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7.22 Charting a New Legacy IN THE HEIGHTS

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Though most know him best as the creator his mega-hit HAMILTON, Lin-Manuel Miranda got his start with IN THE HEIGHTS. Set in the Washington Heights community in New York, HEIGHTS tells the story of Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), a young man who has big dreams of leaving his home and returning to his birth country. When a blackout knocks out the power for days, Usnavi and his friends must navigate life, love and moving forward. This week, The Dream Team returns! After a long hiatus, Jolie Featurstone (TO Film Files) and Julie Levac reunite to talk about what it means to leave a legacy, celebrating community and the tension between the way out and the way back.

You can stream the episode on podomatic, Alexa (via Stitcher), Spotify or Amazon Podcasts! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts!

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

7.22 In The HeightsDownload

Luca: Finding Your Way (With Some Help)

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“Just follow my lead . . . I know what I’m doing.”

One of the strangest books that I’ve had the opportunity to read involved a seaside town, romance, swashbuckling feats, and unique creatures not indigenous to the local population. It was also a parody.  Entitled Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben Winters, it’s exactly what Jane Austen would’ve penned at her desk if she had a penchant for the macabre. There’s little to say about the plot that isn’t given in the title, so I’ll spare you the details (except that Leviathan makes an appearance). 

Thankfully, Pixar’s latest film Luca does not go the way of Winter’s book. It tells a tale of three kids who, in many respects, find their way in life—except that two of them are also sea monsters.  It’s an interesting concept and is both cute and touching at times.  However (and it pains me to say this as a Pixar aficionado), it’s quite disjointed and misses a great opportunity to dive deep into some relevant issues of our time.

Outside the Italian town of Portorosso lives a family of sea monsters—Daniela (voiced by SNL regular Maya Rudolph), Lorenzo (comedian Jim Gaffigan), Grandma (Sandy Martin), and Luca (Jacob Tremblay).  They’re preparing for an upcoming craft show, so Luca is left to tend to a school of fish that act like sheep.  While doing so, he comes across an alarm clock and other items from above water.  Another monster named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) takes then from him, and when Luca follows him, he suddenly finds himself on a beach, transformed into a human being (not unlike Daryl Hannah in the 1980’s film Splash).  It seems this class of sea monsters has the ability to transform into humans if there’s no water on their bodies.

Alberto lives in an old castle turret where he’s kept all of his collected human items, including a poster of a Vespa. Since neither is familiar with the ways of land dwellers, they believe they can create their own Vespa out of the collected items and run away from their past (Luca’s parents are ultra-constricting, which doesn’t make matters any better). They visit Portorosso and nervousness sets in for Luca—will he be outed as a sea monster?

When they actually see a real Vespa, they naturally gravitate to its owner, Ercole (Saverio Raimondo), who promptly dismisses them with insults. Their saving graces are a girl named Giulia (Emma Berman) and an annual competition of swimming, pasta eating, and bike riding that Ercole has won five consecutive years.  Giulia has tried in the past, but pasta and bike riding don’t always pair well—especially when accomplished back to back.  Luca and Alberto offer to help her win, so she invites them over for dinner.  Her father, Massino (Marco Barricelli), has only one hand but loves to go after sea monsters (he also looks a lot like the father in the Pixar short “La Luna” [2011]).  While this plays out, a sweet friendship between Luca and Giulia begins to bloom, leaving Alberto in the cold. Meanwhile, Daniela and Lorenzo enter town, take on human form, and realize that if they get a sea monster wet, they can find their runaway son.

Will Alberto and Luca be discovered as sea monsters?  Will Giulia finally defeat Ercole in the Portorosso Cup?  Will Ercole act like a smarmy, entitled jerk that has created a pseudo-Mafia to make things happen? Will something come of the friendships between the three kids? The answers come in typical Pixar form with a few minor surprises thrown in for good measure.

Although I think Luca is a fine film with a familiar animation style and a fantastic soundtrack, something’s off this time around. The plot is a bit simplistic and bounces from point to point with minimal connections. The Vespa sequences and Daniele and Lorenzo’s parental mission to dump water on every child of Portorosso get old after a while.  However, the biggest issue with Luca involves the wasted opportunities to go deep on subjects such as hiding from one’s dreams, running away from life, the monsters inside each of us, and parental overprotection.  As a result, director Enrico Casarosa’s film feels limited, sort of like the cramped streets of Portorosso itself. An additional five or ten minutes may have made the difference. 

Two things stuck out to me while watching. One: the cat Machiavelli is a scene-stealer. Two: the sheer unlikability of Ercole surprised me. He acts like he runs the town, but nobody ever calls him out for his attitude, sarcastic comments, and brazen lying (he’s too old to compete in the Portorosso Cup yet is still allowed to compete). However, his omnipresence makes any success by the protagonists that much sweeter.

It is important not to discount the emphasis that Luca places on the value of friendships and helping others find their way. Simply put, Luca would’ve never grown had he visited his Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen) and disappeared into the black netherworld of deep water. Instead, he had Alberto and Giulia along for the ride.  A proverb states, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV); this certainly proves to be the case with each transforming the others into something better by the end of the movie. Trying to go through life alone isn’t the answer; letting people come alongside to cry, comfort, and cheer with and for us adds a richness and depth to draw from in challenging times. In many ways, this is what salvages the film for me.

Well, that and a few plates of Massino’s pasta.

Luca is available in theaters and Disney+ as of June 18,2021

Censor: Blurred (and Bloody) Lines between Truth and Fiction

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Taking place during the Thatcher era in Britain, Censor follows Enid (Niamh Algar), a film censor who suffered a traumatic event in her youth with the disappearance of her sister. Having tried to put the events of her childhood behind her, she spends her days pouring over graphic horror films (or ‘video nastys’) in an attempt to keep the youth of this generation safe from becoming tainted by them. However, when a film calls into question whether or not her sister is still alive, Enid embarks on a journey to find out the truth about her whereabouts and discover what really happened back then.

Co-written and directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, Censor is a mind-trip that both horrifies and intrigues. Set in the mid-1980s, the film explores the relationship between reality and fiction by blurring the lines between them. While Censor may not be the most tightly written horror film of late, it may be one of the most creatively constructed. Through her use of set design and lighting, Bailey-Bond ensures that the viewer never separate the real world from the films that Enid consumes each day. In each scene, she visually infects the most innocent of moments with a sense of menace and dread. Red tints bleed into the restaurant as she eats with her parents. Hallways are diseased by shadows and silence as she walks home from work. What’s more, as Enid’s mind becomes compromised, Bailey-Bond edits the scenes to feel increasingly like footage from old 1980s VHS tapes and films. In doing so, Bailey-Bonds drags the viewer into the video nastys themselves, further breaking down the barriers of reality.

During that particular period in British history, the belief that the dark side of culture was being shaped by the violence in these video nastys was prevalent. Tasked with ‘protecting the youth’, the role of the censors was viewed as incredibly important yet the link between violence on screen and reality has never been conclusive. As Enid’s consumption of the nastys reshape her memories, the film begins to suggest the presence of horror films stems from the darkness of the culture itself, as opposed to the other way around. It has been said that horror films mirror the fears and anxieties of our culture and Censor puts that idea on full display. Although it was believed that it was the genre that was creating monsters, the film points to the fact that it actually sheds light on the monsters that already exist. In other words, brutal violence, abuse of women, and more weigh heavily may within this genre but they also present an opportunity to speak to the demons of our culture.

At the same time, the film also calls into the question the fragility of our memories. While the film never explicitly blames her work for Enid’s breakdown, there is little question that it plays a role. For Enid, the role of the censor is essential and she immerses herself in her job. However, when she comes across a video that triggers her memories of her sister, she slowly begins to come apart at the seams. Due to the traumatic nature of the events of her childhood, Enid struggles to put together the pieces of long ago and the violence inherent to these films seem to provide answers to the questions she carries with her. (“You’d be surprised what the human brain can edit out when it can’t handle the truth,” she’s warned.) As a result, Enid almost wants to see reality within the fiction that she consumes. However, on her quest for truth, Enid gradually and increasingly struggles to be able to separate them from one another. While the pain of her story matters, she is unable to fully reconcile the truth of it within her mind.

Visually impressive, Censor should offer the type of gory mystery that horror buffs crave. Bailey-Bond gives the film is a raw feel that seems authentic to the era yet never betrays the story that she wants to tell today. As Enid’s journey devolves into increasing madness, so too does the film itself become more murky along the way, forcing the viewer to decide what is real and what is just ‘nasty’.

Censor is available on VOD on Friday, June 18th, 2021.

Sweat – Alone in the Crowd

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We live in a world of so much connectedness, yet how connected are we to one another? In Magnus von Horn’s Sweat, we see how alone we can be in the midst of masses. We see that celebrity is not the same of a happy, healthy life. We see that what we see of someone on the surface may be far different than who they really are.

Sylwia (Magdalena Koleśnik) is a fitness guru and social media influencer. We first see her as she leads a mass workout in a mall. Afterwards everyone throngs her getting selfies and telling her how much they all love her. She has about 600,000 followers on social media. She posts videos constantly—pictures of her body, opening gift bags from sponsors, walking her dog.

When she meets with her agent, he is concerned about a recent video she posted that went viral. In it she cries because she has no one in her life. The video has made sponsors nervous. They want her to be seen as a happy, successful person—the kind that the world will want to emulate (by buying their products).

That crying video reflects a bit of the reality of her life, but it is a part that she keeps hidden most of the time. Instead, we see the beautiful, ever-smiling, upbeat persona that she has created. That is a person whose vlog is filled with people posting videos talking about how much they mean to her. But that video also brings out a stalker who feels connected to her by her loneliness. When she notices him in his car masturbating outside her apartment building, she feels threatened and disgusted.

Most of the movie deals with Sylwia as she goes through daily life. What we discover is that despite hundreds of thousands of followers, she is a person without a friend. She may be famous. She may be admired. She may be known by many. But she is ultimately alone.

Even when she goes to her mother’s birthday party with family friends, she is not really a part of the group. At one point she heads off to another room to eat her specially catered meal while others enjoy a dinner together. She doesn’t even eat cake, because it does not fit her lifestyle. She has lost all sense of joy and celebration, swallowed up by the persona that the world sees.

In press notes, the director says he is intrigued by what he calls “emotional exhibitionists”—those who can bare their feelings to the world. Sylwia is trying to balance her emotional life between such sharing, and maintaining the persona she has created. When she appears on a morning TV show, we watch as she alternates between those two aspects. She defends her emotional outpouring, because she knows that loneliness is a reality for many peoples. But then she moves to a workout and turns the switch from real Sylwia and public Sylwia.

Sweat allows us to consider our own senses of being connected or disconnected—especially in the age of social media. Does the number of “friends” we have on Facebook reflect our closeness to people, or are we deluding ourselves to think that we care for and are cared for by those people?

Ecclesiastes speaks of the need to be connected to other people. The church is designed to be a connection between people and God, but also one person to another. That is one of the key meanings of sharing in the Lord’s Supper. I think that is why I see the scene of Sylwia eating a different meal in a different room struck me as one of the key scenes. It is coming to a table together that helps us understand ourselves and the world.

Sweat is playing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Mubi.

Reflection: A Walk with Water

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 “There it is. Take it.” (William Mulholland, opening the gates to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1913)

Water is a big deal here in California. It is not just about the presence or lack of rain (although that is important). For over 100 years, huge amounts of water have been diverted from the Central Valley and the Colorado River to provide water for Los Angeles and surrounding areas. In Reflection: A Walk with Water, filmmaker Emmett Brown joins with a group to walk the entire length of the Aqueduct from what is now the dry Owens Lakebed to the Cascades coming down the mountains into the city. Along the way he and others consider what this rerouting of so much water has cost the land. The film is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film begins with a walk on what used to be Owens Lake (and is now the largest single source of dust pollution in the US). In many ways this redirection of water to a population center has had enormous environmental consequences (which are adding to and exacerbated by global climate change). But Brown says he wants to focus on signs of hope—ideas that may serve to mitigate the damage done. We see plans to “slow down water”, i.e., keep it from running to the sea as quickly as possible. We also learn about helping the soil better use the water that is available. There are other aspects of change he highlights as well.

This is a film that will appeal to environmentally minded people. It brings in issues of the way we have pillaged nature, ideas for doing things better, reflects on the treatment of indigenous peoples, and challenges viewers to see possibilities for change. But in the end, this is really a sermon for the choir. Nearly everyone who will opt to watch this movie will probably already be in harmony with its concepts and vision. It will reinforce existing ideas, but I doubt it will make any converts.

While I like the ideas of change, the problem with the examples we have is that they are all small-scale operations. Even if replicated many times as the film suggests, they would only represent a drop of water in the 200 mile long aqueduct. They are nice to consider, but compared to the massive undertaking that resulted in the LA Aqueduct, these are miniscule.

The film also ignores the elephant in the room of water in California—politics. Water is not just a matter of environmental importance in California; it is the basis of ongoing fights between cities and rural farming. California water policy is battled over every few years—especially in increasingly frequent drought years.

Reflection: A Walk with Water serves to bring some of these environmental issues to our attention. It offers ideas that some may want to incorporate into their own lives. It offers us an opportunity to reflect on some of the spiritual aspects of the ecology (mostly from a Native American spirituality). It is a small voice speaking to a very large issue.