ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

grace

The Last Right – Acts of Grace

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“It’s the first right thing I do for him, and it’s the last.”

Doing the right thing is central to Aoife Crehan’s premier feature film The Last Right. But right for whom? And how do we judge the right among multiple values that all have a claim as right?

Daniel Murphy (Michael Huisman) is a New York tax attorney heading back to Ireland for his mother’s funeral. Next to him on the plane is Padraig Murphy (no relation), who is taking his estranged brother’s body back to Ireland after 30 years with no contact. He says that at least they can be together in death even if not in life. When just before landing Padraig is found to have died, it’s discovered that he has listed Daniel as his next of kin.

When Daniel gets home for the funeral, we discover he has a brother, Louis (Samuel Bottonley), with autism. Daniel’s plan is to take Louis back to the US and place him in a special school. But when the authorities seek Daniel’s help dealing with Padraig’s body, a series of unlikely occurrences leads to Daniel and Louis driving the family Volvo the length of Ireland with the coffin strapped to the top of the car so that he can be buried along with his brother. Also along for the ride is a women they have just met, Mary (Niamh Algar).

At the same time, the authorities have decided to hold on to Padraig’s body. The Garda is after them for bodysnatching. When the story becomes national news, many people see what Daniel is doing as a kind sacrifice. By the time he gets to the church, just ahead of the Garda, many have turned out for the funeral of these two lonely brothers.

Along the way there are revelations (including a major one about the relationship between Louis and Daniel) and a budding romance with Daniel and Mary. All of which must turn into conflicts before the right thing to do is finally achieved.

The film is about 50% road movie, 40% romantic comedy, and 10% Rainman. The romcom aspects are the least compelling part of the film, especially when you consider that this trip and the resulting relationship happens in two days.

This is a film that shows how grace can come from unexpected sources. Daniel, although under duress, acts as a grace giver in hauling Padraig’s coffin to be joined with his brother, just as Padraig acted with grace to bring his brother’s remains home. But Daniel also is the recipient of grace in many ways along the way. And it is important to remember that grace is by definition unmerited. Daniel, who essentially operates from selfish motives, finds his life open up in new ways as he comes to know and appreciate Louis. It allows Daniel, who finds grace so frequently in the film to become a gracious person who can set aside his own selfish ways to welcome others into his life.

The Last Right is available in theaters and on demand.

The Florida Project – Not So Carefree Childhood

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The Florida Project is the story of a carefree childhood summer—except it isn’t. Instead it is a haunting view of a somewhat hidden section of American life—families that are not quite homeless, but nowhere near even a minimal security.

The story, which is made up of vignettes more than a definitive plot, focuses on Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a six year old girl who lives with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) in The Magic Castle, a seedy $35-a-night motel near Walt Disney World. Halley is often late with her weekly rent, and is frequently admonished by motel manager Bobby (Willem Dafoe) for various transgressions. Moonee and friends spend the summer panhandling for ice cream, playing in abandoned buildings, and generally having adventures and getting into mischief. Her mother is little more than a child herself. She certainly is not emotionally mature. She tries to provide what she can through hustles, and, if that fails, prostitution and theft.

For Moonee this all seems normal. She has fun. She plays. But viewers know that it isn’t normal. It doesn’t seem to us to be a healthy situation for a girl to grow up in. At times Moonee and her friends do dangerous things because they have no supervision. Halley and other parents in their motel fear arrest or Child Services taking their children. We may think that is needed, but by the end of the film we may not be so sure.

The most interesting character for me, was Bobby. Often stern and seemingly judgmental, he was also an agent that brought grace into the lives of these people. He is an almost constant presence. He seems to see everything and know everything. He provides protection. Even when people fail to follow the rules, he almost never punishes. Theologically, I see him as a cinematic version of the Holy Spirit—the manifestation of God that constantly fills our lives with grace and continuously watches over us. The Spirit can both convict and comfort us. Bobby embodies all of this.

It’s estimated that close to a million people live in such transient circumstances. Because they must move so frequently it is hard to know with any certainty. Many of those living in places like The Magic Castle lost homes in the 2008 crash and have never been able find their way back into regular housing. It is especially hard to track the children of such families to make sure they are in good environments and have access to schools. Even we may want to be judgmental about such situations. We may see Halley as irresponsible and immature, but she is striving to keep her daughter housed and fed as best she can. This film calls us to have compassion on people like this who have next to nothing in a land of plenty.

Even though the film hardly ever specifically references the Disney resorts, they are a constant presence in the film as we see fancier hotels and tourist shops. Places like the Disney parks are a very visible sign of affluence in our society (especially considering the cost to go to them). The ironic contrast that is created by setting the story so close to such a happy place reminds us that this issue really is all around us. We may even consider the possibility that such “magical” places really hide the poverty that exists nearby. We go to such places looking for a magical experience, blind to the reality of difficult lives just outside the boundaries of our escapist destinations.

Photos Courtesy of A24

Mad Max Fury Road: Baptism By Water, Dust & Fire

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furyroad1stWhen we meet Mad Max (Tom Hardy, for the first time), he is wrestling with a vision of the past. He hears cries for help, and sees those he has lost along the way. We know who he is because we’ve seen the previous films by George Miller (ironically enough, Babe, Happy Feet 1 & 2… and the Mad Max trilogy), but his name isn’t uttered until the closing stanza of the film. Max is a man without a community, a man without hope, a man desperately in need of redemption, even though he’s not proactively seeking any of the three.

Soon, Max has run afoul of Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and one of his crazy-eyed henchman, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But Max is not alone: he’s tied to the welfare of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and a band of women who Furiosa is stealing/freeing from Joe. Joe believes that these women are his property (and has impregnated a few of them), controlling his ‘tribe’s’  water, gasoline, and future as well.

Bouncing off of walls and other vehicles of mass destruction, Miller’s script is linear in its own way, but it’s also multilayered. Bombastic visuals make up for a dearth of dialogue, rocketing the audience (especially the 3D one) along through a series of battles, chases, storms, and other calamities, leaving us feeling like we’ve survived a desert storm (war). Elements reflect other post-apocalyptic fare like The Book of Eli and one wonders if the character of Max himself was necessary for the film’s greatness. Could we have been enthralled, enticed, invited in if it had been merely a “world gone bad”? Max himself is not even necessarily the figure we find our eyes riveted to…

Mad Max Fury Road MainFuriosa is herself a stunning character, and not for her beauty or charm. Like other Theron characters before her, she has been stripped of her more feminine nature and held up as an individual ripe with character and strength. She is Miller’s Ripley, the one-armed driver who has a vision for the future, while Max only has visions. She is the moral compass, the driving force, making this Max character seem more like a “reboot” than a sequel storyline. It’s as if he must learn to be human all over again, after the devastating events of Tina Turner’s Thunderdome.

Instead, our heroine is the one who recognizes what it takes to make hope a reality, even if she needs help to see it through. Furiosa believes in the “Green Place,” part-utopia, part-nostalgic past. She’s the one who attempts to intercede on behalf of the Five Wives of Joe, to say that they are not cattle, or property, or baby-producing machines. Initially, and most of the way throughout, Max is merely an additional gunhand, along for the ride.

DSC_3888.JPGA Deeper Discussion: Spoilers Ahead!

But Mad Max: Fury Road is not simply “man bad, woman good” the way that some reviewers have suggested. There is more nuance here, and it may often revert back to an understanding of John Locke/Charles Darwin behavior. Do we take more from our nature or our nurture? Does the fall of technology or ‘civilization’ signal a return  to the animalistic self and the Old Testament understandings of right and wrong? Or is there something higher and more intrinsic about who we are as people?

Max and Furiosa are incomplete people. One lacks a family, while the other lacks an arm (and feminine ‘purpose’ in Joe’s world). But they complete each other (not in a Jerry Maguire way) by being the visionary and the vision fulfilled. Ultimately, the ‘universal blood donor’ saves lives, but he’s not the Christ-figure. He’s the power, the will, the safety net of the Christ-figure, who ultimately proves to be the one who frees the oppressed and comforts the abused.

In the one real dramatic turn of events (spoiler! I told you again), after the group fails to arrive in the perfect world Furiosa was stolen from, Max convinces her that they must return to the land flowing with water and greenery in The Citadel. It is not an image of going away to some other place (a sometimes evangelical view of escape to heaven) but rather a liberating of the ideals, resources, and grace to everyone present in the here and now, already available. [One interesting aside: Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer) tells the liberated wives that once, everyone had enough, and there was no need for war.] Instead of waiting for heaven, what if we lived like we should care for each other today?

FURY ROADThat is a sharp turn from the Valhalla that Joe has Nux and the other War Boys. It’s like (pre-Pan) as if Joe has established himself as the giver of all things to the Lost Boys, and they are predestined to live and die for his glory. Sure, there’s some Middle Eastern thought there about dying in glory, but it’s mixed into a brew that sees the Norse imagery included, along with the elevation of women to objectified status as well. Joe’s Valhalla includes the repression of belief, freedom, and water in the here-and-now, a charge that could be leveled against any organization, from the church of Martin Luther’s day to various world governments. Supply is artificially culled by Joe so that demand is higher, with the understanding that (except for Joe), tomorrow matters more than today. For the Max and Furiosa, much like for the early church sent out to be witnesses in Acts 1:8, they must prove that there is enough of everything (grace, water, gender) for everyone.

The two of them, working in tandem, are baptized by the dust of the storm (we’ve even see Max rise up out of the dust, akin to a baptism or earlier birth in Genesis 2:7). Then, they’re baptized by the fire of the flamethrowers, the bullets, and the grenades of Immortal Joe’s pursuit. And finally, they provide the baptism by freeing the ‘unlimited’ water supply to the villagers waiting below. [Ironically enough, neither one of them is actually ‘baptized’ by the water but they initiate that experience for others.] They make church happen, blasting open the divide between the water and the people, much like Jesus promised the church would in Matthew 16:18: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it.” In the land of desolate desert, Max and Furiosa make the water flow. They are in the practice of blowing away gates, rocks, impediments to ‘the good.’

Honestly, I’ve never walked away from a film feeling so punched in the face by the weight of it. The 3D work was masterful, and the action was slick. I almost feel like I’m stuck with sand in my teeth, from the immersive experience of such a depressing worldview. This was no beach vacation; this was a war for our future, a warning about who we could become.

It’s a lovely day. Or is it?