ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

christopher plummer

6.11 Carving Up Justice in KNIVES OUT

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In KNIVES OUT, Rian Johnson draws the viewer into a world of diabolical murder and twisted intrigue. When aging mystery novelist Harland Thrombey kills himself after his 85th birthday, the police initially rule his death a suicide. However, after private investigator Benoit Blanc is brought in to question the cantankerous clan, he suspects that Thrombey’s death may be the result of foul play and begins to pull at the thread of truth. This week, Steve welcomes back Wade Bearden (Seeing and Believing) to investigate the film’s depiction of justice, mistrusting memory and understanding good character.

You can also stream the episode above on podomatic, Alexa (via Stitcher), Spotify or Soundcloud! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts or Google Play!

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.

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Boundaries – Dysfunctional Family Takes to the Road

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Road trips movies are inevitably about the forces that pull us apart and/or draw us together. Boundaries, from writer-director Shana Feste, uses this vehicle to look at three generations of a family in need of both distance and reunion.

Laura (Vera Farminga) has a problem setting limits, as is seen in the fact that she brings home every stray or injured dog or cat she finds. The one boundary she does keep is to never answer her father Jack’s (Christopher Plummer) many phone calls. But when her son Henry (Lewis MacDougall) is expelled from school for a nude caricature of the principal, she needs Jack’s help to pay for a special private school. Jack needs Laura’s help as well because he’s being kicked out of his retirement community for growing and selling marijuana. So a deal is struck and soon Laura is driving Jack’s ancient Rolls Royce down the Pacific Coast to deliver him to her sister Jojo (Kristen Schaal). What Laura doesn’t know is that the trunk is full of weed that Jack (with Henry’s help) is selling along the way.

Laura and Jack’s relationship is the key one in the film. The estrangement is based on Jack’s history of being a con man and years of broken promises. She is skeptical about letting him into Henry’s life (even before she eventually discovers Jack is using his grandson in the pot business). It is obvious that many of the woes in Laura’s life are rooted in her relationship with her father. She is the epitome of a people-pleaser and is often taken advantage of. Henry is obviously in need of more than she can provide, but Jack is hardly the influence she wants. Even her openness to strays is a search for those who can be relied on to return affection.

Although most of her life is devoid of boundaries, the discovery on the road trip is that the one fence she maintains is the one she has built around her heart concerning her father. As we should expect from a road movie, there will be times when the relationship is ready to crash, but in time, Jack and Laura may find the route that will take them to a new place—a place where they can find more in each other than they have known.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

All the Money in the World – What Are Riches For?

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“Everything has a price. The real struggle in life is to determine what that is.”

How do you determine the price of the important things in life? That question lies in the background all through All the Money in the World. “Inspired by true events”, it is a thriller based on the 1973 kidnapping of a grandson of “the richest man who had ever lived”, J. Paul Getty. But it is also an examination of the way money can shape or distort our lives.

J. Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) is kidnapped off the streets in Rome. When the kidnappers call his mother Gail (Michelle Williams), her first reaction is that it is a joke. Paul has often joked that faking his kidnapping would be a way to get money from his tight-fisted grandfather and namesake (Christopher Plummer). The elder Getty enlists the aid of a former CIA operative, now his head of security, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlburg), to get young Paul back. When Getty is unwilling to part with any of his fortune for Paul’s return, Fletcher and Gail become allies in trying to get save Paul.

The thriller aspect of the film, with various twists along the way, is compelling to keep our interest, but that just serves to lead us to consideration of the role money has in our lives. Do we see it as a means to an end? Can we use money to achieve happiness or to buy things we want? Or is money an end in itself? Does having wealth fulfill us?

Although Getty is exceedingly rich, in this film we see him as a miser. An early scene shows him in his lavish Roman hotel suite, with his laundry draped over bathroom fixtures. Why pay someone to do that? he asks. When he eventually does pay the ransom (negotiated down over several months while Paul is held captive and facing brutal treatment), it is based on what he can write off on taxes and as a loan to Paul. He uses his wealth as a weapon to punish Gail for the divorce settlement with his son.

Getty, at least as portrayed in the film, uses his vast wealth to acquire great art. He places his trust (and his hope for fulfillment and happiness) in possessions. He does not expect people—even his family—to provide those things. He only trusts in the tangible. The attitude that money has inherent value and should be obtained is something that Getty has in common with the kidnappers. They all consider money as more important than people. For Fletcher Chase and Gail Getty, money is only valuable for what can be done with it—and especially done to aid someone in need.

Wealth is a topic that comes up frequently in the Bible. At times it is seen as evidence on God’s blessing, but it is frequently seen as an illusion or even as a hindrance in our relationship with God. Some scriptures that could be appropriate to consider in thinking of this film:

  • The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 5:10)
  • It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Mark 10: 25 and parallels)
  • The Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12: 16ff
  • The love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10a)
  • For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower fails, and its beauty perishes. It is the same with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away. (James 1:11)

Our attitude towards riches often shapes our spiritual lives just as much as it provides the trappings of our day to day lives. All the Money in the World gives us a chance to reflect on how our approach to money affects the way we understand so much more.

Photos courtesy of All the Money US, LLC

The Man Who Invented Christmas – Dickens Meets Scrooge

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Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a well-loved story that has had various screen and stage versions and has become as much a part of Christmas as a crèche. The Man Who Invented Christmas is the story behind the story. It is a combination of a look at Dickens, his creative process, and enough of the retelling of the story that we feel we’ve heard it yet again.

In 1843, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) is struggling to make ends meet. He has had enormous success as a writer, even touring the U.S., but his last few books have been flops. His family has acquired a lavish lifestyle. He and his wife (Morfydd Clark) spend money as fast as Charles can borrow it. When he goes to pitch a Christmas book he has yet to even conceive, his publisher is uninterested. After all, hardly anyone still celebrated Christmas at that time. He vows to publish it himself and have it ready for Christmas. A pretty bold plan for a man with writers’ block.

At the same time, Dickens’s father John (Jonathan Pryce) comes to visit. The elder Dickens has been a bit of a scoundrel throughout Charles’s life. When John was taken to debtor’s prison, Charles had to work in a work house (cf., Oliver Twist). He has affection for his flamboyant father, but is also ashamed of him.

As he struggles to write the book, he conceives of Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), who comes to life for him, and the two have discussions about the “humbug” of Christmas. Scrooge, you’ll remember is a miserly, self-contained misanthrope. He is not at all like Dickens, which make the two of them struggle over the meaning of the book, and hence Christmas. Many of the things that end up in the book have a genesis in Charles’s day to day life. As such, all of the main beats of A Christmas Carol show up as lines or images at some point in the film so that we come away feeling as if we’ve experienced the story in a new way.

The structure of A Christmas Carol is built around a series of visits from ghosts that show the past, present, and future. As Dickens develops the story around those points of time, the story we watch takes us back to Dickens’s past, the troubles of his present, and the unknown possibilities that rely on the success of this book.

The Man Who Invented Christmas also carries the same message as A Christmas Carol: that the message of Christmas is about loving and sharing with others. For Scrooge, that discovery comes with an understanding of mortality. He becomes aware that all his wealth will mean nothing in the grave. He lives a miserable life when all he cares about is money, but is reborn when he learns to share what he has. Likewise, Dickens must learn that his fame is just as empty as Scrooge’s miserliness. His past—especially in regard to his father—has hardened him within his own family. He must escape the resentments that have consumed his life if he is to find the joy of Christmas that he has been writing about.

Photos courtesy of Bleecker Street

The Exception: Will Love or Duty Win the Day?

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Christopher Plummer is quite dapper as exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II, under investigation by the Nazi Reich’s Stefan Brandt (Jai Courtney). Brandt has his own disgraces to deal with – having been forced into this ‘undercover’ assignment. But instead of uncovering who the British spy is in the Wihelm estate, he falls for a maid, Mieke (Lily James), which is doubly problematic because she is Jewish. Will love or duty win the day?

While much of the world would openly agree that Nazi Germany was filled with problems, evils, and atrocities, we’re moved to see Brandt’s dilemma sympathetically. He’s been charged to a duty – even threatened, and his lack of abject loyalty puts him in clear danger. Based on Alan Judd’s The Kaiser’s Last Kiss (2003), the story is fictional, but the dynamics are legitimately worthy of our attention.

What happens when the world we think we know suddenly becomes unworthy of our respect? What do we do when we realize that our expected list of priorities is morally off? Too often, we move along with the flow, assuming it will all somehow ‘get better’ without our action, without change. But if we’re honest, we realize that the truth requires us to be invested; when we see wrong, we have to ask. For most of us, like Brandt, it requires love to break through the chokehold of our patterns of behavior and expectation. We won’t change until we’re forced to care.

Lionsgate’s special features on the Blu-ray/Digital HD combo pack include a “Behind the Scenes of The Exception” featurette as well as audio commentary from director David Leveaux.