Mary Help of Christians Prayer

Mary Help of Christians and Saint John Bosco

Everything Old is New Again: Star Trek: Into Darkness // Movie Review

Like many men of a certain age who grew up in the New York Metro Area, as a kid 6:00PM didn't mean dinner time, it meant reruns of Star Trek on Channel 11.  I am not now, nor have I ever been a Trekie, but I am familiar with the original '60's series from having episodes repeated six nights a week during my childhood. Better yet were the second and third installments in the movie franchise from the 80's that featured the original cast.  They weren't as advanced special effects wise as the Star Wars films, but what they lacked in high tech flash they made up for in humanity, and the simple pleasure of feeling like you were off traipsing through space with old friends you had grown up with.

In 2009 we got a reboot of the film series with new actors taking on the original rolls, which I loved.  Now we have the sequel Star Trek: Into Darkness (both films directed by J.J. Abrams).  I was really looking forward to this, and before I go on and you think this is going to be a negative review; I did like it, just not as much as the first.  And let me get the two big "buts" out of the way before I go on to praise this latest adventure.

 

First off: DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE IN 3D.  I found that it added nothing for the extra money they charge for it, and the cheap Ray Band knock off you have to wear make an already dimly shot film even murkier (in general the most common complaint about 3D). I've heard that the IMAX 3D was good, which may be true, but if you're not into paying even more money to see a movie, stick with the standard projection.

Second, while this is not a remake of an earlier Star Trek movie in the strict sense, there are certain plot devises recycled from the past, to mixed results.  On the one hand
they do put a new twist on an old storyline which I thought was done really well.  But when the big reveal happens as to who exactly the Enterprise crew is up against I made an audible groan.  I figured it out a few words into the bad guy's expository speech and felt a deep feeling of despair build to the crescendo "UGH!".  Maybe this will only matter to real Trekies and people over 40,but it really felt like a cheap gimmick, and the movie almost lost me at that point. But I held my nose, kept on going and in the end was glad that I did. 

On the positive side, the new actors who take on the main rolls of Kirk (Chris Pine), Spok (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban) and the rest of the familiar bunch all do a great job of channeling the spirit of the original without resorting to out and out impersonation.  The most interesting development is in Spok, the half human, half Vulcan First Officer.  On the show we only really saw his logic driven, detached Vulcan nature.  Here his human side is explored, which is only logical.  There are times when lines are delivered that I could hear in my head coming out of the mouths of the old cast, but the new guys give them a different emphasis, which made the proceedings nostalgic and fresh at the same time.   In the hands of Abrams both of the newer Star Trek movies have a level of special effects sophistication the old ones never came close to, but at the same time he hasn't lost the humanity.  In the end that saved Into Darkness for me in spite of my misgivings over the plot. 

As for the plot, James T. Kirk and his crew chase after a suspected terrorist who may or may not be as bad as he seems.  They are under orders to kill, not capture, him by an admiral who may or may not be going rogue.  There are ethical debates over whether they should follow the order, since summary executions are not a part of the Star Fleet manual, and their actions could start a war with the Klingon Empire (a tip of the hat to the Star Trek tradition of using futuristic science fiction as a way of commenting on contemporary issues).  There are more holes in the plot than a slice of baby Swiss cheese so I could spend a ton of space exploring the implausibilities and inconsistencies, but I simply don't don't have the time, energy or inclination.

In the end a mixed, but positive review.  The true believers aren't going to miss it anyway, but for the rest of us it's a good rainy day entertainment.  And my guess is that the less you know about the "Old Days" the more you will like this one.

Our Mother from AOP

Pentecost: The Feast of Unity from AOP

Say a Prayer for the Pretender: The Great Gatsby // Movie Review

I went into the theater to see the latest film adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby wanting very much to like it.  Unlike a real film critic, I usually only see movies I want to, so am predisposed to liking them walking in.  But this time I went to see a film I normally wouldn't simply because the critics and the press had the long knives out for it way before it even premiered, and so was hoping to be contrarian.  I'd also never seen a movie directed by Baz Luhrmann, out side of a few clips and trailers, and was curious to see the full on hip-hop meets highly stylized period / costume drama mash up that he's known for.

Sad to say; mission very much unaccomplished.  I didn't hate this movie, and it has flashes of greatness, but in the end this is one case where, unlike Oz the Great and Powerful from a few weeks back, I found the negative hype to be pretty much on target.

The movie follows the story of Nick Carraway (yes, Nick Carraway), played by Toby Maguire, a would be writer who tries to make his way in 1922 New York as a bond trader.  He moves into a small cottage on Long Island next to an immense mansion owned by the mysterious "New Money" millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).  The story is told in flashbacks during Carraway's sessions with a psychiatrist in a sanatorium (an invention of the film), who encourages him to write it all down.  We find out that Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanon (Carry Mulligan), who married "Old Money" scion Tom Buchanon (Joel Edgerton), just happens to live across the bay.  From Gatsby's pier can be seen a green beacon that sits at the end of the Buchanon estate.  Nick's mysterious neighbor wanders out at night to seemingly reach out to it across the water.  Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's party's, unusual because these weekly bacchanals are open to anyone who wishes to drop in, and finds out all is not what it seems, and things that seem like coincidence are actually very well mapped out contrivances to get Gatsby and Daisy together.  


While the party scenes are certainly over the top, and in general the film represents more of a fantasia on Gatsby then a straight telling of the story (which is all well and good), in the end it really doesn't work.  But I'm not sure that this is completely Luhrmann's fault.  I read Gatsby years ago, and remember the beginning, and remember the end, but the middle is a bit muddled in my head.  And that's a pretty good way to describe this filmed version.  The reality is that not much really happens in the book until the end.  Most of the middle is taken up with dialogue scenes in hotel rooms and sea side cottages that would probably work better on the stage than on the screen.  Luhrmann is a visual director, and as hard as he tries to jazz up the more meditative segments I was still looking at my watch at a certain point.  He would have been better served to go full on fantasia as opposed to mixing the fantastic with an attempt to be faithful to the book.

For all the time spent lingering over our star crossed lovers, the ideas of the book are given short shrift.  We hear about the class distinctions between Old Money and the Nouveau Riche, Tom's white supremacist hogwash, and the corrupt manipulation of the public by hidden powers represented by the gambler Meyer Wolfsheim (Amitabh Bachchan), but they are never really fleshed out.  When we get to the end and Nick's stinging condemnation of the Buchanons and their class I'm not sure it will make complete sense to those in the audience who haven't read the book.  Or maybe it is that these themes are so 1920's in nature that the film makers figured their relevance would be lost on today's 18 to 35 year old demographic the movie is targeting, so why bother to get too deep?

Like I wrote, there are flashes of greatness.  The best scene was probably the most low tech: the confrontation between the principals at the Plaza Hotel on a sweltering summer afternoon.  While this is one of those "stagy" parts I wrote about, it was well staged and gave the actors a chance to act and show that they could do more than preen. 

I haven't talked about the 3-D because I don't see that it really mattered, except that it added to the superficiality of the proceedings.  At first I thought that the unreality of the sets, staging and music was  meant to be symbolic of the vacuousness of the period and the emptiness of the character's interior lives, but I'm really not sure.  The Great Gatsby does such a good job being vacant I can't believe it's just a trope.  Sometimes the negative hype is the truth, and unfortunately that's what's going on here. 

Modernity and Morality: A commentary by Fr. Barron

Let's Not Fool Ourselves: It's Murder in the First Degree

There is an unfortunate divide in the attitude the Catholic clergy has concerning abortion.  I'm not talking about those poor souls who are either secretly, or not so secretly pro-choice.  That's not an attitude or approach in how to view the issue, that's an out and out rupture with the truth that shouldn't be tolerated.  No, I'm writing about an attitude that recognizes that abortion is wrong, but feels the bishops and some of the faithful are "obsessed" with it, and other matters of sexual morality (I think that it's a mistake to see abortion as a part of the Church's sexual ethic to begin with, but I'll have to save that for another post).  There are other, more urgent issues like the plight of the poor and other matters of social and economic morality that needs our attention more, or so the argument goes.  There are also other life issues, like the death penalty, and the treatment of prisoners in general, that deserves equal if not more attention.  Of course the other attitude is that abortion is murder and as such should be the priority.  A society is judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable, and while we shouldn't neglect the poor, the sick or the prisoner, the weakest and most vulnerable of all are the unborn, and so they should get the first priority.

I come down on the side that says abortion is murder of the most innocent and vulnerable, and therefore gets the priority without neglecting the rest of Catholic social teaching.  In the last few years I had heard the rhetoric of the other side, and began to be lulled into a certain sympathy with it, though I never fully accepted their line of thought.  The Kermit Gosnell case has wakened me from this moral haze.  The killing of live born babies is what logically follows when you make an arbitrary distinction between life inside and outside the womb.  And the things Mr. Gosnell was doing are not new or isolated: stories that abortionists routinely leave live born babies to die of neglect after failed abortions have been circulating for decades.  That many abortion "doctors" pay no attention to restrictions on third trimester abortions is also an open secret.  Years ago one of my sisters in law played detective and called a clinic pretending to be an expectant mother in her third trimester.  She was told by the person on the other end that it was a problem, but nothing they couldn't work around. So, while I'm as shocked as anyone by the brutality of the crime, on some level I'm not surprised that these things are going on.  This case needs to be a clarion call for anyone wavering in their full throated opposition to the killing of the unborn.


There are also those who believe abortion is wrong, but don't want to use the word murder to describe it.  This is often in a sincere attempt to be pastorally sensitive to the women who procure them.  I get this.  I've had many women come into my confessional to confess this sin.  After hearing their stories would I call them murderers?  No, I wouldn't.  The decision to abort is often made under pressure and duress. As a result there is often a willful ignorance as to what is growing in their wombs.  Immediately afterward these women often try to put the whole thing out of their minds, but eventually the reality of what they've done catches up with them, and then they come to me.  My job at that point is to be the loving face of Jesus the Good Shepherd, not a harsh judge bent on crushing the already bruised reed.

As for the practitioners of abortion, no other title but murderer fits.  They know what they are doing, and some even acknowledge openly that this is the taking of a human life.  A U.S. court has decided that the actions of this abortionist were murder, the late term abortions he performed are illegal, if not meeting the present legal definition of murder, and the death of one woman under his care is man slaughter.  They're all murders as far as I can see, and we shouldn't be afraid of using the word because we might offend people.  The truth is the truth, and in this case might help to end this scourge in our land.

As for Gosnell himself, he plea bargained himself out of the death penalty. I've had friends wish great harm on the man, and while I understand the out rage I can't condone it.  I am against the death penalty, though I'm not sure I buy the Seamless Garment argument.  No, let him live.  Let him spend long days and nights, how ever many more the Lord grants him in this life, to think about what he's done.  Maybe he repents (remember God wants the sinner to return to Him, not to perish).  Maybe he doesn't.  Either way he will face God, and that's good enough for me.  

Mad Men Season 6 So Far

 

We are better than half way through Season Six of Mad Men.  What can me say so far?

Don Draper 3.0

As was hinted at in the last scene of the last episode from last season, Season 6 has seen Don return to his philandering ways.  The "Old Don" is back then, right?  Well, sorta kinda, but not exactly.  He actually expresses feelings of guilt over his renewed infidelity in this season's episode one, even though the subsequent episodes show the more amoral side of our "hero" that we're used to.  But when Sylvia, the married woman he is cheating on his wife with, breaks it off out of her own feelings of guilt and shame we see Don's eyes change from steely and cocksure to helpless and heart broken.  For his two marriages and the countless affairs he's engaged in over the years, Don Draper is in love, maybe for the first time in his life, and the fact that he can't control his beloved or his own emotions is killing him.  When he returns home after the break up it is early morning and the news has just broken on the East Coast of Robert Kennedy's assassination.  His wife Megan is crying in front of the TV, and Don sits emotionally drained on the other side of the bed.  Once again the show does a masterful job juxtaposing historical events with the fictional crisis of the characters (more on that later).

So Don has changed, but on some level also remains stubbornly static.  As others have pointed out, last season ended on the doorstep of the Summer of Love and this one dawned on the threshold of 1968.  Having passed through that cultural blender and out the other side fashions and hair styles have changed; ties are getting wider, sideburns longer, dresses more colorful.  The one constant is Don, whose grey suits and close trimmed and slicked back hair haven't changed since we met him in 1960.  His resistance to change isn't confined to his choice of neck tie.  He still drinks too much, and though he's not quite the dirty stomp around he once was, in his world fidelity remains optional.  The sexual revolution is going on, but he still maintains a strange mix of chivalrous misogyny. While not the bigot Roger Sterling is (he accepts a black secretary no one else wants, and is generally respectful to the African Americans he deals with), he's content to let the status quo of institutional racism remain out of complacency if nothing else.  He professes to be against the war in Vietnam, but suggests an ad campaign for Dow defending the use of napalm.  It's 1968, the world is blowing up, but Don is walking through the rubble willfully ignorant of all the change going on around him. 

Don's one time rival, now partner, Ted Chaough represents the more modern, sensitive man; keen to the ways of business, not above playing the game a bit loose and fast, but you get the feeling that while he's out to win he's not bent on destroying people in the process.  He drinks, but not too much.  Ted tries to draw ideas out of his creative people using brain storming techniques as opposed to browbeating them like Don.  In most things he uses the carrot, not the stick.  Is it a coincidence that he's the only major character who practices a religion (Lutheranism)?  But now that he has been drawn into the SCDP universe will Don rub off on him, as Peggy Olson fears, or the other way around?

Which ever way it goes, Don has to face eventually that things are are changing.  In this week's episode, Man with a Plan, Don and Sylvia engage in some very strange sex as power and manipulation game that seemed to be taken straight out of The Last Tango in Paris or 9 1/2 Weeks.  Though Sylvia was on the submissive end she seemed to actually enjoy it.  In spite of this by the episode's conclusion she ends the affair, and no amount of alpha male posturing will change her mind. Yes, the game was fun, but the world is bigger then the hotel room where they pretend that what they are doing is at once real, but inconsequential to their lives outside.  Their relationship is complicated, and both are close to their cheated on counterpart.  For Don, the king of compartmentalization, this type of thing is second nature.  For Sylvia it is too much to endure.   So he goes, confused and distraught, for a lost love but also because the tricks he could always rely on in the past don't work anymore. 

MLK and RFK

There is a spit opinion out there as to Mad Men's incorporation of historical events into the show's storyline.  Some see it as the weakest part of the show, I'm one of those who feels that  they do a good job with it.  Most episodes don't pivot around big news events of the Sixties, but when it does it works pretty well because the event itself isn't the thing; it's meant to speak somehow to what's going on with characters themselves.  The JFK assassination worked well as the back drop to the final disintegration of Don and Betty's marriage.  The Martin Luther King killing highlighted the difficulty Don has dealing with his feelings,as well as showing the political and social cracks beginning to emerge on the ground among the people of SCDP.

This past Sunday the Robert Kennedy assassination was placed at the tail end of the show.  Some commentators were surprised that this important event was treated like a "throwaway."  I disagree strongly.  This was no throwaway, but a superb way of summing up what's been going on.  I would go as far as to say the entire sequence, which segued into the closing credits, was a brilliant mix of style and substance.

As I wrote in my Season 6 preview, you can only have so many of these "very special episodes"  where we witness the reactions of the characters to these monumental events.  It's not the producers' fault that MLK and RFK, two American icons, were murdered two months apart from each other.  They could have done two episodes in three weeks with characters walking around stunned and weeping, asking "what's the world coming to."   Instead we have the world falling apart and Don Draper totally disconnected emotionally from it, in part because he can't seem to make sense out of his own personal situation.  He has lost control of his love life, and at work he is quickly losing his status as the smartest guy in the room, though it's debatable how aware of that he is.   Up to now he has always been the most powerful, charismatic and intelligent man at SCDP.  Since even before this latest merger there have been questions about that, beginning at least with his ill advised Hawaiian tourism pitch that made people think of suicide instead of a leisurely swim in the ocean.  The center isn't holding, both inside and out, and Don is confused and oblivious at the same time.

As for style, the sequence begins with a sleeping Pete Campbell being awoken by his increasingly senile mother who is staying with him at his bachelor pad against his wishes.  She tells him that, "they just shot that Kennedy boy," to which the aggravated Peter responds with a huffy reminder that that happened "years ago."  We cut to Megan and Don, she crying on the bed, eyes fixed on the TV news coverage of the killing, he fixing his cuffs as he walks into their bedroom.  She is emotional, he is stoic.  We know why she is upset, but as he takes his place on the bed, away from Megan, we are left to wonder what exactly Don is thinking; is he aware of the assassination? We have to assume that he is, but if so does he even care? Is he thinking of Sylvia?  Is he pondering his lost power?  Is he wondering if the the world he knew, both in terms of his personal life and the bigger social picture, is ever going to get back to normal?  Meanwhile the monotone of the TV reporter is all we hear as Friend and Lovers' Reach Out in the Darkness, that very optimistically hippie anthem, comes up in the background and shares the sonic space with the tragic report, much like Simon and Garfunkel did with their rendition of Silent Night from that same era.  The screen goes black and the credits come up as the sound montage continues (Darn AMC for cutting in with promos way before the credits end).

A "throwaway"?  Not by a long shot.  In probably less than three minutes we get an insight into how people then may have found out about the shooting and reacted to it, while both moving the story ahead and summing it up at the same time, and we only had to hear about the world going to hell in a hand basket once (from Pete's mother).  We got irony, pathos, a touch of farce and a heavy dose of psychodrama without having to go through the entire "tragedy of the week" routine yet again.  Bravo.

Who is Bob Benson?

Bob Benson is a newbie in the Mad Med universe, and is, at this point, even more mysterious than Don Draper.  He is also very anti-Draper in that he is cheerful, quick to help, perky as all get up (if you can call a man perky), and did we say cheerful?  The mystery is why is he around and what does he want?  The general consensus is that he will either turn out to be the biggest back stabber in history or else is part of some bigger plot to overthrow Don, even though at this point their paths have not crossed in any significant way.  In fact up to this week Bob has sort of just been there, popping up now and again in random, seemingly meaningless situations, piquing our curiosity about who he is and what he's all about.

The plot thickened a bit this week when he helped Joan get to the hospital when she was stricken by some mystery illness, and then got her bumped to the top of the emergency room triage list by bluffing the nurse in his cheerfully slick way.  Joan later returns the favor by making sure his name is not included in a post merger list of firings.  

Some in the blogosphire think he's a corporate spy of some sort.  I'll go out on a limb and guess that he could be a reporter or writer doing his own piece of gonzo journalism research for a book or article.  Just a guess.  Stay tuned to find out for sure.

The Papacy and Papal Infallibility | Columbia Catholic Ministry

I had trouble downloading videos over the last few weeks, so excuse me as I make up for lost time.

Pope Francis and "The Religious Sense": A commentary by Fr. Robert Barron

Fr. Damien from the Apostleship of Prayer

The Kermit Gosnell Trial

This is the first time that I'm addressing the Kermit Gosnell murder trial, and I must admit a bit of embarrassment for that.   It's one thing for ABC News to ignore this horrible atrocity, it is another thing for me.  One problem is that I'm at a loss for words.  I have seen the images of the mutilated and in some cases decapitated, babies and am left in utter disgust.  And lets not delude ourselves, these were babies.  In one of the more despicable comments accredited to this "doctor,"  after he severed the spinal cord of one of his victims with a scissors at the base of the neck, he jokes to the attendant that the dead child was "big enough to walk me to the bus stop."  Now Gosnell, who evidently has a long history in the abortion industry as both a practitioner and an activist, awaits his fate.

That so many news outlets have chosen to ignore this trial does not surprise me.  The News now is not about gathering facts or reporting events but about creating a narrative; painting a picture with words, telling a personal story that makes you identify and sympathize with or vilify the subject or situation depending on the editorial staff's wishes.  This is not journalism, this is propaganda.  Even someone like Fran Lebowitz, no conservative she, laments New York Times articles on the Iraq War that begin with descriptions of dusty roads and lone soldiers suffering from the heat, jittery from dodging IED's, as if she were reading a short fiction or essay piece as opposed to the intended hard news story.  We need to feel emotionally engaged for the information to mean something to us, or so the theory goes.  I would argue that the goal is to persuade the reader to the politically correct view, and right now the PC view is that abortion is a right that needs to stay "safe" and legal, but most importantly legal with unlimited access.  So yes to stories of women who have to travel miles to get an abortion because they aren't available in their town, no stories about boy friends, and even parents, who pressure their girlfriend or daughter into getting one against their will.  Yes to stories of the bad old days of back ally abortions (the statistics for which many old time pro-choice activists admit were made up), no to real time accounts of dead babies and mothers in the age of Roe.

I can't get myself to post or even link to the pictures I've seen.  They're out there on the Internet, easy enough to find if you want to; news blackout or none.  I guess I don't want the believer to go and see these images, but the doubter.  The one who has been fed the lies that these are indistinguishable masses of tissue. I want you to see that these are babies.  At what point back on the developmental trail do we say that they aren't?  When does it become right to drown them in solvent or rip off their limbs?  How long will we allow the "narrative" that abortions are safe, sanitary and liberating for women keep us from seeing the truth.  Abortion is murder, and if you want to kid your self that some how this is not true, at least in the first two trimesters,  I'm not sure how you can convince yourself of that in this case. 

The Death of American Tragedy // "The Place Beyond the Pines" Movie Review

 

A criticism I usually level against film dramas I see is that they too often have a happy ending.  Not that happy endings are bad in and of themselves, or that I want to be depressed every time I walk out of a movie house.  But the ending of a film should somehow match the trajectory, and overall mood, of the story it tells.  Some of the hallmark American films of the last fifty years have endings that are brutally unhappy, or at least ambiguous.  The Pawn Broker, Bonny and Clyde, The Godfather I and II, to name just a few, all end on decidedly down notes.  Even The Exorcist, where the devil is defeated, makes you question what cost is necessary to overcome evil.  We think of the original Rocky as an uplifting movie, but remember, our hero loses the big fight; his is a more subtle triumph.  Repeatedly since I've put on my amateur movie critic hat have I walked out of a theater shaking my head because I felt like a film didn't pull the trigger on the logical, and possibly more meaningful, ending that would have also been less than happy.  The latest on my list of "couldn't go all the way with it" movies is The Place Beyond the Pines.  

The Place Beyond the Pines tells a story in three distinct acts, each focusing on a different set of characters who are interrelated either by blood or chance.  Ryan Gosling plays a motorcycle stunt rider who quits the county fair circuit and settles in Schenectady, New York when he finds out he has a son there he hadn't previously known about.  He turns to a life of crime when he can't support the child on his meager mechanic's pay.  He attempts one job too many, with everything that could go wrong going terribly so, ending with a confrontation with a rookie police officer played by Bradly Cooper.  The story then shifts to Cooper, and the struggles he has balancing his ambition to move up the ranks while staying clean from the corruption in his own department.  The final act follows Gosling and Cooper's sons fifteen years later, both the same age, who, unknowing of their fathers' previous history, meet in high school.  The one constant is Eva Mendes who plays the mother of Gosling's son.

Each of these people are a mixture of good intentions and fatal flaws in the best tradition of Shakespeare.  Gosling wants to be a good father, but his impetuousness leads him to bad choice after bad choice, further alienating him from the people he is trying to draw into his life.  Cooper made a choice to follow a police career, against his politically connected  family's wishes.  While he likes to play the humble civil servant, his eyes are on a bigger prize.  It's hard to tell sometimes if, though not without a conscience, in a way he isn't just as bent as the crooked cops he goes after.  Their sons, played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen, seem almost switched at birth.  DeHaan, though mixed up with selling drugs, is a brooding, thoughtful kid who wonders about the motorcycling father he never met.  Cohen, though a child of privilege, comes off as a brutish street kid, lacking his father's smarts and sensitivity.  Unlike a Shakespearean tragedy all doesn't end in tears.  DeHaan's future is left somewhat open to conjecture, but his final confrontation with Cooper and his son amounts to nothing more than a pair of muddy trousers and a bump on the head.  Cooper even reaches the top of his profession in spite of some very public embarrassments.  The Bard would have had none of this.

I think of The Place Beyond the Pines as somewhat Shakespearean in spite of it's very American setting because the focus is so much on the personal choices of the characters leading to tragic endings.  American tragedies, especially since the "New Hollywood" period of the '60's and '70's tend to present people up against an unfair system out to control them or else destroy them if they refused to conform.  While both principles are at work here, none of these people can really blame their troubles on "the Man," with the possible exception of Eva Mendes, who is at the mercy of self seeking men the whole way through. This is a movie that tells its story in a meandering, roundabout way, which made it's somewhat foggy, half upbeat resolution make me wonder all the more what exactly the point was supposed to be.  Shakespeare rendered rich, psychologically complex characters who acted in conflicted, sometimes muddled ways.  But their actions always had clear consequences.  Here the lesson seems to be that you can make the wrong choices consistently, and, for one character at least, still get the prize in the end.  This is not gained by manipulation, or the victory an unfair system or personal corruption winning out in the end.  It happens simply because we don't want people leaving the theater sad, and that's simply not a very good reason to be artistically dishonest. 

I don't want to give the wrong impression; The Place Beyond the Pines is not without sadness and loss, but this shouldn't have ended happy for anyone.  Not because happy endings are bad, but because sad ones can teach us a lesson, and this one represents a lost opportunity.