ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

You are here: Home / Editorial

Editorial

Dear Cameron: A Letter of Thanks

by Leave a Comment

Dear Cameron,

First of all, congratulations on another successful festival! I can’t even imagine how much work goes into anything of this magnitude and I’m sure it’s involved many sleepless nights and stressful days. I know that you’re busy but I wanted to make sure that I sent you a message. We don’t know each other and, other than a couple of tags on Twitter, we’ve never spoken. What’s more, this is hardly the type of posting we place on our site but I wanted to make sure you had the chance to read it. Sometimes, you have to write to get things out–oddly, that seems to have been a theme in several of the films I’ve been watching this year–so I wanted to reach out to you.

I wanted to say thank you.

Not just for the festival or all your hard work, though that is well-deserved. (I’ve been a TIFF member and attendee for almost 10 years now and, every year, you and your team pull off a superhuman feat by managing an event of this scale.) Each year, you assemble films that challenge, inspire and reframe worldviews… but this year, you brought in one specific film that made such an indelible mark on my soul that I felt the need to attempt to reach out to you.

Last Saturday, myself, my wife and two dear friends attended A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood.

First, a little bit of backstory. In the briefest of descriptions of my own journey, I have been a pastor for 20 years. Over the past two decades, I have worked with children and youth from our church’s neighbourhood, challenging them to live lives that matter and can help change the world. In recent years, co-founded a website (ScreenFish.net) designed specifically to engage the voices of our culture through film. Like TIFF, I too am passionate about exploring the ideas and themes that matter to others and exploring how they shape our current cultural narrative and connect with my own faith. 

In recent years, however, things have taken a turn. As Lloyd asked Rogers in the film about burdens, my own ministry has faced incredibly difficult challenges, both personal and professional. As a result, over the last 18 months, I have been dealing with severe depression and panic attacks as a result of deeply rooted anger and hurt in my own soul. While I have been in therapy for over a year, the last few months have been extremely difficult on my wife, children and I and, as a result, I recently left my place of ministry due to mental health issues. (It would not be out of place to admit that there were moments of severe darkness, which remains out of character for me.) The purpose for my leave of absence was to begin with a time of sabbatical where I could begin to seek God for rays of light and hope for myself as we move into the next phase of our journey.

Then, as I said, we came to the premiere last weekend.

While I have been challenged and refreshed from a number of films at the Fest this year–this was my 6th film of 11 total for 2019–Beautiful Day is the one that has left the greatest mark on my soul. To sit in the theatre and experience Lloyd’s journey wasn’t merely just a great film, it was a moment of light and hope for me. Although forgiveness and grace aren’t exactly new themes for any film, this particular film presented itself in such a genuine and earnest manner that I found it a significant step towards my own healing. I believe the film speaks of forgiveness as “choosing to release our anger against another person” and, for me, that was a powerful moment of clarity. The fact that Mr. Ha… er… Rogers speaks to Lloyd to remind him that he isn’t broken and encourages him to ponder those who have loved him along the way is such a profound truth that is rarely spoken within our world. In short, it was another piece of my own healing experience. To take pause and reflect on truths like these (and more) in a film like this was a beacon of light in this tired and weary soul.

In short, I wanted to thank you for, not only all your hard work, but also bringing this particular film to the Festival of Festivals (#throwback). It should be noted that I do not expect a response to this letter nor am I asking for anything in return. You may share it with whomever you believe it might be an encouragement if you wish (or not). As I stated earlier, TIFF is designed to challenge the world through ideas of all types on a grand scale. However, I felt it was important for you to hear that films like this also offer hope and healing on a personal level as well.

So, thank you Cameron. To you and your team.

Thanks to you all, today will be a beautiful day in my neighbourhood.

21 Things You Forgot About Being a Kid: Learning from the Next Generation

by Leave a Comment

What can we learn from the generations coming up after us? Dr. Rick Stevenson shares what he has learned after nearly twenty years of interviewing children and adolescents.

21 Things book cover

I was introduced to Rick Stevenson through Greg Wright, a long-time internet friend and mentor. Greg was my boss for most of the time I was writing for Hollywood Jesus – somewhere back in the Dark Ages. (It’s hard to believe I left HJ nearly four and a half years ago.) Greg had introduced me to the Millennials documentary series which was shown on the Ovation network in 2016. Screenfish was kind enough to let us share my interview with Greg and my subsequent review of the documentary.

In 2001, Rick created the 5000 Days Project, which the website tells us

is a global organization dedicated to developing emotional intelligence (EQ). We apply the StoryQ method of deep inquiry combined with video journaling technology to bring a low-cost and easy-to-implement tool into schools and communities allowing all kids to self-reflect and process in a safe environment.

As of the book’s release as an ebook in July, Rick has “conducted over 5500 in-depth interviews” with school-age children up to high school. The Project stresses the importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence, and was developed in consultation with experts in the fields, including Stevenson’s friend Dr. John Medina, author of the Brain Rules series.

Coming from a conservative Christian environment, I have long been aware of the need to get a handle on my emotions so they do not rule me. Unfortunately, I think too many in conservative circles have misunderstood the role of emotions in our lives. Too often a stoic approach is taken, ignoring one’s emotions rather than dealing with them. What often seems to happen is that the hidden emotions are still controlling the person, largely because they refuse to acknowledge the effect emotions play in shaping our lives. For example, if you are making choices based on fear, and you refuse to acknowledge you have those fears, you end up making excuses for your beliefs and actions instead of honestly examining the role this emotion has played in shaping your beliefs and actions. Xenophobia can often be excused in this way. How often have we witnessed someone who has obvious prejudices insist they are not prejudiced?

Rick’s book helps us remember what it was like to be a kid, and that remembrance can be the start of understanding who we are. It can also help us better understand those around us. According to Jesus, our mission here on earth can be summed up in two commands: Love God, and Love one another. The agape love the Bible speaks about is not emotionless. It is more than an emotion, as it seeks the best for the one loved, but the concept does include emotion. Jesus’ mission on earth was to show us what God is like. The Gospels continuously tell us that Jesus was filled with compassion for for those around Him. His actions on behalf of others was not some kind of calculated stoic response based on some mathematical calculation of what is best for the person. His actions were precipitated by an emotional response to the need He witnessed.

We have gotten emotions exactly backwards. Some of us were even taught to make the brain the engine and the heart the caboose. That is not how it works. (See the animation video near the bottom of the page on The 5000 Days Project’s home page.) Putting the emotions in a “caboose” role causes us to ignore what our emotions are trying to tell us. Only by knowing what our heart is telling us can we examine who we really are. Certainly our emotions can be lying to us, but we cannot know that unless we are listening to them and examining them. As I asserted earlier, our emotions will still lead us whether we acknowledge them or not.

If any of the above has sparked an interest in Emotional Intelligence, or causes you to want to try to understand yourself and others better, Rick’s book would be a good place to start. Broken down into 21 quickly-read and easily-digested chapters, 21 Things You Forgot About Being a Kid is a delight to read. Be sure also to read the Foreword and Introduction, as these provide background and insight into what is to follow. 21 Things is available as an ebook on Amazon.com. (If you don’t have Kindle, you can download the PC or Android versions for free.)

Skin: Can We Change?

by Leave a Comment

“You have three choices: die young, life in prison, or start talking.”– Daryle Lamont Jenkins

Watching Guy Nattiv’s Skin is like watching brutally violent, incredibly profane lyrical poetry on screen. As white supremacist Bryon Widner, Jaime Bell delivers the performance of the year, re-enacting the racist, sexist, profane twenties of a real-life bigot. While a One People’s Project activist, Mike Colter’s Daryle Lamont Jenkins, watches with interest, Widner swears, beats, chokes out, and burns his way through minorities and sects. Others, including Widner, believes there is no hope for him, Jenkins believes there’s more to the young man than his face tattoos and his anger. And then Widner meets Danielle Macdonald’s Julie Price, and discovers a real family for the first time.

Widner isn’t really the son of Fred and Shareen Krager (Bill Camp and Vera Famiga), but they’ve given him a place to live, used his skills as a tattoo artist to raise money for their white power group Vinlanders Social Club, and kept him subservient with a constant barrage of verbal and physical abuse. The audience sees just how creepy the Kragers are as they recruit newer members, as they casually dispense their form of justice on those they deem unworthy, whether they’re white or minorities. The dread the film conveys builds, pouring on the depths of despair, the bottomless feeling that no matter what Widner does, he can’t change his ways or escape the web.

“If we could turn even one of these fascist assholes, then I’ll leave a crack in the door.”–Jenkins

Realizing that Widner received his first facial tattoo at fourteen, that his mother and father were drunk and abusive, that the Kragers “saved” him from one desperation and replaced it with another – none of that relieves Widner of responsibility. But while it shows the repulsive layers of the brainwashing that Widner had received, it explains the layers of socialization and de-socialization that Jenkins will have to help Widner overcome, if the white power adherent would ever listen.

We know that the bottom of the evil abyss is deep – and at times Nattiv’s film leads us to believe we’ll never see the bottom for Widner – the inclusion of Price into Widner’s life changes everything, slowly. It’s not just Price but her three daughters (Zoe Colletti as Desiree; Kylie Rogers as Sierra; Colbi Gannett as Iggy) who capture Widner’s attention and give him inklings of the way his life could be different. These three girls to varying degrees help Widner see his humanity, replacing the negative physical touching in corrupt affection and sex of the VSC with natural positive interactions between a husband and wife and their children. It’s the replacement of the real for the fake that serves as the course-changing purpose in his life to push him out of the arc of destruction that he was on.

“Is it true what Desi said, are you an evil man?”–Iggy

The Kragers make offers for community, for responsibility, and for opportunities that lure young people in, before replacing them with condemnation, epithets, and emotional abuse. (A psychologist could have a field day with this, but this is a film review, right?) While Widner has believed in the hope that one day he would surpass the trials and abuse, he’s come to see that the pattern doesn’t change, and he’s watching it happen to younger people as he meets Price’s family. While the littlest daughter challenges him to consider the good in himself, Widner isn’t sure that he’s actually capable of good, that he can change, even asking Jenkins, “What if I take all of this stuff off [my face] and I’m still a piece of s—?”

In its own way, Skin is a parable of the prodigal son being reminded of his worth, of his ability to be forgiven. Of course, in this parable, we meet the prodigal when he’s so deep in the grime of his new life that he’s almost forgotten what it was like to ever be whole – and then we watch his powerful, gritty bursting forth from his “lostness,” unsure what remains for him on the other side. Of course, in 2019 America, Skin is also a challenge to see how the prodigal finds his way home thanks to the one he considered his enemy, the one he deemed unworthy of his respect.

Skin may prove to be one of my favorite films of the year, but it’s also the hardest “watch” I’ve had in years, and a reminder that the road to redemption isn’t smooth, graceful, or perfect. Let’s be clear: Skin is a brutal, ugly film that dares us to blink, to look away, to give up before it gets… good. Skin is a reminder that redemption takes many paths, that help arrives in many forms, that salvation is always the path where love conquers hate with truth, persistence, and grace.

Skin is in theaters and On Demand on July 26.

Why Live Action Remakes?

by Leave a Comment

Often when we grow up, we look back at our parents’ lives and think that we can do things better than they did. Sometimes we are right, but not always. New technologies lead to different ways of telling stories. My parents listened to radio. I had TV. My sons had video games (hooked up to a TV). My grandson has all kinds of things I’ll never grasp on a handheld device. What is better and most imaginative? It’s a matter of perspective, I think.

But when a big media company grows up, it may think its technology outshines what has come before it. The Walt Disney Studios are currently working on a number of live action remakes of earlier animated features. They have already done Beauty and the Beast¸ Jungle Book (really more computer animation than live action), Dumbo, Aladdin, and currently the Lion King (also computer animation). In the pipeline in various stages of development or discussion are live action remakes of Mulan (coming next March), The Little Mermaid (currently getting a lot of buzz from casting Halle Bailey as Ariel, causing some racist backlash), Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, The Sword in the Stone, and a number of spinoffs from Disney cartoons, such as a Tinkerbell film.

My question is whether or not this is a good thing. The cynic in me might say, Disney just wants the money that comes with a ready-made audience. But actually, I think that that is not enough of an answer. I think that the extent of this live action remake trend reminds me of those generational difference I note above. It’s like my thinking TV is better than radio, or my grandson thinking his tablet is better than my TV.

I don’t think I’m just being a grumpy old guy. I liked the live action Dumbo better than most reviewers. I think Mulan could be an intriguing remake that works especially well in live action. And I expect Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alan Menken will make some wonderful songs to enhance The Little Mermaid. But overall, I think Disney is making a mistake in making all these remakes. The underlying premise to these remakes is that live action (or in the cases of Jungle Book and The Lion King, computer animation) is intrinsically better than the animation of the originals. I find it only slightly ironic that the studio that bears Walt Disney’s name, no longer makes any of the kind of animation that Walt Disney was the master of. The new versions of animated classics essentially diminish the originals. They say by their very existence that those older versions are not good enough for today’s world. I dissent.

Animation—both computer and hand-drawn—makes for an excellent medium for storytelling. Many of the original Disney classics were based on fairytales or other stories that were especially conducive to the use of animation: Snow White, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Peter Pan. Each of these could easily have been made as live action films at the time, but the choice was made to do it with animation. And I believe that was the best choice. These stories and the magic they weave for the audience is enhanced by being told through animation.

Of course the studio continues to tell stories with animation under both the Disney and Pixar names. These are almost always well received and of great quality. (Although I personally mourn their decision to rely entirely on computer animation. I still love to see traditional animation as we get from Studio Ghibli and Cartoon Saloon.) This format is still an important tool in the studio’s storytelling. But just as I’d hate to see Disney’s classic Old Yeller made into an animated feature, I wish that they would respect the animated gems of past generations enough to let them be the wonders that they are.

TNT’s I am the Night: Is the Truth Worth It?

by Leave a Comment

In I am the Night, Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) teams with Chris Pine to deliver a better-than-cable-worthy miniseries about the Black Dahlia murders to TNT. Here, Pine is the anti-leading man, a disgraced news reporter named Jay Singletary who can’t let go of an old story about an illegal abortion clinic run by respected physician George Hodel. His off-the-books investigation intersects with that of the story’s lead, Fauna (India Eisley), who is in hot pursuit of her grandfather, Hodel. Together, they pursue the truth, but the cost may outweigh their hopes for clarity and peace.

While the series gets off to a slow-burning start – we know Fauna is stuck in a life between black and white as a mixed-race teenager and that Singletary is an ex-soldier chasing clues to mysteries he doesn’t understand – but the score and Jenkins’ slowly doled out hints of suspense let us know there’s something more coming. Somehow, Jenkins’ willingness to hint at violence but not overburden our eyes with it allows for a terror to build that pulls us closer to the edge.

Let’s be clear: if you stop after the first few moments, or even the first episode … you’ll regret it.

“Hodel might be a lot of things… but he sure isn’t the bogeyman.”

Central to the mystery, but just off-center of the series, is Hodel (Jefferson Mays). We can’t be sure just how bad Hodel is (and for the record, neither are the history books) but we know from his creepy disposition and flashbacks shown later that he isn’t someone we’d trust with our daughters. There’s something just not quite right about him, and the camera refuses to let us in on exactly what it is, showing us just enough to make us queasy.

While Singletary doesn’t really know what he’s pursuing, the audience can see he’s made all of the wrong kinds of enemies. There’s a casual brutality to the way the police force treats him, harkening back to the classic police thriller L.A. Confidential that reminds us that law and order in the twentieth century had less justice than we might hope for. In clear opposition to the police is Singletary, a PTSD-suffering ex-hero who has used enough drugs to soil his name and posted enough wasted stories to be Peter crying wolf when it comes to Hodel. What does it mean when the truth is told but the narrators may be untrustworthy?

“I thought the truth would win, like a sucker.”

From a dramatic perspective, the audience is in hook, line, and sinker on Fauna’s pursuit of her history and Singletary’s search for redemption. But truth is really what is at stake here, along with justice, grace, and, most basically, good versus evil. While the path to the truth gets more and more harrowing as our protagonists wander down it, even as a mysterious stranger spies on Fauna and the persecution of Singletary ratchets up, I am the Night asks us to consider what we know about the truth and how far we would go to find it. If we’re lied to and the truth is covered up, if the things we thought we knew were true are not, then where do we go socially, politically, emotionally, and spiritually?

For Fauna and Singletary, our identity matters, more than we’d like to admit or actually understand. For people of faith, that identity begins in understanding we are created in the imago dei and further confirmed as God’s children through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. More than the designations determined by law, by race, gender, location, or creed, those foundations of identity rise to the surface. Our foundation can become cracked or covered over, much the way that Fauna and Singletary have lost their way, but in pursuit of the truth, we can see who we were always meant to be in the first place.