My 2020 Film, Writing and Reading Challenge:
Travelling Around the World Through Film, Blog and Book

The Particulars:
International Film Challenge
I’ll be using the full list of Oscar submissions as my base (available here: https://www.screendaily.com/…/full-list…/5133396.article)

Beginning with a Country’s submission from this list, I’ll be doing research on films and Directors etc. from that Country, making a list of necessary and important films and viewing the coinciding projects.

For the reading challenge side of it, I’m hoping to pair books on the history of film and culture within these particular regions with the Country these films are concerned with.

I have no set number or timeline for how long to spend in a given Country, so I will see how far I get.

Integrated Writing and Reading Challenge
I define a film critic primarily as someone who writes/talks about film and who has a base of followers. These two distinctives are what separates a critic from a fan (or hobbiest, or lover, or whatever label best fits for you).

The other side of this is my personal definition of film “criticism”. Anyone who has feelings and thoughts about a film is engaging in criticism, and I think it is important to recognize that criticism at its root is not a negative term. It simply means to think about or assess a films qualities and distinctives.

I love to write and talk about film (criticism), and I engage with critics who have followers because they offer me a place to write and talk with others about film. The best critics I have found encourage a given community to think about the art and the craft of filmmaking in light of our experiences, and the best communities care about providing and sustaining a safe place to express these thoughts with one another

The ongoing challenge of film criticism for those who share a love of film as a critical medium is balancing awareness of the craft with our experience of a film. The danger of engaging film criticism within a functioning community is its penchant to categorize people, opinions and thoughts in terms of who is right or who is wrong. When this persists it creates insiders and outsiders (cliques). I see this happen with film critics. I also see it happen in film communities.

Sadly, in my own experience too often conversation about film gets boiled down to right and wrong, subjective versus objective, and when ones experiences differs from another’s, our default response becomes one of predetermined dismissiveness- I’m glad it worked for you, but it didn’t for me. These types of responses are good for protecting against unnecessary conflict, but they do little to alleviate the existence of insiders and outsiders, and dont help in our understanding of what film “criticism” actually is- conversation rather than opinion. And I am guilty of this same thing myself. Our experience of film should never be something we feel we need to protect or defend, rather it should be something that our mutual conversations look to shape.

The truth is, our awareness of the craft is ALWAYS subservient to our experience of the craft. All objective opinion is measured subjectively. This is the marriage we work within when we participate in the art of conversation together. To see film and film criticism any other way is dishonest and disingenuine, and worse yet can be dismissive and demeaning.

And yet often the pressure does exist within film communities to appear more objective than we are for the sake of being taken seriously in conversation with others. What this leads to though is elitism, always and consistently, and it, by default, provides fuel to the idea that there are insiders and outsiders within this systematized approach to what should be a communal exercise.

What makes film such an important art form is its social component, and the strength of its social component is found in the shared experience and the shared discussion in a way that is not discriminatory. An ability to converse on equal ground is key to our ability to engagement and likewise learn, whether we are a critic or a viewer. This means listening first and speaking second, with emphasis on the fact that conversation depends on this two way street.

In 2019, and as someone who cherishes film, I found myself confronted with the reality of these insider/outsider categorizations. The reality that so much of our social interaction (and sometimes all of it) comes from online forms compounds these categories, largely because they are able to persist in these spaces silently and at a detached distance. We arent responsible for the inclusion  and acceptance of others we cannot see, thus it becomes incredibly easy online to feel, rightly or wrongly, that you and your opinions belong and somehow are at the bottom of a perceived, figurative, and also very real at times social ladder. The sad part of the reality is for some, if not many, is that there is shame in admitting that we think or feel this way at all, especially when it comes to communities built around things we are passionate about.

In truth, within the context of online film communities these realities can easily turn thinking and writing about film into a socially driven fear and a challenge rather than a joy. Because film is such a passionate and personal medium, missing the nuance of social interaction is all too common in a virtual world predicated by quick wit, single sentence (lest it succumb to TLDR), story breaking, eye catching, popularized online vernacular. Like too much high art, praise too many blockbusters, write too long, too short, see films too late or too soon, don’t watch enough, watch too many, read the right stuff or the wrong stuff, be emotional or not emotional enough, have a hot take or a dumb take, taken together all of these things can hold significant sway in whether you feel you do or don’t belong in conversation with others and whether you are an insider or outsider in these online communities.

It is the nature of conversation as an art and writing as a form. The first belongs to everyone as a product of being a social creature. The other comes with the baggage of being a given and aquired talent and skill. The problem is that in physical social context we can find like minded individuals more easily. In the online world not all writing is considered equal, and yet writing (and the wit that accompanies it) is a singular and measured form. What follows then when this becomes the dominant form of relating to one another within film communities is the loss of one’s ability to converse on equal grounds as “people”. We are only as good as our ability to converse in written form.

This can be a nasty and awfully hard world to navigate at the best of times, particularly for an artistic medium where experience, and the sharing of those experiences, is such an integral facet of its expression. To be sheltered behind a keyboard means it is that much easier to disappear behind it as well. Write an unpopular opinion or say something too emotional or pen something in the wrong form and the wrong way and it cause you to feel isolated in the virtual eyes of others forever (when most of the time people arent aware this is happening). And if you arent witty or savvy enough or elegant enough to navigate out of these trappings it can feel very defeating and near impossible to avoid this feeling of isolation. It is a powerful force.

And theory and research seems to show that virtual isolation can be even more damaging than physical isolation primarily because it allows us to remain ignorant of its impact and to create the existence of this isolation in particular ways in our own heads that allows it to grow into monstrous forms.

And yes, every group will say that everyone belongs, but everyone who is a part of a community also knows how real the feeling and presence of that isolating social ladder is. There are always people at the top and people at the bottom, and when we translate this to film community and film discussion, what make this doubly destructive is that the medium is one that invites us into conversation, only to make us feel more isolated in response when we feel our online opinions dont measure up. It can feel like we’ve been mislead or duped into a false sense of hope and identity.

It is the challenge for those who experience this to persist in speaking and to find the motivation to keep writing about something that is meaningful to them even when they feel that their opinions dont matter, might be judged or wont be heard. And the reason to keep doing this is because we need this community, and we need to share our experiences with film with one another as part of what it means to be human. One way to ensure this doesnt happen at all is simply not to share and not to write at all, which would be more harmful.

As the world turns and physical social reaction around film becomes less and less common, there remains a desperate need to figure out how to make this online community work. One of the things I am trying to do this year is to rediscover my own voice in this context. I spent so much of 2019 trying to figure out how to balance hanging with the elite of the online film groups I am a part of, and I came to realize that is something I could be chasing after forever. It doesn’t help to make me feel like I belong. If anything it just reminds me of why I dont. So how do I respond? How do I still engage in these communities in a healthy and meaningful way?

First, knowing that it is important for me to feel that I am not writing simply for my own sake or in a vacuum (or in online form, a virtual vacuum), the only true response I can have that is within my control is to continue to commit to reading the work of others. If someone takes the time to write, pens a review, has some thoughts, regardless of who they are or where they are on this social ladder I take the time to read their work from start to finish and genuinely consider it worthwhile. No excuses.

Second, I decided to give far more time to writing this year in a way that best expresses my voice in an honest way. I am someone who is interested in narrative over character and story over performance. I appreciate all aspects of film, but the films that inspire me and the scenes that speak to me are the ones with strong narrative focus and a meaningful story. My hope is to focus back in on that aspect of film and to give more voice to the stories and narratives that stand out to me in 2020 rather than feeling the need to qualify those feelings with certain external polishes (giving lower star ratings, elevating weaknesses to something they aren’t, using certain emphasis) just so that I can feel I can participate in the discussion.

To coincide with this, I am also hoping to work into my reading challenge books on film technique and storytelling methods. It’s been a while since I’ve read one, and I think re-familiarizing myself with the nuts and bolts off narrative structure would be a helpful asset as I write more as well.

And one more thing to add as an aside…
Additional Reading Challenge
I have made a list of books to read that my favorite films are based on/were adapted from to include in my reading challenge for this year as well.

 

Happy New Years everyone. May it bring more great reads, watches and reflections for you all.

“They say that miracles happen out here.”

There is a beautiful moment in The Way, a 2010 film Directed by Emilio Estevez, where Tom (Martin Sheen), following the loss of his wife and son, makes a decision to complete a journey his late son only had a chance to start. Setting off with no training, few provisions and little in the way of purpose and direction, we see him decidedly and firmly exit the door, plant his feet, and start off in the wrong direction on the popular Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Only to recognize his need to correct course.

The Way of Jesus
In the third chapter of The Gospel of John, “John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ As I wrote in a previous blog in this space, as this passage foretells the Christmas Story what we find is a deep, contextualized concern for a discussion of “repentance.” According to Craig Keener, a Christian scholar and theologian, a common understanding of repentance in the ancient Greco-Roman world would have been a change of mind or matter of thought. In its Judeo-Christian usage, the idea of repentance signified rather a complete change in direction, which is more a matter of sight than thought. It is about the ways in which we see God, the world and ourselves.

Speaking to this same context, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 3 speaks about baptism through water, which in the ministry of john the Baptist is this matter of repentance. The writer of Matthew then contrasts this with an emphasis on another type of baptism- fire and spirit (verse 11). The use of fire and spirit seems to indicate two unique and complimentary aspects of Jesus’ ministry- one is salvific (spirit), the other sanctifying (refining). This is the direction John the Baptist desires his audience to turn towards, in the way of Christ’s transformative work.

What I love about this moment of course correction in the film is that it accents the fact that Tom has to come to terms with the idea  that he has no real idea what he is doing, and even less idea about where he is headed. This is what the darkness reminds us of, is our lack of control and our dependence on something bigger than ourselves. Here he is simply acting out of a moment of need and a simple prodding of his spirit to do something that feels necessary and important to healing and reconciliation regarding this disconnect that he feels between the life he once controlled and the life that sits outside of his control. And like the idea of repentance that we find in John the Baptist and the Gospels, the film uses the fact that Tom is an eye doctor to open up a necessary metaphor for this journey of learning “see God, the world and ourselves more clearly,” which in the Advent season begins with hope and is made real through the kind of faith that brings both joy and peace.

Before he embarks on this journey, in this moment of loss and grief we find Tom sitting in a Church attempting to reconcile what has happened with his idea of faith in something more hopeful and just. We hear the priest lean over and ask Tom if he would like to pray with him. Tom’s stark answer, which he accentuates later on in this journey, is both stark and also honest as a pure witness to his pain and grief, his feeling of being out of control. “What for,” he says, echoed later in his insistence that he is not a deeply religious man. And yet it is this unexpected spiritual quest that reforms this what for into a “what if” as he embarks on the Way. And this what if becomes the foundation for the possibility of hope and faith renewed in the midst of the darkness he carries.

We come to learn that there was a pre-existing strain in the relationship between him and his son, a difference in the way they view the world. He doesn’t understand his son, and his son remains exasperated about how short sighted his father’s view of the world is. And when Tom’s son declares his decision to get on a plane and see the world it leaves the two of them at both a figurative and geographical distance.

This pilgrimage is a way of bridging that distance, of coming to peace with both their broken relationship and his broken view of God, the world and himself. What he doesn’t expect and can’t foresee is the transformation that awaits him on The Way. which arrives more as a reformation than a reclamation. The old giving way to the new. This is what it means to see differently, to be transformed through repentance.

Peace and the Virtue of a True Pilgrim
On the fourth Sunday in advent we light a candle that represents Peace. We enter Advent in the HOPE (first candle) our FAITH will endure, and this faith is what allows us to find JOY in the darkest of places and PEACE in the promise of what awaits us on Christmas day. This is a peace that transcends our understanding and our experiences, peace that arrives as a gift and which invites us on this pilgrimage of our own.

One of the key questions of this film then is, “what makes a true pilgrim.” There is a pretty incredible scene in the middle of the film where we see Tom and the group of travellers he meets on The Way, all of them travelling this road with their own baggage in tow, pondering this question. Is a true pilgrim required to ask for more burdens and look for more suffering? Or is a pilgrim someone inspired to take this journey because of the suffering we already know? Or is a pilgrim simply one who embarks on The Way from wherever it is that we find ourselves, be that seekers, the sick, those looking for change and to grow, those looking for inspiration, or those dealing with grief and loss?

At the heart of this question lies an even deeper question. Are each of us then defined by the baggage we carry? This is unfortunately how we often approach the idea of faith. We live in constant comparison to others, and because of this we live under the judgment both of what we have done and what is being redeemed. Our stories define our worth. What The Way submits is a different way of seeing. As pilgrims we are not defined by our baggage, but by a promise of transformation. We are then judged not by what we have done or left undone, but by our need. And what we find in our places of need is the necessary gift of hope, faith, joy and peace. These are the transformative pieces that define us as people on The Way. When we judge ourselves we are left with unforgiveness, a lack of reconciliation and a hopeless notion precisely because we are forced to compare ourselves to the lives of others. When we allow ourselves to be judged by God, we find forgiveness, reconciliation and hope precisely because we no longer need to compare ourselves to the lives of others. This is the freedom that comes from being pilgrims on the way together, each submitting ourselves to our need for transformation.

These are the same questions that we ask when we follow Jesus on The Way. The truth is that the call of John the Baptist is to all with ears to hear and from wherever it is that we find ourselves and with however heavy or light or condemning our baggage is. Entering The Way is primarily about seeing in a different direction than the one we are currently on. It assumes that this is something we need, and it promises that this new way of seeing God, the world and ourselves will bring true transformation to even the darkest of places, even when we can only see what’s right in front of us. What matters is the direction we are walking in, not that we have arrived. Are we moving towards hope or away from it. Are we being defined by the present or by this declaration that we can live as transformed people.

For Tom, his change in direction brings him to the possibility of healing and reconciliation. Coming to the foot of the cross, he finds peace in the end once again within the walls of a church. It’s a beautiful and freeing moment where we see him finally fully broken and vulnerable, open to what The Way has to teach him as a forgiven, fully reconciled and hopeful child of God. And it is this moment that frees him to reconcile with his son at the ocean side by spreading his ashes at the final, declarative point of this journey. Not as a way of saying we arrived and been transformed, but as a way of saying we live in the promise of this transformation now even though we are still being made new every single day.

The Peace of Christmas
Christmas is about calling us to see the world differently, to see in a different direction than we currently are in the midst of the darkness. It is about moving towards the gradual illumination of the light in the darkness with whatever our baggage happens to be in tow. It is about finding hope, and choosing to hope in faith.

As Tom’s son says, “you don’t chose a life, you make one.” The foundation for this truth is that what gives us the desire and strength to live is hope. And hope, faith, joy and peace, all of the virtues that Advent represents, are gifts. This is what it is to celebrate the birth of Christ, to declare the gift of hope, faith, joy and peace that imposes itself even into the darkest of places. In Christ God entered into our experience and is walking The Way before us, ahead of us and with us every step of the way.

To help celebrate Christmas this year I chose a grouping of films to watch over the Advent season (6 in total), with each film coinciding with one of the virtues that Advent celebrates through the lighting of the candles. The first Sunday is hope, and the second Sunday is Faith. This past Sunday, for which I chose my favorite film of last year “If Beale Street Could Talk”, was Joy. With the emphasis that Advent places on darkness and light, where we arrive at joy in this seasonal and liturgical process is by way of the darkness that helps emphasize the slow and gradual illumination of the light.

I chose this film to represent JOY because of the way it approaches its narrative structure as a gradual and growing contrast of light and dark with the darkness giving emphasis to the light through intimate and personal cinematic process. In the very first scene we hear the words spoken from the novel on which this film is based, declaring “I hope no one has to look at someone they love through glass.” Love becomes the bearer of the light, which is an integral part of the films visual telling. The light comes in swaths and bursts in this story, often times sneaking through the darkest of places. It illuminates and uplifts, carrying the characters in this story forward into a uncertain future in which hope and defeat wage constant war.

Ths glass symbolizes the darkness. The darkness permeates this love story, but at the same time it helps to illuminate the films larger social commentary and context, the world into which love is ultimately expressed. The story of this central couple separated by the glass and bars of these prison walls informs the larger reality of the Black experience as a social reality, and the Black experience likewise informs their personal story.

What holds the light and dark in relationship to each other as informing entities is the image of this promised and expectant baby. The hopeful words that follow the films opening sentence are simply this- “We’re having a baby… don’t you worry.”

Structurally speaking, the film then moves to give context for the love story that gave life to this child first, and the tragic story that found this love story strained, challenged and separated by glass second.

At the heart of this love story is the challenge that finds the welcome of this baby into the world. Conceived into a world of hope and faith, the childs conception is marred by the darkness of their circumstance. A strained situation reflective of a broken world where the mention near the beginning of a longed for family and marriage, this once hoped for future, gives way to the reality of the prison walls, a burdened and impoverished Black community, alienation and judgement, and vast feelings of uncertainty. In some ways it’s not unlike the story of Mary, who found herself stigmatized and equally burdened by outside pressures as the baby she bears sits in direct contrast to the darkness that surrounds her in the Christmas narrative.

There is a powerful exchange that happens between the two families that becomes framed by two strong sentiments- That the child “was born of sin,” but also that “my” child will be forgiven… even now locked up in some dungeon. “only the love of God will get him out.” This is followed up by the statement “what difference does it make how it gets here, this is still your (grand) child.” This statement speaks to the baby, but even more directly to their judgment and acceptance of the couple, their grown children.

These two statements positioned together evoke the present darkness and the hope of an illuminating light. The hoped for family and marriage in this film symbolizes what is a lost hope. As they say in the end of the film, “We still aren’t married. After all that’s happened, neither of us cares what that means.” For this couple, they know the darkness that has imposed itself on them. In the scene that opens the film, she is the one telling him to not worry. Later on, following a sequence in which their hopes feel all but lost, we hear her quietly speak the words “Lord have mercy” and him being the one to now encourage her and tell her not to worry.

This becomes a pivotal point in the film in which hopelessness then leads to this ultimate picture of hopefulness, the arrival of this expectant child bursting into the world in a grand display of light. It’s an incredible moment, and I think it encapsulates what the joy of Christmas is all about. Into the darkest of places the Christ Child arrives, and in this Child we find the promise of what feels like a still uncertain future. That’s what we hold onto, and that is where we are free to reclaim the joy that this season offers. Not that things will be made right in the here and now or that our problems will be solved. The film brilliantly leaves the idea of him getting out of prison and them getting married and how long they will remain separated as ambiguous. We arent given this information. What we do get to see though is a joy reclaimed through the promise of this child. As she says in the end, “we have the life we have been given, and by (this life) our children can be free.

This is what it means to be a Christian. We are children of God made free to live into and towards the promise of a redeemed and just world. By recognizing the darkness we can then see the light. We can have faith that we are not alone because love alone remains stronger than the darkness. This promise is written all over the film, this sense of knowing what this love is. We see it when she says, “even though he was turned away laughing, he was still holding my hand.” Or when the best friend breaks down seeing their love and says, “I ain’t got nothing like that.” And it’s a love that is meant to emanate outwards in both directions, from God and family to them, and from them to their child and the world.

Its a love that breaks through with the call to “not be afraid” and to lift up our head. And this lifting up comes to fruition in the films final scene where a young boy draws and writes a hopeful picture of their family together and calls them to lift their heads in prayer towards the light once again. This is pure and true joy expressed in an unshakeable and eternal fashion.

The beauty in this film uncovers the darkness, but it also exposes us to the light. The way it captures their relationship, born from their own Beale Street setting (which is symbolic for the darkness of the larger social reality they live in) and one marred by the darkness of their experience, illuminates with the joy of finding moments of dancing and holding and loving in its midst. They have joy because they know they are not alone. They have joy because the judgment that comes in the beginning of the film by both family and society gives way to a love that calls them out of the darkness and sets them free to live towards a greater and redeemed reality, letting them know they arent forgotten, that they are forgiven, that they are loved and that they are not alone. A true picture of Christmas indeed.

For my personalized Liturgy Watchlist I chose a selection of films that I feel reflect the different virtues of the Advent season. Each lit candle symbolizes one of the virtues represented over the four Sundays of Advent, culminating in the Christ Candle as the true and full expression of these virtues embodied in the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day services.

As we move through a time of waiting and anticipating in Advent, each of these virtues brings us closer, with an increasing realization of the lights growing illumination, to the celebration of Christ as the light of the world. With each celebrated and recognized virtue the light grows stronger in the expectant arrival of the Christ Child. Through this journey we find JOY and PEACE as we come to reflect on what it means to HOPE in FAITH, a journey that is as interested in the darkness as it is the light. And as I reflected on in my initial post (see:
https://findingmeatfortysite.wordpress.com/2019/12/14/liturgical-watchlist-advent-in-film/), faith emerges as the most important virtue in this exercise. Faith is what endures when hope feels all but lost. Without faith in something we remain hopeless, and the truth of what faith is AS a virtue, which is equally so for each of the virtues that we encounter in the season of Advent, is that it arrives as a gift not an acquisition of merit.

HUGO AND THE VIRTUE OF FAITH
Hugo, a 2010 dramatized work by famed Director Martin Scorsese, is intimately interested in this question of merit. It follows a young, now orphaned boy as he finds himself holed up in the confines and hidden mazework of the machinated clocks that help document the time and function of a Paris train station and keep everything moving and on schedule (working like clockwork). Invisible to the public eye, Hugo observes the daily routines and functions of humanity from afar, evoking in him an existential query regarding questions of purpose and meaning, driven primarily around solving this perpetuating mystery around his fathers passing and this odd creation he left behind. At one point we see Hugo gazing over the expansive Paris landscape and wondering about the ways in which this seemingly intricate system of machinated function imposes itself on these greater and evasive ideas of purpose and meaning. Otherwise, he seems to ruminate, where does someone like him fit in this vast world?

This is a boy who knows and has experienced darkness, something we come to know has touched each character in the film in their own way- in war, loss, struggle, unforgiveness. From Hugo’s unique vantage point, Scorsese is able to give us glimpses of what this hopeful young boy sees, inspired not by the mindless routine of peoples coming and going (again, like clockwork) but instead by an intimate awareness of the smaller “human” moments that seem to disrupt and calm its flow.

Which is precisely what Hugo becomes over the course of this film, a disruption of the routine. An imposition into the organized chaos of life.

Which is precisely what the darkness is imagined to be as well. A disrupter. Only over the course of the film what we come to realize is that what the darkness disrupts is our sense of self reliance, the very thing that opens us up to this desperate and innately driven need of FAITH as the thing that can reorient us towards the light when things feel largely aimless, lost and out of our control. The same faith that can then shine a light into the world at large.

What permeates this discussion of faith is a reoccurring theme of brokenness. A broken situation leads to this broken creation that leads to and awareness of and feelings around Hugo’s own brokenness and the brokenness of others, including the shop owner that he comes into contact with over the course of this film. Interestingly, what initially unfolds within this relationship between Hugo and the shop owner is this idea of debts incurred and debts paid, a matter of merit. This is what the darkness submits us towards and enslaves us to. And yet it is by entering into this relationship and uncovering its mystery that true freedom, redemption and purpose is found. And the beauty of this picture, imagined in this grand intertwining of creator and artist, young boy and family lost and family gained, is that it is in our brokenness that we are being made whole.

This is what the light does. This is what Christmas celebrates. As we stand looking out over the world with our own existential questions and our own awareness of the darkness in mind, we are able to frame (or reframe) our place in the world not according to our weakness or our strength, but according to the idea that in our weakness we are a part of a grander story.

It’s no secret that Scorsese wrote Hugo with an understanding of his own life as an artist, and what he seems to be reflecting on here is the idea that in art, in our finite creations, hope and faith in something bigger than ourselves and our own brokenness is being expressed. Something with eternal and life shaping, or light shaping, power.

In Advent we recognize this power in a God who chose to enter into the human story rather than stand above or removed from it. The God-Human story is one built on our relationship to the one who gives us life and the world into which His light persists. God created, and called us to participate according to our own creative intuitions, each according to our experiences, stories and inspirations. What breathes life into these creations though is the light that guides it, forms it, shapes it and gifts it with a necessary and enduring faith. And it is towards the light that the darkness points.

FAITH AS WAITING AND ANTICIPATING
As we await the coming Christ Child over the Advent season, the second candle awakens us to the reality that Christ is the light of the world, the one in whom we find our purpose. Christ is the one whom shines in the darkness and that the darkness hopes for in faithful precision. Christ is the one to whom we find healing and worth in our most broken of places. Christ is the true gift of faith.

As Christ awakens us to the darkness, may He also gift us with the faith that endures as we continue to reorient ourselves towards the hoped for light.

I was inspired by a recent podcast episode from Think Christian to think about film in a Liturgical sense. Growing into a liturgical environment in my later and most recent years, Liturgy is something I have grown to challenge and cherish as it has helped to inform my relationship with God. This episode about faith, liturgy and film inspired me to be intentional about marrying my love of film with my love of God by way of liturgy, beginning with the Advent season.

I had been writing a piece on this hopeful intention for this blogspace and it ended up getting published here: feel free to read this is you desire to know more about this process on my end, where it is coming from and where I hope it leads. 🙂

https://www.reelworldtheology.com/liturgy-watchlist-advent/

Matthew 3:1-12 English Standard Version (ESV)

John the Baptist Prepares the Way

3 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”^[a] 3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,

⁴ Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

 
ADVENT REFLECTION
Theologian and scholar Craig Keener suggests that, in order to truly understand John the Baptist, we must see him in the light of the prophets. In a world where the prophetic ministry had appeared to cease, Matthew 3:3 sees John as a sign of its expected fulfillment (Isaiah and Malachi).  The description of John as one who “came preaching in the wilderness of Judea” (vs 1) wearing a “garment of camel’s hair” (vs 4) evokes Elijah and the Exodus story, expressing the hope they, as children of Abraham, held for Elijah’s return and the promise of a new Exodus.

The audience in this passage are the children of Abraham (verse 7). The warning is for the presumptions they have regarding the nature of John’s baptism and their salvation. They expected John to be a sign of their coming salvation in an external sense. What they did not expect was the call for individual repentance.

According to Keener, a common understanding of repentance in the ancient Greco-Roman world would have been a change of mind or matter of thought. In the Judeo-Christian usage, repentance signified a complete change in direction, which is a matter of seeing. Contrasted with baptism through water in Matthew 3, which in John’s ministry is a matter of repentance, we find an emphasis on another type of baptism- fire and spirit (verse 11). The use of fire and spirit seems to indicate two unique and complimentary aspects of Jesus’ ministry- one is salvific (spirit), the other sanctifying (refining). This is the direction John desires his audience to turn towards, in the way of Christ.

So if John’s baptism desires to point us in the direction of Jesus, Jesus’ baptism is then God’s actual saving (purifying, refining) work. This is where John’s own prophetic voice in Matthew 3 begins to take root as an expression of renewed expectation through Jesus. For the children of Abraham, God was expected to establish His Kingdom in the world for their sake. John reforms their expectation by pointing them towards Jesus as the full expression of this kingdom building, which is refining us for the sake of the world.

Advent is a time of waiting and expectation as we anticipate Jesus. In this time of waiting, here are two worthwhile questions to consider. Where do our expectations need to be reformed, and how do our lives need to be refined?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Christmas is often seen as a time to stop, reflect and reorient ourselves from a life centered towards ourselves to a life centered on God and others. A breaking through of our routine. Liturgically speaking, it is the start of the Christian calendar, the beginning of that long road to being shaped towards this end.

But what if we saw Thanksgiving as the grounds on which we anticipate this “breaking through.”

THE GREATEST OF VIRTUES 
Faith, hope, and love are often seen, in the Christian view, as the greatest of virtues. They are what remain when all else is stripped away.

I looked up a couple definitions of virtue:
1. “Attitudes,and good habits that govern one’s actions, passions, and conduct according to reason; and are acquired by human effort.”

Sadly, it has been a while since I’ve visited this space. With this being the end of a decade, I have been dedicating most of my time to working through a lengthy watchlist of films from the last decade, with the hope of eventually putting together a definitive top list of the decade this coming December.

Which has been an enriching and enjoyable exercise to say the least. But it has also limited my time available to read and write.

What inspired me to write again was a recent message given by Pastor and Theologian Greg Boyd. What he spoke on is something I have been wrestling with over the last couple of years, which is the question, what does it mean to actually believe in something. I mean, to really believe. Or further towards his concern, what is the difference between believing and living in a truth.

 

CAUGHT IN THE PROCESS OF DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION
I have recounted in this space a few times my personal journey with the idea of faith as both (to borrow a couple overused terms) a deconstructive and reconconstrive process, focused at once on what it was I could no longer believe in, and what I it was I was choosing to believe on. Which is a tricky distinction to make as a Christian, especially given how much power the word “belief” holds over doctrine, practice and theology, certainly as it relates to the marriage of propositional (believing in) and internalized (living in) forms. It can be damaging and confusing to say the least.

In this particular message from Boyd, he imagines belief as a “sight”, and wonders (as a strongly anabaptist leaning thinker for what that’s worth) if there is an important distinction, particularly for those of us who have gone through a deconstruction and reconstruction process, between what it means to look at something from the outside and to see something from the inside.

FALLING IN LOVE: THE NATURE OF THE SUBJECTIVELY OBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE
He uses the example of falling in love to explain this. For modern, Western thinkers, it is easy to look at a word like love and to describe it primarily as a scientific exercise using concrete and largely de-mystifying terms. All of which can be seen as “true” by nature of looking at something objectively and from a distance.

But what lovers know by default is that these terms cannot and do not accurately describe what we experience from the inside of falling in love. As Boyd suggests, no amount of “looking at” will ever be able to get you to “look along”, a sentiment he borrows from the richness of C.S. Lewis’ own thought process when it comes to understanding the nature of belief.

SCIENCE AND FAITH: SHARED FORMS WITH DIFFERING OBJECTIVES
Along with this recent message from Boyd, I also happened upon a debate between Marcelo Gleiser and Stacy Tasoncos on the marriage of science and faith over the last couple of days. One an agnostic, the other a Catholic convert from agnosticism, but both scientists, they professed a shared commitment to the idea of the great mystery or the pursuit of the unknown. Science, by nature of doing what it does, deals with what we do not know. Knowledge in the form of absolutes, in this view, ceases to be science and veers towards dogma or “scientism” (a worldview). Religion likewise embraces knowledge as that which we do not know fully, and this sense both religion and science share a similar foundation in which truth is that which we strive for rather than expect to attain.

Where these two forms of thinking do deviate though, which both the debate and Boyd uncover, is in the shift from belief in an idea to a focus on living in a specific truth. This is where Boyd’s distinction applies most directly. Science is dedicated to the consistent process of challenging and reforming our belief in a working theory. Religion is ultimately concerned not with the truth that we see looking at something from the outside, but how this reforming translates into a living, breathing truth.

To quote Boyd, “We can believe all the truth in the world, but belief is the active reality of living something as true.”

THE POWER OF THE MENTAL NARRATIVE
And here is why Boyd considers this to be significant. Because we all live in what he refers to as “a mental narrative”, which in simple terms is the way we subconsciously interpret the world around us. And the thing that he points out about this mental narrative is that it is conditioned, not chosen. As a world view, or a means of viewing the world, it is conditioned based on how and where we live. We don’t choose it, it chooses us by nature of us living inside of it. And by nature of this living, breathing, experiential belief of the way that the world is, it conditions what it is that we put our faith (trust) in on a daily basis.

So a couple of ideas to pull from this:

1. Science, by nature of what it is and does, is not a worldview. It offers observations about the world in which we live for the purpose of pursuing and testing that which is not known. But scientists, as all people do, live according to “a” worldview, a function of faith in a given, shared and accepted reality by which truth can be governed.

2. Religion, by nature, is a function of “a particular” worldview, and the religious, as all people do, live according to a particular worldview which is a function of faith in a given, shared and accepted reality by which truth can be governed.

3. Where we find a shared function (the uncovering and pursuit of the mysteries and the unknown), the two have differing purposes. If science is interested in asking the questions, religion is fundamentally interested in how our conditioning shapes the ways in which we live with these questions in a religious worldview.

And as Boyd argues, to be conditioned by a belief (or any belief), we need to be inside it (the worldview that governs it) in order to be conditioned by it.

OBJECTIVELY UNOBJECTIVE
What complicates this in Western society is that, we have grown a tendency to believe that it is possible to live above our beliefs, that we can be an objectively objective people, or rationalizing rational creatures. The problem that Boyd points out though is, “it’s not your conscious beliefs that determine how you believe or how you live, it is your unconscious beliefs.” It is the stuff that we don’t even think about, the patterns that shape our actions in the day to day, the things we take for granted, that matter most, not necessarily what we know objectively.

Looking at the verse from Romans 12 that reads,

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

Boyd argues that the word “conform and “transform” are words that essentially mean seeing “alongside of” or “on the inside of. They call towards a pattern of living. They indicate “a fundamental structure that holds things together.” And the only way to truly discern the will of God is to be living in this pattern. But what is interesting about the word “renewal” here is that it begins to uncover a relationship between what is conditioned and what is choice. All of these things- conform, transformed, discern, are things that happen to us based on what we are being conditioned by. These are not things we gain on our own. They are given to us and we are given to them. But the notion of renewal calls forth this idea of these things being made new over, and over and over again. It suggests a daily function, which indicates the presence of a choice. Once we recognize that our mental narrative is something that has been conditioned, we can recognize the role that faith plays in being reconditioned, or renewed, by placing ourselves where we can be shaped by a particular experience of the world and a particular pattern of living. This is where we find the idea of spiritual discipline and formation. And where we place ourselves is an active choice. 

So what does it look like to be renewed according to the “mind”, that shared construct that exists for both religion and science? Boyd argues that this comes down to the idea of the “sanctified imagination”.

THE SANCTIFIED IMAGINATION
Let’s go back to the example of falling in love. When we fall in love, we are experiencing that from the inside. We are living it. It is an involuntary action that drives us to do (some very stupid things).

In the movie Tolkien, one of the most powerful scenes in the film is when Edith and Tolkien are eating together, and we see Edith challenge Tolkien on his love of words by suggesting that, words only gain their meaning by nature of what we attach them to. Love, by nature, gains its meaning not by recital or definition, but by experiencing it as meaningful. By living in it and seeing it from the inside as more than just an objective reality to be pragmatically demystified.

But there is a definitive connection between living in and our imagining of, and this connection is called faith. Once we begin looking at things from what we imagine something to be (faith), that is when we begin living it from the inside. That is when something becomes accepted. And as Boyd says, when it comes to the idea of the “sanctified imagination”, the idea of being renewed to know what is good and perfect,  it’s not what we know that changes us. Information looks at a subject. It is what we imagine this to be in our life that changes us. And in religious thought, we rest in a worldview that imagines the result of love long before it is actualized. This is what differentiates the product of love as a chemical reaction, and the purpose of love as an imagined reality. This is what differentiates the condition and the choice. Once we imagine what love is, we can then become conditioned by it in a new way. And when it comes to this particular worldview, this god given love conditions us towards the self giving, sacrificial, justice serving, restorative, resurrection narrative that it invites us to imagine.

HOW I HOPE TO BE RENEWED AND RECONDITIONED THIS SUMMER
So why did all of this inspire me to write? It might be because of the long winter we just experienced and lived in. This and other factors took a toll on my own mental conditioning over the last few months. And in my life long battle with depression and anxiety, these phases of my life tend to exasperate the deconstruction process more than the reconstructing effort.

But its precisely at times like these that I need to pattern myself again around this idea of living in a new narrative. Summer is on the horizon.

When I walked away from my faith, I was convinced I was divorcing myself from an oppressive pattern of indoctrination, and freeing myself to think and live objectively, towards a greater truth and pursuit of knowledge. What pressed back on me, and HARD, was the fact that, in this view, I had traded one pattern of indoctrination for another. I was simply placing myself within a different worldview and accepting a particular pattern of conditioning. Only, I found that I was now detached from the imaginative process, something that ultimately led me into even more deep rooted depression and anxiety. Which is where I find myself retreating to when I revisit these times of persistent cynicism and oppressive feelings.

What helps me in times like these is writing of course. And immersing myself in particular types of narratives. Getting back into more hopeful stories that recondition or renew my faith into more hopeful outcomes. And re-familiarizing myself with the Gospel story as one that is intended to liberate me from oppression, not indoctrinate me towards it. Which is what I hope to do over the coming summer months. I am lucky enough as a school bus driver to have this sort of automatic sabbatical. And I am looking forward to some dedicated reads, travel (Toronto and Boston), meeting some new friends (from my online movie discussion group), helping out with some youth programs, and enjoying the summer days and movies.

My prayer would be for you to be able to find the same, no matter your schedule and your routine. That grace would afford you a chance to recondition and renew where ever you find yourself.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰ The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. (Luke 2:39-40)

My word for this year (see my ROSEBUD resolution challenge in this space) is Perspective. Thinking about lost perspective. Gaining perspective. Changing perspective.

If you are someone who engages with the liturgy of the Church calendar, you will know that following the Advent of the Christmas season, we celebrate the 12 days of Epiphany, beginning on December 25th and ending on January 6th. This celebrates the in-betweeness of Christ’s birth, the culmination of our waiting during Advent, and those who personally discover and encounter the Christ child.

In the liturgical sense epiphany is about the “manifestation” of God into the world. Christ being declared as God incarnate. In the popular sense of the word it also carries the meaning of a revelation or a sudden burst of knowledge. God being made known through the coming of the Christ child. To encounter Christ is to experience the ultimate shift in perspective. The sort of shift in perspective that looks to turn our world, my world, upside down.

At my Church this past Sunday we talked about the time after Epiphany. It is known as the Ordinary time. A time when we begin to settle in and gain perspective. A time when we begin that slow walk with Christ from baby to boy to the ministry of the Cross that awaits us at the end of this long and winding road of seeing Christ manifest Himself in the everyday, ordinary routine of life.

A time when those resolutions have a chance to sink in and take root.

We reflected on Christ as child become boy last Sunday. We engaged in the imaginative process of what it would have been like for that boy to grow into a man. The years that scripture remains quiet on. And we settled in on that phrase, a phrase which is repeated twice in 2:40, and 2:52- the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him, with one small caveat. In verse 52 it adds and Jesus increased in divine “and” human favor. 

If I am to see this ordinary time as the slow walk with Christ, a chance for Jesus to change my perspective, the idea of “growth” becomes central. Not simply physical growth, as in the boy becomes man, but growth in wisdom or knowledge. And not simply knowledge of this world, but knowledge of Christ as the son of God. This is what the Epiphany sets up after all, this slow, breaking through of God into the ordinary. This is what this notion of “the favor of God” is about- increasing in our knowledge that we are known by God.

The way we grow I am certain will look different from one person to the next. But in the spirit of imitating Christ, I was able to pull three things from the context of this child become boy in Luke chapter 2 that help me see God’s favor increase in my own life.

1. It begins at home- This is where the ordinary life is lived out. This is where we imagine the boy growing in favor, in Galilee, in Nazareth. Christmas is about that sudden burst of knowledge in all the magic and wonder of the season. But what Epiphany prepares us for is the slow, gradual manifestation of God’s favor being poured out in the ordinary of the everyday. In the homes that we have built out of which we do these things like family and work and play.

2.  It is about a continued liturgy- Advent is the start of a new Church Calendar. It is about fresh beginnings. Coming back to the story of God that is being made known in our lives and our world. Re-centering ourselves on the narrative to which Epiphany welcomes us into, to be participant in. This is where we find Jesus growing, is not simply in the everyday, ordinary of home life, but in their engagement with the liturgy of their faithful tradition as it says “every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover” (2:41). It’s a reminder that our year is just beginning. The story of God is just beginning to unfold. The wonder of Christmas is still being made manifest in the everyday, ordinary world. And if we are to see favor, the best place to find it is by entering into this story with fresh eyes.

3. “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” If it begins at home and participates in the liturgy, the other defining aspect of this child become boy story in Luke is surrounding ourselves with others whom can help shape our perspective. And what marks these others in our lives are those opportunities we gain from listening and asking questions. Of allowing others to teach us. When we listen, when we ask, when we are willing to be taught, this is where we grow. And what’s so significant about this last point is that this is where that added phrase “in divine AND human favor” gains force. Making time for the others in our life is where Jesus insists he “must be”. And in the context and understanding of the word favor this carries a dual force. In relationship we grow in knowledge of the other and others can come to know us. We gain the opportunity to know and be known, and on those terms increase in the favor that can reveal to us the ways in which the divine broke through into the humanity of our world. This is the story, after all, that our liturgy is telling. This is the epiphany that we are carrying forth into the ordinary of our everyday.

God has come. God is with us. God is growing us in favor. This is my prayer for my everday, ordinary life, that in this favor God will help me to see where I have lost perspective, where I need to gain perspective and that I would have the courage to let him shift and change my perspective in both divine and human favor.

“It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.” 
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Poetry.
Poetry in motion.

This is how I would describe If Beale Street Could Talk

One could argue that the cries for acceptance, healing and freedom run deeper in Jenkin’s previous, Oscar winning Moonlight, but the dance of these same longings colors the surface of If Beale Street Could Talk in a way that leaves more room for him to revel in and play with the details.

And the details are gorgeously realized. The light. The use of colors to heighten and contrast different emotions.

It’s the colors in fact that form the movement of the narrative, sometimes illuminating a moment captured in time by creating an ethereal and angelic glow, while in others calling us back towards a moment now seemingly lost in time as the color fades into or settles into the background. This is the movement that opens the film, a glorious burst of color that settles in on the image of that glass wall which separates Tish and Alonzo, a working symbol of all the things that can separate us from capturing the beauty of a moment.

The Beauty of A Human Moment
I know it’s not appropriate to measure one film against another, but the whole time I was watching this my mind kept going back to my experience of Roma, another Oscar hopeful that holds similar themes. Both are exceptional works of cinematography. Both films are also anchored thematically by a concern for illuminating culture and giving us a picture of the oppressed. They both hinge on a scene of conception (or in the case of If Beale Street Could Talk, a series of scenes that set the stage for the conception), and both hinge on a birthing scene. Most importantly, both films are equally interested in the question, do you want this child? A question that is framed against the backdrop of a world filled with oppression, racism, culture, personal hurt and poverty. This is the world they are bringing this child into and the knowledge that continues to haunt them.

Two different culture, two different worlds but two similarly interested films in working with the nature of this divide.

And yet, where Director Alfonso Cuarón keeps the divided world of his film sharply in focus with his use of slow, panning shots and detailed setting, Jenkins illuminates a world that is also beautiful. A world in which human connection can burst through the dimmed colors of that distant reality at any moment. The tenderness of the conception, the beauty of the birth scene, the slow dance of the central characters romance and imagination, the subtle importance of the acceptance they find in family. These things underlined for me what was missing in Roma- that human connection.

The backdrop, the music, the way the camera is able to hide and conceal and reveal all in a single scene. The way it layers the romance in shots of perspective. The way it follows the baby out of the water in a symbolic burst of light. Where I felt the cinematography overwhelmed the humanity in Roma, here it accents the beauty of these moments, giving us room as viewers to not only immerse ourselves in the world of culture and division, but to revel in that sense of longing that is so pervasive throughout this story in way that helps us see and experience a journey, a movement.

The film is not absent of the despair and struggle and everyday monotony that is so prominent in Roma. There is division and there is the pain of an isolated and oppressed culture. There is the corrupted image of a street that holds in its stone promenades the story of a divided Country. This is the one side of that glass wall. But it doesn’t want to leave us there. It allows the characters to bridge the coldness and the distance in order to give us that sense of closeness, intimacy, warmth and love that its centrals characters, and we if we are honest, so desperately long for.

It shows the two sides of this world, one their given reality and the second their hopeful reality. And sometimes hard work, the hopeful work is required to capture the notes of the second.

It’s a bit of a lengthy quote that I did my best to condense, but I really like how author DeRay McKesson puts it in his book “On The Other Side of Freedom: The Case For Hope”, a book he wrote about and for the given reality of African Americans in this Country:

“Faith is the belief that certain outcomes will happen and hope the belief that certain outcomes can happen…. Faith is rooted in certainty, hope is rooted in possibility- they both require their own different kinds of work. That faith is rooted in certainty does not mean that it never wavers… (but) the work at hand is hope-work… the absence of hope, not its presence, is a burden for people of color… I think faith is actually the burden that people have misnamed as theburden of hope… when my faith waivers, my hope carries me through.

Freedom is not only the absence of oppression, but is also the presence of justice and joy. We are fighting to bring about a world that we have not seen before. We have never seen a world of equity, justice and joy. We are trying to create something altogether new. And it is impossible to create something new in the absence of hope.

We have a hope rooted in a belief that as sure as hands have made the buildings that dominate the skylines of our cities, hands have made the institutions, practices, and customs that perpetuate racism and injustice that permeate those same cities. What is made by human hands requires maintainance. Buildings can be torn down and built over. Parking lots can become parks and vice versa. Institutions can evolve, change, or be dismantled.

Hope is the belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays. Hope is not magic. Hope is work. Let’s get to work.
– Deray Mckesson

The Hopeful Work
“From my chair, I looked out my window, over these dreadful streets. 
The baby asked,
‘Is there not one righteous among them?” 
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

The characters in this story, all bound by their current reality in one form or another, are at this hopeful work. Bound to their reality but also desperate to hold on to the belief that tomorrow can be, and will be better.

Like the gaze of those eyes that once held them so firmly together in the ability to know and be known in a difficult world, now drifting through the course of this film against the confines of that glass wall. The way it culminates in these eyes meeting once again.

Like the differing experiences of faith in God that culminates in the hope of that final scene- hands held, hearts open, eyes now shifting towards the illuminating sense of that fresh glimpse of a new burst of color that now occupies their space with them.

Or the way it takes the hopelessness of this journey, the moments now lost in time, and finds them again anew in unexpected ways and unexpected places. The subtlety of dancing through the streets to the slow and winding rhythms of the films glorious soundtrack. The slow curve of the absolutely wonderful Kiki Lane’s smile forming out of the sadness.

A Street That Paves The Way Forward
This is a truly beautiful film framed by closeness, intimacy, warmth and love. But most of all framed by its ability to capture those human moments, both lost and in time. The image of that conception and the birth taken together is what bridges both sides of this mirror. It is the picture through which the human moment is allowed to burst through the faded colors of their past. And it is a reminder of the power of the human moment to create something beautiful in its midst. A street that paves the way forward towards hope.

“I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.” 
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk