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Afghanistan & Abortion & Ivermectin, Oh My!

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The war in Afghanistan comes to a controversial end. Abortion is again in the news due to an unusual Texas law. Ivermectin hits center stage in Covid politics thanks to Joe Rogan.

How should Christians think through such varied yet pressing news items, events and issues? How is the nature of God a guide when it comes to having a “Christian take” on things? Find out in this new episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast!

Also, a quick pop culture minute generates a metric ton of mentions, including Smallville, The Golden Girls, The White Lotus, Hades, Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, David Lynch, Twin Peaks, The Green Knight, The Thin Red Line, The Fountain, and Ted Lasso.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Days of Darkness – Are We in a New Dark Age?

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[NOTE: I wrote this review in 2008 after seeing the film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, expecting to publish it when it was released in the US. However, the film never got a release. I’ve often wondered what happened to it in all those years. Now it is available on AMC+ and IFC Unlimited (both accessible through Prime Video Channels and both offer a one week free trial.)]

Days of Darkness is the concluding film of the Denys Arcand trilogy that also includes The Decline of the American Empire and Barbarian Invasions. (It could be argued that Jesus of Montreal is also part of this group of films. I’m unsure about the more recent The Fall of the American Empire, which I haven’t seen.) The two earlier films shared common actors and characters.  Two of the characters from those films show up in minor roles in this film, but by and large, this is a very different kind of film from the first two.  The titles of the film harken back to the Roman Empire.  The decadence leads to weakness that allows the barbarians to invade and bring about the Dark Ages.  As a Canadian on the border of the American empire, Arcand seems to be saying that he sees the same sort of process happening in current society.  He may well be right.  What really connects Days of Darkness with the trilogy is that The Barbarian Invasions is about trying to escape death; this film is about trying to escape life.

Henry Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  That certainly describes Jean-Mark in Days of Darkness.  Jean-Marc leads a pretty boring life.  His world is grey – his house, his car, the sky.  His marriage isn’t happy.  His children aren’t happy.  He’s a bureaucrat who spends his day listening to unhappy people.  But he has his imagination.  Like Walter Mitty, Jean-Marc spends much of his time in his daydreams – but this is Walter Mitty as if he had been written by Woody Allen and Hugh Hefner.  Jean-Marc’s fantasy life is not just an escape; it is a critique of the many ways the world has lost its way.

The real world of this film is nearly as surreal as Jean-Marc’s imaginary world.  The great bureaucracy where he works is housed in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.  It is literally a bureaucratic maze.  His co-workers have to take classes in how to laugh.  The problems he deals with each day are unbelievable, and yet each is an actual case.  (My favorite is a man who was walking on the side walk when a car hit a streetlight.  The streetlight fell on the man, who lost his legs.  The city charges everyone involved in the destruction of public property, so he has to pay for half the streetlight.)  There is rarely anything he can actually do.  One of the lines that sums up this world is “You’re wasting your time; it’s pointless.”

In his dreams Jean-Marc is in control.  He is the lover of a famous movie star and a TV news reporter.  He solves the world’s problems.  He is famous and rich and happy.  Those who are his nemeses are dealt with harshly (but of course they deserve it).

The film reflects the malaise that so often becomes part of life as we go through the same routines day after day.  Not only our personal lives, but our corporate life just seems to be one repetition after another.  Consider the skepticism with which we greet political campaigns.  Do any of the candidates live up to the dreams we have for someone to lead us?  Following Arcand’s post-empire metaphor, the meaninglessness of staged political debates or of reality television or blogs that do nothing but blather reflect a world that is as devoid of wisdom as those centuries before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

If we follow the world into this malaise, it is indeed pointless and we are wasting our time.  Instead all the Jean-Marcs in the world (and that includes us all) need to find a life that has meaning beyond the limits of our minds.

Mogul Mowgli: Reconciling and Telling Your Story

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Mogul Mowgli tells the story of Zed (Riz Ahmed), an aspiring rapper who has been toiling away in the business for fifteen years. With plans for an upcoming tour and positive word of mouth, Zed appears to finally be on the verge of his big breakthrough. However, while visiting his family, Zed suddenly finds himself in hospital with a strange degenerative illness. Unable to walk on his own, Zed is forced to choose between his health and career while also making peace with his past, his family and the uncertainty of his future.

Directed by Bassam Tariq, Mogul Mowgli is an intimate and powerful look at one man’s struggle to build a legacy in the face of unexpected pain. While the story works well on its own, Mowgli works primarily due to the strength and intensity of Riz Ahmed. As we’ve seen in his past work, Ahmed is one of those rare performers who is always willing to commit to a character with deep passion. Having co-written the script with Tariq, the film feels like a personal project for him and he once again fully invests himself into his character’s emotional journey with authenticity and intensity. (Incidentally, it’s also worth noting that fans of his acting may be unaware of his solid rap career that he has built under the name Riz MC, a talent that is fully on display within this film.)

With its emphasis on musical trauma, Mowgli will invariably draw comparisons to Ahmed’s most recent work in Sound of Metal. Though they are very different in style and context, there are enough similarities between the two projects that make it feel like a spiritual sequel of sorts to the film. Like its predecessor, Mowgli tells the story of a musician who is dealt a crushing blow to his career after a medical emergency derails his plans. What’s more, just like Metal, this film sends Ahmed’s character on a quest for identity that carries him deep into his soul where he’s forced to realize what’s most important to him.

However, what sets Mowgli apart from its spiritual successor is its emphasis on culture. Just as his rap career is finally about to take off, Zed finds himself torn between worlds. Having spent the last fifteen years working his way to success in the United States, his return home is wrought with tension from a family that feels as though he has abandoned their traditions. Whether it’s changing his name or embracing a style of music that remains foreign to them, his family fears that their prodigal son has erased his own culture from his life for the sake of American success. Under pressure to embrace his heritage, Zed goes on a journey to reconnect with his soul which challenges him to reconcile his past with his future. While his voice and style may differ from the culture of his family, Zed simply wants to be heard by them.

As he sees his health slip away, Zed’s greatest fear is that people will not know who he is. To him, leaving his mark on the world is an essential part of his dream, whether it’s through having children of his own or through his music. For Zed, music is his chance to be heard and pass his story on to others.  In many ways, it’s both his legacy and his children. With each beat and verse, Zed uses his music to give him strength and help him process the challenges that he faces. 

In short, music helps him to tell his story. 

Well-performed and executed, Mogul Mowgli is an engaging look at what it means to reconcile who you are with who you want to be. As Zed wrestles with his cultural and physical journeys, his music provides him an outlet that allows him to work through his pain. His story matters and he understands that it needs to be heard by others. Whether or not this story is close to Ahmed’s own personal one is unclear but it honestly doesn’t matter. What matters most is that he certainly seems invested in sharing it with us.

Mogul Mowgli is available in theatres on Friday, September 3rd, 2021.

Memory House – The Weight of Oppression

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In Memory House, Brazilian filmmaker João Paulo Miranda Maria shows us the way a history of colonialism (even when it’s not officially colonial) continues to be a spiritual burden that many cannot escape.

Cristovam is a indigenous black man from Northern Brazil who has moved to an Austrian enclave in the South because the dairy company he worked at for 20 years long ago closed the dairy he worked at in the north and moved the operations to the south. In the opening scene, Cristovam is being interviewed by the company head, but through an interpreter. The boss hasn’t even bothered to learn Portuguese. When Cristovam is told his wages will be cut, the boss tells the interpreter “As on old and black man, where would he get a better option?”

The boss operates under the assumption that the Europeans came to bring innovation. He assumes that is for the better. The company is fully behind an independence movement to secede from Brazil. They clearly feel superior to the Brazilian people.

As one of the very few native Brazilians (and the darkest skinned one), Cristovam is something of an outlier. He doesn’t speak German like most of the people in his community. He experiences blatant racism. He is preyed upon by local youths.

He discovers an abandoned house that has many old things that rekindle his memories and feelings of past times. As he finds more and more items, he is in touch with ancient folklore and begins to find a sense of being that is not defined by the European community. There is a hint of magical realism as Cristovam takes on these aspects of the past.

Part of the discoveries that Cristovam makes happen after some locals have painted a racist comment on the wall in the house. He begins chipping the plaster away and there finds an earlier wall with a picture on it that is one of his triggers. We see there is a layer under that one as well. It is as though the layers of historical oppression must be removed bit by bit in order for Cristovam to find his genuine self.

The film provides commentary on the way oppressed minorities have had their dignity chipped away through years of cultural imperialism. Cristovam is left with little of the meanings and values of the world of his birth. He is a stranger in a strange land even in his native country. And in the end, even his life may be just another thing stolen by the company and the community around it.

Memory House is in select theaters and available of virtual cinema.

Photos courtesy of Film Movement.

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Celebrating (and Owning) Culture

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In Marvel’s Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, skilled fighter and assassin Shang Chi (Simu Liu) is confronted by the family legacy and past that he thought he had left behind. His father is known as The Mandarin, the leader of the Ten Rings organization and one of the most villainous people in history, uses a legendary weapon to give himself immortality and power so great that it rivals Thanos’ Infinity Stones. After Shang Chi escapes his father’s grasp and flees to San Francisco, The Mandarin recaptures his son and wants him back in the fold to help with his master plan. 

There has been a great deal of attention lately focusing on Asian hate during the pandemic. (In fact, as crimes and hate against Asians have increased, Shang Chi earned terrible early reviews on Google despite not having been released to the public yet.) However, with an uncompromising vision, one of the best aspects of Shang Chi is that the movie never tries to “whitewash” him or the story to appeal to the general audience. Instead, the film embraces Asian representation and use of culture in all aspects, from the wardrobe, fight scenes, backgrounds, mythical creatures, weapons, and even allowing them to speak Chinese onscreen. 

Like Black Panther’s celebration of African culture, Shang Chi shows the audience just how rich Asian culture can be and how much great talent there is in Hollywood right now that is being overlooked. The whole movie is really an immersive cultural experience and those who have never seen an Asian-led film before are going to be blown away. Of course, it still does also do all of the great things that have made Marvel be so successful as well, such as its trademark witty humor, CGI glory, and super creative/intense superhero fight scenes. (Incidentally, in its set pieces, Shang Chi really creates martial arts scenes that you’d expect to see from a classic Jackie Chan movie, a style which blends really well with Marvel’s cinematography and choreography.) As an absolute huge celebration of Asian culture, Shang Chi is a huge step in the right direction for inclusion and diversity for Disney and the movie industry as well. (And, of course, make sure to stay for both after credit scenes.)  

Marvel’s first Asian led superhero movie, Shang Chi takes its audience on a mythical journey of intense martials art action mixed with a storyline that really speaks to Millennials and Gen-Z’s. Being a second (or longer) generation immigrant, there is often a huge lack of cultural identity. For example, while you may grow up learning bits of your background and know that you are Asian but you may not really identify (or want to identify) with your culture. In this way, you can be kind of tied between your ethnic origins and the culture of the country that you’re growing up within. Especially when as a child, you’re constantly bombarded with media that does not celebrate or acknowledge you. This notion also relates to Shang Chi himself, as his character arc follows the story of a second-generation immigrant who is troubled by his past and the legacy that his father is forcing on him.

Typically, the aspirations of a tiger parent are known for pushing their kid to become something that they don’t want to be. For many Asian parents, this dream is for their child to become a doctor or lawyer. For Shang Chi, however, it’s to become head of the Ten Rings. Wanting nothing to do with his heritage, Shang abandons it entirely by running away and completely disassociating himself with it. (In fact, he’s even ashamed of his true origins.) The relatability of watching him is how a lot of Asians feel about their family and culture too. To these youth, their parents’ culture is something to hide and attempt to break free from. Without giving away any spoilers, it’s only after Shang Chi goes on this adventure and confronts his family and homeland that he reconnects with his roots. In doing so, he begins to feel some pride in who he is and who he can become. (“You are a product of all that have come before you,” he’s told.) Personally, I really believe that the film uses this to highlight the struggle for younger Asians to acknowledge their culture and own their background is a part of who they are now. There is a message of cultural celebration within the film that invites second-generation immigrants to be proud of their heritage, rather than hide or be ashamed of your own race. 

Overall, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is an amazing celebration of Asian culture that was long overdue. By celebrating Asian culture, Marvel has really taken a great step in the right direction at a time when it’s needed. As the latest new character into the MCU, the film is fueled by family ties that really drive the story and demonstrate the struggle of the next generation to connect with their history. 

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is in theatres on Friday, September 3, 2021