ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Alicia Vikander

Tomb Raider: What We Pursue

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Tomb Raider may end up best being known for Geneva Robertson-Dworet’s film before Captain Marvel, Silver & Black (the Spider-man universe), and Gotham City Sirens (the Batman universe). That’s not to say that the film isn’t entertaining – or that Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl) isn’t every bit the action star. But somehow, this one doesn’t level up – which is sure to disappoint the millions of Lara Croft fans, online and otherwise.

In the reboot of the Angelina Jolie action series based on the hit videogame, Vikander is Croft, nearly ten years after her explorer/adventurer father disappeared in pursuit of a mysterious Asian queen who is believed to still be alive – buried with all of her sorcery on an island in the Devil’s Sea. Croft is damaged by her father’s absence, but she’s been boxing and riding bikes to keep herself in shape. And then her father’s lawyer shows up, reminds her of her estate, and she trips over the mystery of where her father has gone.

Following the clues of her father’s story, Croft finds sea captain Lu Ren (Daniel Wu, Into the Badlands) and heads out for the island. Marooned there, she encounters a rival explorer, Mathias Vogel (Walter Goggins, Justified, The Shield), who killed her father and is still looking for the buried queen.

All of this is like levels of a video game, no? But it doesn’t get really crazy until Croft is running around the island after the mystery – dodging crashed airplanes, killer mercenaries, and levels of clues leading to the queen. The audience watches voyeuristically as Croft gets kicked, dropped, shot at (by the worst-aimed mercenaries anywhere), and punched for awhile – even though it keeps reminding us that she’s the smartest person in the world. For too much of the movie, Croft can’t save herself – she’s just stuck between a bunch of men who are too stupid to see that the treasure they’re pursuing is not worth dying for after all.

This is action/adventure/horror that isn’t quite as good as the sum of its parts, but does have some moments. It’ll be interesting to see if the Croft magic is revived again because Vikander’s heroine is set up now (with the threat that the evil Trinity is everywhere)- we know who she is and why she is that way. She’s discovered the buried hero inside of her, the ethos of her father’s lessons (even if he benched paternal responsibility for worldwide pursuits).

But sadly the story becomes more about the way that men (including her father) have sacrificed everything – their parenting role, their lives, etc. – to chase something that they were never meant to have. In many ways, this is a sin narrative – a reminder that we often become obsessed with what we can’t have, what we shouldn’t have, and that it can lead ultimately to our destruction.

Thankfully, it’s not up to the men here. Lara Croft has it covered.

Special features include “Tomb Raider: Uncovered” with insight from the cast and crew; “Croft Training” as Vikander prepared for the physical elements of the role; “Breaking Down the Rapids” as director Roar Uthaug shows one of the more perilous exploits Croft delivers; and “Lara Croft: Evolution of an Icon” shows the growth of the character from the games to film.

The Light Between Oceans – Hard Choices, Consequences

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The Light Between Oceans is set on Janus, a small island far off the coast of Western Australia. The Roman god it is named after has two faces and is often thought to be looking to both the past and future (hence the year starts in January, also named after Janus.) Janus Island we discover in the story is placed between two oceans, but it is also a place that lies between hope and despair, joy and sorrow, injury and pardon, and love and . . . love?

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Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender), a veteran of the Great War, signs on as the lighthouse keeper on Janus. He is looking to get away from everything after the war. He will be about one hundred miles from another living person. And he likes the idea. But just before he goes, he meets Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander), a lovely young woman who is grieving the loss of two brothers in the war. After a bit of a long-distance romance, they marry and head to their own little Eden on Janus. Their happiness seems complete—until two miscarriages brings darkness into their lives.

Two days after the second miscarriage, a rowboat drifts toward Janus. Inside Tom and Isabel discover an infant and a dead man. At Isabel’s insistence, they do not notify anyone and begin to raise the child as their own. And so now they are a family of three—Tom, Isabel, and Lucy. But when they take Lucy into port to be baptized, Tom notices a grieving woman, Hannah (Rachel Weisz), in the church graveyard. He sees that she has been at a memorial to a man and child lost at sea the day before they found Lucy. His guilt at her deep grief sets the story for the various dilemmas that Tom and Isabel will face—emotional, moral, and eventually legal. It also means that everyone will have to face sorrow in unexpected ways. There are no possibilities for everything to work out nicely. In fact we may wonder if there will be any happiness for anyone.

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This is a story that deals with consequences. Each action creates consequences not just for the person involved but for others as well. Even when characters try to do what seems the right thing, there are severe, unforeseen costs involved. In such a situation, how can we hope to make choices that will lead to what is right? And we often have to balance what is right for whom, because what helps one person injures another.

The film also touches briefly on forgiveness. In a flashback we meet Hannah’s husband, a German who must live with the resentment of most of the community because of the past war. Yet he lives a life that does not repay those who treat him badly. He notes that you only have to forgive once, but resentments have to be brought up over and over and that is just too much work. This comes up again in the film, but could have been explored a bit more fully than it is.

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I think we often find ourselves on Janus Island—that place that looks in two directions (or even multiple directions) at once. We are always on the cusp not just of past and future, but of the many possibilities of where our lives can lead. The choices we make may open some doors and close others. How we live in the aftermath of our choices often determines whether we will find happiness or not.

Photos courtesy of DreamWorks Pictures

Editor’s note: Special features include “Bringing the Light to Life,” a look at how Cape Campbell, New Zealand, became the background for the film via the cast and crew as Cianfrance’s work made the film what it is; and see the history of the lighthouse at Cape Campbell played out. 

Podcast: JASON BOURNE again?

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This week on the show, Steve welcomes Wade Bearden, co-host of Seeing and Believing, to talk about Matt Damon’s return to JASON BOURNE. Has the franchise gone stale? How does Bourne deal with a new world and his past? All this and more, this week on ScreenFish.

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.

2.22 Jason Bourne

The Danish Girl: Finding One’s True Self

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“It doesn’t matter what I wear. It’s what I dream. They’re Lili’s dreams.”

The Danish Girl opens in Copenhagen in 1926. Einar and Gerda Wegener (Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander) are artists who are very happily married. Einar is a successful landscape painter, while Gerda struggles as a portrait artist. One day, with a deadline looming, Gerda asks Einar to model a dress and shoe. The experience triggers a gender confusion in Einar. When, as a lark, Gerda dresses Einar as a woman to go to a party, the back and forth between male and female identity escalates. Soon Einar is going out surreptitiously as Lili and begins to view his true identity as a woman. Soon two personae emerge. Einar and Lili have two very different lives.

There is a minor trend in media of stories of transgendered persons—people who identify as a gender other than is manifested in their physical body. Now there are procedures and surgeries that allow people to become who they see as their true selves. We have rules for how to treat transgendered people in school. But when Einar/Lili had to deal with that struggle, the word “transgender” did not even exist. The only explanations most people had were either moral outrage or psychological pathology. Lili eventually became the first person to undergo sexual reassignment surgery—risking her life to live the life she believed was hers.

The Danish Girl is at its heart a love story. Einar and Gerda are very much in love. As Einar transitions to Lili, that love is often tested, but it overcomes those difficulties as Gerda serves as Lili’s key support in the very difficult situation. Watching Lili kiss a man is a very challenging event for Gerda. She simultaneously sees her husband and his alter ego. Within that love story there is also a story of grief, because as Lili becomes the dominant manifestation, Einar is in effect dying. Lili, as much as Gerda loves her, is not her husband whom she has loved for many years. Einar and Gerda had a very collaborative life as artists, but when Lili emerges, she is not an artist. She does however serve as a muse for Gerda.

I think one of the difficulties in watching a film about someone who is transgendered is that it is very difficult for those of us who have an internal gender that matches our assigned gender to truly understand what that is like and the pain associated with the conflict within. When Lili and Gerda meet with the doctor who will perform surgery on her, she tells him, “This is not my body, Professor. Please take it away.” Because all this can seem so strange to viewers, I think it makes Gerda the more sympathetic character. We may feel Einar/Lili’s suffering, but we can much more identify with the pain that Gerda must deal with.

Compassion is the key quality that this film seeks to instill in viewers. By having compassion for Lili, we learn to have compassion for other transgendered persons. By watching Gerda’s compassion for Einar and Lili we understand that compassion is not an easy task. Sometimes the act of being compassionate is not superficial, but rather must be pulled up from the depths of our souls if it is to find expression.

Photos courtesy Focus Features