Film Journal 2023: 80 For Brady Directed by Kyle Marvin Where to watch: now showing in most theaters
A perfectly charming and effortlessly likeable aged comedy based on a true story. It’s not often we get films for the above 60/70 demographic, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when we do. While this isn’t really laugh out loud material, and for a nearly 2 hour run time manages to keep things relatively simple and subdued, the chemistry keeps it afloat, and while I am not the target demographic I have to think it’s stays somehow relevant and relatable when it comes to navigating that stage of life.
I don’t think you need to like football to enjoy this film? I say that with a question mark becasue I do enjoy football. At the heart of this film are four lifelong friends who have aged together and done life together, and football just happens to be a Tradition, being the Patriots fans that they are, that they enjoy for the bonding rather than the game. It’s really about them more than anything else, with each of the four being given a nice subtext to round their characters out.
This is a safe bet, to be sure, but with the right company and life experience in tow, or even for a chance to sit with a cast of characters sporting a diffremt life experience than my own, I think this ends up playing a decent game. As they say in football, it doesn’t matter how you get it, what matters is the W. And I think this gets it.
Film Journal 2023: Knock at the Cabin Directed by M. Night Shyamalan Where to watch- now playing in most theaters
As a staunch M. Night defender, which seems par for the course for anyone who is a fan, I am pretty much here anytime he releases a new project. I have been particularly intrigued by Knock at the Cabin ever since picking up the book in preparation. I do like the book, but certain misgivings about some of its choices when it came to the story and execution left me convinced that this material would be a really good fit for M. Night as an adaptation. And beat for beat, start to finish, this left me feeling justified in my initial suspicions. Not only is this a great adaptation of the book, the changes it makes to the story perfectly address my misgivings about the source material.
Now, I want to be careful in articulating my feelings here, as one unfortunate byproduct of what are without a doubt complicated and polarizing feelings about M. Nights body of work is that, to speak positively about one of his projects tends to get interpreted as some notion of a “return to form”. I want to avoid such sentiments as I don’t think M. Night ever went out of favor for me, and I personally remain deeply appreciative of the fact that he refuses to cave to external pressures to become something that he is not. A not so popular opinion perhaps, but for as much as I enjoyed the film, Split almost went there for me. Which is why Glass remains one of my all time favorites, as it doubled down on what makes him who he is as a Director. Even with films like Old, a film that swings for the fences in ways that turned off the general audience, I still find much sustaining appreciation for the kind of stories he tells and the sort of emotinally laden and spiritually atune moments they can capture and evoke.
That is perhaps a lengthy caveat to say, Knock at the Cabin is both one of his most accessible works to date while also being true to form when it comes to his tendencies and his style. Along with being an extremely well structured film with near perfect pacing and a really sharp sense of focus, this is also a bonafide showcase for Dave Bautista. The whole cast is strong, but here M. Night proves his penchant for uncovering great performances from some unlikely places and giving performances a platform to demonstrate the full breadth of their talent.
Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of this film is the way M. Night employs such strong religious imagery. This is steeped in biblical language, breathing this visual text into a western society that has perhaps become unfamiliar with the essential beats of the Christian story and other religious expressions. This film, given its use of the apocalyptic genre, makes one of the strongest cases for how to read revelation responsibly, to borrow a phrase from biblical scholar Micheal Gorman. Responsibly means recontextualizing a letter that speaks to its world into our present day with an eye for both the present evils and an eternal hope. The film delves into such topics as religious struggle and religious doubt, faith, conviction, hope, and the way these virtues align with a true expression of the divine. And true to M. Nights approach, he doesnt parlay these spiritual concerns into some otherworldly space, rather he imagines what it is for heaven to invade earth, for a striking christoformity to meet a cruciform imagination within a real world context. M. Night pulls from the source material a keen eye for bigger questions relating to a world where both good and evil seem to coexist in constant tension, shaping how it is that we engage it from one direction or another. He takes the particulars of this families experience, ripe with pertinant and real oppressive realities, and uses this to turn our eyes outward towards the world and upwards towards the divine with a redemptive and restorative lens. A powerful reflection on revelatory truth and genuine apocalyptic vision, and how it is that these things give us a way to make sense of the challenges of existence and the darkness that does persist. Where it does, love and beauty and light still remain. We simply need to engage it as particpants and image bearers.
Delved into a new book called Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error by Dru Johnson. Thus far it has been a compelling look at how the world of the Biblical text understands knowledge and how that relates to different forms of knowing that we find in our world today. It starts by posing the following question:
“The Christian Scriptures could be theologically described as beginning and ending with an epistemological outlook. The first episode of humanity’s activity centers on the knowledge of good and evil. The final stage of humanity is pictured by Jeremiah as a universally prophetic and knowing society: “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord” (Jer 31:34). What happens to knowledge in between?”
It then goes on to establish the following aim,
” The goal of this book is to lay the groundwork for a biblical theology of knowledge–how knowledge is broached, described, and how error is rectified within the texts of the Protestant Christian canon. Essentially, this study is meant to be a pry-bar, a tool to open the lid on the neglected idea that Christian Scripture might be developing robust descriptions of knowing that can direct us today. Proper knowing as it occurs in the Scriptures means that there are better and worse ways to know.”
What Johnson underscores early on is the idea that knowing is not merely limited to pragmatic forms of knowledge relating to functional and material processes and realities. As he writes,
“As we follow the story and language of knowing and error, knowing looks more like a process than a mechanism that yields a product called knowledge.”
He provides two early examples from the Pentateuch: “YHWH wants for Abraham to “know for sure” (ידע תדע) that his promises to him will come true (Gen 15:13). At first glance, it appears that “Abram knows that YHWH’s promises are veracious” accurately reflects something about Abram’s knowledge according to the narrative. However, we will find that defining this scene in terms of propositions alone cannot reflect Abram’s knowledge sufficiently…
Adam comes to know that the woman is his proper mate and states his discernment as a matter of fact, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . .”7 But it was the man’s ability to see that this was his mate that is constitutive of his knowledge and we are interested in how that seeing is honed. Moreover, the object of knowing is often God himself and thus what is meant to be known still lies outside the perspective of the reader (e.g., Exod 29:46). What could it possibly mean, after all, that Israel could know YHWH as her God, or that the man and the woman knew that they were naked?8 These could mean many things, none of which would be entirely plain objects called “knowledge” to us.”
Here he locates knowing within covenant terms. “Even where “knowing that” is stated in the biblical texts, it is often stated in terms that are explicitly covenantal or resemble covenantal relationship… So “knowing that” is contingent upon knowing-in-covenant-relationship.”
Now, to be sure, this is not simply citing the sort of covenantal concerns that we find in reformed circles where knowing is attached to faith and is seen as something imputed through God’s regenerating work. What Johnson is getting at more closely is participationist theology, which is what i personally adhere to. It speaks to the idea that God has and is doing a work in the world, and that knowing directly relates to particpating in the reality of this work. What is true about God’s work becomes something we then intimately know and hope in through relationship.
To bring it back to 2 Corinthians 5:7, we walk by (faithfulness), and not by sight. The phrase not by sight is often used to denote some sense of blind “belief”, a purely pragmatic form of knowing, when in fact seen and faithfulness actually conote two different ways of knowing, one that is centered on participation in the new reality God’s work brings about in the world (the earthly tent of 2 corinthians 5) rather than mere knowledge of its claim. This is made obvious by verse 8 and 9, which move to attach faithfulness directly to matters of participation in the Kingdom of God (the eternal house of chapter 5).
As Johnoson writes, “The Scriptures appear most concerned that people know what it’s like to be a knower primarily as an obeyer of YHWH and Jesus respectively. Knowing appears as a skill, figuring out to whom we should listen, where we should look, and how we should understand what is being said… It seems that we need both the descriptive and prescriptive view of knowing. The Christian Scriptures give us both: the way knowing is supposed to work and how it actually works. Further, the Scriptures describe in detail how the attempt to know goes horrifically wrong.”
If you are interested in participationist theology, Michael Gorman penned one of the seminal works on the subject in The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement, or Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality
Film Journal 2023: Missing Directed by Nicholas Johnson and Will Merrick
There is a simple and satisfactory summation i could employ here to say, if you enjoyed searching you will likely enjoy Missing. However, part of what makes Missing a successful follow up to Searching, the Directors previous debut, is viewing the two films in concert with one another. Beyond the shared style and approach, both films telling their stories entirely through the employment of external screens and devices, Missing provides the filmmakers with an opportunity to build on what they did with Searching by exploring different techniques and ideas. This adds a dimension of fun and play to the natural exercise of following the clues along with the on screen characters (with different scripted clues being offered to us as viewers along the way) and putting the different pieces of the puzzle together. It helps this story to stand apart and be/do it’s own thing.
One suggestion- avoid the trailers if you can. Go into this cold and enjoy the whole experience without the spoilery plot points from the trailer lingering in your mind. That will help give the first half of the film far more mileage. That aside though, this is a solid sophomore effort that proves itself with its attention to detail, some solid casting, and strong pacing. There’s nothing too demanding here, but it earns the sentimentality and the necessary tension befitting a solid, low grade thriller.
Was just thinking about a trip Jen and I took back in 2008 from Winnipeg to California and back around through Wyoming and Montana, driving straight through the Arizona desert heat in our 2005 Ford Focus (which I’m still driving) without air conditioning. Oi.
Somewhat inspired by a book I read recently called the Power of Moments, my thoughts wandered to this trip after making myself a cup of tea from celestial tea. Its funny how all these years later I still find a simple tea bag inciting a very real feeling of nostalgia paired with vivid memories, and all because of a spontaneous decision to make a detour and visit the celestial tea factory.
It wasn’t just the tea. It is marked on either side by a trip to see the hotel from the shining
walking across the royal gorge
and picnicking in the garden of the gods
revelling in scoring a $1 dollar stay the previous night in a fancy downtown Denver hotel far beyond our means and pretending like we belonged with the other guests casually enjoying 9.p.m. free cookies and milk in our complimentary robes
and arriving at our final destination of the day- a bed and breakfast in Durango where the hot tub pictured below provided us with a view of one of the most fantastic sunsets we have ever experienced.
Film Journal 2023: Women Talking Directed by Sarah Polley
One of the most striking characteristics of Sarah Polley’s much praised adaptation of a similarly successful novel by Miriam Toews, a novel I have not read (just for context), is its narrowed scope. Based on my limited knowledge of the material I expected to find a historical epic. What I found instead is a studied and largely restrained portrait of a group of oppressed and abused women residing on a colony which is mostly contained to a spacious loft in a farmyard barn. This is about as intimate as it gets when it comes to storytelling in film, and much of the run time is given to sitting with this cast of women and listening to them converse and debate the pros and cons of leaving the men of the colony, staying and forgiving, or staying and fighting back- the three central options that lie in front of them.
These conversations become a way into the stories of these individual women, who themselves stand as a representation of a much larger cast of women who remain unseen beyond the confines of this loft. In fact, what makes this study so fascinating and powerful is the fact that all of the tension that does exist remains unseen and out of sight. We barely see the men, beyond a single young man sympathetic to their cause and willingly lending his services as a scribe and a reader. We only hear about them and experience the conflict through their dialogue. We also don’t see much in terms of potential conflict within the women either. For the most part what we find is a relatively unified group made up of different generations with slightly different perspectives and vantage points. This generational gap then becomes the visual means by which the film finds its thematic core, especially when it comes to one of its key interests- forgiveness.
What is forgivness. Should one forgive. What does it look like to forgive. These are questions that form the emotional and spiritual concern of this present point of crisis and decision, and these questions provide a powerful basis for exploring the relationship between parent and child and between the one and an inherent responsibility to the whole community. Coming to realize that none of them act alone and that no one indiviual decision can be made apart from a concern for the whole makes up the fabric of what becomes not just a story about revolution and change in a world where the womens voice has been silenced, but a powerful story about the role of faith and its relationship to hope and love. There is a moment in the film where we see this group of women, having fought through the pain and horror of the decision that lies in front of them, clapsing hands and reciting a familiar hymn. It’s one of the moments where we suddenly break away from the loft and see how the spirit of their conviction holds the power to enact very real change, and as the words of the song carry across the fields and into the far corners of the colony, it inspires us as viewers to believe and hope and love with them into a better reality.
And it should be noted, while this material is heavy stuff exploring dark realities, Polley gracefully writes these characters as ones who are not simply defined as the victim. The film us infused with beautiful moments of humor and joy and life all the same, reminding us of the privilege of simply getting to sit with these characters, not simply to listen but to know who they are in the fullness of their lives, their desires and their dreams.
Film Journal 2023: Infinity Pool Directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Is this officially continuing the eat the rich trend from 2022? In part, although I’m still mulling over the fact that the main character, played by Alexander Skarsgard is actually an impoverished writer who “married” into money. The characters that surround him and the vacation resort him and his wife travel to in order to find inspiration for his book however? Money.
Early on in the film we are given a portrait of this resort as being isolated from the world that exists outside its gates. Outside the gates is where the citizens of this city live. As long as the rich travellers ignore this world they can retain their bubble. It’s when these two worlds collide that this bubble threatens to burst. It is precisely this point of contact the Director, the younger of the Cronenbergs, is looking to examine and explore.
If you have seen Possessor you know his penchant for telling his story using strange and pychadelic visual sequences. This is a way of getting inside the heads of the characters, a way of pulling out the internal battles waging within so as to say something about it. We see much of this on display here, although I found this story to be more accessible and straight forward on that front, for better or for worse. One of the key interests here is the emphasis Cronenberg gives to that internal battle within, playing around with serious questions about the nature of man. Who are we truly when the veil is pulled back, and how does that relate to the controlling systems that surround us. What is it that our innate creature ultimately desires. Mileage might vary on how well he formulates these questions and affords them a resolution, or at least a solid platform on which to ponder them from. His distinct visual style I think will also isolate some and compell others. But I do think the ideas here are ambitious and worthwhile.
I will say that something here kept me at a bit of a distance. The power of Possessor was that it demanded a lot of processing and brain power to unpack. And the more I thought about it and dissected it the more compelling the film was. Given that this is slightly less demanding I find myself with less to process and less desire to linger with it and think about it further, which unsettled my sense of just how strong the film was as a whole. I would be interested to see how a rewatch might reformulate that, but one suspsiciton that I have towards that end is that I had a hard time connecting to Skarsgard’s character. Goth is great of course, but it is Skarsgard who is meant to carry the films thematic force. Part of it is that he is written as a sort of flat, one note persona. Someone whom we meet in the absence of inspiration, and as the story unfolds we end up sort of doubling down on this aspect of his persona. There just wasn’t a whole lot of range on display, leaving me somewhat at a distance.
Still enjoyable though, and worth watching if you are fan of the younger Cronenbergs work. Be forewarned- this gets more than a bit out there with its sensibilities and subject matter, so it definitely won’t be for everyone
Reading Journal 2023: The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search For Meaning by Jeremy Lent
Reading this book actually took me back to last year and delving in to The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber. Slight difference in focus, thesis and scope, but a definite shared concern for reimagining humanities history in light of the evidence and allowing that to shape how it is that we see our place in this world, or better yet, our place in relationship to it.
Lents interest, as the title suggests, is in exploring how it is that humans have arrived at the idea of a meaningful existence. This question, as he will go on to flesh out, has much importance when it comes to how it is that we exist meaningfully in this world. The ebb and flow of history certainly demonstrates the possibility of negative and positive potentials when it comes to the how. Thus Lent posits that it’s not only important to locate how humanity distinguishes itself as a functioning creature, but also how humanity remains connected to the larger world it exists within.
For Lent, the journey begins with overwriting popular histories of man in contest with nature with current theories regarding humanities complex relationship to its environment and to the human, socially bred systems that guide us. Here he borrows from Graeber in pushing back against assumptions which want to draw humanity’s history along linear lines from less civilized to civilized, or premodern to modern, or Neanderthals to intelligent species. Lent spends just as much time as Graeber in dismantling some of the prominent thinkers writing on a popular level, which includes the likes of Pinker and Dawkins. Not that these thinkers are entirely wrong or uninformed, simply that that they fundamentally misunderstand the evidence of history and science regarding how it is that humanity came to be and how early hominids held the very same markings of what we might call civilized society today.
If Graeber takes a big picture view, Lent dials things down concerning the question of what makes us human to something he describes as the patterning instinct, the key marker of our cognitive history, which is what distinguishes humanity from all other species. It is within these patterns that we find humanities penchant for both cooperation, communication, and perhaps most importantly metaphor/symbolism which help us make sense of reciprocal relationships around us. It is perhaps more true to say that we create meaning through our ability to both think and speak cooperatively it in proper relationship to our environment than it is to say that such meaning is sought.
Now, here is a point of disagreement I have with Lent, and it is a pretty strong one. There is a sense in which he appeals to metaphor to help us see how humans can be defined as human because of our need to think in necessary binaries- light and dark, good and evil. And yet as he unfolds the larger narrative of humanity’s mythic consciousness he caters to an all too common portrait of religious development and consciousness. While attempting to place religious thought as the natural outcome of our need for metaphor and symbolism in langauge and thought, he locates the problem with religion as a movement from polytheism to monotheism. His end goal is to uphold East and West as representing two different trajectories in this regard, with the West ultimately emerging as the colonizing force through its appeal to monotheism as a means of enacting binaries between us and them. Part of this movement then becomes a shift from humanity operating in relationship to nature (once upon a time seen to be either the resident of the gods or the gods themselves) to humanity operating within a split level world where nature is bad and the transcendent is good, be it by the divine images that reside in the heavens or by the later sciences that would come to define the worship of the enlightenment. There is actually a lot here that I share in terms of value, interest and concern. I do think there are problems inherent in the west and that the enlightenment has proved wanting, and I do think this has to do with no longer adhering to the simple value of living in relationship to our environment and the other. But I disagree with his analysis of religion and religious development, especially his heavy emphasis on christianity as one that upholds this split level view positing the spiritual body/kingdom in contest with the material world/self. It in fact pushes against such a view. He makes multiple references to christian texts for example that do not adhere to some of the better scholarship, and ironically falls into the very trappings he is looking to deconstruct by appealing to wrongly informed histories to locate a kind of linear movement from less enlightened to more enlightened.
The end result leaves him attempting to weave his thesis into concrete and practical assumptions concerning the truth of meaning in this world in ways that felt a bit dishonest and certainly unable to acknowledge it’s own appeal to irrationality. He wants to lay out meaning as created while also claiming the freedom to make multiple claims about meaning as given truths that should or must guide our actions. Its perhaps ultimately not the fact that he does this but rather that he doesn’t acknowledge these leaps in reason that felt most frustrating, especially when half the book is disguising itself as a wrongly placed critique of religion and religious development.
Lots still though to mull on, and overall offers a helpful push back on certain ways of thinking according to western paradigms and allegiances. I think one learning that really stuck out for me is how he unpacks the connection between our patterning instinct, honed as it is to find meaning in this world, and our being wired for metaphor and symbolism. It permeates everything, even if the langauge of the West has muddled it and polluted it, and reenchantment, or recovery of meaning, begins with a recovering the power of language and story as part of the essential human distinctive.
Reading Journal 2023: Legends and Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes byTravis Baldree
Just to set up my experience with this book. I first heard about it early last year when it started to show up in seemingly every think piece, podcast and online discourse. For a book that had seemingly muscled itself into these conversations though, it proved impossible fo find. It is what you might call an unknown “discovery’. A small book by an unknown author that explodes on to the scene via word of mouth. Unlike film, when a book experiences this phenomenon it means it sells out in a very short amount of time, and to print more generally takes a good while.
So here we are over 10 months later, the book finally getting a rerelease, this time with an added prequel attached at the end. The verdict? I get why it has been such a hit with a wide cross section of readers. It is high fantasy, but with a very grounded, down to earth and real world approach. Sure, the world might be populated with unfamiliar creatures such as elfs, dwarfs, orcs, gnomes, and weird spider like monsters called a scalvert queen. It even has a dire cat. But it also tells the simple story of one such Orc named Viv who, having tired of life as a constant adventurer lived by way of muscle and sword, desires to start afresh by relocating to a quiet, unassuming village and opening a coffee shop, a new drink she happened across while on one of her adventures.
The book is an easy, undemanding read (hence the low stakes), and for high fantasy avoids the complicated world building and details you sometimes find colouring the genre. This is the sort of book you can finish in a couple sittings, a feel good story meant to endear you to its characters and leave you with a smile befitting a well made latte. And I think it succeeds on this front. I won’t be surprised to see this made into a series or a film someday.
Reading Journal 2023: The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson
At one point Robinson muses about the challenges of being both an academic and a Christian. She describes how when people discover she is a Christian it tends to result in shock and confusion.
In truth, the identifying feature that is probably more shocking is the fact that she is a Calvinist. Imagine my disillusionment then when I found myself being won over by some of her arguments for entertaining a Calvinist perspective on the givenness of things, a title which is essentially captured through a series of reflections which attempt to bridge the gap between meaning and reality. Robinson demonstrates a knack for pulling out the strengths of the system while simultaneously challenging some of its most maligned and controversial positions. Just as there is such a thing called a generous orthodoxy, it appears a generous Calvinism could apply just as well. Here we find her engaging what is typically an exclusivist and heavily dogmatic religious expression by reimagining it as a celebration of the goodness of humanity and of Gods creation. She exchanges an emphasis on depravity for a willingness to locate Evil external to what is the fundamental and given value of the human and the created world. She allows her religious convictions to assume and to evoke definite polarities- light and dark, good and evil- within her discussions of reality. And she trades a view of the cross, mired as it is in Gods death wielding ways, for a view of God’s determined involvement in the restoration of this given reality in the light of a common grace and an equal love for all people and all things.
To be clear, The Givenness of Things is not shy about its religious interests, but the book is geared towards both religious and non-religious readers. She has an interest in engaging academic discussions and intellectual discourse, and we see this woven naturally, and almost in a linear fashion, through the sciences, the humanities, and philosophy. It’s no mistake that she begins the book with an essay titled “Humanism” and ends with chapter titled “Realism”. Inbetween she offers compelling and formative discussions that interpret her humanist concern through a greater sense of what reality in fact is, expanding our views and challenging our presuppositions as she goes. Thus the final chapter on realism is able to reinterpret reality in a way that appeals to something both reasoned and mysterious, certain but also allusive, something able to be known through the sciences but something that also holds the power to reveal, thus the givenness of thing both observed and experienced.
No, she didn’t quite convince me towards calvinism, but she definitely did compel me towards meditating on the profound nature of her ideas. For as disorienting as it was to read something so intelligent and aware alongside quotes of Jonathan Edwards, this is a book I would have no problem handing to my non religious friends, to my Calvinist and my non calvinist friends. There is little doubt in my mind that it could lead to some rich discussion.
The Stories of my Life 