I lift my eyes to the mountains. 
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
Psalm 121:1-5

The summer series at our Church is fittingly centred on the the idea of a pilgrimage. We are reading together through Psalms 120-134, and the invitation is not simply to read them but to go on a “journey” with them. To even utilize some ancient practices in scripture reading. The invitation is to follow together through what is known as the Song of Ascents, to allow them to evoke a sense of forward movement and growth. To capture the idea that as we read we are actively moving upwards in order to gain a bigger and better picture of God and God’s relationship to us and the world.

Thinking back on our pilgrimage to Nashville, this image of the final ascent into the Appalachian front sticks in my mind as particularly meaningful. The ride from Louisville to Knoxville, partly known as the Bourbon Trail, but also leading to the entranceway to the Smokey Mountains, is beautiful. But it is not until you enter the greater Knoxville area that, to borrow a popular phrase, “the hills come alive” in their full splendour.

In a most recent sermon my Pastor spent a bit of time reflecting on the idea that in the ancient world Mountains held slightly different meaning than they do for us today. Today we tend to see them as a place of retreat, a place of solitude and contemplation. They are a backdrop of nature that allow us to think on the bigger picture of life and questions and doubts and wonder.

In the ancient world mountains were seen as mysterious and apprehensive places. They were obstacles to be conquered as one either fled from or journeyed toward a particular place. They were were wars were fought and they tended to be places that evoked a strong sense of fear and wonder and apprehension. They were the home of the gods as they say (which is also why they were also given the names of different gods).

Author Walter Woodburn Hyde in a work he did titled The Ancient Appreciation of Mountain Scenery suggests the possibility of discovering something of a pattern in the ancient world when it came to their relationship with the mountains. A pattern that I felt could appropriately speak to our modern experience.

There is a sense in which history sees our growing relationship to mountains in the light of how we see and understand ourselves. In a spiritual sense this can also be understood as the way we see and understand ourselves in relationship to God. There is something about the grandeur of the mountains that awakens us to something bigger than us, something mysterious and incomprehensible. And I think what often accompanies us on our “retreats” to these places is a return to this sense of mystery in the modern age as we retreat from the pressure of daily life and the onslaught of information that barrages us every day.

But I also think that what we can learn from the ancient world is that these retreats can also be considered an ascent. A pilgrimage. A means of growing and moving forward as the change in environment helps us to understand ourselves in relationship to God and the world more clearly. And I think in an explicitly Christian sense, this ascent is connected directly to the idea of growing in our understanding of God with us. We ascent into the mountains in order to challenge the feeling of God being far away and to remind ourselves that God is near.

Hyde argues in his article that that the ancient world provides glimpses of this natural progression from places of fear to places of admiration and contemplation as we look at the historical record. Much like a mountain climber does with intention today, on the other side of this ascent into the mountains for the ancients, even if unintentional, tended to be the emergence of a recognizable introspective process that saw the mountains as not something simply to conquer, but a picture of grace and wonder to embrace. A place that can tell us something about ourselves and about God rather than simply withholding us from the mystery of that relationship.

Interestingly enough, particularly when it comes to the Southern Appalachian front, both the early settling of the area and the civil war follow this same idea or pattern of ascent. Where once the mountains were something to get over and to conquer in order to expand further West, the Mountains eventually became a place to settle and to grow, and in some redeemable sense a place to live in communion with the indigenous people that called it home. Today theses town are reflective of a chosen lifestyle and culture and a place to remind one of the horrible acts that were enacted on the indigenous people.

And where the civil war turned those same mountains into a battleground and a place of uncertainty and danger, eventually the Mountains became a safe haven for broken soldiers and a divided nation. A place to heal.

Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg: A Conversation of Contrasts
Immediately to the East of Knoxville are the twin cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Two cities that hold very different representations of the areas history.

Gatlinburg is the Mountain town that sits right outside the gates to the National Park. In earlier years it represented both a settlement for the early settlers and became an important battlefront during the civil war where the union troops that eventually settled in the area (and that remain represented today) encountered the challenge of a heavy Confederate force.

And what’s really interesting about the politics of Gatlinburg is that it is a pro-union (today that reads liberal) town that didn’t see eye to eye with its confederate supporting founder (Gatlinburg of course). In fact he was ran out of town.

Pigeon Forge by contrast holds the remnants of the areas industrial roots, being built around this old iron forge that eventually was shut down and turned into an old mill that is still functioning today. 

This also explains the areas obsession with pancakes.

And so Gatlinburg is largely recognized as the cultural heart of the area, while Pigeon Forge represents the industry. And it could be noted that the minute you drive into Pigeon Forge this becomes immediately obvious. The industry of yesteryear has grown into a hugely over the top tourist destination full of museums, grandiose buildings and multi-level go cart tracks.

Think Clifton Hill on steroids.

And yet there is a sense that for all of this tourist attraction, the area remains indebted to its roots. We stayed at a small, independently owned hotel on the edge of town called the Tennessee Mountain Lodge. Just far enough from all the lights and noise to gain a sense of the mountain culture, but close enough to be a part of the attractions as well.

And immediately next door to our motel was what they call the Old Mill District. It is here that Pigeon Forge owes its roots, the once Iron Forge turned milling house. It is a well preserved symbol of what once built the town as the settlement expanded from Gatlinburg to Knoxville, and as I mentioned still a functioning part of what drives their industry today.

And just beyond the Old Mill, just beyond the sightline of Dollywood (which provides nightly fireworks Disney style by the way) is what they call The Island, an entertainment mecca that mixes an old style shopping district full of unique and independently owned store fronts set against the backdrop of restaurants and a giant ferris wheel. A fun place to linger into the late hours of the night (they stay open until 11:00).

Gatlinburg still has some of the flashiness of Pigeon Forge built into its village streets, but it mostly revolves around getting you up close and personal with the mountain experience. What largely sets Gatlinburg apart is in fact its village like atmosphere.

Wandering its main streets is a little like stepping back in time into a still thriving mountain culture. Aspiring musicians lingering and playing (and they will refuse your money if you try to give it). Lively streets packed full of people. Authentic Moonshine spots vying for your attention. And decorated torch light style old Victorian village sections with all sorts of local shops, candies, chocolates, and coffee.

Or take for another example the Arts and Crafts Community.  Formed in 1937 the Arts & Crafts Community is a union of artists and craftsmen that they describe as “a living, breathing tribute to the history of Tennessee.” The sign describes this group as carvers, weavers, watercolor artists, casters, soap makers, potters, silversmiths and many others, and the way you participate in this arts and crafts community is by driving the trail that takes you through a bottom section of the mountains. It’s a beautiful idea in a beautiful spot.

Understanding Our Roots
So while talk about protecting our roots comes alive in Pigeon Forge’s history, a town that has changed drastically from what it was but which has continued to struggle to maintain its image as an authentically grown family town built on industrious pursuits, Gatlinburg actively lives it out by celebrating its heritage in a more unrestrained, lively, rebellious atmosphere akin to its Moonshine roots.

And isn’t that what forms our pilgrimages. Knowing where we came from, the obstacles of our past, facing the figurative mountains that have shaped us in unique ways and becoming transformed on the other side? This is what our ascent does, is bring greater clarity to these things much in the same way that the identity of these towns remains a vital part of who they are. And we strive after this sort of clarity, often in the modern day by “retreating” to the mountains so that we can also be molded into something new. So that we can grow, spiritually speaking, as God’s children.

I spent time praying for the students who were embarking on their own pilgrimage as we made the final ascent up into the Smokey Mountains. And as we reached the spot of highest elevation I imagined them having the opportunity to gain a better picture of who they are. To consider their roots and the ways in which their pilgrimage might be able to grow and transform them as well.

I admit, I am not a huge fan of Mountains. Call it my Prairie bred roots, but my own sense of retreat often comes in places where I can see far down the horizon. Endless Prairies. The quant rolling hills of Pennsylvania or Eastern Canada. The Ocean side. These often are where I get drawn into the mystery, the bigness of this world. And yet as we engaged with the Smokey Mountains I was taken by the elevation. The idea that we could journey from one side to the other and have taken a pilgrimage of some significance. And it inspired me to consider that whether we are travelling to Nashville or spending time in the Psalms, God is with us, forming us through our experiences into more cultured and loving persons regardless of the past that we carry with us. And often precisely because of the ways these mountains give these pieces of our past more clarity and purpose.

 

 

 

When travelling, one of the ways I measure an experience of seeing a new place is through asking, how disappointed am I to have to leave and how eager am I to visit the place again.

Spoiler- I was disappointed to leave and I want to go back Louisville.

Driving the 165 to Louisville
Approaching the Indiana/Kentucky State line from the North, the 165 runs straight through the heart of Indiana. There are National Parks to the east and the west, while smaller towns and cities such as the self declared “mid-century modern architecture “mecca” of Columbus, Indiana, dot the interstate itself.
(Pictures of Columbus, Indiana, including the Common and the Mill Race Park, a form industrial area converted into green space)

(Photo by Leonard Perry)

Or take Lafayette, the quiet, unassuming home of Axle Rose and Purdue University, the school of choice for a number of famous people including Neil Armstrong, and perhaps most importantly the birth place of the “chicken nugget”.
(Photo by John Schanlaub- Downtown Lafayette, Indiana)

It is here that those familiar with indigenous history and relations can pass through the battleground for the Battle of Tippecanoe at Prophetstown State Park, a major turning point in the ongoing efforts of the Indigenous Peoples to create a functioning Confederacy that could withstand the ongoing push of the American conquest and settlement, a battle that essentially paved the way for the war of 1812.

Lafayette also represents a familiar characteristic of many of the towns and cities that mark this route, which is preserved or redeveloped historical river fronts and old, Victorian era architecture that follow these towns all the way into Louisville. Now mere remnants of a failed dream, Lafayette used to be an epicentre for the longest canal ever built in North America, the Wabash and Erie Canal that closed after operating only for about a decade. It becomes a bit of a treasure hunt to track down traces of the old canal these days, but one of those places is a restored 10 mile historic section of canal trail that connects to Delphi along the Wabashi river, a short drive from Lafayatte. You can even take a wonderfully quaint canal ride on a restored canal boat or walk the trails to gain a glimpse of the canal’s grand past.

You can see the canal tour here:
https://www.homeofpurdue.com/attractions/wabashanderiecanal.html

Also worth noting is the restored canal in Indianapolis.(Picture from Indianapolis monthly of the Indeanapolis Canal)

Which brings us to Louisville, where an unintentional detour (also called missing our exit) took us straight through the heart of downtown, an experience that became one of my favourite moments of the drive.

Welcome to Louisville
Our initial destination in Tennessee was Knoxville, the point at which we would be dropping off our group of students at a conference and splitting time between the Smokies on the East and Nashville on the West before picking them up and making the journey home. Arriving in Louisville, our planned stop for the night en-route to Knoxville, the interstate junction offers you two options- the 165 heading straight to Nashville or the 164/175 route veering East/West. We needed to take the East exit towards the infamous horse mecca of Lexington situated on the Western side of the Daniel Boone National Forest, and then eventually continue South on 175 to Knoxville.

Crossing the Ohio river ahead of this junction gives you a great view of the downtown skyline and Louisville Waterfront Park. But it was our missing our 164 East exit, which would have veered us directly away from downtown Louisville, that offered us a spectacular up close and personal view of the park, the skyline and the Big Four Bridge (a joint effort to connect the Indiana/Kentucky state line which is divided by the river) right before looping us back through the heart of downtown in order to get us heading back East.

I have a huge appreciation for skylines, and one of my favourite things is the experience of driving into view of a city skyline for the very first time. And there is little question Louisville is a beautiful city. There even happened to be a festival going on in Waterfront Park at the time, and as we started our descent off the elevated freeway and towards downtown we were offered a perfect view of Jimmy Eat World playing on stage with the Ohio River and waterfront situated right behind them.

                                          (Image Source: Practical Wanderlust)

Getting off the interstate took us right past a series of quaint and stylish downtown streets known for their pedestrian friendly atmosphere, old Victorian architecture, the Lousiville Slugger Museum and of course the downtown bars and distillery’s (one third of all Kentucky Bourbon comes from Louisville).

Worth noting and one of my big regrets is that in getting back on the 164 from this point we drove right past Cave Hill Cemetery, the gravesite of Muhammed Ali, on one side and the historic Frankfort Avenue on the other, two places I would have loved to get out and spend some time in.

We stayed just outside of Louisville that night, but that brief time in Louisville was more than enough to capture my attention and leave me wanting to go back. It reminded me of our time in Omaha City, a place we expected nothing from but fell in love with at first sight because of the pedestrian friendly downtown and downtown life, the canal and the incredible river front, along with the interesting history seemingly existing in the middle of nowhere.

Louisville: A City of Welcome Contradiction
As we started our ascent the next day into the Appalachian Mountains, the story of Louisville would turn out to be a great foreshadow for what was to come in the Knoxville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg area, otherwise known as the entry point to the Smokey Mountains. Not unlike those towns, which I hope to talk more about in my next blog, Louisville is a place of seeming contradiction and misrepresentation, which is largely a product of its close confluence with the Mountains themselves.

One of the things I learned on this trip is that it is the are stretching from Gatlinburg through to Virginia and North Carolina on one side and through to Louisville on the other that was most impacted by the civil war because of the way the Southern Appalachia of the way the Union and Confederate loyalties congregated in these areas. This led not only to heated battles over these different ideologies, but it also led to intermixing in the mountain towns as well, resulting in an odd conglomeration of ideologies, a reality that surfaces most visibly in the different historical narratives you tend to encounter as a tourist. And this oddness reaches well into the Louisville culture, a culture that often gets associated with Southern stereotypes and sensibilities, but in actuality represents a rather eclectic and unrestrained cultural voice that in a sense deconstructs those sensibilities.

This characteristic reaches both forwards and backwards into many aspects of the Southern Appalachia.

Take Daniel Boone for example. His story has developed into a legend that appears to serve both sides of a competing political view, on one hand as an icon and symbol of conquest and Western expansion who is depicted brutally scalping and murdering the “savages” threatening their progress and their lives, while on the other hand representing someone who shunned images of early American civilization and development by removing himself from these areas and establishing positive relationships with the indigenous people in a life lived isolated from the ignorance of the cities themselves.

In the reality it becomes apparent that the real  Boone was somewhere in the middle, and perhaps an even more heroic figure than the legends on either side give credit for. Louisville remains an homage to Boone’s role in positioning America’s Western expansion through important and necessary civil discourse and civic development, while at the same time fostering and supporting healthy relationships with the indigenous groups that shared the land with them. He was in a sense attempting to reflect the hopeful aspirations of both worlds.

And as with the Knoxville/Gatlinburg area that lies ahead, modern Louisville’s tendency to be in constant ideological flux affords it a neat and intriguing, if confusing atmosphere that is at once progressive and refreshingly moderate at the same time. Often misunderstood based on its Southern roots, the city is in actuality a largely undefined, cultural expression that carries through its attempts to speak through the divided lines of North and South.

As journalist Jeffrey Lee Pucket puts it in an article for the Courier Journal discussing Louisville’s complicated character,

“Despite siding with the North in the Civil War, Kentucky didn’t abolish slavery until after the war was over, K’Meyer wrote. It then chose to be Southern in order to grow the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, instituting a Jim Crow system which was just slavery-lite even as Louisville gradually built a community that embraced religious diversity and immigration.”

Also suggesting,

“In its heart, Louisville is a Southern city primarily because it desperately wants to be seen as Southern, meaning friendly, slow-paced, elegant.

But Louisville also clearly wants to have its cornbread and dip it in Vermont syrup, too, because it has long identified with big-city aspirations associated with Northern culture, such as civil rights, cutting-edge arts and sarcasm.

We’re Southern when it suits the narrative and greatly enjoy adopting a persona dressed up in string ties and hats that double as flower arrangements. But when it comes to the South’s more deplorable legacies – racism, segregation, poverty – we’re quick to look northward.”

And this long standing relationship with pre-civil war history, civil war history and the modern age continues to shape the life of the area today, permeating the stories of its many cultural markers from horse racing to Whiskey and Moonshine heritage. All of which makes it not just a beautiful landscape, but also a beautiful tapestry of the sort of unhinged and multi-cultured expression that can help reshape our imaginings and stereotypes of the South while perhaps playing a role in healing a divided land. And after engaging with this city over the last number of years of armchair travel, seeing it in person I can’t help but begin to understand what enchanted spiritual giant Thomas Merton back in 1958 towards this same end.
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“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
– Thomas Merton (Conjectures of An Innocent Bystander)

*unless otherwise noted, photos courtesy of visitor pages

A little known fact about Chicago, home of the tootsie roll and Wrigley’s Gum (of course) is that it happens to be the official candy capital of the world, which I only became aware of after recently reading through the book Candy: A History.

And as you leave Chicago heading South on the I65, the first indication you have that you have crossed a State line is not the welcome absence of the toll roads, but rather the large interstate signs that practically beg you to take the upcoming exit to visit the Albanese Candy Factory, noting it as the home of the “world’s best” gummi bear (of which I can now attest).

Bookended by the Albanese Candy Factory on one end of the Indiana State line (the only company to offer 12 flavours of gummi bears by the way) is Schimpffs Confectionery located just before Louisville also on 165. This is the oldest family owned candy shop in the U.S and also where they make those legendary Red Hots.

Also worth mentioning, monitoring the Indiana middle state, is Abbott’s Candy Factory set in the racing capital of Indianapolis, a confectionary whom played an important (emphasis on “important”) role in perfecting the caramel, for which I am eternally grateful

A Small Bit of Candy History
Following the 1893 world fair in Chicago, which would go on to revolutionize the industrialization of the candy industry by subsequently opening the door to market the first wrapped candy (tootsie roll) and candy bar (Hershey) along with the world’s first “combination candy bar” (the Goo Goo Cluster from the Standard Candy Company in Nashville), the nostalgic picture of candy and the candy store that we know today started to take shape.

Truth be told though, there is a lot of interesting material to be gleaned from all this candy obsession aside from simply being kitchy and touristy and perhaps a bit indulgent. For example, one of the things I learned from reading Candy: A History is that these candied institutions that are pining for your tourist attention all along the interstate were once and still are at the forefront of America’s larger story. Dig a little deeper beyond the wrappers and what you will find are stories of immigrant families striving to make a new home for themselves on American soil, such as the story of a Bavarian family whom turned their old, romanticized version of a penny candy store into an area institution called Schimpffs Confectionary. And like so much in American culture, dig a little deeper yet and you will also find America’s long standing, socio-political struggles and successes well represented and very visible.

Roadtripping and the American Ethos
Which is one of the things I find so fascinating about road tripping through America. The American ethos is so well preserved and celebrated from town to town and city to city that its hard not to appreciate the intention with which they tell these collective stories in incredibly personal ways. Ask someone in America a question about their national history and they are almost always willing to share, warts and all. This is in large part (I think) because they remain personally connected to their (collective) story in a real way. Something we as Canadians, I think, can learn from. And I am often amazed at how great American’s are at telling stories. Intermixing lively legends with history and lasting questions, there is a joyous spirit that often permeates the fashion in which they bring these places to life in knowledgeable and entertaining ways, often touching on honest and revealing depictions of the nation and people they desire to be.

And although this might feel foreign to my own particular slice of Canadiana (where being from the “slurpee capital” of the world is a fact one is likely only to find buried on wikipedia somewhere under “useless pieces of information”) I feel like at least part of the reason Americans tend to be so vocal about these fun little cultural factoids and trademarks is because these places, in some form or another, do represent an innate and inner desire to understand and know where they came from and where they are headed. And the chance to mark these stories and tell these stories is a chance to truly express how they feel beyond the politics and the unfortunate caricatures. The fact of the matter is that the people who started these places and sill work at these places and that value the identity of the towns and cities that house these places are real people with real values with often long standing generational ties that shape real hopes and real fears that I can’t pretend to know and understand without actually talking to them and being willing to step into their shoes, if only for a moment. And road tripping through America is, if nothing else, a chance to actually talk to them, to walk for a moment in their shoes. And the truth is, in a silly and almost preposterous way, sometimes it takes something as seemingly trite and silly as gummi worms to remind me of the humanity we share across borders and nationalities, the same humanity that shapes each of us no matter where we come from.

Also worth saying is that this is what makes these stories of immigrant families and diversity, freedom and democracy, opportunity and creativity all the more important at times when these same values and this same shared sense of humanity could be perceived as being threatened and challenged.

The Backroads and The Kitchy
As a visitor to the United States there is something to be said for having endless opportunity to take that long detour through the country backroads just to witness Jack Daniels still making whisky, or winding through a long forgotten section of an old Kentucky suburb just to stand beside a sign commemorating Col. Sander’s very first “cafe”.

Or pulling off the interstate to walk through the doors of the very first Cracker Barrel Country Store and Restaurant. These are the things that are afforded equal participation right beside the bigger name cultural attractions like Churchhill Downs or the Indianapolis Speedway, and I personally find this to be a neat aspect of Americana to revel in and enjoy.

That and it simply makes road tripping a whole lot more fun.

So in a curious way, like the quintessential American road trip, candy brings us together much like a horse race. These iconic pieces of Americana that began as a a subtle craft and labour of love beckon us to veer off the freeways and take a break from the bustling pace to revel for a moment in simpler times. The walls of candy concoctions that line the Albanese Candy Factory for example intentionally elicit feelings of those old penny candy stores, even if it also happens to boast a large chocolate fountain as its “can’t miss it” centre piece. Open factory windows where we can watch the candy being made bring us back to a time when candies were made in a shop just down the road and where the delicious concoctions used to sit in the open air for excited eyes to peruse and behold, young and old.

And when we were done perusing, we simply got back on the freeway refreshed and newly determined to keep our eyes peeled for the next opportunity to explore. And lucky for us, the 165 had plenty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jen and I often refer to Minneapolis as our adopted American home. We’ve been down the main roads and the backroads, shopped until we dropped at the outlets and the mall (which for me doesn’t take much) and experienced wonderful sunsets sneaking behind the downtown skyscrapers as we drove the river road. We’ve attended concerts, toured gangster hide outs and the Old Mill District, hung with the Peanuts gang and wandered the expansive natural wonderland that is Minni’s waterfalls,  lakes, Mississippi and Apple Rivers and Stillwater origins.

We’ve shared a lot of great moments on the way down and in that particular city, but by far one of my favourite memories has to be a once infamous and spontaneous stop at the downtown Sculpture Gardens where we decided to masquerade as potential home buyers by hunting down open houses in the row of old, stately homes that dot the hill behind the park. For our purposes we happened to be “relocating for work” and “considering something centrally located to downtown” with “a spacious backyard and at least 3 bedrooms in a quaint and quiet neighbourhood.”

We found some good potential, but we were pretty sure they weren’t going to take our idea of a low-ball bid.

Getting Lost and Getting Found in a 13 Mile Radius
One of the things we anticipated about this most recent trip was the opportunity to be stand-in-tour guides for our group of students as we navigated this neck of the woods, or at least as far as Chicago. But it turned out the only thing they were truly interested in was the Mall of America. I won’t lie. The wind was taken out of my wannabe-tour guide sails for a bit. When you’ve done the mall (I’m sure) 1,000 times (okay, a slight exaggeration) the last place you really want to be is back at the mall… 3 times… over the course of a single trip.

But I was quickly reminded by forces greater than me that I wasn’t there for myself. We were there for the students, and as Jen rightly pointed out when I was their age and embarking on my very first trip to Minneapolis guess where I wanted to go? The mall.

All of this was good though, because as it turned out my personal pride in knowing the area backwards and forwards was about to take a serious hit. Apparently Minneapolis has taken a more recent page from Winnipeg’s book and decided to close off every known street leading straight to the mall.

And, no I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say “every known street”.

We arrived in Minneapolis 2 hours ahead of schedule (Dave pats himself on that back for ignoring those back seat calls for that last washroom break), and just as we texted the parents to let them know we were arriving at the mall safely? Complete gridlock.

Being no less than a ten minute drive from the mall in regular traffic flow, we would end up spending the next 2 hours being led in a continual circle by a GPS that refused to recognize the road closure.

The only solution when this happens to be the one time you forget to bring a physical copy of a road map with you? Try and get far enough out of the way for the GPS to recalculate and choose a different road.

And yes, that’s much harder than it sounds when you are, literally “trying” to get yourself lost.

And then came the monsoon. That didn’t help matters either.

The running joke in the midst of all this mayhem and frustration was that no matter how hard we tried to get ourselves off track the GPS remained determined to keep us exactly 13 miles away from the mall. We eventually had ourselves a little celebration when it finally rolled over to that 12 mile mark.

At the very least, on a positive note, I did finally get to exercise my tour guide alter ego. The GPS at one point rerouted us straight through downtown, and so the kids got an up close and personal look at the big city, and my commentary:

Dave- “And did you know this building…”
Jen- “Dave, they’re not listening.”
Dave sheds a tear.

Going in Circles and Finding Our Way
As I mentioned in my previous blog, one of the big takeaways for the students that attended the conference in Tennessee was the charge to consider what it means to carry the experience of the conference into everyday life on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. It can be difficult to return to daily routine after such an elevated and hyped up experience, and it can take a certain determination to keep from feeling like one is simply going in circles with exercising and growing their faith at work, in school and with family and friends.

And yet these are the places that faith has the most opportunity to become real and honest and relevant and measured.

Along the way down to the Nashville area and back we stayed at a few different places, including a Church and, on our first stop in Minneapolis, a house of a particular couple who provided me personally with a good picture of this same faith challenge.

They are a Canadian couple currently living in the United States while actively ministering abroad. And one of the things they mentioned when asked about why they chose to move to Minneapolis was that, alongside some personal reasons, they felt that they needed a place to take root. A home base to serve from and serve out of, even if they weren’t there very often. When pressed about what taking root meant to them they proceeded to give examples of their ongoing struggle to cross certain relational barriers in a place that they didn’t share much history with. A place that also happened to be where those relationships tended to be most important. And the fact that they weren’t at “home” very often made it doubly hard to even begin building this history, particularly at the Church they were now attending.

But for them, having that home, that compass to centre them and lead them back in the midst of their constant travels, was still hugely important. It just meant that in the little time they did have at home they needed to be far more intentional about pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and having those necessary conversations, inviting people over and joining small groups.

In truth, and as a part of their personal confession, their collective GPS seemed to know its way around the middle east, their main point of ministry, far better than at home where it could be easy to simply set course and keep hitting the same obstacles over and over again rather than looking for creative ways to recalculate towards a more fruitful investment and trajectory. And as they acknowledged this, they continued to share inspiring stories of how they were challenging themselves to look for new opportunities and pushing themselves to gain every new mile with a sense of purpose, efforts that they felt were translating into progress and new relationships, however small they might be in the moment.

And this, in my eyes, included their hospitality towards us.

Recalculating And Getting Back on Track
As we eventually left Minneapolis and headed towards terrain that was quickly becoming far less familiar to us, setting us even more dependent on a GPS that for some bizarre reason still picks up Sasha’s thick Ukrainian accent long before our own made in Canada dialect  (AAGGHHHH, It’s CHICAGO… QUICK, TELL IT TO AVOID THE TOLLS, AVOID THE TOLLS, AVOID THE TOLLS), I couldn’t help but feel like the metaphor we were bringing with us across the Minnesota State line was turning more and more relevant. Relevant as I processed some of my own life. Relevant as I prayed for and considered the experience of these students in the week ahead, one of them being my own son.

On that note, I know for both Jen and I we are constantly wrestling with how to offer Sasha a clear picture of the Christian faith and the Christian walk, something that can hopefully make sense to him as he wrestles with his own questions and finds his own way in this crazy world. Something that can help him build a solid foundation for him to carry on his personal journey. And being a first time parent of an only child, I confess the weight of this responsibility feels terrifying even on our best days. And yet we knew that for whatever this once in a lifetime trip was going to be for him, continuing to be there to help him navigate his questions and his struggles on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains in any way that we could, especially as he enters Grade 11 and holds his first job this summer, continues to be our most important role as parents. Helping him to know that, just like gathering together with five thousand plus students South of the border who all share a similar connection and desire to understand the Christian faith in some capacity, we as a family are likewise on this faith journey together, through the ups and down, failures and successes.

And isn’t that what this journey of faith is really all about? One step at a time. For all of us. Together. Up the mountain, in the mountains and coming back down that mountain. Yes, it’s true. The makings of a good road trip also happened to awaken in me the makings of a good, faithful and fruitful Christian walk.

 

 

 

 

 

I still remember the moment I decided to be a drummer.

As a young boy I had experimented with the piano and found it too rigid and rules based for my personality. And while I loved the guitar, everyone and their dog seemed to be a guitar player, and in an exercise of self awareness (or shameless self-concern) I have never been very good at standing out in a crowd. The drums seemed the perfect compliment to my introverted tendencies. It gave me opportunity to play (drummers still seem far and few between), and it gave me a voice that I felt I could actually hear above the noise of my own inadequacy.

Even though I was largely untrained and technically ignorant, the first time I played in public- for Grade 10 chapel, I was also awakened to this idea that I finally had a voice that others could hear and understand as well, and music to a large degree became my means of building meaningful relationships during those later adolescent and young adult years. .

And A Dream Is Formed…
Thus formed the seeds of a (late) childhood dream, a dream that solidified itself the day I walked through the doors of a Delirious concert (and yes, I know that dates me) and happened upon this small, unassuming outfit that went by the name of Switchfoot performing as the opening act. It was at that moment I knew, this is what I wanted to be doing. This is what I needed to be doing. And given all roads at the time seemed to go through Nashville, the once epicentre of the Christian industry and the very image at the time of “making it” and living the dream, I became equally determined to see that city one day.

And I nearly did.

After experimenting with a number of different groups over the years and failing at finding anything that would stick, I remember one day waking up and telling myself, this is it. I have one more go at it to try and make this happen. The older I was getting the harder it seemed to be to keep pressing the reset button.

So I wrote a plan out on a piece of paper, joined forces with a good friend whom had stuck with me through the years, and looking to make something happen went to work putting the plan into action. We brought in a front person, wrote a number of songs, cut a demo and started playing shows. And people responded, eventually even catching the eye of of a booking agent.

But it was at that point I realized something had changed for me. The glimpses I was getting of what this life would eventually be, for as exciting as it was in the moment (there is nothing like that first time playing on a big stage in font of thousands of people) wasn’t adding up to my expectations. Further and more importantly, here I was finally on the cusp of living my dream and the only thing I could think about was a group of students from my Church that my music was taking me away from. I was missing graduations, important moments, and at the time an entire year of investment at crucial times in some of their lives.

So I stepped away from the band. The same band I had put so much work in to foster and create. I stepped away from my dream. And, as it just so happens, I stepped away right before the band relocated to guess where?

Nashville.

The band would go on to sign to a label, go on tours and sell (and make) a number of albums. Me? I went back to school to become a Youth Pastor.

Where one dream fails a new one takes shape. And for as hard as it was to come to terms with leaving music behind, I was (eventually) equally excited for this new direction in my life.

Fast forward a number of years…

After graduating and serving for a number of years at a few different Churches, I found myself stepping out of Youth Ministry after an extremely brief but incredibly tough experience that nearly destroyed me (and I say that in seriousness). And to this day, which was around five years ago today, seeing my former band or other equally successful musician friends still living that dream reminds me of those failed dreams. And while I did eventually find another Church to call home I haven’t been able to bring myself to pursue music or Youth Pastor since that day.

Which is a long road to take to get to this point, but when the need and opportunity presented itself recently to drive a small group of students down to the Nashville area for a North American, Covenant Denomination wide youth conference, something interesting sparked in my spirit. I noticed the symbolic intersection of those two failed dreams coming together. Here I was, a stand in leader driving a group of students to Nashville, the place I had always dreamed of “making it” to as a musician.

 

Making Sense of Our Dreams
Dreams are funny things. They develop out of our expectations. They arise from our relationship with others. They are shaped by things that inspire us. They feed off the thrill of the unknown, the idea of discovering and accomplishing something new.

And from what I have learned in my years on this earth, they almost always tend to relate to two main things- the question of who we are and the question of how “we” can impact the lives of others.

For these students heading down to Nashville this trip was something they had been anticipating for a long time. Some of them had never been over the border before. For others they had never explored that part of the Country before. For most, if not all, a conference of five thousand plus students all worshipping in the same place carried an air of mysticism and excitement that they could only imagine.

For myself, living on the other side of two failed dreams, what this trip revealed for me was that my experiences had turned me into something of a cynic. Having the privilege of watching these students anticipate the conference and explore these new places, I was brought back to my own childhood spirit of expectation, expectations that were once full of the same hope, anticipation, wonder and appreciation of the unknown that I was seeing in them, all the stuff that cynicism tends to steal away as we get older.

I was also reminded that these expectations do come with a necessary degree of healthy fear and risk. God knows that for as much as he tried to hide it, our own son (who accompanied us on this trip) approached this conference with a sense of fear and trembling. It also ended up being a struggle for him after being sidelined for a good portion of the experience by a bad case of “swimmers ear”. It was a reminder that there is anxiousness and uncertainty is a natural part of what accompanies all of us as we step out into the thrill of the unknown, and also the risk that sometimes our experiences don’t necessarily match our expectation. And yet the reason we step out and embrace these sort of experiences and dreams with hope and expectation is because it is something we believe will and can be transformative and life changing.

Which is simply to say, dreams are made of both the highs and the lows. Dreams are made of both excitement and fear. And what I realized is that rather than make me cynical, this truth should give me reason to be grateful. Because if there is one constant in the high’s and low’s it is this- stepping out into our dreams helps build a foundation. It gives us a place to start from and a means of moving forward. It teaches us something important about the present moment while offering us something to invest in for whatever our future dreams might become. It shapes our voice and give us a way to speak above (and through) the noise of the everyday. It allows us to embrace and not miss the joy and deal with the disappointment.

And above all, the idea of this confluence of both the highs and the lows gives us a way to make sense of and learn from the stuff of the everyday, the battleground of life where we face the highs and the lows on an even more consistent basis.

It is fitting then that a big take away for the kids I talked to on the other side of the conference was the idea of carrying this question with them- what will we do when we head home, back to the everyday? For as much as this experience, this dream, was thrilling for most of these kids, the hardest part was knowing how to carry the lessons of that experience on the other side of the Appalachian mountains. How to carry the lessons of this conference experience into the everyday in a practical way.

Thinking back on my own dreams (and I had a long, looooooong drive for which to ponder through this all multiple times over), I wondered if those dreams were essentially about two things for me. The desire to find my voice and the need to create and play music that might speak to others who felt they didn’t have a voice. And this is the foundation that music and ministry gave me over the years. I can remember playing shows where the front person for our band would have a lineup going out the door waiting to get an autograph. My line would be about 3 people long. And yet I remember feeling in those moments, this is exactly where I want to be, having the opportunity to speak to those who feel they don’t belong or don’t want to be in the larger line. As my dream shifted towards ministry it became about a passion to give voice to those who felt disenfranchised either by the world or by the Church itself. To reach the kids on the fringes who didn’t belong in the “popular” crowd. A large part of went wrong (from outside perception) in my last job was my inability to connect with the popular kids. And yet I remember thinking in the dying moments of my time at that Church, I am exactly where I would want to be, hanging out and talking with the kids on the fringes.

And here’s the biggest thing. The decision that stepping out and living those dreams “in the moment” could make a difference in my life and the life of others only became clear years later. In the moment I expected that it could and it would. On the other side of the mountains I found myself questioning whether it did anything at all. In both cases for me I felt more lost and more useless on the other side than I ever had before. It is only after all these years later that I can say with even a small degree of manufactured confidence, I was exactly where I needed to be and that there was a reward for stepping out and taking that risk.

As I pondered these things, the hope and prayer that I had for these students on what turned out to be a fairly quiet ride home was that the dream of attending this conference, the anticipation of experiencing and seeing something new would give them a foundation, a fresh place to start from and live out their faith in the everyday. That they would not simply feel stuck on the long, endless expanse of the prairies, but know that hope and optimism and expectation for what God can teach them about themselves and their ability to invest into the lives of others is theirs for the taking right where God has them. The present moment, the week of highs that a conference tends to bring, would form a memory of “God with them” that could give them the words they need in the lows they will likely face in the years ahead, and hopefully that can give them the strength to continue to resist the cynicism and embrace the hopefulness long into their maturity.

Given that we’ve reached the halfway point, I figured I would check in on what I’ve been watching,

Here is a link to my official working list and tally:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/a-working-ranked-list-of-the-films-i-see/

In total this is a list of 37 films that I have seen that have an official release date listed as 2018.

My Top 10:

10. Game Night

9. Black Panther


8. Peter Rabbit

 

7. A Quiet Place

 

6. Isle of Dogs

5. First Reformed

 

4. Ready Player One

3. Tully

 

2. Paddington 2

 

1. Infinity War

Some Points of interest from my top 10 list:

• I was genuinely shocked to see Tully eventually overtake Ready Player One. Ready Player One had been my most anticipated film of 2018 for a long time and I haven’t been shy about sharing how much I loved seeing it on the big screen. But the emotional force of Tully, which played on an extremely personal level, spoke louder than my fandom.
• The two films that have shuffled the least are my number 1 and my number 2 (Infinity War and Paddington 2 respectively). I fully expect them to stay where they are, but there is a whole half a year waiting to challenge them.
• The single film that has shuffled the most? Peter Rabbit. It has teetered at a few points with getting bumped out of my top 10, but it just keeps persisting and fighting its way back up.
• The most intriguing match up for me to watch? A Quiet Place and Isle of Dogs. Both are films that highlight the Director. Isle of Dogs cemented itself as my favourite Wes Anderson film, while A Quiet Place showed such a strength behind the camera it was impossible to ignore. I resonated with the narrative of A Quiet Place on a deeper level than I did with Isle of Dogs, but I anticipate Isle of Dogs having more layers to peel back and explore on subsequent viewings.
• The film I anticipate moving up over time? First Reformed. I saw it. I can’t stop thinking about it. And the more I think about it the more it keeps breaking me over, and over and over again. I also won’t be surprised if Hereditary ends up cracking the top 10. I need more time to digest it. Definitely the scariest movie I’ve seen in 2018.

Some points of interest from my full working list of 37 films:

Most Underrated Film(s) of 2018

Paul, The Apostle of Christ
An above average faith based film, and even though that doesn’t necessarily sound like high praise, I really did appreciate what this film did both narratively and with some of the cinematography. It deserves to be seen for sure.

Hotel Artemis
I had heard middling reviews of this one and I almost passed it up. I’m glad I didn’t. What drew me in to want to see it was the premise. What caught me off guard was the social commentary, a film about having the strength to not only enter into the worlds brokenness but to participate in the worlds brokenness, and the complimenting performances of Brown and Foster.

Biggest Surprise(s) of 2018

Upgrade
A film I knew nothing about, had been quietly earning some fans where it was screening (in larger cities south of the border), but that I had to wait what felt like eons to even have a chance to see (and even then I almost missed it sneaking onto a single screen locally). Now that I’ve seen it, totally worth it. Nothing flashy, but it has a unique story, engages some compelling themes, and plays like The Matrix on a modest budget.

Peter Rabbit
I believe there is a surprising narrative strength to this children’s film even if you know nothing of the source material, but it is in relationship to the source material this film reaches another level, especially as a children’s story. I had zero expectations going into this one. I left experiencing every emotion on the spectrum. And yes that means I cried.

Most Intriguing Match Up

Tomb Raider and A Wrinkle In Time (Sitting at 20 and 21 respectively) have been the two films that have probably shuffled around the most over the last 6 months. Although I could (and can) admit that it had its flaws, A Wrinkle In Time was such an important book for my childhood that I was willing to forgive a lot to embrace the film. In a couple movie discussion groups I participate in I found myself a lone voice attempting to champion the film. Tomb Raider earned the same rating from me but was much easier to find champions for in those same groups.

Given that these two films sat side by side on my working list, I spent a lot of time wrestling with which one should come out on top. I fully expected A Wrinkle In Time to personally (and honestly) work its way up over time, while I thought Tomb Raider might trend the other way. At this point in time it is the other way around, but I haven’t given up on the possibility that A Wrinkle In Time might muscle its way back in the running on subsequent viewings.

Top 3 Best Performances (lead or supporting) of 2018 So Far (in no particular order):

1. Claire Foy in Unsane
2. Ethan Hawke in First Reformed
3. Charlize Theron in Tully

Most Fun I’ve Had in the Theatre in 2018 So Far:

1. Game Night
2. Ready Player One
3. Rampage

Most Emotional Experience of 2018 So Far:
Tully 

Scariest Film of 2018 So Far:

Hereditary 

Funniest Film of 2018 So Far:
Game Night

Overall Thoughts at the half way point:
While 2017 was solid all around, 2018 feels like one of the stronger years for film that I can remember in a while. But aside from the fact that there have been some really stand out films so far, there are two things I have noticed to be particularly true this year:

1. The number of films that have seen extremely limited release
It’s been hugely frustrating to see films sparking tons of dialogue and gaining a ton of buzz but being unable to see them without driving at minimum six and a half hours to the closest, big American city. And what makes this even more frustrating is that these are films that could have likely been very successful given even a single screen beside the more recognizable blockbusters (Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Won’t You Be My Neighbour, First Reformed, just to name a few). As has been documented (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-revenue-hits-a-record-33-billion-2q-2018-1124371) theatres are still breaking records in terms of box office revenue, but the trend towards giving smaller films less time and less access feels like a lost opportunity.

2. Might there finally be an uptick in the spoiler adverse crowd?
I am not sure I have ever seen as much dialogue surrounding trailers and spoilers. A big part of this was no doubt the long awaited arrival of Infinity War and the dance between efforts to talk about the film without giving anything away. There also seems to be some carry over from the advertising debacle that was last years Mother, with people arguing over films like A Quiet Place and Hereditary and the idea of seeing the film that was advertised without giving away the twists and turns (with people feeling like they got more than they needed in advertisements for A Quiet Place and maybe not enough for Hereditary).

But what all this conversation seems to have sparked is a bit of welcome push back to the growing embrace and expectation of having our movies spoiled for us. It was only as far back as 2015/2016 that we saw a gluttony of articles being published declaring that spoilers abound because we want our movies spoiled (see: http://ew.com/article/2015/07/27/trailer-spoilers-southpaw/). It appears that the tide might finally be changing, and one of the methodologies I have seen some implementing is embracing the teaser trailer while shunning and avoiding the others. And thankfully teaser trailers are now being made more and more accessible and sparse.

Best Films I Caught Up With From 2017
1. Hostiles 
2. The Endless
3. Unfriended

Anticipated Films that have already seen limited release but that I have yet to see in 2018
1. Hearts Beat Loud
2. Won’t You Be My Neighbour
3. The Rider

Looking Ahead: Most Anticipated Films From the Second Half of 2018:
Blockbusters
1. Mission Impossible Fallout
2. Bumblebee
3. Aquaman
Honourable Mention: Spiderman Into the Spiderverse

Dramas:
1. First Man
2. BlacKKKlansman
3. Welcome to Marwen
Honourable Mention: Bohemian Rhapsody

Sequels
1. Ralph Breaks the Internet
2. Creed 2
3. Equalizer 2
Honourable Mention: Fantastic Beasts 2

Remakes or Reboots
1. Christopher Robin
2. Mowgli
3. The Nutcracker and The Four Realms
Honourable Mention: Robin Hood

Outliers
1. Mandy
2. Sorry to Bother You
3. The Sisters-Brothers
4. Splinters In Time
5. Widows
6. The House With the Clock In It’s Walls
7. The Captain
8. Down a Dark Hall
9. Kin
10. A Star is Born

Princesses
One of the tell tale signs of summer in our neck of the woods is the emergence of a particular young girl who loves to dress like a fairytale princess and make the street her playground every Saturday morning, dancing as if no one is watching.

And I mean full on princess garb with colourful flowing dress, tiara and wand.

I typically meet this girl while I am out walking one of our dogs. And every time she sees me coming she immediately runs over to greet me. I always want to ask where she got her dress and why she enjoys wearing it. There is something about her childlike abandon that fascinates me. I want to but I never have. From time to time though I have allowed myself to imagine…
From Princesses To North End Neighbourhoods
When my wife and I decided a few years back to adopt internationally we also happened to be in the process of trying to move. Which meant at the time of our move we were faced with a necessary question.

Where did we want to raise our eventual son or daughter?

At the time the only sure thing was the Country our son or daughter would be coming from and the language they would most likely speak. And so we decided to make an immersion program one of our top priorities. As life sometimes goes, our search for an immersion program found us moving back to the same neighbourhood that we had moved from 10 years prior. This was the neighbourhood of our young married life, the beginning moments  of our building a life together. And so there was something special about beginning a family here as well. And in many ways it really did feel like “coming home”.

Fast-forward a few years.

Our adoption was as a success, our son has just completed middle school and is now leaving the immersion program behind for a new high school. At which point we find ourselves faced with another important question.

Where will our son attend high school?

The easiest answer would be to enrol him at the high school located across from the middle school. The harder path was to lobby for a school outside of our catchment area (neighbourhood), which meant the difficult process of applying, advocating for and eventually “maybe” getting accepted.

We chose the harder path.

Which brings up yet another question.

Why did we choose the harder path?

To be fair there were some practical reasons for our decision. But the one that sticks out for me is the one that I feel I did my best to ignore- no longer wanting him to attend school in our neighbourhood.

So what changed? What made me resistant to the idea of our son building further roots in the neighbourhood we had chosen to raise him in? To explore this question I think offering some brief context for our neighbourhood might be helpful:
From North Enders To The Suburbs
We live on a figurative but very real jurisdictional line. We could literally move across the other side of our street and find ourselves in a different jurisdiction. And what’s important to note about this fact is that this jurisdictional line is what essentially separates the “north end” from the sprawling “northern” suburbs. To say you are a north ender in the city in which we live is to qualify that you somehow live on the “wrong side of the tracks”, to borrow from a long running joke that we sometimes use ourselves. To live in the north end carries certain connotations and assumptions, ones that ironically would get erased had we chosen to simply live on the other side of the street.

And here’s the thing about this fact. We thought nothing of this when we first moved into the neighbourhood 10 years prior. This was our neighbourhood, our home. We took pride in our North End home. But when you suddenly have a kid your senses become that much more heightened. This is true not only of the sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle apprehension of others towards sending their kids to hang out with our son “in our neighbourhood”. Just the other day we witnessed a parent awkwardly caution their kid about not going outside of our home while he was here. And this is not the first time this has happened.

This is true not only of the familiar pause and questioning we get when we declare ourselves to live in the “north end”, as if it is hard to wrap ones head around why we choose to live where we do. We have gotten that one a lot to be sure.

But it is also true in the way I allowed those perceptions to influence my own thinking over the last 3 years of us being a family. Somewhere along the way I started to adopt the same attitude and “act” the same way myself.

And what’s sad to me is the message this has sent to my son. Watching him slowly begin to recognize that where we live is not like the other neighbourhood his friends and other families live in on the right side of the tracks, followed by effectively removing him from any opportunity to make friends in the place we have chosen to live ourselves. And what is perhaps most ironic, or most painful, about recognizing this way of thinking is the image we have of our sons orphanage. That for as run down and dirty as it was, it carried a sense of pride and home for our son. The same sense of pride and the same sense of home that he once had for the North End in our first few years as a family. Where our house was big. Where our neighbourhood was safe and exciting. Where everyone in this new Country was the same.

As I watch our son commuting every day out of our neighbourhood and slowly but surely losing all of the neighbourhood ties he had managed to build in his first two years of middle school, I feel sad that the message he has heard from me and from others is that our neighbourhood is not good enough for him, and that by living here he is not the same as others. That there is something inherently wrong with being “north enders”.

From The Suburbs To The Florida Projects
On the surface the film The Florida Project tells the story of an existing community living just outside the grounds of the massive Disney World complex. But as we meet the families that make up this community, the story itself begins to form into a compelling and unexpected social commentary, a stark conversation about that invisible line that separates the affluent from the less than affluent in any given city or neighbourhood. Just in this case the Disney image exists and persists in a hyper-realized function of this reality, a fictionalized but very real demonstration of an “out of sight out of mind” attitude.

The film is most expressive in the smaller details, such as the use of space, allowing the camera to capture “kids in motion” by narrowing in on tight corners, rooms and slightly obscured views, allowing every turn, every new corner to carry with it an element of surprise and exploration. It captures the power of the unexpected, and it is the ability to wonder what lies behind the next bend or the next corner that awakens us to the joy of being a kid that the film wishes to express and celebrate.

At the same time it is the unexpected, the just obstructed view, that awakens us to the darker side of this social divide that the invisible line projects onto its characters, using the camera to hide the sight lines of the grand Disney complex just out of view of the reality of life in this forgotten and neglected community.

Or details like the use of setting, allowing the faded exterior of a former castle like hotel to contrast against the castle that we don’t see, shedding further light on the lives that call this crumbling neighbourhood construct home.Those brief moments in the film of tourists accidentally showing up at a hotel they believed was something else, a hotel they perceived was on the right side of the tracks, function as an incredibly powerful witness to the social divide. Or the way the film gives us a picture of the kids contextualizing their own fairy tale experiences into their own situation and setting, turning even the most derelict portions of this community into something celebratory (imagining the destruction of an abandoned home set fire against those recognizable Disney fireworks).

 

The end result is this idea that there is a world for these kids to explore, but one that comes with a very real sense of boundaries, and that beyond these boundaries exists a world in which they do not belong and in which these kids are seen as intrusive, unsafe and unwelcome.

The sense of two worlds existing so close together but remaining so far apart.

From the Florida Projects Back to North End Princesses
As I encountered this young princess dancing through our North End streets like no one was watching, I was reminded of The Florida Project. I considered the idea that our own invisible line was literally measured by the side of the street that we chose to live on. And I was hit with the realization that the answer to my question was two fold. Nothing has really changed from the days our son spent walking those 6 blocks to his school right down the street from where we lived. And yet something had changed- my own perception of those 6 blocks.

And then my mind began to create a picture of our neighbourhood streets, imagining a massive castle existing across the street from us that I somehow cannot see but yet I know it is there. And as I imagined this castle I felt shame and regret over thinking that merely living on the “wrong side of the tracks” would make me immune to measuring our neighbourhood against the image of that castle. Shame and regret that when push came to shove my actions did not speak louder than my words.

… And then I imagined this little girl. Who was she? What caused her to put on that dress and dance through the streets with such expressive joy? I imagined this little girl spinning and twirling in the shadow of Moonee, played with child like abandon by the wonderful Brooklyn Prince in The Florida Project. And I imagined her meeting a Bobby, played with an unrelenting compassion by the talented Willem Dafoe, someone who could tell her that no matter what the world told her that she had a place to belong. And I imagined her putting on her dress and running through the gates of Disney World to celebrate with the children on the other side of that divided line regardless of her slightly run down house, ethnicity or neighbourhood stereotype. And I turned from my imagination to offer up a prayer. A prayer that this little girl might never lose that sense of joy. That she would aspire to be a Moonee. A prayer that the next time my own actions needed to speak louder than my words that I would chose to do more than simply ignore it. That I would aspire to be a Bobby.

 

 

 

 

 

THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS

Set against the MCU’s long slate of great, immensely successful and largely adored comic book movies, Infinity War manages to set itself apart as something truly special.

Here are some of my more specific thoughts on what this film meant to me personally.

The Stories within a Story- Shaping and Reshaping our Expectations
Each individual film in the MCU has its own tone, its own style and its own arc. You don’t really need to be a comic book fan to necessarily enjoy them, and one can enjoy a single, particular film or series without needing to appreciate them all. For example, one might connect with the spy-thriller vibes of Winter Soldier but not dig the Star Wars type space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy.

But here is what is so brilliant about what the MCU has managed to pull off over all these films and all these years. While each film is different, they have also each been conditioned by a larger, creative vision which has slowly been pushing each story towards a collective, climatic finish.

This is what Infinity War represents.

Which essentially means there are multiple different entry points into the story that Infinity War is bringing to close and there are many different ways to experience this story depending on which character or characters we happen to have an infinity for. This also allows the film to be ripe for conversation amidst the potential for a variety of different reactions.

It’s risky. Never before have we had something like this on film. But it is a risk that I believe reaps a worthwhile reward.

Avengers 4 or a True Avengers sequel- Bringing the MCU together
The first two Avengers Films along with Captain America: Civil War (which many affectionately call “Civil War”) took the first steps in pulling together the MCU, and they did this from three working perspectives:

• raising the stakes (Avengers)
• foreshadowing the rise of a recognizable villain (Age of Ultron)
• setting the relationships between the characters of each individual characters in the MCU in tension with one another (Captain America: Civil War)

Thus we arrive at Infinity War with real stakes, the rise of the most dangerous villain they have yet to face, and the individual narratives/character arcs that see our heroes now splintered and separated from one another.

And what is astounding to me is the way in which Infinity War uses these perspectives to pull each individual film with all its unique tones and styles and characteristics into what essentially becomes one large, continuous first act of a Lord of the Rings style epic trilogy. I have personally come to consider Infinity War as a sort of sequel to everything that has come before it, a middle film and the first of a two part grand finale all rolled up in one. It is a true marvel that the film allows the different tones and styles to be equally present and visible while also becoming something entirely unique and different.

 

Harnessing and Setting the Tone – Creating a True True Mash-up of everything that is good and right about the MCU
There has been a ton of material released on the inter-web detailing the genius of how this team of directors, writers, artists, cinematographers managed to honour each individual flavour and tone. Here’s one of my favourites (and you can follow the link into the rabbit hole… well worth the time)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-luQokOiBw&feature=share

But the most essential ingredient for honouring each individual tone and identity is the way they structure the film. This film is an ode to comic book storytelling methods, capturing what many have come to love about reading comics. I would argue of all the films the MCU has done this is the first, truly great “comic book” movie. Creating multiple entry points into its narrative over time is precisely what comic book storytelling does, especially in its more modern form as the relationship between screen and page begins to get stronger and stronger and more relevant.

Here is a link to an interesting article about modern storyboarding techniques:
https://www.cbr.com/what-will-be-comics-next-big-storytelling-technique/

What allows all of these individual films to work in a mash-up film like Infinity War is precisely this- storyboards allow a single caption to “flow through the story”, a larger theme and purpose that defines the more defined narratives or each character.  And the larger a series becomes the larger and more purposed the storyboards can become. This is why a single film can carry so much nuance and information regarding a larger universe, even if you don’t realize it at the time. They structure Infinity War using 20-30 minute individual sequences (panels) set within a larger narrative arc (storyboard) in order to allow this larger narrative to unfold.

If you are a person of faith, it is worth noting that this is also a great way of seeing the relationship between God and the world. As we live our lives we are constantly being made aware of the larger story in which God has been unfolding since the beginning of time. In our limited perspective we live our lives so as to gain glimpses of this story and our place in it, and then to allow that story to infuse our life with a greater purpose, a grander vision for the world in which we live. And the beauty of this is that each of us are given an entry point into that story from the perspective individual narrative, just as each character in the MCU plays a larger role in Infinity War.

Defining Expectations
To begin with, I think for many fans who have been following the MCU with eagerness and anticipation it is fair to say while there are many different entry points for this film, there also exists a silent and shared expectation:
a) a chance to see all of the characters coming together in one film
b) The story of Thanos as a truly great villain to trump them all.

I don’t think anyone truly knew how or if they might actually pull this off, but if we can narrow this film down these two expectations there is little question they pull it off in a pretty incredible and awe inducing fashion. My jaw was on the floor by the end of this film. But it is what the film does with bringing all of these characters together and with developing Thanos that also circumvented these expectations.

 

First, the film uses its structure to establish the place of each individual narrative in the pre-determined story they are now starting to reveal, bringing each standing character arc to its own final points of tension.

• The now rogue hero’s of Cap and Widow
• The isolation and growing PTSD of Hulk
• The aging and fractured Stark and the burgeoning mentor-student relationship with Parker
• The devastating loss of Thor’s family and world
• The longing of Rocket to belong in the midst of his own past and hurt and his desire to just be a captain (this was so brilliant)
• Star Lord’s own journey as a captain and the family dynamics and loss he has faced
• Establishing the relationship between Gomorah and Thanos
• The spiritual journey of Dr. Strange in finding humility in light of his ego and service in the midst of power
• The relationship between Vision and the Scarlett Witch

And then it fuses these points of tension together to expose a larger, and in many ways unexpected story about a fractured group all needing to find a way to work towards a unifying goal- defeating Thanos.

What is really interesting about this larger story is the ways it uses the old guard as windows to see the new. We know these old characters. We are invested in their stories. The film reminds us that no matter how often the stuff of life tends to separate us from one another, that we all face tough stuff in this world and that we are all fighting toward the same end is what shapes our common humanity and brings us together.

Take the opening scene for example. We are thrown into the harsh reality of genocide. This flows straight out of the story of Ragnarok and connects us to the world of the Guardians, the old and the new being brought together through a single picture of desolation. And it is out of this that the film is able to dig into the personal stories of Star Lord, Stark, Thor and Rocket revealing a shared experience on an even deeper and more personal level even though these characters have just met for the first time.

Or take the growing Stark- Parker relationship. The film uses this as a entry point into the relationship between Stark and Dr. Strange, bridging the mysticism of Strange with the concrete, scientific methods of Stark and connecting it to their need to control (or their inability to control) what is happening and their burgeoning desire to each make a difference and be a difference maker in their own way, or in the case of Stark to leave a legacy that will last beyond his aging presence in these films.

 

The True Story of the Greatest Villain
As was mentioned above in regards to defining expectations, if Infinity War becomes anything in the midst of all these inter-personal dynamics and fractured relationships, it is telling the story of Thanos. This is ultimately his movie, and I am willing to posit that Thanos is likely the great villain of our time. If everything has been building up to seeing this character fleshed out in full form. here he is given depth, motivation, ambiguity, moral-tension and immense power that is all captured in a performance by Brolin that should not be understated.

And did I mention he looks incredible on the big screen!
While all of our heroes are an entry point into their shared arcs in Infinity War, they also become the entry for developing and understanding Thanos as the central villain they must each unite to defeat. Thanos has lost everything, and so the opening picture of genocide not only ties us into the story of Thor and the Guardians, but it stands as a contrast to Thanos’ own moral dilemma. Because over population caused his own planet to self destruct, his only means of redeeming this tragic reality is to extend mercy to the world by gaining the Infinity Stones and wiping out half the population with the snap of his fingers.

There is a part of Thanos that perceives his actions to be right and necessary and just, and there is another part that seems to be blindly moving towards something he feels he simply needs to do for the sake of alleviating his own hurt and loneliness and despair. It provides a stunning level of emotional complexity, and it is this opening picture told with tragic proportions and mass death that keeps this moral tension in view moving forward, especially in that crucial scene between Gomorah and Thanos where he is revealed to have the love Gomorah assumed wasn’t there.
Defining the Heroes and the Villain
And here is ultimately what is so neat to me about the way these old stories meet up and pair off with the new. We begin to see each of these fractured and broken stories slowly uncovering a subtle (and not so subtle) question about what defines a hero and what defines a villain. And this question comes through the idea of sacrifice, a theme that is also familiar to the Christian story.

Take Vision and the Scarlett Witch. Yes, even though killing Vision so that Thanos can’t get the stone would have been for the greater good of the world, doing this would have made it difficult for Scarlett Witch to distinguish her own actions from Thanos’ motivating purposes. Thus she remains driven to find another way to defeat him, if only to know she is on the right side of the line in this battle between good and evil. The fact that she does it in the end is set against Star Lord’s willingness to kill Gomorah for the greater good as well. I think the way these two scenes pair together tell us that this theme of sacrifice is the thing that separates them from Thanos, even when it is not entirely clear.

Contrast this with Thanos’ decision to sacrifice Gomorah for the sake of extending mercy to the world. For Thanos, the only way he saves the world is by sacrificing Gomorah, through which we are given a striking picture of this moral ambiguity. Where Thanos stands on the right or wrong side of this line isn’t always clear and throughout the movie we are left to struggle with where his motivation lies, for self or for others. All we really know is that all of this death, all of this loss, all of this destruction is painful and not the way things are supposed to be.

And this moral tension comes to full fruition in the moment Strange, having seen every possible scenario and knowing there is only one way forward, sacrifices his stone and saves Stark’s life for the sake of world, a moment that stands as the most definite picture of hope in this film, the idea that even in the questions there is a way forward, a way to redeem the mess and to find the promise of a better future. And somehow, this notion of sacrifice, of the hero’s constant resistance towards exchanging one life for another, feels like it is going to be a central part of how they move forward together.

Leaving Us With the Questions
Which is precisely where we find the film making its boldest move of all. In this story, in this moment, the heroes lose and the villain wins. It’s something we can see coming in the opening five minutes of the film. We know that Thor is the most powerful hero and we see him left with one eye and powerless against Thanos. We know The Hulk is the next most powerful hero and we see him being tossed around like a rag doll and suffering with some form of PTSD that keeps him from turning green and saving the day.

And the faint hope we have that Thor might be able to forge another hammer arrives at last with a striking and forceful sense of depletion in the final sequence.

Bold. Gutsy. Heartbreaking. Challenging. The last shot of Thanos staring off into the sunset might be one of the most chilling scenes I have experienced in recent memory, a scene that is willing to leave us wrestling with all the unanswered questions of this collective journey. How can this be redeemed and at what cost will this redemption eventually come?

The Stakes of Life and Death: Redemption
The question of stakes in this closing moment of the film has been hotly debated. Some loved it. Some hated it. Some feel they have been cheated, others found it raised the stakes beyond what they imagined.

Suffice to say at least everyone seems to be talking about it.
First, it is worth pointing out that this is what comic book stories do. They all have their own version of the Infinity Gauntlet. No death is ever necessarily final. They introduce kids to important adult themes. They allow us to taste death and darkness and despair and all those unanswered questions of life- our common humanity- while also giving us hope that anything is possible and nothing is final and that we can trust that we are heading towards something better than the present reality.

Second, when it comes to comic book storytelling, these storylines are less about the death itself and more about ways in which these deaths can and will impact the characters in the story moving forward. It is about the ways in which the stuff of life forges us and allows us to grow. It evokes necessary emotion in the moment while leaving us with the question of endless possibilities moving forward. We know heroes come back to life. We know things can be changed and corrected. This is why we can trust these stories. The real question is how will this unfold? How are they going to tell this story of loss and redemption in a way that teach us something about life and where these lines between hero and villain ultimately get drawn. How are all of these characters, already fractured, already broken, going to deal with this loss moving forward.

This is the stone out of which heroes and villains are forged in the comic book world.

Thus the stakes are to be understood and experienced in the moment. The stakes are in the sacrifices that have been made and the ones that will likely have to be made to find hope in the tragedy. The stakes are in this universal sense of defeat and the pictures of mass death that linger through each of these sequences. The stakes are in how we choose to find a way to rise above the current reality.

Faith. Hope. Love. This is the stuff of trusting that we are also a part of a larger story, one that is moving us towards the promise of redemption and a better world.

We don’t know how this story ends, and that is what forces us to sit in the moment. We don’t want our heroes to die, and that is what forces us to sit in the moment. We don’t want to be left in such a stark picture of loss and devastation, and that is what forces us to sit in the moment, to hope and trust that where this story ends is where it promises to end- with a world that can be redeemed.

Dr. Strange saw an immense number of possibilities, and only one resulted in victory. That is where the hope lies, but man does it seem like this is going to involve sacrifice. In the stakes of life and death and finality, redemption only works if there is a way forward, the promise of something better. And that is what Infinity War stakes the entire story of the MCU on.

Again, this is what comic book stories do. You don’t truly know how all of this is going to play out in the final act, but in this moment man does this all suck big time. Watching Parker die? Watching Scarlett Witch holding Vision in his final moment? Watching Gomorah being thrown off a cliff? Watching Thor lose everything in that opening scene? Hugely emotional.

Which brings me to where this all of this seems to be leading.

Disassembled Hero’s Assemble
The new hero’s have disappeared and the old guard is left standing. I wouldn’t have wanted them to write this story in any other way. It’s perfect. The Cap and Stark relationship is left intentionally unresolved, which means working through the stuff that pulled them apart is likely going to play into how they respond to what has just happened. And we know there must be a reason for saving Stark at the expense of that final ring.

I’ll wager this. I actually think if you strip away Thanos this is Stark’s story at its heart. His bookend.

And there is the question of why Rocket is the one who remains of the Guardians. Or why Banner becomes the only one to interact with each different group over the course of the film.

Any way this shakes up the final film is going to be one emotional ride through both the reality of the hell that Infinity War leaves us with and the promise of a new earth that lies somewhere on the horizon. Infinity War has set the stage for the MCU to be reborn. It has set the stage for the old to give way to the new in dramatic fashion, and calling out to Captain Marvel in the end was goose bump inducing. Using the setting of Black Panther and Wakanda, incorporating a dominant Guardians vibe, the increased role of Dr. Strange, the idea of the student taking the place of the mentor.
Yes, this is a tragic ending, but hope still remains. The real question is, what is it going to cost and how will the hero’s be able to redeem this notion of sacrifice that seems so central to the story Infinity War is telling.

Following the fantastic “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, Director Wes Anderson returns to the art of stop motion animation with the recent release of “Isle of Dogs”, a beautifully crafted, lusciously detailed, heartfelt technical marvel.

It didn’t take long to find myself being swept up into this adventure about a boy going on a search for his dog spot, and there is little question the film builds on much of Anderson’s more recognizable stylistic and idiosynchretic tendencies:

• His deadpan style humour and dialogue
• His attention to symmetry and shape and precision
• Using cultural and artistic references to anchor his film in a particular time and (imagined) place and influence.
• Playing with messy family dynamics

Along with these familiar stylings, Isle of Dogs also sees Anderson continuing to experiment with new ideas and demonstrating personal growth, most notably in his use of a lower frame rate which accents the animation with some rougher edges and doing some neat things with moving us in and out of panned shots and an almost fearless willingness to do close up shots. This has a way of taking a confined area and making it feel a lot larger and more expansive than it actually is. We also see Anderson, someone who has a tendency to depict muted emotion, growing in his embrace of more obviously optimistic, joyous and sentimental tones. True to form, Isle of Dogs might be his most sentimental and most accessible film to date narratively speaking, and technically I think this film, which we find echos of in The Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom and, of course, Fantastic Mr. Fox, could be considered one of his most ambitious and impressive visual accomplishments to date.

Coming back to “craft”, this is the perfect word to describe Isle of Dogs, and also the perfect way to describe a Director who I believe represents a true Auteurs. With that said, it is also worth pointing out that even a cursory and surface look at the story behind the making of Isle of Dogs showcases this film as a true collective process as well, developed through a writers room, an expansive team of talented artists and, at least when it comes to its inspiration, a shared passion for Japanese animation.

All of which brings me to the elephant in the room- the lingering and much publicized accusation of cultural appropriation.

The film takes place in a futuristic, fictionalized city that represents a conceptualized version of Japan. Anderson’s choice to create a fictionalized city and landscape out of a recognizable and very real culture, people and history is connected to his desire to pay homage to the things that have inspired him from that culture, namely the work of Kurosawa and Miyazaki. But there are some (or many) who feel that Isle of Dogs crossed a line between homage and, at the very least, borderline cultural appropriation, not necessarily with intention but rather as an error of judgement. Some feel that the reason for using Japan as a setting is not entirely clear in the context of the film, which means the way Anderson is using representation in this film becomes even less clear. As a couple of writers have surmised, Anderson positions himself as a tourist rather than truly immersing himself in the culture, thus relegating Japan as an objectifying plot device rather than a homage or love letter to a culture.

Here are some examples I have encountered of possible cultural appropriation:

• Representing Japan’s history of family centred monopolies in an over sighted and slightly fashion (The Kobayashi family)
• Swapping the important cultural image of the Komainu with “cat” shrines
• The decision to set it in Japan while also making the hero of the story a white, American exchange student
• Naming the central Japanese character “Atari”
• Including the scene of making Sushi as a stereotype
• The creative decision to have most of the characters speak in an often broken and sometimes tongue and cheek version of Japanese while having the dogs speak in English

I do think this last point is probably the most poignant one. In the film the dogs speak english while the Japanese characters speak in their own language without subtitles. Instead Anderson chooses to use an on screen english interpreter and a white, American exchange student as a means of engaging across linguistic lines. This has the affect of distancing us from the Japanese characters to a degree, and although it is clear Anderson is playing around with the idea of communication and language thematically, some felt this recognizable device actually ends up working against this end goal by not allowing the Japanese characters to have a voice of their own.

Critic Nina Coomes fleshes out the role of language in the film in her review, saying:

“At one point, before allowing his opponents to make a counter-speech, Mayor Kobayashi inexplicably barks out “Risupekto!,” a Japanized pronunciation of respect that isn’t used in colloquial Japanese. While there are many English words that are commonly used in Japan, Isle of Dogs opts to invent its own. For instance, instead of having his characters say osuwari (sit), Anderson has them parody English by shouting “Sitto!,” another word Japanese speakers don’t use.”

Coomes further adds,

“Taken alongside the movie’s cultural oversights and reinterpretations, this conclusion is just another instance of Isle of Dogs using Japan as a way to normalize outlandishness, thus creating the illusion of a cohesive story.”

This last point is worth highlighting. More than one critic has pointed out that what really crosses the line is the way the film seems primed to use an unfamiliar culture (to American audiences) to elevate and accent the strangeness of his methods as a Director. At this point the lack of intention almost veers towards intentional.

Now, this might be a good place to pause and offer an obvious caveat to all of this. I am not Japanese, nor am I overtly familiar with the culture myself, and so I cannot speak to the way someone from this culture or familiar with this culture might interpret or contextualize this film differently than me. I can only speak from own limited experience with the film and from an observant understanding of the issue as best as I am able.

Worth posting is this review by Justin Chang (critic for the Los Angeles Times), who argues the film as appropriation but does so with a sympathetic voice to what he believes are the films many strengths. Whether you agree with him or not, I think he has written one of the better pieces regarding the films cultural voice.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-isle-of-dogs-review-20180321-story.html

With that caveat, here is where I land on the issue of cultural appropriation in Isle of Dogs. I think it does tow a line, perhaps mostly because Anderson has yet to speak publicly about some of these artistic choices, but I do not think it is intentional or purposed, and I do not think it should or must take away from an individuals experience of the film as emotionally resonant. And I think this central point is important, even as I have personally learned much about the cultural appropriation in this film from other voices over these last few weeks.

I should also point out that the film resonated with me emotionally on a number of levels, which I hope to explore further here, which makes this whole conversation a delicate process that must be done with understanding and grace (on my part and on the part of others who might disagree), especially when it comes to trying to make sense of someone as unique as Anderson.

So as a way of getting into my more detailed thoughts on why this film resonated with me on a strong and positive level, here are some of the more important points that stood out for me when it comes to my personal experience of Isle of Dogs and the issue at hand:

1. Anderson himself has described this film as the culmination of one big idea (the desire to create a story about a boy and a group of alpha dogs in a garbage dump) and a passion (for Japanese animation and culture). Every indication that we can glean from his public interviews tells us that cultural appropriation was far from intentional, and that Anderson actually wanted to endear us to the nuances of Japanese culture through this fictionalized setting. Now, this does not mean it isn’t fair to speak to the issue if it is present, but I do think it awakens us to the idea that maybe there is more going on here than it first appears.

2. As was stated above, this project was the culmination of many different voices, including representation from Japanese culture. The fact that it had a writers room, a rarity in film and even a greater rarity outside of franchise films, speaks to what was hopefully an environment conducive to fleshing out the necessary intricacies and respect and grace to make this work. All of which is simply to say that while Anderson might have directed certain decision and creative choices intentionally, the creative process here actually mirrors a more recent (and less controversial) film dealing with cultural representation- Coco. Obviously Isle of Dogs hasn’t resulted in the same universal embrace of that previous film’s cultural representation, but again, I think this fact can awaken us to the possibility that what Anderson was trying to achieve might be far more sensitive to the culture than some felt it was.

3. The attention Anderson and team give to particular scenes is just one of the many impressive things about Isle of Dogs. This is true in a specific sense, but also in a larger cultural sense. The way it uses the music and captures the beauty of Japan and Japanese culture seems to me to be genuine and adoring, even if it is a bit touristy.

Just to speak to the sushi-making scene in particular, I know some saw it as an unfortunate inclusion (and depiction) of a common Japanese tradition used simply to heighten the setting as a strange and unfamiliar backdrop through which we can embrace Anderson’s own creative process. But I think the sheer detail given to this scene is telling. The way the camera narrows in on the process of this individual partaking in what is clearly more than a mundane, every day activity, along with the way it uses this scene as a break or pause in the larger narrative, showed incredible care and intention for a moment it wants us as an audience to resonate with and appreciate and revel in. This, I believe, is actually a window into the culture rather than appropriation. It is also worth pointing out that I have read a few interviews from Japanese individuals which suggested the way this scene captures the reality and precision and detail of this process was admirable and faithful. I have heard that this scene alone took 8 months to film, and these sort of facts, I think (and I felt) help to reveal Anderson’s creative purpose in this film in a more celebrated way.

4. Many critics have pointed out that there seems to be an intention to use see this story as a way of satirizing the current state of the American landscape. Knowing that this films creation spans Presidencies might suggest this is more timely than pointed, but there is room to consider, as movie critic Richard Brody (New York Times) writes, “For Anderson, Japan is a sort of mirror-America,” offering a reflection on “the xenophobic, racist, and demagogic strains of contemporary American politics.” Thus one of the questions this brings us back to is, does the use of Japan as a backdrop for this film become a means to gain a laugh, colour a film, and ultimately help us better understand ourselves, or does it allow us the opportunity to see ourselves through a fair representation of another culture.

For me, given the attention to language as a thematic force in this film I honestly felt Anderson was trying to speak across cultural lines. And as I wrestled with where to land on this issue I came across this link which I found somewhat compelling.

https://www.cinemaescapist.com/2018/04/isle-dogs-metaphor-japanese-politics/

Shang, writing for The Cinema Escapist, essentially argues that, although this is a film (at least partially) written for American audiences and by an American Director, the mistake people seem to be making is viewing it from the wrong perspective. As Shang writes, “The confusion over Anderson’s political message (is) rooted in the same Americentrism which assumes that all of our movies must, at their base, be about ourselves.”

It is fascinating to consider his ensuring point that “if Isle of Dogs is viewed against the backdrop of contemporary Japanese politics rather than our own, the film suddenly transforms from an impenetrably weird Wes Anderson flight of fancy, into a powerfully encoded piece of political propaganda.”

Now, I am still wrestling with this interpretation in its entirety, and to be honest, seeing it from this lens, as a direct reflection of the future of Japanese-American relations, is made even more poignant and compelling when considering it survived the transition into the Trump era of politics. But if I was to simply take the idea that this was written “from” a Japanese perspective, it definitely does change the way I view many things in this film. And so while it could be right and appropriate to, as Brody writes, recognize that “from its basic setup, “Isle of Dogs” is a fantasy that reflects no aspect of Japanese current events but, rather, the xenophobic, racist, and demagogic strains of contemporary American politics”, that doesn’t necessarily mean this a film that elevates “us” at the expense of “them”. This is simply the way Anderson invites us, from the perspective of an American audience, to see a film set in Japan in the light of our own current socio-political reality. If Shang is even partially right, Anderson is indeed trying to speak across cultural lines without appropriating either, which becomes especially relevant as we try to resist the assumption that this is a film made primarily for American audiences, the basis on which the cultural appropriation I think is given the weight some people have given it. In this sense, even though I don’t agree that she is presented as the hero of the story in any way, the exchange student really could have been from any culture.

5. A further note on the inspiration of Kurosawa and Miyazaki is also necessary. Anderson gives Isle of Dogs a certain ascetic that anchors its futuristic setting in a recreation of these past works, using colour and visual to give the film an almost strange amalgamation of futuristic imagining mixed with an older, recognizable and almost nostalgic nuance. Also worth noting, as film critic Richard Brody does, is that this is not entirely unfamiliar to Anderson’s style:

“The movie’s future-Japan (a future that is decoratively imbued, Anderson-style, with industrial styles and technological devices of the fifties and sixties) is akin to the fictitious Central European country of Zubrowka in “Grand Budapest,” which is as much a movie creation—a reference to films by Ernst Lubitsch and other nineteen-thirties filmmakers—as is the futuristic-dystopian Japan of “Isle of Dogs.”
– Richard Brody

Further, we see him doing this with his other well publicized inspirations (Roald Dahl and the French New Wave films and directors come to mind) along with playing with other forms of cultural expression (The Darjeeling Limited, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums). This is just to say, this is what Anderson tends to do as a director, is to come up with a story and then find the best setting through which to tell it and then to play around with that setting creatively. This is not Japan. As critic Justin Chang puts it, this is Wes Anderson’s world.

6. I have also heard that “Isle of Dogs” is considered “the third film in a virtual trilogy, following Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel”—which uses these homages and cultural settings to write “a trilogy of revolt.” according to Brody. And this is, when it comes down to it, what I think Isle of Dogs is really all about. It is about the ways in which we respond to issues of legalism, tyranny and political corruption, and the ways we find ourselves as individuals in “community” wrestling with the desire for independence but also this longing to hold on to and find worth and acceptance and belonging in the affection and appreciation that comes from others.

We see this in the group of outcast dogs and the different characteristics Anderson affords each dog. This idea for a story about a boy looking for his dog opens up conversation about the tension that exists between tame and wild, individuality and community and Anderson uses this tension to explore some of the central tenants of human nature, that individual struggle between instinct (we do what we do not want to do and do not feel in control) and free will (the desire to know we are striving to do good and the need to be in control). The moment this is most realized is the point in which Chief, voiced by Bryan Cranston makes this momentary confession that he bites, but he does not want to bite and he does not know why he does. It’s a powerful moment that exposes the true force of this narrative trajectory. Its a theme that resurfaces when Chief, trying to woo one of the female dogs, is told that this female does not like tame dogs. This becomes a commentary on the ways we struggle through the biological make up of our world to find something innately human and humane and to fight through some of the tenants of a sort of dominant Darwinian environment. And all of these dogs stories essentially feed back into this growing relationship between Chief and the boy Atari as an examination of how this humanity is expressed in our individual stories of hurt and brokenness.  Which brings me to this last point…

7. As Brody points out, “the centre of the movie is neither the Japanese characters nor the American one; it’s the canine ones.” I agree with this to a point, but where I disagree is that I think the dogs stories are what open us up to Atari’s own upbringing and family relationship. And far from humanizing the dogs while dehumanizing the Japanese, as critic Angie Han believes it does, I think the film sets these characters in relationship to one another as a means of bringing out Atari’s own inward journey as a commentary on society at large. And I don’t think Anderson is making any single political point here. He is simply presenting the struggle of our socio-political realities regardless of culture. Both democracy and dictatorship is held up as a messy construct. Both individualism and collectivism is held up as a messy and broken construct. Things are broken and flawed on all sides because this is what humanity is, a means of working through our brokenness together.

But the brilliance of what Anderson does is the way he brings us towards these macro and micro narratives of messiness and brokenness through a rather simple construct of a boys relationship with his dog. As we gain a window into Atari’s own heartbreaking story, each of the dogs he encounters on his search for spot provides a mirror for his story to reflect back on his personal struggle and his growth. And what Anderson taps into is the way this bond between dog and human has a way of doing this in many of our lives. Its one of the most expressive and real and honest dog movies I have seen in a long time, and one that pulls this emotion out in subtle ways (akin to the slow welling up of tears we see in those animated eyes). And because I was so invested in this emotional element, the movie allowed me to consider that the reason Anderson was keying in on this was to open me up to the question of our socio-political environments. He uses this dog-human relationship to bring out the films ultimate and unifying message, this idea that even when we need to fight for our independence in the face of oppression, thankfully the (human) need for affection and acceptance and belonging looms larger and stronger. We cannot exercise ourselves out of community, even when our image of community is broken, just as it is in a world where dogs have been outcast to Trash Island. Because without community we cease to understand what it means to be human(e), which is precisely what is happening when the only relationship Atari is afforded by his politically powerful father is between him and his guard dog, a relationship he holds onto as his only true community even when they also try to steal that relationship from him as well.

When the worst of ourselves has come to surface, we need to dig deep to rediscover what it is that makes us good and what it is that expresses the good regardless of our hard socio-political lines. And this same message then flows out into our individualistic tendencies, pushing back against our narrow vision of the “revolt” theme. The scene at the slide set against the scene with the stick arrives with a certain power, providing us with a key transitionary moment in the film when it comes to understanding this relationship between community and individual and our struggle against our nature and our humanity. And it is one that I found profound in both the weight it carries and the commentary it provides for speaking across linguistic lines and experience. Even though we speak different languages and look different from one another, the things that pull us apart and bring us back together are very much the same. We fight to be heard, but we need others to hear us. We push back against the control of others, but we need relationship. And the most important thing that comes out of these two things is that true freedom only comes from one place- relationship with one another. And thus it becomes far more important to know how to listen in the midst of the films rather timely demonstrations of dominating politics and fake news (the Oracle) than it is to simply revolt, even if that sometimes becomes necessary.

The fact that over the course of the film each choice and each decision in this group of dogs is being appropriated to the majority vote speaks to this idea of being heard regardless of the language we speak, regardless of whether that democratic process actually even works, and it is this same message that speaks into this choice to have them speak Japanese without subtitles. I think it is meant as a contrast to the sort of relationships we build with our dogs. We have to truly listen in order to understand, not to language but more importantly to emotional and visual cues, to who we are underneath the brokenness. Because words only go so far. I think as an American audience we are being invited to consider what this might be like in a cross cultural context. And this, I think, is a really important message of us to hear regardless of whether we are a dog, a translator, an exchange student, a young boy, American, Canadian or Japanese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Is there anything quieter—or scarier—than silence?”

(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS)
Memorable performances, impressive pacing and one of the most effective uses of sound in recent memory would all be notable for me when it comes to discussing A Quiet Place, but it is the films attention to detail that might be its most stunning accomplishment.
When it comes to the films attention to detail here are three things that stood out for me:

1. Using trope to stretch the boundaries of a familiar genre

John Krasinski of The Office fame doesn’t have an extensive or memorable filmography attached to his name (The Hollars hardly made much in the way of noise), but A Quiet Place is certainly proof of his potential as a director in demonstrating restraint and building tension behind the camera.

We can see this restraint and recognize his ability to build tension in the decision to take what is at its heart a story driven film and re-imagine it through the lens of the horror genre, a decision that allowed him to tell this story in a very particular way.

And yes, it is a film that that includes plenty of horror tropes, but the most noted thing to me was that it could easily do away with these elements and still exist as a compelling film.

Further, because this film is not dependent on these tropes to do what it sets out to do, Krasinksi is free to play around with these horror aspects in way that is refreshingly self-aware and intentional. He takes a simple concept, the idea that if you make a sound monsters will eat you, a concept one could argue is not entirely original to a genre prone to these sort of elements and jump scares (last years It Comes at Night and the previous years Don’t Breathe come to mind as fair comparisons) and breathes into it complex themes and heartfelt drama.

Take the nail scene for example.

When we first see the nail we know exactly why its being introduced into the scene. We know that eventually someone is going to step on it. And yes, in one of the films more memorable moments Emily Blunt’s character (Evelyn) eventually does step on this nail in a very convincing fashion (I am still recoiling from the image). But here is where Krasinksi demonstrates a unique skill as a director and deviates from the trope itself. Rather than simply move on to the next scare he makes the decision to leave the nail in play. The brilliance of this decision is while the nail never really ends up impacting the story again in a purely physical manner, simply being in play lends a measured emotional weight which adds an invited sense of urgency. As we move up and down this stairwell with different characters leaving and entering the basement and passing vicariously by this protruding nail, as viewers we are left at a heightened state of awareness, and Krasinksi uses this heightened awareness to key us in on the narrative movement that the nail sets in play, namely the separation and growing chaos that is threatening to tear this family apart.

It is also worth noting that what adds to the brilliance of this decision, and Krasinski does this a lot over the course of the film, is that he is able to use a single trope (like the nail) to set in motion an elevating and intensifying state of sound, tension and chaos. As she steps on the nail we see Blunt’s character spiralling towards an intensifying climax all predicated on her ability to stay silent in such a circumstance (the woman has just gone into labour for crying out loud… which is what I would likely be doing in that same circumstance, not going in to labour but crying out loud). And it leads us towards one of the craziest birthing scenes I have ever seen delivered (pun intended) on film followed by her subsequently being trapped in the basement with one of the monsters, her life and the life of her family literally in her hands.

And all of this happens while outside of the home each of the other characters are spiralling into an equal sense of chaos at the same time.

This move from controlled and predicated normalcy and towards uncontrolled chaos is what Krasinski is looking to evoke and portray in A Quiet Place, and he does this by using the tropes of a genre to achieve it. This is where the sound and silence becomes more than a singular concept and grows into a compelling metaphor and an active player in the story.

 

2. Using sound and silence as a storytelling device

Again, conceptually the story revolves around a family forced to live in silence in order to avoid being hunted by these mysterious creatures which are extremely sensitive to sound. Silence, then, becomes the means by which Krasinski is able to use this surface horror element, one predicated on an element of horror or fear, and infuse this into a narrative that on a deeper and more complex level is ultimately about family and responsibility to one another. A narrative that begins as a simple premise based on the methodical control of ones environment and circumstance which gets thrown further and further into a sense of uncontrolled chaos for fear of these unnamed monsters, is able to allow that chaos to bring these thematic moments to the surface in a meaningful way, and it all happens through the art of sound and silence.

For Krasinski, sound and silence in A Quiet Place is expressed on three levels:
– Conceptual– the means by which the film is able to achieve its jump scares
– Technical– the way the film uses silence and sound as a cinematic device
– Thematic– both contextualized into the post-apocalyptic setting and an acting metaphor for the characters themselves.

On a conceptual level, the silence easily could have become a gimmick, a way to earn a few scares and represent itself as another genre film. A good one albeit, but nothing necessarily original. It is on a technical and thematic level that the film stretches these boundaries and turns the art of sound and silence into a storytelling device that feels wholly original.

Take the score for example. Set in minor keys that feel just slightly off of centre, we are able to note the way that the score moves in and out along with the films specific narrative movement. In most cases, when considering horror tropes, the music is what awakens us to the danger lurking around the corner. It predicts the jump scares and readies us for an emotional response. In A Quiet Place we begin with silence… eerie silence. Unsettling silence. It offers us this sense that nothing has survived in this environment through a complete absence of background noise and nature. The jump scares are so effective in A Quiet Place because they breathe out of this silence. And if you pay close attention to the score you can recognize that the music and sound responds rather than predicts these tonal and emotional shifts, narrowing us in on the characters themselves rather than the scares.

In this sense, each sound in the film arrives with a sense of immediacy, urgency, purpose and context. From small, sudden accidental noises to massive sonic explosions, each noise arrives as a deterrent, a response or a distraction that tells us something about the characters and the larger metaphor of the story. Take for example the old man grieving the loss of his loved one. The scream that pierces this scene evokes a sense of desperation, pain, futility and remorse that is rather stunning when we consider we only just met this individual a few seconds ago. This momentary sound also becomes the image through which we are able to interpret Krasinki’s own break of the silence through his character later on in the film.

Or take the story of the daughter (played by the absolutely wonderful Millicent Simmonds). Pay attention to the way the sound and the direction moves with the shifting perspective of her deafness. When she puts on the hearing aid her father made for her and takes it off it, the act is felt through the noise and the silence that captures this moment on screen. In one particularly frightening scene we are allowed to see the threat standing behind her while her on-screen character and perspective remains completely deaf to it. It plays to chilling effect.

The silence also plays a role in dictating the family’s means of survival. The effort and attention Krasinski gives to imagining every day activities in the light of silence is incredible. The silence then becomes expressed through the most innate details and background visuals- eating on Kale leaves for example, or marking off the floor so they know which boards creek and which don’t. And I love that we don’t spend any time watching them actually create these ways of living, they simply exist in the world we are being asked to inhabit with them, a function of their perceived and assumed adaptability. In fact, it is the way Krasinski is able to consistently answer possible questions of what it might look like to actually live in a world of silence that allows us to relocate any questions we might have about how this world might or could work as a marvellous feat of creative cinematic accomplishment. The effort and attention to detail works to draw us in rather than leaving room for us to question it.

And finally, as I move into a discussion of the films narrative, on a thematic level the silence plays a significant role in determining the films hopeful resolution and redemptive arc. Krasinski made this film to express the fears of parenthood that he experienced himself, and to discuss the ways in which family can help us learn to live with purpose in the midst of these fears, and the way family can help us see beyond our fears by giving us the opportunity to invest into the lives of others without condition. He simply uses the silence and the apocalyptic environment as a way to imagine the every day reality of this experience, this relationship, in an imaginative way.

3. Family, Fear and the Fight to Live Beyond the Tropes

The opening scene perfectly captures the desolation of the landscape contrasted with the picture of a family, whom we are first introduced to through images of unnamed feet shuffling through the isles of an abandoned grocery story. What this opening scene does is establish the hopeless reality of their world along with a calculated and determined decision not to simply just survive in this world, but to actually live.

This is also what we see in the picture of the rocket that the youngest boy so desperately wants to hold and to play with. A simple desire for the chance to be a kid. The chance to play with a toy like any normal child would have in the world that once was. This is followed by the pain of a father who realizes he has to take this opportunity away from his kid, and then lastly by the love of a sister who desperately wants to give that chance back to her baby brother.

See it through this lens and this whole sequence becomes a tear inducing moment of humanity.

The opening scene also stands as a picture of longing and of hope in a larger sense. This rocket is a symbol of what lies outside those doors, the unnamed monsters that threaten the worlds existence, unknown monsters that seemingly came from somewhere and whom we only get to know through posters and writings in the background. It is also a symbol of the families survival, and the survival of every other family that might be out there, the idea that wherever the monsters who destroyed their world came from, there is a way to freedom and the promise of new life.

While the opening scene evokes these very clear pictures, it also reveals the way this family has decided not simply to escape this world but to make it their home. For whatever the monsters have taken away, they cannot take away their sense of family and the opportunity to redeem the here and the now.

Which is precisely the moment Krasinski chooses to pull us into the films main source of terror and tension. As we see the younger boy’s life suddenly taken by the monsters in a horrifying but spectacularly rendered sequence, the certainty and safety of this family unit is thrown into question. The system the parents had built to protect their children can no longer be trusted, and thus the idea that the world is unsafe but that they are stronger together is thrown into a slow progression of disarray and chaos. The single decisions of this moment are destined to haunt them and hold them each personally responsibility for what happened, a reality that essentially begins to pull them silently and slowly apart.

– The daughters choice to give her brother a little bit of happiness.
– The mothers choice not to carry her son
– A fathers inability to know what was happening in time to save him.

And so the daughter feels responsible for the death of her brother, believing that her father will forever hate her because of it. The mother feels lost in her inward turmoil and haunted by what she perceives to be her failures as a mother to protect her child. The father feels like he can no longer protect his family and thus becomes consumed with trying to consumed with trying to fix the problem on a superficial level.

All of which leads to the decision to have another baby.

This has been decisively one of the more divisive moments in the film for general audiences. Why would they decide to do this? Is this not irresponsible? Stupid? Unbelievable? Unforgivable even?

I have read some comments of those who loathed this film because of this singular decision.

And yet this single decision is what breaks the silence of their isolated grief.

This single decision symbolizes the truth of who they are together and the reality of the life they are living apart from one another.

This single decision moves them out of a place of mere survival and back towards living as a family again.

The fires they light every night. The routines, methods and means of making it through the day, the pictures still hanging on the wall, the ways of bringing back to their life every day, normal functions like eating together and playing games together. The picture of them sitting around the table in silent prayer. They are desperately trying to find a way to be a family, to hold onto their sense of family, and all of these things become beacons of hope in a film filled with not just with silence, but with darkness. With the new birth this hope becomes realized. It becomes an expressive statement of resistance to the ruins of their world, an insistence that the monsters will not defeat them and that their family will find a way to move forward together. And it all flows out of one of the most intimate and beautiful moments in the film, a moment between husband and wife in which touch and dance and closeness says more than words ever could (also one of the more beautiful uses of music and sound in the film).

The birth speaks to the one thing that looms larger than the monsters in the story- the way loss and grief can rob us of hope. The scene is not arbitrary or a cheap trick, it carries a deep sense of purpose and meaning. It is the way they settle, rebuild and move forward in the face of the monsters. It uncovers why they are still around all these months later. It uncovers the real determination of the father’s time spent in the basement, in isolation. And it is what ends up bringing the family back together, most notably and importantly binding back together the father-daughter relationship that has been lost under the physical and emotional silence.

The birth then is not just a symbol of hope, but a reminder of their brokenness. This is a film being held hostage not to monsters but to their pain.

There is a crucial moment by the waterfall where the silence is finally broken in an audible way, if only temporarily. And it becomes a moment of clarity about where this family is at. Each drowning in unspoken pain. And it directly connects us to later in the film where the mother and their new baby are caught behind the “waterfall” in their home while separated from the rest of her family.

One moment defined by sound and the freedom to finally be able to speak. The other defined by the threat of silence and the inability of the mother or child to be able to speak in light of this new birth. In both cases this is a symbol of the divide that the silence creates and the freedom they have in breaking the silence by coming back together as a family.

And eventually it is this unspoken relationship between the father and the daughter that does pull the family back together. Whereas the death of their son pulled them apart, the death of the father does the opposite. Where the daughter holds herself responsible and worthy of her fathers hate and rejection, the father demonstrates his love in a true moment of sacrifice, one which stands in stark contrast to the old mans sense of futility and hopelessness earlier in the film.

And what becomes revealed in this act of love is that the fathers love has been persisting over all this time, undying and unbroken, simply unspoken and disguised by the silence and fear of the world around them. All of his work he was doing was for the sake of his daughter, his family, and it ends up being the very thing that not only brings them back together but allows them to move forward and rebuild in his physical absence.

It’s a heart wrenching realization and powerful thematic development for a film that could be measured merely against its tropes. And it is a moment that invites each of us, parent or not, to wonder about the choices we might make in the face of such circumstance. The power of silence as metaphor is that the anxiety and fear of bringing a child into the world is a direct reflection of the lives each of us live in the every day. And the questions it evokes is, does hope loom larger than fear? Does freedom loom larger than anxiety? Does love loom larger than words? And how, when we measure the ways this fear and anxiety builds walls and divides our sense of family and our decisions and ability to move forward (also in the larger sense of community), might we respond to opportunities to break this silence and fight back against fear and anxiety?

One of the sound designers (Erik Aadahl) said about A Quiet Place, “For a film where humans must be silent to survive, the goal was to make an audience lean in and become afraid themselves to make a sound.”

In a truly redemptive sense, the film also invites us to learn to live again as well.