Batman Begins
Review by John L. Ng
October, 2012
After reviewing Christopher Nolan’s "Dark Knight Rises," the last of his Batman trilogy, I wanted to watch again his first movie to see how it all began. "Batman Begins" (premiered 2005) opens with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) sojourning in the Far East. As a child he has witnessed the gruesome murders of his parents. Disillusioned in anguish and fear he relinquishes his privileged existence and abandons Gotham. Presumed dead, he becomes a lost soul finding his way in the Himalayas, and in himself. He encounters a clandestine fraternity called the League of Shadows where he matures his self awareness and combatant skills.
Mentored by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), a master of the fraternity, Bruce rises into a samurai-like warrior. But he desists the fraternity's morally dubious mission. He perilously escapes and returns to Gotham only to find it perilous in lawlessness, under siege by a crime lord, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). The last good cop James Gordon (Gary Oldman) is hapless in his goodness; assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), Bruce's childhood love, the last virginal idealist, is helpless in her idealism.
Under Ducard's tutelage, Bruce masters the power of fear. Fear is Bruce's greatest impediment and will become Batman's potent offense. As a child, Bruce was enwrapped with fear when he fell into an abandoned well filled with bats. In time, bats become his greatest fear. The last breath of his dying father to fearful Bruce was "don't be afraid." In a world where evil is more confident than good, fear is a powerful emotive weapon, both for evil and for good. One can use fear in unaware people to oppress them; another can use fear to strip the oppressors' corrupt capacities. Ducard instills in Bruce that the best means to fight injustice is to manage one's own fear and manipulate fear in others. "Breathe in your fear," Ducard reassures him, "to conquer others you must become fear, you must bask in the fear of others."
In this existential duality replete with delusive fear, the most potent power a hero can have is also fear. Unlike other super heroes, Batman is a super hero without super powers. He is a mere mortal like us. But he possesses the power of fear. In time, Bruce becomes Batman. He transforms a bat cave into his high-tech Bat Cave. Bruce exerts, "bats frighten me, it's time my enemies share my dread." Through his metamorphosis into Batman, Bruce is confronted by constant fear - he wrestles with it, is motivated by it and uses it to render paralysis in others. To do good, this hero is not fearless; to do good, he faces up to fear and masters it.
But fear's pulses can easily mutate into impulsive vengeance. In a defining moment, Rachel slaps Bruce awake to the realization that without compassion a crime fighter is at best a vigilante and at worst a revengeful executioner. The antonym of fear is not courage but compassion - that intuitive, passionate desire to share in the pains of others. In a world where evil seemingly is winning, there is a line that is finely drawn that demarcates justice from vengeance. It is not jurisprudent coincidence that Batman never kills anyone. He only terrifies his enemies into cognitive and emotive submission.
"Batman Begins" narrates how in Gotham's social darkness Bruce Wayne is transformed into the Dark Knight. Even his voice is a raspy menace of existential darkness. The iconic image of the Dark Knight perched on top of the skyscraper turret in the dark of night, overseeing Gotham, taps into our shared hopeless fear in a world gone dark. Of all the superheroes, Batman is the darkest and the most human. With Bruce's flawed but compassionate humanity and Batman's human but fearsome power, Gotham - this world - is a safer (and better) place, even in its darkness.
October, 2012
After reviewing Christopher Nolan’s "Dark Knight Rises," the last of his Batman trilogy, I wanted to watch again his first movie to see how it all began. "Batman Begins" (premiered 2005) opens with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) sojourning in the Far East. As a child he has witnessed the gruesome murders of his parents. Disillusioned in anguish and fear he relinquishes his privileged existence and abandons Gotham. Presumed dead, he becomes a lost soul finding his way in the Himalayas, and in himself. He encounters a clandestine fraternity called the League of Shadows where he matures his self awareness and combatant skills.
Mentored by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), a master of the fraternity, Bruce rises into a samurai-like warrior. But he desists the fraternity's morally dubious mission. He perilously escapes and returns to Gotham only to find it perilous in lawlessness, under siege by a crime lord, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). The last good cop James Gordon (Gary Oldman) is hapless in his goodness; assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), Bruce's childhood love, the last virginal idealist, is helpless in her idealism.
Under Ducard's tutelage, Bruce masters the power of fear. Fear is Bruce's greatest impediment and will become Batman's potent offense. As a child, Bruce was enwrapped with fear when he fell into an abandoned well filled with bats. In time, bats become his greatest fear. The last breath of his dying father to fearful Bruce was "don't be afraid." In a world where evil is more confident than good, fear is a powerful emotive weapon, both for evil and for good. One can use fear in unaware people to oppress them; another can use fear to strip the oppressors' corrupt capacities. Ducard instills in Bruce that the best means to fight injustice is to manage one's own fear and manipulate fear in others. "Breathe in your fear," Ducard reassures him, "to conquer others you must become fear, you must bask in the fear of others."
In this existential duality replete with delusive fear, the most potent power a hero can have is also fear. Unlike other super heroes, Batman is a super hero without super powers. He is a mere mortal like us. But he possesses the power of fear. In time, Bruce becomes Batman. He transforms a bat cave into his high-tech Bat Cave. Bruce exerts, "bats frighten me, it's time my enemies share my dread." Through his metamorphosis into Batman, Bruce is confronted by constant fear - he wrestles with it, is motivated by it and uses it to render paralysis in others. To do good, this hero is not fearless; to do good, he faces up to fear and masters it.
But fear's pulses can easily mutate into impulsive vengeance. In a defining moment, Rachel slaps Bruce awake to the realization that without compassion a crime fighter is at best a vigilante and at worst a revengeful executioner. The antonym of fear is not courage but compassion - that intuitive, passionate desire to share in the pains of others. In a world where evil seemingly is winning, there is a line that is finely drawn that demarcates justice from vengeance. It is not jurisprudent coincidence that Batman never kills anyone. He only terrifies his enemies into cognitive and emotive submission.
"Batman Begins" narrates how in Gotham's social darkness Bruce Wayne is transformed into the Dark Knight. Even his voice is a raspy menace of existential darkness. The iconic image of the Dark Knight perched on top of the skyscraper turret in the dark of night, overseeing Gotham, taps into our shared hopeless fear in a world gone dark. Of all the superheroes, Batman is the darkest and the most human. With Bruce's flawed but compassionate humanity and Batman's human but fearsome power, Gotham - this world - is a safer (and better) place, even in its darkness.
The Dark Knight Rises
Review by John L. Ng
August, 2012
“The Dark Knight Rises” is the final film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Can’t write that I enjoy the movie. Let’s get my reasons for not liking it out of the way first. The film is three hours long and encumbered with side stories and subplots that make it wearisome to follow. For whatever the cinematic challenges, much of the dialogue is inaudible over noisy soundtracks. I have to work hard (and who wants to work hard to watch a movie) to overlook these distractions to take away the movie’s dark visual essay on our post-modern human conditions.
TDKR narrates Mr. Nolan’s moody worldview of existential duality. Living in post modernity – and a post 9-11 world – Gotham City (the world) is a dark and gloomy place of ambivalent good and complex evil. Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) heroic goodness is a tortured soul in perpetual bereavement of something lost. An emotional orphan, he is a duplicitous hero who is both cape crusader and recluse vigilante. His nemesis Bane (Tom Hardy) perpetrates a social reformer with an anarchy and terror crook. His reforms are morally questionable but are not entirely nefarious. If we are cynical enough, we swear Bane is Wayne’s evil twin. They implicitly shared the same roots of the same training from the same master. Their painful past has crippled them as well as connects them.
Nolan’s existential duality is also replete with delusive deception. Not everything or everyone is what it seems; rather everything and everyone don a guise. Batman, Bane and Selina Kyle (cat woman, Anne Hathaway) wear masks. Others wear virtual ones because they are all living some lie: Miranda Tate (philanthropist and Bruce’s love interest, Marion Cotillard), John Blake (idealistic cop, Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), and even Lucius Fox (Batman’s gadget wizard, Morgan Freeman). When Bruce quips about the cat woman’s costume, she retorts, “Yeah? Who are you pretending to be?” In another scene, Bane professes “No one cared who I was, until I put on the mask.” In perilous Gotham, its citizens wear masks not to hide who they are so much as to show their true self in hiding.
In this post-modern existential duality, every one is alone together. Wayne, Bane, Selina, Blake and Miranda are without families and fathers. Childless, they themselves are children orphaned who long for a surrogate father. Nolan portrays several father figures for the emotional orphan Wayne. In a flashback, there is amoral Henri Ducard who was Wayne’s hard driving master-father. Alfred (Michael Caine), as Wayne’s butler perpetually in tears, is the nurturing father. He warns Wayne to stay in his manor, “there is nothing here (Gotham) for you but pain and tragedy.” Lucius surrogates as Wayne’s resourceful father who supports the dark knight’s needs to meet the dark night. Commissioner Gordon is Wayne’s well meaning but exhausted father who seems absent much of the time in a hospital bed or fighting crime. Gotham is a homeless place where people live together but are alone.
TDKR is inspired by the French Revolution motif of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” At the final scene, Alfred, again in tears, recites the final lines from Dickens, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better place that I go to than I have even known.” Unlike Dickens’ city, it is mostly the worst of times, not the best of times, in Gotham. I rather hang on to the lyrics Alan Jackson sang after the 9-11 tragedy, “I know Jesus and I talk to God / and I remember this from when I was young / faith hope and love are some good things he gave us / and the greatest is love.”
August, 2012
“The Dark Knight Rises” is the final film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Can’t write that I enjoy the movie. Let’s get my reasons for not liking it out of the way first. The film is three hours long and encumbered with side stories and subplots that make it wearisome to follow. For whatever the cinematic challenges, much of the dialogue is inaudible over noisy soundtracks. I have to work hard (and who wants to work hard to watch a movie) to overlook these distractions to take away the movie’s dark visual essay on our post-modern human conditions.
TDKR narrates Mr. Nolan’s moody worldview of existential duality. Living in post modernity – and a post 9-11 world – Gotham City (the world) is a dark and gloomy place of ambivalent good and complex evil. Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) heroic goodness is a tortured soul in perpetual bereavement of something lost. An emotional orphan, he is a duplicitous hero who is both cape crusader and recluse vigilante. His nemesis Bane (Tom Hardy) perpetrates a social reformer with an anarchy and terror crook. His reforms are morally questionable but are not entirely nefarious. If we are cynical enough, we swear Bane is Wayne’s evil twin. They implicitly shared the same roots of the same training from the same master. Their painful past has crippled them as well as connects them.
Nolan’s existential duality is also replete with delusive deception. Not everything or everyone is what it seems; rather everything and everyone don a guise. Batman, Bane and Selina Kyle (cat woman, Anne Hathaway) wear masks. Others wear virtual ones because they are all living some lie: Miranda Tate (philanthropist and Bruce’s love interest, Marion Cotillard), John Blake (idealistic cop, Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), and even Lucius Fox (Batman’s gadget wizard, Morgan Freeman). When Bruce quips about the cat woman’s costume, she retorts, “Yeah? Who are you pretending to be?” In another scene, Bane professes “No one cared who I was, until I put on the mask.” In perilous Gotham, its citizens wear masks not to hide who they are so much as to show their true self in hiding.
In this post-modern existential duality, every one is alone together. Wayne, Bane, Selina, Blake and Miranda are without families and fathers. Childless, they themselves are children orphaned who long for a surrogate father. Nolan portrays several father figures for the emotional orphan Wayne. In a flashback, there is amoral Henri Ducard who was Wayne’s hard driving master-father. Alfred (Michael Caine), as Wayne’s butler perpetually in tears, is the nurturing father. He warns Wayne to stay in his manor, “there is nothing here (Gotham) for you but pain and tragedy.” Lucius surrogates as Wayne’s resourceful father who supports the dark knight’s needs to meet the dark night. Commissioner Gordon is Wayne’s well meaning but exhausted father who seems absent much of the time in a hospital bed or fighting crime. Gotham is a homeless place where people live together but are alone.
TDKR is inspired by the French Revolution motif of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” At the final scene, Alfred, again in tears, recites the final lines from Dickens, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better place that I go to than I have even known.” Unlike Dickens’ city, it is mostly the worst of times, not the best of times, in Gotham. I rather hang on to the lyrics Alan Jackson sang after the 9-11 tragedy, “I know Jesus and I talk to God / and I remember this from when I was young / faith hope and love are some good things he gave us / and the greatest is love.”
The Descendants
Review by John L. Ng
June, 2012
“The Descendants,” directed by Alexander Payne and based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, is an ode, not a celebration, to human imperfection. The movie is funny and sobering at once. Because we are flawed in our human conditions, our families and everything in them are frayed with fallacy and fallibility. The imperfect man is Matt King (George Clooney). As an inept husband and father, Matt summarizes it well from the start in his voice over: A family seems exactly like an archipelago. All part of the same whole but still separate and alone, and always drifting slowly apart (sic). Much of his angst is due to his awkwardness in deploying his heart felt intentionality. But like us and his family, he simply lacks gracefulness to pull it off.
Matt and his extended family are wealthy descendants of Hawaiian royalty. They are inheritors of a choice parcel of Kauai paradise. The cousins want to sell it to developers which will make them unimaginably wealthy. But Matt is distracted by a family tragedy. His wife lies in an irreversible coma after a boating accident. To cope, he haplessly seeks to bond with his two difficult daughters and make peace with his comatose wife. After years of family neglect, he wakes up to make amend. He wishes that things can be better but relational dysfunction is pervasive. At moments, he collapses in utter despair. Not for long, he manages to gather enough strength to make the best of what he can and cannot do.
The movie is unhurried, all the while human emotions rage. After discovering his wife’s infidelity, in a huff, he viscerally slips on boat shoes and runs to his neighbor-friend’s house for answers. His ostrich-like sprint is comical, and tragic – an analogous of how awkward and awful is our human pathology. The double wounds of a dying and betraying wife pains him with remorse. But Matt has a good heart; he means well. Even while suffering the incongruity between hesitation and impetuosity, his good heart provides a means to do what is grace-full in graceless human defect. After a heated argument, he tenderly carries his sleepy teenage daughter upstairs to her bed. In a private moment at the hospital, he rants uncontrollably against his comatose wife but finds enough grace to forgive and kiss her. He seeks out his wife’s lover to enrage but then turns around to offer him an opportunity to visit with his wife at the hospital.
In time, Matt comes home and intuitively pulls back all the window curtains. Slowly sunlight bathes the room with cleansing brightness. This too is an analogous of the cleansing light that has seeped into his life. Gazing at the old photographs of his ancestors and family on the wall, in a moment of clarity, he realizes that the present he has made is irrevocably connected to his past and future. At another time, Matt corrects his daughter, “Nothing just happens.” His family and he need to take responsibility for the choices they have made. Biblical faith teaches that forgiveness is the only power we have to overcome the tyranny of our past mistakes with one another. There are numerous moments of forgiveness in this movie because there are numerous people in need of forgiveness. At the end of the day, in cognitive and emotive dissonance, but with forgiveness, Matt is sitting restfully while sharing ice cream with his daughters. As an ode to human imperfection, this movie painfully reminds us of our flawed conditions and poignantly celebrates the power of forgiveness to change our past.
June, 2012
“The Descendants,” directed by Alexander Payne and based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, is an ode, not a celebration, to human imperfection. The movie is funny and sobering at once. Because we are flawed in our human conditions, our families and everything in them are frayed with fallacy and fallibility. The imperfect man is Matt King (George Clooney). As an inept husband and father, Matt summarizes it well from the start in his voice over: A family seems exactly like an archipelago. All part of the same whole but still separate and alone, and always drifting slowly apart (sic). Much of his angst is due to his awkwardness in deploying his heart felt intentionality. But like us and his family, he simply lacks gracefulness to pull it off.
Matt and his extended family are wealthy descendants of Hawaiian royalty. They are inheritors of a choice parcel of Kauai paradise. The cousins want to sell it to developers which will make them unimaginably wealthy. But Matt is distracted by a family tragedy. His wife lies in an irreversible coma after a boating accident. To cope, he haplessly seeks to bond with his two difficult daughters and make peace with his comatose wife. After years of family neglect, he wakes up to make amend. He wishes that things can be better but relational dysfunction is pervasive. At moments, he collapses in utter despair. Not for long, he manages to gather enough strength to make the best of what he can and cannot do.
The movie is unhurried, all the while human emotions rage. After discovering his wife’s infidelity, in a huff, he viscerally slips on boat shoes and runs to his neighbor-friend’s house for answers. His ostrich-like sprint is comical, and tragic – an analogous of how awkward and awful is our human pathology. The double wounds of a dying and betraying wife pains him with remorse. But Matt has a good heart; he means well. Even while suffering the incongruity between hesitation and impetuosity, his good heart provides a means to do what is grace-full in graceless human defect. After a heated argument, he tenderly carries his sleepy teenage daughter upstairs to her bed. In a private moment at the hospital, he rants uncontrollably against his comatose wife but finds enough grace to forgive and kiss her. He seeks out his wife’s lover to enrage but then turns around to offer him an opportunity to visit with his wife at the hospital.
In time, Matt comes home and intuitively pulls back all the window curtains. Slowly sunlight bathes the room with cleansing brightness. This too is an analogous of the cleansing light that has seeped into his life. Gazing at the old photographs of his ancestors and family on the wall, in a moment of clarity, he realizes that the present he has made is irrevocably connected to his past and future. At another time, Matt corrects his daughter, “Nothing just happens.” His family and he need to take responsibility for the choices they have made. Biblical faith teaches that forgiveness is the only power we have to overcome the tyranny of our past mistakes with one another. There are numerous moments of forgiveness in this movie because there are numerous people in need of forgiveness. At the end of the day, in cognitive and emotive dissonance, but with forgiveness, Matt is sitting restfully while sharing ice cream with his daughters. As an ode to human imperfection, this movie painfully reminds us of our flawed conditions and poignantly celebrates the power of forgiveness to change our past.
Friends with Benefits
Review by John L. Ng
April, 2012
Okay! I don’t live in a dark cave and I do get it. Society evolves and cultural values change. What were once deviant behaviors are now accepted as normal. The late New York Senator Daniel Moynihan coined a phrase describing this evolution “defining deviancy down." In societal evolution, what was once intolerable public behaviors are, in time, tolerated. His insightful observation ably applies to our attitude toward graphic sexual displays and gratuitous vulgar language in social discourse and entertainment.
The film “Friends With Benefits,” recently released in DVD format, is a study of defining deviancy down. The film is billed as a romantic comedy but there is nothing romantic nor comical about it. The story is typical of that genre. Jamie (Mila Kunis), a corporate headhunter, tries to lure Los Angeles art director Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to New York. During their few days, and nights, together in New York, they become fast friends. Both are recent casualties from broken relationships and are in no mood for new romance. These wounded souls agree to have casual sex as benefits of their friendship.
Can two intelligent, attractive and sensible people have sex without emotional entanglement? This rhetorical speculation is as ridiculous in reality as it is made plausible in movies. The film would have us believe that two friends can enjoy un-entangled sex because they are virtually genderless. When they first meet at the airport, Jamie ostentatiously carries Dylan’s garment bags to their car. While bantering, they sling profane arrows at each other like two drunken sailors in a sleazy bar. In several nude scenes, we see the backside of Timberlake and Kunis – from that angle they look awfully similar without genital identities.
All this is to remind us that they are friends without gender distinctive. Sex, like food, is a genderless bodily pleasure. Have a craving for food? Enjoy an entrée of osso buco. Have an urge for sex? Enjoy it with a friend. This premise is utter non-sense and the experiment ultimately fails. The traditional notion that sexual gratification is the culmination of mutual love and commitment still has validity. Enough studies have shown that men and women have sex for different reasons. Men have sex because they can; women will have sex when they have intrinsic reasons. Whatever the reasons, studies also show that without committal love, sex is reduced to a clumsy physical act of diminishing returns.
The film has another non-sensical premise – that people find coarse talking enjoyable. Granted, Kunis and Timberlake are pretty to look at. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching them partially naked and making out? But their dialogues are doused with gratuitous profanity. Profane babble dribble from their mouths, and from everyone else, flagrantly. Crude references to graphic sex acts, bodily functions and bathroom hygiene flood our hearing. Does the film really believe that it is romantic when two lovers talk vulgarly to each other?
Once upon a time, “making love” meant two lovers having a romantic conversation. That is what Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers enjoy when they are making love in their genuine romantic comedies. I would rather watch them on DVD and skip this one.
April, 2012
Okay! I don’t live in a dark cave and I do get it. Society evolves and cultural values change. What were once deviant behaviors are now accepted as normal. The late New York Senator Daniel Moynihan coined a phrase describing this evolution “defining deviancy down." In societal evolution, what was once intolerable public behaviors are, in time, tolerated. His insightful observation ably applies to our attitude toward graphic sexual displays and gratuitous vulgar language in social discourse and entertainment.
The film “Friends With Benefits,” recently released in DVD format, is a study of defining deviancy down. The film is billed as a romantic comedy but there is nothing romantic nor comical about it. The story is typical of that genre. Jamie (Mila Kunis), a corporate headhunter, tries to lure Los Angeles art director Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to New York. During their few days, and nights, together in New York, they become fast friends. Both are recent casualties from broken relationships and are in no mood for new romance. These wounded souls agree to have casual sex as benefits of their friendship.
Can two intelligent, attractive and sensible people have sex without emotional entanglement? This rhetorical speculation is as ridiculous in reality as it is made plausible in movies. The film would have us believe that two friends can enjoy un-entangled sex because they are virtually genderless. When they first meet at the airport, Jamie ostentatiously carries Dylan’s garment bags to their car. While bantering, they sling profane arrows at each other like two drunken sailors in a sleazy bar. In several nude scenes, we see the backside of Timberlake and Kunis – from that angle they look awfully similar without genital identities.
All this is to remind us that they are friends without gender distinctive. Sex, like food, is a genderless bodily pleasure. Have a craving for food? Enjoy an entrée of osso buco. Have an urge for sex? Enjoy it with a friend. This premise is utter non-sense and the experiment ultimately fails. The traditional notion that sexual gratification is the culmination of mutual love and commitment still has validity. Enough studies have shown that men and women have sex for different reasons. Men have sex because they can; women will have sex when they have intrinsic reasons. Whatever the reasons, studies also show that without committal love, sex is reduced to a clumsy physical act of diminishing returns.
The film has another non-sensical premise – that people find coarse talking enjoyable. Granted, Kunis and Timberlake are pretty to look at. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching them partially naked and making out? But their dialogues are doused with gratuitous profanity. Profane babble dribble from their mouths, and from everyone else, flagrantly. Crude references to graphic sex acts, bodily functions and bathroom hygiene flood our hearing. Does the film really believe that it is romantic when two lovers talk vulgarly to each other?
Once upon a time, “making love” meant two lovers having a romantic conversation. That is what Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers enjoy when they are making love in their genuine romantic comedies. I would rather watch them on DVD and skip this one.
Beautiful Boy
Review by John L. Ng
February, 2012
There is a random shooting at their son’s college. During the school lockdown, the mother frantically tries to reach her child but is only able to reach his voice mail. Fearing the worst, they hope he is all right. While waiting for news of what happened, the police knock on their door and announce that their ‘beautiful boy’ is not a victim but the perpetrator who killed scores of students before killing himself.
Out of this startling opening scene, this well crafted film, directed by Shawn Ku (his first) unveils for us how the parents at the epicenter of this senseless earthquake cope with their circumstances while we, the audience, can only watch and listen. Ku crafts the film with a minimalist eye. Little of our human conditions are explored; far less is explained. Conversations are sparse and brief. Scenes linger painfully awash in a distant silence. Unlike other films of this genre, it does not deal with the obvious issues of human tragedy. It only shows how two people, and those near to them, cope. For the initiated, they may notice the parents’ messy emotions are dragged through the stages of grief – isolation, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
We know little about the parents. Kate (Maria Bello, one of my favorite actors) is at once controlled and controlling. Exacting and knowing, she imperiously tells others how she feels and what to do. Bill (Michael Sheen) is distracted by self-absorption and is filled with latent anger. Adrift in a loveless marriage, the two have lived a charade for others and their son. The night before the tragedy, the son calls home. They struggle to stay on the phone. Bill abruptly gives up, leaving Kate to nurse the call. Their son is obviously hurting, lonely and wanting. She wants to reach out but her nature gets in the way.
The film exposes their nuanced emotions as estranged spouses in a crisis. In senseless pain, they each pull the other closer for support only to quickly push the other away. In silent tenderness, while in the car after the burial, their hands touch briefly as they stare away from each other. In the presence of extended family, they have enough presence of mind to whisper their anguish to each other. During their stay in a motel, they explode in random rage, shame, guilt and recrimination after making love the night before.
The minimal intentionality of this film fits well with the notion that much of human existence is what it is. Or, as the philosopher Lao Tze says – “it isn’t what it isn’t.” Much of life is not meaningless only incomprehensible. One should not ask too many questions or worst provide too many answers. After attending worship service with her family, Kate blurts out “What do they say? God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Well, not so true, is it?”
It is a tempting question that tempts us at every bend when we are hurting and not quite sure why. Not only life is a mystery, God is a mystery. Who can explain God? To its credit, the film does not try. At the final scene, Kate cradles a distraught Bill in her arms. We’re home, she reassures him. Perhaps this is the only hopeful moment in the movie. Perhaps this is the only assurance of God’s elusive presence and invisible grace.
February, 2012
There is a random shooting at their son’s college. During the school lockdown, the mother frantically tries to reach her child but is only able to reach his voice mail. Fearing the worst, they hope he is all right. While waiting for news of what happened, the police knock on their door and announce that their ‘beautiful boy’ is not a victim but the perpetrator who killed scores of students before killing himself.
Out of this startling opening scene, this well crafted film, directed by Shawn Ku (his first) unveils for us how the parents at the epicenter of this senseless earthquake cope with their circumstances while we, the audience, can only watch and listen. Ku crafts the film with a minimalist eye. Little of our human conditions are explored; far less is explained. Conversations are sparse and brief. Scenes linger painfully awash in a distant silence. Unlike other films of this genre, it does not deal with the obvious issues of human tragedy. It only shows how two people, and those near to them, cope. For the initiated, they may notice the parents’ messy emotions are dragged through the stages of grief – isolation, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
We know little about the parents. Kate (Maria Bello, one of my favorite actors) is at once controlled and controlling. Exacting and knowing, she imperiously tells others how she feels and what to do. Bill (Michael Sheen) is distracted by self-absorption and is filled with latent anger. Adrift in a loveless marriage, the two have lived a charade for others and their son. The night before the tragedy, the son calls home. They struggle to stay on the phone. Bill abruptly gives up, leaving Kate to nurse the call. Their son is obviously hurting, lonely and wanting. She wants to reach out but her nature gets in the way.
The film exposes their nuanced emotions as estranged spouses in a crisis. In senseless pain, they each pull the other closer for support only to quickly push the other away. In silent tenderness, while in the car after the burial, their hands touch briefly as they stare away from each other. In the presence of extended family, they have enough presence of mind to whisper their anguish to each other. During their stay in a motel, they explode in random rage, shame, guilt and recrimination after making love the night before.
The minimal intentionality of this film fits well with the notion that much of human existence is what it is. Or, as the philosopher Lao Tze says – “it isn’t what it isn’t.” Much of life is not meaningless only incomprehensible. One should not ask too many questions or worst provide too many answers. After attending worship service with her family, Kate blurts out “What do they say? God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Well, not so true, is it?”
It is a tempting question that tempts us at every bend when we are hurting and not quite sure why. Not only life is a mystery, God is a mystery. Who can explain God? To its credit, the film does not try. At the final scene, Kate cradles a distraught Bill in her arms. We’re home, she reassures him. Perhaps this is the only hopeful moment in the movie. Perhaps this is the only assurance of God’s elusive presence and invisible grace.