matter how absurd, we aren’t even thrown that bone in Angels & Demons. I became lost after the first 30 minutes, and didn’t care, as the Langdon character races around Rome seemingly finding “symbology” in every church and every statue in Rome. Wherever there’s a statue with a pointing finger or holding an arrow, it “means something”.

The movie meanders for a while, with an absurd and credulous scene in the Vatican archives (I wasn’t aware Bruce Wayne had been hired to design the facility, either), and I began to look at my watch ever more frequently. The religious setting of the movie begins to disappear altogether until we finally get to scenes in the conclave inside the Sistine Chapel that, aside from Michelangelo’s stunning art work, could just as easily be a meeting of the Jedi Council if not for the skullcaps and occasional crucifix pendant. As to that last item, I found it telling that in a movie centered completely around the Vatican, and the inner circles of the Catholic Church, we get not one mention of either the name Jesus or Christ, and barely a single shot of a cross with the exception of the one on top of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica (I’m surprised they didn’t CGI that one out too).

By the time the film reaches its bewildering climax, I was actually trying to stifle laughter and failing. The plot holes become so staggeringly vast that you are left wondering if the director had the common courtesy to contact someone at the National Park Service to inform them he would be borrowing the Grand Canyon.

In the end, Angels & Demons doesn’t live up to the hype, nor does it even live up to its DaVinci Code predecessor. The target of the film this time around is the Catholic Church and not the Christian faith, but even the Catholic Church should be able to shrug this one off. The only thing we are left with is to wonder what it is about this material, as with The DaVinci Code, that attracts people like Tom Hanks and Ron Howard to it. Hanks is a wonderful actor, and if you don’t believe that check out what I feel is his best performance, one many people might not have seen, in the 2002 film Road to Perdition, one the best father and son pictures ever done and a film with a surprisingly Christian theme. Director Ron Howard is also a first rate filmmaker, who has done terrific work in Cocoon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and especially Cinderalla Man. Dan Brown’s material is beneath them as artists, in my opinion, so again that leaves one with the question of what attracts them to this material, and to wonder if the answer is to be found in the agenda behind it?

Magnus

• Welcome to the launch of Hollywood & the Vine! A Christian perspective on Hollywood and the entertainment and media culture. #
• Hollywood & the Vine launches today at: http://www.hollywoodandthevine.org. #

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