This week, Steve Norton and Jason Norton (no relation) discuss Mad Max: Fury Road, looking at desolation, redemption and, yep, the Wizard of Oz.
Show Notes
Fishing for More – Mad Max Edition [PDF Download]
Reviews
Memorial Day, War, & John Wayne #TBT
I remember watching John Wayne films with my grandma, a longstanding tradition from all of the John Wayne films she watched with my grandpa. Quite frankly, any western would make Grandma smile, but westerns with John Wayne were priceless. With the arrival of Warner Bros.’ John Wayne Westerns Film Collection (available June 2), I had to sit down to watch, remember, and reflect. It seemed the right way to celebrate my grandparents – and Memorial Day weekend.
The first film in the set, Fort Apache, may be the one that represents a view of war and peace that is more nuanced than you might expect for the time period (1948). Wayne plays Captain Kirby York, an honorable leader and veteran who gets passed over for promotion when Henry Fonda’s Owen Thursday is appointed to head up Fort Apache. The problem is that Thursday has no experience working with the natives – the Native American Indians – and he blunders his way into a Custer-like massacre. [There’s a bit of romance between Thursday’s daughter (a grown-up Shirley Temple) and a younger soldier (John Agar).
While war is less “messy” in its depictions from the 1940s and 1950s, Fort Apache shows off a self-awareness about the humanity in everyone, on both sides of the American government/Native American conflict. Wayne’s character shows some depth, some willingness to recognize that even in the midst of a conflict, we must treat people like beings with integral self-worth. Unfortunately, the conflict doesn’t end well for Thursday and his troops, but the stage is still set for us to consider the price of war, the cost of conflict, and the way that we are prideful in our interactions with those we consider less than ourselves. Especially in situations where we make things black and white, us versus them, we fail to see the way that our brothers and sisters often wear the opposite uniform or stand opposed to us in verbal and physical conflict.
If we haven’t learned from years of watching the news, we have the examples of American Sniper, Lone Survivor, and Zero Dark Thirty to remind us. Somehow, Fort Apache artfully dances the line between glorifying war and showing its costs – there’s honor in the nobility and sacrifice of many of the soldiers, but there’s nothing to crow about when it comes to dying. Seriously, the lesson is as old as John Wayne, so when will we learn? When will we come to respect each other, those who serve and those who oppose us, and see the worth in each of us individually?
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The John Wayne Western Collection includes four more westerns for your high definition viewing pleasure.
The Searchers (1956) finds Wayne teaming again with director John Ford for the twelfth time, this time in a story about another Civil War vet who is searching for his missing niece (Natalie Wood). Named the greatest western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008, and twelfth on the AFI’s Best of All Time list, The Searchers combines a bit of Stockholm Syndrome and the white/Native American conflict.
Rio Bravo (1959) is a Howard Hawks’ film starring Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Ricky Nelson, and John Russell was one he and Wayne made to rebut the themes perceived in High Noon, which the two “remade” twice in El Dorado and Rio Lobo.
The Train Robbers (1973) is a heist movie about a woman (Ann-Margaret) who is pushed by a thief (Wayne) into finding gold her dead husband hid. They’re chased by the Pinkertons (led by Ricardo Montalban), under the direction of Burt Kennedy. This is the first time on Blu-ray.
Cahill: United States Marshal (1973) is the fifth collaboration of Wayne and Andrew V. McLaglen, about an aging U.S. marshal who has to chase a killer when his grown sons get mixed up in the crime. This is the first time on Blu-ray.
The five-disc Blu-ray set contains hours of special features. There are older “behind the camera” segments from Warner Bros. Presents, documentaries on Ford (“Monument Valley” and “A Turning of the Earth”), one narrated by John Milius (Dirty Harry, Red Dawn, Conan the Barbarian, Apocalypse Now) about The Searchers, another on The Searchers called “An Appreciation,” and “The Man Behind the Star,” plus trailers and more.
Foxcatcher: Wrestling with God
Foxcatcher is as difficult to write about as it was to watch. I have seen it three or four times now, and it does not lessen the difficulty of watching such a tense and dramatic film. Despite that, it is a great film, deserving every nomination for every film award it got! There is no other film like it. Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo all gave outstanding performances.
The difficulty of watching this film is that it is true.
Foxcatcher is the story of John du Pont (Steve Carell) whose desire to achieve something on his own draws him to sponsoring the US Olympic wrestling team in the 1980s. Du Pont knows nothing about wrestling, but it does not stop him. From the moment we meet du Pont, though we barely recognize Carell, we know that there is something not right.
The same could be said about Channing Tatum’s Mark Schultz. The trophies and metals in his apartment seem to stand as a memorial to what was in Mark’s life. Mark goes from making a speech to elementary school students about the Olympics to making a speech (prepared by du Pont’s people) about the father-figure that John du Pont has become in his life. These speeches stand in contrast to where Mark’s life has taken him.
John du Pont seeks out Mark to achieve his vision of being a part of a winning team. There are hints that he goes to Mark to get to his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), an experienced coach. In this attempt, John befriends Mark, making promises and sharing intimate stories. John sets himself up to be the father-figure that is missing in Mark’s life. Mark does not seek him out as a mentor; John positions himself to be such. On the way to the event where Mark is give a speech that John’s staffers wrote, John shares cocaine with Mark and teaches him how to use it. From there we see a decline in Mark.
There is something not right here.
Between the two of them, John and Mark fill the screen with emotional damage. This damage is so settled within their very core, that is difficult to see, yet it explains everything. After participating in drug use with John, Mark begins to change, which is depicted by his appearance. He dyes his hair and he dresses differently. He spirals into self-destruction.
After he loses a match that he should have won, Mark returns to his hotel room to grieve. What follows is one of the most intense scenes in the whole film. Without any words, the real wrestling in Mark’s soul is revealed.
Filled with anguish, Mark sends his head into a mirror, glass breaking. He orders carts full of food and stuffs his face. His nameless internal wrestling bursts forth. The fighting ends with Mark collapsing to the floor. This is how David finds him. Bloodied. Defeated. Full of carbs. The wounds can be bandaged. The carbs can be handled. David puts his attention on Mark’s battered soul.
In the shadows of the hotel room, Mark is curled up on the bed, with David bent over him. As they do when they wrestle, they become one lump. David says to his younger brother, “You’re not in this alone.”
When you are in your darkest moment, dwelling in the shadows of life, there is nothing more meaningful than someone whispering, “You’re not in this alone.”
In the Hebrew Bible, Jacob wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32) all through the night. Some have suggested that the angel represented God and the wrestling was over whom God was calling Jacob to be: Israel – the father of a nation. In Romans 7, Paul describes a fight with himself – “I do the things I know I shouldn’t do and I don’t do the things I know I should do.” In Ephesians 6, Paul says that the struggle we go through is not one of flesh and blood, but one with the spiritual forces of wickedness.
We wrestle with God, with ourselves, and with forces of injustice.
The beauty of the film is that it does not state the obvious. We do not know for certain why Mark is emotionally damaged. Nor do we know why John is, though the film leaves clues as to why they may be. So often that is the case. We see others wrestling with their inner selves, not knowing why. We can, however, say to them, “You’re not in this alone.”
American Sniper: War Costs Us All Something
Rudderless Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) sees footage of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings and goes from thrill-seeker to U.S. Navy Seal. While Kyle’s life appears to a blend of the thrills and the honor, Clint Eastwood’s film raises the story to levels of greater nuance. For all of its criticism for being a “hoorah” kind of film about military glory at all costs, the film itself shows the power of Kyle’s efforts and the costs of the sacrifices he made.
Just seconds after marrying Taya Renae (Sienna Miller), Kyle gets shipped off to Iraq in response to 9/11. His first kills (the ones shown in the trailer) set off a lifetime of internal struggle as he wrestles with his honor, duty, and service as a sniper protecting his fellow American soldiers, and the tearing of his soul as he takes the lives of others.
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.–Genesis 9:6
Kyle ends up battling Mustafa (a fictional composite of Iraqi snipers who ends up making the film itself feel more personal), kill for kill, situation by situation, shot after shot. This is where the visual explosiveness of the film comes from, the action/thriller of the cinematic experience. It’s gripping for sure, and I remember that seeing it for the first time, it held me tight for hours after the credits rolled.
This is not like the war movies I remember watching sporadically growing up. It’s filled with dread and hopelessness, reasonably desolate, shot in darker, sandier hues. The ‘victories’ don’t feel like winning, and the losses feel like they’ll never be overcome. Soldiers Kyle knows fall, and even the ‘enemy combatants’ who lose their lives carry more weight than the bad guys gunned down in the latest Liam Neeson flick.
But the truth is that the internal tension for Cooper’s Kyle, and for his relationship with Taya Renae, is even more moving. Kyle has two experiences in non-combat that make the film for me, the first occurs in-between tours with a man who credits Kyle with his life and the second occurs as he’s crossing paths with his own brother in transition. The first man approaches Kyle’s work as if he is part-angel/part-saint, while Kyle is shaken by being perceived as heroic; the second situation shows that what Kyle has marginalized in his own life has taken root and twisted his brother.
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.–Romans 12:19
I’m not sure, having read up on both Kyle and Eastwood, that Kyle would love the way Eastwood has depicted the internal conflict. But there’s clearly a difference in the cinematic Kyle’s perspective from his first tour to his last. Eastwood can clearly see the way that war hurts us, leaves us scars, even if the killing is done on behalf of the greater good or the innocent.
Honestly, watching the film, I’m reminded of my conversations in high school when I was learning about Augustine’s Just War Theory. I’m reminded of the way that people have discussed the ways that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as a pacifist, wrestled with the decision concerning assassinating Adolf Hitler. And I remember the startling end of Zero Dark Thirty, marketed as the “greatest manhunt in history” that culminated in the costs of such an obsession, violence, and methods.
Eastwood isn’t glorifying war. He’s not “hoorahing” his way through this one. Yes, he acknowledges that American values and security would not be the same without men like Chris Kyle who bravely, boldly, and authoritatively lay their lives down for the protection of others. But he wants to remind us that this costs us something, that war is not cheap, that lives matter even if they’re not the lives of people we know or like.
Watching American Sniper, I’m impressed by Eastwood, Bradley, and by people like Kyle. But I’m also reminded that Jesus’ words about violence and taking revenge are for our good. We can’t handle the responsibility of taking lives; we aren’t meant to be God, who decides who lives or dies. The cost is too great when we’re put (or forced into) those kinds of decisions.
Sorrowfully, for Chris Kyle, it cost he and his family everything. But it’s not like our hands are clean. Just like buying something produced somewhere that labor is unfairly provided with little-to-no compensation makes us guilty, our freedom at the hands of people like Kyle who are protecting us, makes us guilty, too. We have freedom because of men like Kyle, and until wars cease, we’ll be complicit in their struggle.
What will it take for us to make a change?
Pick up your copy of American Sniper on Blu-ray/DVD at Amazon.
What Does Hope Look Like? Ted Williams, Walt Disney, & Tomorrowland
At 7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, Arizona, the greatest hitter in baseball history lives. Well, Ted Williams’ body hangs cryogenically frozen, awaiting that moment in the future when science will allow for those who have been preserved indefinitely to be reanimated.
Another innovator, Walt Disney was rumored to be cryogenically frozen (he was actually cremated a month before the first person was ever cryogenically frozen), but his involvement here is really over the creation of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), originally intended to be an organized city aimed at optimism and positive futuristic developments. Disney’s understanding of the future was one aimed at utopia, or a perfect community. Isn’t it ironic that the land he purchased to build such a community is now “just” a theme park?
Both men believed that the world they lived in wasn’t the best that there was. They longed for a future. Ironically, Williams hoped to have his life preserved until it could be reanimated, although he spent most of his life hating his parents, separated from his children, and wishing he was a better person. [What about that screams, “I want to do this longer?”] Disney, on the other hand, was less concerned with what was, and hoped for what could be? Disney believed in better. He wanted to inspire people to look up, to wonder, to recognize the good that could be, rather than be stuck in the now that included orphans, bankruptcy, and other kinds of suffering.
In Genesis 3, in the archetypal story of the fall of humanity from the right relationship with God, humanity achieves ‘knowledge,’ specifically the recognition of good versus evil. Before that, they had lived in bliss, in a utopia so to speak of God’s infinite love and grace. But now, as God recognized, humanity ” has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22). So, God removed humanity from the Garden of Eden, and prevented them from living forever. Forever in pain, violence, sickness, shame, and sin. God didn’t kick humanity out of the garden because God was threatened but because God knew humanity would suffer, indefinitely. God believed that there could be something better. [And ultimately, he sent his Son to die on the cross to show us just how much better that could be.]
Cryogenics seems like a bad idea. I happen to believe our souls and our bodies aren’t necessarily one and the same, although they’re all part of the whole. I also don’t want to live forever like this, because I believe there’s something better. I believe there’s a time in the future where the kingdom of God will come upon the Earth, when all of that stuff we wrestle with will be no more. Because I believe God is going to make all things new.
Now, does that mean we can’t get better, that technology, that Tomorrowland can’t be a reality? That the future can’t hold technological and scientific advances that can make our lives better? No, I think the future can be good, because I believe God continues to move and create, even in a broken world, and we can be part of that.
So, I think between Disney and Williams, I’ll choose Disney. And maybe even give ole George (Clooney) a shot this weekend. Why might Brad Bird’s vision of Tomorrowland look like? What can we learn? How can we grow? How might the future shows us brighter glimpses of the kingdom of God?
Just be careful what you put your hope and faith in today, and tomorrow.