ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Darrel Manson

Carmen – Throwing off repression

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“God isn’t evil. God is very tired, and when we are tired we make big mistakes.”

Carmen, written and directed by Valerie Buhagiar, is a story of both repression and awakening. Some people are silenced, but may have blessings to share if allowed to be heard. When things seem the darkest, it may be that something new will dawn.

In Malta, the tradition has been that when a man becomes a priest, his sister follows him to the rectory to serve as his housekeeper. Carmen (Natascha McElhone) has been doing this since she was sixteen. She has had no real life other than servitude. She is not allowed to find love, or to grow as a person.

When her brother dies, she has nowhere to go. The monsignor offers her only platitudes of a great reward in heaven. (But, of course, she must die first.) The sister of the incoming priest is pushing Carmen out so she can be in charge. She manages to sneak a key to the church, and sleeps there. When one day she is sitting in the confessional, a woman comes in and thinks it is the new priest. Carmen replies with wisdom. Others follow, celebrating the way this new priest handles things, even though he never holds mass.

When Carmen takes some of the church fixtures into the city to pawn, she meets Paulo, a handsome young man who is helpful. Carmen begins to discard her old life (symbolized by a change of clothes). Now she begins to expand her view of what her life can be. But she also is discovering that she has something to share with the world other than keeping her brother happy. She longs to ring the church bell, but that too is restricted to men.

We might be tempted to dismiss this as a relic of a tradition in an isolated situation. But it serves as a reminder of many ways that women have been silenced and oppressed through the years. And the fact that we see Carmen coming to life by doing the forbidden act of hearing confessions is a reminder that the church has culpability in that oppression. For Carmen (and in time, the community) this act exemplifies the importance of being empowered to exercise one’s gifts.

A part of her wisdom is seen in the quotation above. Given her circumstances, she might well have come to view God less than kind. She does not want others to reject God, rather she wants them to understand that perhaps God is just overwhelmed with us all. It’s easier to accept a God who may make a mistake from time to time, than for him to not care about us.

I found it interesting that each step that Carmen takes towards her awakening is preceded by a pigeon leading her someplace. The dove (a cousin to pigeons) has long been a sign of the Spirit. The Spirit, even if not the church, enable those who follow to do God’s work in new and exciting ways.

Carmen is in select theaters and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Good Deed Entertainment.

Young Plato – Grade school philosophy

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“It’s very hard to be right in philosophy.”

I was in college when I had my first class in philosophy. We may think philosophy too hard, esoteric, or maybe even a waste of time. But in the documentary Young Plato, filmmakers Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath, take us to a primary school in the North of Belfast that thrives on bringing philosophy into the lives of the students and their families. At the center of this is a headmaster whose office is filled with Elvis memorabilia and who reads The Daily Stoic.

At Holy Cross Boys Primary School, Head Master Kevin McArevey and his staff teach boys ages 4 through 11 how to deal with the issues of life by applying the questions of philosophy. When two boys scuffle in the school yard, they are brought to McArevey who takes them to the Philosophy wall to discuss the whys of behavior and consequences. Philosophy here takes on flesh and blood to become an important tool to address the past, the here-and-now, and the future.

The school is located in a predominantly Catholic area of the city. The neighborhood was a place of violence during The Troubles. The parents of the children grew up with that violence. There are still Peace Walls that separate various blocks. There are many murals that go back to that time, or are meant to memorialize the violence. There is also an incident when a pipe bomb is found near the schoolyard. The neighborhood is also somewhat decayed. There are drugs. There is an above average suicide rate.

McArevey talks to the boys about such serious concepts as death, violence, anxiety. He asks them to think about the whys, and also about the what-should- we-do’s. Sometimes this in in one-on-one encounters, especially following a boy resorting to violence at school. Other times it is in a class filled with students.

The students (keep in mind the oldest are 11) have a remarkable ability to analyze. When he asked them to refute Heraclitus’s statement “You can’t step into the same river twice”, they come up with two examples of things that never change. (I won’t share them with you. Can you think as well as these boys?) When McArevey talks to them about Seneca’s (a Roman contemporary of Jesus) Ten Ways to Control Your Anger, he asks them for ways, then compared them to Seneca (and they get several of them).

He also challenges the boys to question everything—even their teachers and parents. He tells them to “what if everything you hear”. Often boys who fight will tell him that they have been taught that if they are hit, they must hit back. That is certainly a common idea, but especially in a place such as Belfast with its violent history. He tries to show the boys how to talk with parents about such teachings.

The history of violence in the neighborhood comes up often. McArevey shows them news reports of things that happened there. He encourages the boys to share the stories of their family in those days. For them, The Troubles are not limited to the past. That time is an ever-present part of their environment. It is only by learning to view that history critically, that the boys can help to change the culture they are in.

The publicity for the film identifies McArevey as a Stoic. Stoics believe that happiness is found through virtue. In a place such as Northern Ireland, that may seem like a radical idea. But we see that such an approach to life can be fruitful.

I know that education is a complicated endeavor. But watching what happens at Holy Cross offers a glimpse at a possibility that might be transferable to other settings. It makes it clear that children—even as young as these—are capable of very sophisticated thinking. We may be right that philosophy is hard or esoteric, but it does matter. And the Boys of Holy Cross are better for it.

Young Plato is in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Solisiú Films

See How They Run – Whodunnit fun

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“It’s a whodunnit. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

It may be true that murder mysteries often follow set formulas, but See How They Run, directed by Tom George, manages to be enough different to entertain us, while being very adamant about how typical it is to the genre. In fact, it manages to parody whodunnits, the theatre world, and the film industry as it keeps us trying to figure out the culprit.

Set in 1953 London, we are there for the celebration of the 100th performance of Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap. You might recognize that title. It has become the longest running play ever—and it’s still running. Because the play has been so successful, Hollywood has come sniffing around. Producer John Wolff (Reece Shearsmith) has optioned the play and brought in an American blacklisted director, Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), to adapt it.

Köpernick is arrogant, boorish, and annoying. So when he turns up dead, there are plenty of suspects who had a variety of reasons to have done the deed. Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) is assigned the case. Stoppard is essentially burned out. He doesn’t much care anymore. He’s given a raw young officer, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan), to assist him. Their boss describes her as “A very capable officer—or at least she will be once she gets the proper instruction.” Stalker is as eager and spunky as Stoppard is bored and apathetic. As the two follow various leads, they seem to keep uncovering more motives and suspects, rather than eliminating some.  Eventually, the investigation will even lead into Agatha Christie’s living room.

This film, which seems to be trying to channel Wes Anderson films, becomes a bit of satire about film and theatre. For example, Köpernick and his screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo) argue over the value of flashbacks (which Cocker-Norris views as lazy). We then immediately have a flashback. Also, Köpernick feels no need to actually see the play—he plans on making a movie that’s completely different. The clichés and tropes that go into a whodunnit are turbocharged to the point of being over-the-top

An interesting tidbit of information is that The Mousetrap was indeed optioned for film, but there was a clause in the contract that said that the film could only be made six months after the play closed. Here we are almost 70 years later….  That makes this film about a play that can’t be made into a film. Yet, the film actually does mirror The Mousetrap in various ways. That kind of unusual indirectness is typical of this film. At the same time, in the end, we discover that perhaps this is the film that Köpernick would have wanted to make.

For me, what makes a murder mystery enjoyable is characters. This film makes the characters so cliché that I knew them. The fun was in seeing just how far they could take those clichés and the parodies and run with them.

See How They Run is in general release.

Photos courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Hold Me Tight – Being human

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“It’s human.”

What we see in Mathieu Almaric’s film Hold Me Tight is indeed very human. Of course, sometimes being human means suffering through great pain. Perhaps it can also mean moving past that pain.

Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) is on a journey away from her family. We aren’t told immediately what she is moving away from or trying to avoid. Instead we see scenes from her journey and scenes of what her family is like without her. This mixes with memories and with music. Her daughter Lucie (Anne-Sophie Bower-Chatet and Juliette Benveniste) advances through the film from struggling to play “Für Elise” on the piano to playing very complicated pieces and applying to the Paris Conservatory.

The story is told in a very non-linear fashion so that we are never quite sure of how much time has passed, or even more importantly, what is real and what is imagined. Is she really staying involved in her family’s life? We get a sense that there may be something unstable about her. Certainly we know her separation from her family is causing her pain. The film provides its own spoiler about halfway through that allows viewers (if they have noticed it) a way to begin to process the various scenes that are playing out.

As Clarisse moves through her life without her family, we often wonder why she is not with them.  Her memories of them are filled with love. She continues to worry about her children and dream of their growing and finding happiness. Indeed her own happiness seems to be tied to her family—especially to Lucie. Yet she has absented herself from their lives.

When everything becomes apparent, we are again reminded of the line “It’s human”. What we have watched playing out on screen is very much what it means to be human. It is memories, love, worry, imagination, longing, dreams, and grief. All those aspects are mixed together in Clarisse. She is only just beginning to come to terms with what her family has meant to her and how her life will be changed.

Hold Me Tight is in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Medieval – The real game of thrones

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“If you chose to fight, you may die—but for your cause, and that is a good death.”

Medieval from director Petr Jákl, is the story of a Czech hero, Jan Žižka. The film opens with voiceover saying “Blood. Tyranny. Intrigue. Power.” That might make you think of Game of Thrones, and you wouldn’t be far off. Medieval has all the cunning, betrayals, battles, and gore, but on a smaller scale (and without dragons). [Note: although the story and director are Czech, Medieval is an English language film.]

Set near the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, we are told of the divisions that face the Holy Roman Empire. There are also divisions in the church, with two popes, one in Rome, the other in Avignon. King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia (Karel Roden) is in line to become the new Emperor, but must get safely to Rome to be crowned. His half-brother Sigismund (Matthew Goode) and nobleman Henry III of Rosenberg (Til Schweiger) are plotting to prevent this in order to advance their own political power.

One of Wenceslas’s supporters, Lord Boresh (Michael Caine) hires the mercenary band led by Žižka (Ben Foster) to kidnap Rosenberg’s fiancé, Lady Katherine (Sophie Lowe) as leverage. Katherine is someone who hated the barbarity of the iron rule that the kings and knights enforce on the people. She is, we discover, drawn to the ideas of the Hussites, a religious sect that emphasized the laity (more on this later).

Katherine proves to be courageous and compassionate. Soon Žižka has fallen in love with her and his vision of the world begins to expand to see the value of the peasants who are so oppressed by the rulers of the world. Žižka begins to work with the peasants both because he is outnumbered by the various factions playing this game of thrones, and to empower them to defend their homes and families. In battle, Žižka begins to develop new strategies. And, of course, there must be a big one on one between Žižka and the brutal leader of Sigismund’s faction (Roland Møller) that will decide what becomes of Katherine—a battle in which she is also an important part.

Žižka goes on to be a great military leader as the leader during the Hussite Wars. This film is really more about his evolution from an outlaw-mercenary into a leader. He also evolves from the ideas of the divine right of kings to supporting the rights of the people when they rise up against oppression. His evolution is seen in another series of words in voiceover at the end of the film: “Honor. Justice. Freedom. Faith. Hope.”

The religious aspect of the film plays out in the background. There are some brief mentions of Jan Hus and Hussites, but most viewers will not have much understanding of how that all ties in. The Hussites were one of the movements within the church that led up to the Protestant Reformation. The Hussites believed in the power of the laity and that the church had become corrupt. (Who could blame them when the church couldn’t even agree on who was the real Pope?) They also rejected the idea that the law of the King was the law of God. The film includes a Hussite hymn (and battle song): “Ye who are God’s warriors, and of his law, Pray to God for help, and have faith in him.”

There is a certain democratization that accompanies the idea that the laity can be trusted with some of the important aspects of Christianity—such as being able to read the Bible for themselves. This film provides a touch of insight into a religious and political conflict that most of us don’t know about. But the intertwining of the two worlds is often a key part in the history of both the church and the political realm.

Medieval is playing in general release.

Photos courtesy of The Avenue.

Burial – Legacy and death

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“Death is nothing if the legacy lives on.”

Ben Parker’s Burial builds a tale around the ambiguity about the death of Hitler in 1945. Some have used that idea to imagine his escape to Argentina. This film takes a different perspective. It becomes a battle for the propaganda value of Hitler’s remains in the days following his death.

In the waning days of World War II, a young Soviet intelligence officer, Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega), is tasked with a very secret mission with orders from Joseph Stalin himself. She and a small cohort of Soviet soldiers are to bring a crate back to Russia. She is one of only three people that know what is in that crate. Each night when they stop, they bury the crate, so that even if they are found, the crate will not be.

 A few days into the journey, while in Poland, they are attacked by pro-Nazi partisans, known as “Werewolves”. The surviving soldiers take refuge in a farmhouse. It is then that it is revealed that the crate contains the rotting body of Hitler, being taken to Stalin so that he can look his enemy in the eye. It would also be a great coup for the Soviet leader to be have such a trophy of the war.

As the werewolves keep at the attack, with the support of a German doctor whose job it is to do an autopsy to disprove that this is the Fuhrer’s body, the band of soldiers are eliminated in battle. In the end, only Vasilyeva escapes.

For the most part this is a pretty run-of-the-mill war movie. There is a lack of discipline among the soldiers that leads to some of their troubles. There is a sense of doom as the soldiers must deal with not only the enemy, but their distrust of each other and their mission.

What meaning the film has is built into the prologue and epilogue that take place in London many years later. Vasilyeva, now living under the name Anna Marshall (Harriet Walter) is confronted in her apartment by a neo-Nazi intruder who has tracked her down because he has heard rumors that she helped cover up the fact that Hitler survived the war. For that intruder, the legacy of Hitler not being a loser was paramount. We continue to live in a world where such legacies carry on, even when all evidence shows otherwise. Vasilyeva summed up the power of that when she defended their mission: “Men like that don’t die. They fester in the ground infesting everything.” Often even after death, ideas can continue to infest our world with evil.

Burial is in select theaters and available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of IFC Midnight

Private Desert – Love and Loneliness

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“Remember when we talked about being alone in the world?”

Aly Muritiba’s Private Desert is a story of a man’s search for a way out of his loneliness and isolation. Much of that solitude is self-imposed and the result of being in a very conservative masculine world. His journey will push his understandings about love and about who he is as a man. [Note: In the film, the story reveals things slowly. This review will include information that might be considered spoilers.]

Daniel (Antonio Sabola) is a police academy instructor on suspension for the brutal beating of a rookie. He is also the caregiver for his father (retired police) with rapidly failing health. Already feeling isolated from his colleagues, he has also been ghosted by the woman he has fallen in love with online. He sets out to drive 2000 miles across Brazil to find Sara, whom he has never really met.

What he is to discover is that Sara (Pedro Fasanaro) is genderfluid, with two personas: Sara, who Daniel has fallen in love with, and Robson, living out his birth-gender as a blue-collar worker who lives with his grandmother. Sara has seen videos of Daniel’s violence, and is unsure if she would be safe with him.

This is a meeting of two worlds. Daniel, from the cold south of Brazil, is very conservative. He has learned that men are to be self-contained. Even in a crowd he seems to be totally apart. Yet, when we see him with his father, we see tenderness and kindness. The constraints of Daniel’s life seem to be symbolized by the cast he has on his wrist through most of the film.

Sara/Robson, in the sunny north of the country, has struggles in a world that is not welcoming. He and his mother attend an Evangelical church (The Church of God’s Will [!]) that would see him as sick and sinful. At the church he is told, “salvation and happiness don’t always walk hand in hand.” He sees both Robson and Sara as his real identity.

The conflict that Daniel and Sara face is not just about gender, but about what it means to live and love in ways that society may not approve of. Sara/Robson has had to find a path to joy throughout their life, but it has been difficult. Daniel faces having to see the world in a much different manner. He would need to see himself in an entirely new way. The question is whether he can love the Sara he discovers. Can love help him to open from the constraints of the world he has inhabited his whole life? Is there more to love than the passion between two bodies?

The film uses the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to emphasize the struggle between the two worlds/loves/futures. As the song talks about “falling in love” and “falling apart”, we see that the meeting of these two people and worldviews will be a mixture of both.

Private Desert is rolling out in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Three Thousand Years of Longing – The Power of Stories

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“We exist only if we are alive to others.”

There is more to the truth than facts and history. Stories (even fictional stories) often tell us more about life than all the facts that can be compiled. That is why stories have always been told to describe and define people and cultures. George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing is a story about stories—and about truth, even though it has a fairytale quality to it.

Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a narratologist—an academic who studies stories from many cultures. She seeks to find essential truths in folklore and mythology. While in Istanbul for a scholarly conference she finds an interesting bottle in a shop, which she buys as a souvenir. When she returns to her room and opens the bottle, it fills the room with smoke which coalesces into a Djinn (Idris Elba) who, as is the custom, offers her three wishes. Those wishes are required for him to have his freedom.

Alithea has a hard time believing that Djinns are real, and even if he is real, she knows that all the wish fulfillment stories throughout history all lead to grief. She is reluctant to make any wishes, but the Djinn is desperate to be freed from the bottle. To try to convince Alithea of his reliability, he tells her stories of the three women he had loved that led to his being imprisoned in the bottle for three thousand years. Each of the women had strength and skills. Yet over time, he was never able to gain his freedom—or to find real love.

Idris Elba stars as The Djinn and Burcu Gölgedar as Zefir in THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING Photo credit: Elise Lockwood © 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved

As the Djinn shares the stories with Alithea, she comes to understand him and desires for him to know the fulfillment of a loving relationship, and in time makes a wish that is perhaps surprising to them both. And although, as Alithea points out, all wishing stories are cautionary tales, the two find a time of happiness, but it can never really be what they want.

The first thing in the film to strike me was the opening voice over, as Alithea tells us her name and that the story she is telling is the truth. What many viewers will miss in that opening line is that the name Alithea is derived from the Greek word for truth (αλήθεια, alētheia). We can see much of this film as the interacting of two worlds: the academic/scientific modern world, and the ancient world of fairytale —truth and myth. But rather than setting the two in opposition, the film brings them together in such a way that the complement and edify one another.

This film focuses on the power of stories. They are not just a form of entertainment. They are the way we convey truth from one generation to another. Primitive societies told stories of nature, the stars, great heroes and gods in order to pass on values. Consider how much of the Bible is made up of stories—including the Gospels. These stories tell us what God is like and how we relate to God. Many of the best sermons I have ever heard, are stories tied together to help us better understand the concepts of faith.  All those stories help us to find truth. In the end, we all long for truth as people have for millennia.

Idris Elba stars as The Djinn and Tilda Swinton as Alithea Binnie in THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING Photo credit: Courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Inc. © 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved

Three Thousand Years of Longing is in theaters.

Photos courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

The Legend of Molly Johnson – One woman’s struggle

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How far will someone go to protect the ones they love? In Leah Purcell’s Australian Western, The Legend of Molly Johnson, we see one woman’s answer to that question in very trying conditions. The film is based on Purcell’s play which reimagined a nineteenth century Australian short story, “The Drover’s Wife”. (The onscreen title of the film is The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson.)

Molly Johnson (Purcell) is alone with her four children (with a fifth due very soon) in a small isolated house in the Australian outback. Her husband is a sheep drover and has been gone for six months. Her first response to any outsider (human or beast) is to grab her rifle. When she is confronted with an Aboriginal man named Yadaka (Rob Collins) in shackles, she is cautious, but takes him in temporarily. As the tentative bond between them is tested, they discover secrets that bring Molly’s life into a new focus. Yadaka connects with Molly’s oldest son, Danny, and begins to teach him about “Man’s business” and some Aboriginal concepts. He becomes a bit of a father figure for the boy.

When her husband does not come back from the drive (and it’s learned he never showed up for it) the new lawman in town becomes suspicious and sends a constable to the Johnson home to investigate. There he finds Yadaka, who is wanted for murder. This creates a dangerous situation for all three, which ends up in a deadly showdown. Before long, forces are tearing Molly’s family apart. In the process Molly becomes a symbol of women’s struggle in society and of racism.

The film cinematography gives a great sense of the beauty and severity of Molly’s life in the isolated countryside. That beauty and severity are reflected in Molly’s personal struggle. She is a woman of great love for her children. But that love often pushes her difficult actions. And we know that for Molly survival is not about self, but about her children.

It is of note that Purcell took “The Drover’s Wife” and completely changed the concept of the story to reflect post-colonial ideas. The racial and women’s rights aspects of the film are not a part of the short story. Yet it is those ideas that give the film its power.

Purcell comes from an Aboriginal background and views storytelling as something near to sacred. Stories are passed from generation to generation as a way to transmit identity and culture. She sees this film as a form of Dreaming (an Aboriginal artform). That concept is very clear in the film’s ending. It is a delight, at the film’s end, to see a story being told anew and being left to discern just how that fits into and completes the story.

Molly’s and Yakada’s struggles as they are revealed throughout the film are a reminder of the hardships women and people of color have had to endure in times past—and often still do. Those hardships are not benign, but often grow out of abuses that many people at the time viewed as acceptable. As we look back we may think we’ve grown past such ideas, but in reality, we too often understand we have not.

The Legend of Molly Johnson is in select theaters and available on digital platforms.

Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Syndrome K – Life Saving Disease

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Doctors take an oath to save lives. Sometimes that means making some hard decisions. For a group of doctors at a Catholic hospital in Rome in 1943, those decisions were very hard. It could have cost them their lives. Instead they infected a number of local Jews with a disease. That may sound inhumane, but it was really a way of saving their lives. Syndrome K, a new documentary from Stephen Edwards.

When Germans occupied Rome in 1943, they began the roundup of local Jews to send to extermination camps. This film tells the story of three doctors at Catholic-run Fatebenefratelli Hospital that invented a disease that was very contagious, very dangerous, and very fictional. When Germans came to inspect the hospital, the fear of contracting the disease kept them out of the Syndrome K ward.

The brief documentary gives some brief historical context for the events, but relies mostly on interviews with two of the doctors and the son of one of the doctors who took part in this extraordinary rescue, as well as some of those who survived because of Syndrome K.

The film also brings in some of the context of the Catholic Church in Rome. Vatican City is the smallest independent country in the world. During the war it maintained neutrality, in large part out of fear. Pius XII is the center of great controversies over whether he did enough to try to prevent the Holocaust or if he was involved in trying to save Jews. Certainly, the monasteries and convents of Rome were a refuge for many hidden Jews. Could it have been so without Vatican support. The film includes a identification card signed by Giovanni Battista Montini, who was one of the pope’s closest advisors. (The film doesn’t mention that he later became Pope Paul VI.)

The doctors at Fatebenefratelli took seriously their oaths to save lives. If they had been found out (and they did more than just save Jews) they and their families could have been killed. Instead they chose to do act on behalf of their neighbors. That, of course, is a key teaching of the church.

Syndrome K is available to rent on digital platforms.