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. 

God and Baseball // "42" Movie Review

 

On a spring evening in 1903 the Ohio Wesleyan University baseball team arrived in South Bend, Indiana for a game the following day against Notre Dame.  The story goes that the hotel would not give a room to one of the visiting players, Charles Thomas, because he was African American.  The Ohio Wesleyan manager, indignant that his player was refused service, was able to get the clerk to agree to allow Thomas to stay in his room that night; but only that night.  The next day they would have to find different lodgings for him. When he got to the room the manager found his catcher sitting in a chair crying, violently rubbing his hands down the length of his arms saying, "Black skin, black skin, if only I could make them white."

That manager was Branch Rickey, and he would say years later that the scene of a man trying to strip off his own skin haunted him for decades, and played a key role in his determination to integrate Major League Baseball by signing Jackie Robinson to a Big League contract in 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Some have called into question the veracity of this account, though  Thomas, who remained a life long friend of Rickey, vouched for it.  All agree that something happened that night, even if it didn't proceed exactly like the grizzled old baseball man and spinner of colorful tales related it.  Most agree too that Rickey's motivation for breaking the "gentleman's agreement" that kept blacks out of the Big Leagues for sixty years was manifold.  A social conscience? Yes. A desire for a bigger gate at the ball park?  Sure.  A hunger to win with the best players available, regardless of race?  You bet.  But there was also a little matter of faith, and it's on clear, if understated, display in the movie 42, the new bio-pic about Jackie Robinson.

In 42 (named thus for the uniform number he wore) Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) is the center of the story, but the people around him seem to have the most personality.  His wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie) grew up in Southern California where segregation, at least the legal kind, didn't exist.  She's a smart, self possessed woman, so the first time she sees a whites only women's room, on a pass through New Orleans, she does the only thing that seems natural; she goes in.  Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni), Brooklyn's manager, is a hard living womanizer who likes to hang with gamblers and gangsters (the latter details strangely left out of the movie), but when his players revolt at the idea of having a "negro" play with them he lays down the law in no uncertain terms: you'll play with Jackie Robinson or you will be traded.  Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), a black sports reporter sent to accompany Robinson on his first spring training, has his own color line to break and seems to understand the wider implications of what our hero is doing more than our hero does.  Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) the Dodger shortstop and a team leader, is a southerner, at once inclined to give the new guy a chance, but struggles with cultural expectations, ultimately showing a very public sign of support for Robinson that helps change the mood both inside and outside the clubhouse. 

And then we have Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford): the gravel voiced, cigar chomping, Bible quoting baseball man who had already revolutionized the game by organizing the first minor league farm system when he was GM of the St. Louis Cardinals.  When he came to the Dodgers he established the first permanent spring training facility, and promoted the use of batting cages, pitching machines, batting helmets and was doing statistical analysis, stressing the importance of on base percentage over batting average, thirty years before Bill James wrote his first book.   Again, details left out of the movie, but show that he would have been a Hall of Fame executive even without his crowning achievement.

A question that is asked repeatedly of Rickey in the film, by Robinson especially, is "Why are you doing this?"   As we've seen, this is a man who could have rested on his laurels at this point in his career.  But yet something drove him on.  Yes, Rickey was a shrewd business man, and we shouldn't discount the material benefits he had in mind.  But in choosing a player for his grand move he didn't go for the best or most well known.  He went for a college man, a former military officer and a Methodist, perfect because "I'm a Methodist, God's a Methodist."  That combination of character and faith, in Rickey's mind, are what made Jackie Robinson the perfect candidate to endure the unspeakable hardships he would have to endure in the years to come.  When a rival executive threatens to keep his team from the field Rickey reminds him of his eternal destiny, that God might not judge the reasons for not playing his team that day to be sufficient.  Whatever role that long ago incident in the South Bend hotel may have played in the Jackie Robinson story, Rickey's faith was certainly a major factor in answering the question of why he took the risk.

While Rickey's religious convictions are on display in 42, Robinson's are not explored as deeply, though in real life he was just as devout as his boss.  I guess that is my one criticism of movie, apart from some slow patches that could have been tightened up, and a bit of contrived suspense at the end to give the story some type of payoff; that Jackie seems to be the least developed character in the movie.  Even before he's advised to not react to the abuse, so as not to give his enemies an excuse to point the finger of accusation back at him, he comes off as a tad stoic, a blank slate of sorts.  A day after seeing the movie the person who stands out in my mind is Harrison Ford's Branch Rickey, and while I recommend 42, a solid if far from perfect film, I'm not sure that's what the film makers had in mind.

Pondering Evil, Yet Again, Wearily

The Old Testament prophets tended to be very harsh when times were good.  They tried to remind people that life wasn't all about parties and wealth creation; that in the midst of the fat years there were still poor people not sharing in the prosperity, and not to be deluded into thinking that wealth, pleasure and power were substitutes for God.  The prophets reminded Judah and Israel that all things pass, and that chastisements eventually come for injustices and immoralities, so they shouldn't come to depend on their excess, and make a good examination of conscience.  Then, once the bottom fell out they changed tone, assuring the people that God hadn't abandoned them and the present trials wouldn't last forever.  In other words, they didn't kick people when they were down.  For us today religious figures who come out after a tragedy and get their Isaiah up, blaming a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or some other traumatic event that takes human lives on the sins of the people comes off as cruelly tone deaf.

We are still left with questions though.  We are not so accustomed to having the prophetic finger pointed at us as we are to point the finger at God, asking, "where were you?"  I weary of the question, not because it's a bad one, but because it has no response that can satisfy us.  The standard Thomistic answer is that God permits evil so that a greater good can come out of it.  In the big picture this is true, but I doubt that this explanation would make any sense to the parents who just lost their eight year old son in Copley Square.

I have adult nieces, some of whom work in and around Boston, one of whom is an RM who was called in to help at a hospital in the city treating victims.  After thanking the Lord that "all the girls are where they're supposed to be," as my father put it, I felt heart broken.  My eldest niece, the nurse, works in a children's burn hospital.  She sees terrible things on a day to day basis already, and all I could think of were the fresh hells she was being subjected to now.  She'll be thirty in a few months, but all I could see in my mind's eye was the baby wrapped up tight the way they do in hospital nurseries.  I still thought of her, and the others, as they were as children.  We want to protect our children from ugly things, and now it's impossible.  Even though they're not children anymore, it's a helpless feeling, to say the least.

I long ago reconciled myself with the problem of evil.  That people make wicked choices doesn't effect my faith in God.  That God permits evil is wrapped up in the gift of freedom; that He allows us to do good and accept Him means that he also allows us to do wrong.  Without that possibility we are slaves.  It doesn't mean my heart wasn't in my throat thinking about what could have happened if someone I loved was where they "weren't supposed to be" at 2:50pm Monday.  It doesn't mean I didn't feel rage seeing what had happened to people I've never met.

As for the cosmic reasons, I thought about when people came to Jesus asking about an incident when Pilate had slaughtered a group of Jews indiscriminately (Luke 13:1-5).  Jesus told them that they, and an unfortunate 18 who had died when a tower fell on them, were not singled out for destruction because they were "greater sinners" than anyone else.  He instead pointed out the need to repent for everyone, because murderous tyrants, falling towers or terrorists' bombs don't discriminate.  Evil is a part of our human condition.  We work for justice and peace, but mustn't be shaken in our faith when there are those who are for war.  It is for us to walk in the light of Christ so that we are always ready to meet him.  We pray for a happy, provided for exit from this life, but are ready for the unexpected.

In the end words do not suffice.  I do not know what greater good can possibly come out of this.  I was not there when God created the stars and set the earth on it's foundations, as He reminded Job when he asked a similar question.  I, like most of us, am numbed by the evil, and take solace in the random acts of kindness and heroism of performed by ordinary people on the scene.  And while these victims were certainly not being punished for their sins or those of their fathers and mothers, I am convinced that this darkness that covers us right now won't lift until we return to the Lord with sincere hearts and a repentant spirit. 

Fear Goes Dancing // Silver Linings Playbook Movie Review

 Silver Linings Playbook has been out since last November.  I have resisted seeing this movie all the while.  I made it through the Holiday Season avoiding it.  Then I navigated my way through Oscar time ducking it.  But Thursday this was the only movie even remotely worth seeing at a multiplex that boasts twenty-one screens (January obviously isn't the only dumping ground bad movies). Everything about it from the title to the premise screamed feel-good-inspirational to me, which means I normally walk the other way (one day I'll tell you why).  In light of the dearth of competition I held my nose, bought the ticket and succumbed to the inevitable.  

The good news: Jennifer Lawrence deserved her Oscar as the young widow, and the rest of the cast and crew deserved the nominations they received (you could make a strong argument for Robert De Niro for best supporting actor).  Bradley Cooper is believable playing a man suffering from bipolar disorder, even if it is a somewhat sanitized Hollywood take on it.  Director David O. Russell's often off beat song choices make up for the totally derivative and predictable sound track on his last film The Fighter.  Over all I liked this better than that earlier film, and found many of the individual elements in Silver Linings Playbook to be very well done and pitch perfect.

Until you put them all together.

Here's the problem.  I'm not a mental health care professional, but my vocation brings me in contact at times with people who suffer, and these poor souls really do suffer, from bipolar disorder, OCD, occasionally a person effected by paranoid schizophrenia crossed our doorway.  For the most severe cases these afflictions keep them from living anything approaching a normal life.  To hold down a job is close to impossible.  To maintain a stable relationship is equally difficult.  Many are like the main characters, otherwise able bodied adults living at home with their parents with out a job or prospects.  While I don't believe that the filmmakers are dishonest or have any bad intent (all the characters are three dimensional people treated with sensitivity), there is still a bit of unreality surrounding the story, that would have worked better if they had followed a more conventional tack. 

Cooper plays a former teacher who has probably suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life, but is only diagnosed after he catches his wife in the shower with one of her co-workers and does what most husbands would do in that situation, whether they were emotionally unbalanced or not; he beats the snot out of the guy.  After eight months in a mental hospital (part of a plea bargain that keeps him out of jail) he comes home to live with his parents.  A close friend invites him over for dinner, and oh yeah, they invite the sister-in-law (Lawrence) who is recently widowed and dealing with her pain by bedding every every Tom, Dick and Suzie she can get her hands on.  After a rude introduction they share their anti-depressant med history.  We know that true love is just a Zoloft away.

Cooper's father (De Niro) is a bookie who is more than a touch obsessive compulsive (see, it runs in the family).  They all want something. Cooper wants his wife back, De Niro wants out of the bookie business and open a restaurant and Lawrence wants to participate in a dance contest.  With out going into details (mainly because by now most of you have probably already seen the movie) these simple desires intersect and contradict and come to a neat resolution.

In the end this is a hard movie to give a firm recommendation to.  There were parts I really loved, and that made me regret my decision to skip this one for so long.  The sound track matches songs to situations perfectly, and often left me saying things like, "I know the artist, but what's the song?"  As anyone who knows me can tell you, if a movie stumps me on a song or an artist, it's done something.  The sequence where Cooper obsessively ransacks the house looking for his lost wedding video with Led Zeppelin's "What is and What Should Never Be" as the back drop is brilliant.  Jeniffer Lawrence, who was probably 20 when this was filmed, shows astonishing maturity in a role that many actresses in their thirties can't pull off.  De Niro, is well, De Niro; tough, but he shows a real tenderness as the father struggling to make things right with his son.

On the other hand, the neatness of the resolution and the unspoken message that two emotionally broken people can heal each other left me shaking my head.  I could point out that there are a lot of plot twists that are telegraphed, but that really didn't bother me because the performances were so good.  It is, as with most mainstream Hollywood movies, that we had to have the "silver lining," the unmitigated happy ending that belies the truth, that left me a bit cold.

The truth is that both of them have a hard road ahead of them, and two volatile personalities together usually leads to more explosions.  For those who suffer from emotional problems the solution is not that there is a cure, but that it is manageable.  While autism is not mental illness, what made Rain Man so good was the acknowledgement that the Dustin Hoffman character was never going to change.  It was Tom Cruse as the "normal" brother who had to change and accept his brother for who he was.  That ring of truth is missing from Silver Linings Playbook.

So, if I was forced to give a recommendation, it would be to see it.  Individual parts are, at times, exceptional and shouldn't be missed.  But put together as a whole I felt it missed the mark, by that much.   

The Office of Readings and the Book of Revelation

Priests and religious are required to pray the Divine Office, also known as the Liturgy of the Hours, everyday.  It is also referred to sometimes to as the breviary, the book that contains the prayers themselves.   These are liturgical in nature, which implies that they are recited publicly and in common, though diocesan priests normally pray it in private.  There are seven individual "hours" that are to be prayed at various times of the day, though there is some leeway on that.  Monastic religious normally pray all seven, secular clergy and active religious can choose one of the three "small hours" that are prayed during the daytime period.  As Salesians we pray Morning Prayer (Lauds) and Evening Prayer (Vespers) in common, while the priests have to find time on their own to fit in the other hours. Salesian Brothers are not required to pray the other hours, though they are free to. 

I make this brief introduction because periodically I'll be sharing reflections on one of the Offices in particular, the Office of Readings.  This is one of the major Hours, though it isn't attached to a particular time of day like the others are. It can be prayed at anytime, though most priests either pray it first thing in the morning before Lauds or, like I often do, treat it as a night office and pray it before saying Night Prayer and going to bed.  Like all the Hours the Office of Readings involves the praying of the Psalms (the usual three, though often it is a longer Psalm divided into three parts).  Then there are two lengthy readings, one from Sacred Scripture and the other from one of the Fathers of the Church, the writings of a saint on his or her feast day or, on occasion, a document from Vatican II.  This assured me that no matter how busy I get during the day, I am reading the Word of God daily and being nourished by the wisdom contained in Tradition.  One down part right now is that the English addition, which hasn't been revised since the 1970's, only has one cycle of scriptural readings where as the Spanish edition, updated in the '90's, has a two year cycle, thus containing a greater selection from God's Word.  Just as the Roman Missal was revised a recently, I understand a new English breviary is being worked on, and I hope that this deficiency is corrected.

The Office of Readings usually tackles a book at a time, spreading the selections out over a period of days or weeks.  From this Second Week of Easter through about the sixth we'll be reading the Book of Revelation.  I will be offering reflections as we go along.  But these will be personal reflections.  I will not be trying to answer questions of the controversies of the book, and I am certainly not offering anything scholarly.  What I will offer is something more along the lines of a Lectio Divina;  this is the way I heard the Lord speaking to me and how I believe he wants the Word to influence my life as a disciple.  This is probably the most difficult book of the Bible to do this with because of its obscure symbolism and wild imagery.  We tend to look at the universal meaning first, but I do believe God is saying something to us, not just about the End of Days or the plight of empires, but about our lives here and now in the micro setting of our lives.  

I've taken enough time on the setup.  Soon my first reflection on John, Patmos and the Seven Letters.

The Church is One | Columbia Catholic Ministry

Mad Men Season Six

I'll be writing a more complete reflection on the new season of Mad Men once a few episodes are in the can and some sort of narrative theme has been established.  But a few quick observations on last night's season premiere.


1. (CORRECTION:  In the original post I identified the setting of the season premiere as the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve 1968.  I was critical of what I thought was the choice to skip the entire year, one of the most turbulent in American history.  The episode itself keeps the date somewhat  ambiguous.  I based my dating on a New York Post preview that cited a news paper headline Don reads while he's at the beach to reach the December, 1968-January '69 time frame.  It seems after investigations made by the various bloggers out there, putting the clues together as only those intrepid guys and gals with even more time on their hands than I do can, that I'm a year off, and we have not missed out on all the fun and frolic of that volcanic year of 1968 [and looking a the episode again on demand makes me want to kick myself for missing the Green Bay - Oakland Super Bowl reference, that as a sports fan should have been the dead give away].  

First, I'm embarrassed at the flub.  Secondly, I'm glad that I was wrong.  Third, in light of the earlier start date, it seems really quick for so many of the "straights" at SCDP to have gone all groovy with the hair and cloths.  These trends take time to bubble up in the culture, and while it's certainly not completely out of place, with this revised timeline the changes seem more radical than at first blush.  

I read one article that argues that all the obsession over such details is silly, and I'm not going to dispute the fact that as a bit of a history nut I probably pay too much attention to such things.  But I do think the context matters, even if you can enjoy the show without it.  Most historical dramas use the past as a way to comment on the present.  A film like M*A*S*H was really talking about what was going on in Vietnam at the time and bore no resemblance to the Korean Conflict.  A Man for All Seasons, while taking it's setting in Tudor England much more seriously, was exploring very twentieth century notions of conscience.  I would argue Mad Men does the same in reference to our consumeristic society.  But unlike M*A*S*H it does take it's historical setting seriously to the point of making it almost another character.  I disagree with critics who say the show works well the least when the stories interact directly with the events of the time.  I find Matthew Weiner and his writers are actually pretty subtle in that department and the detail only adds to he experience.  As I observed about Season Five I felt there were times the story could have taken place at anytime, which loses some of the magic.  I will admit that there is a balance to be struck between letting the story unfold naturally and forcing it to follow historical events in a contrived way.  I think Mad Men does it, and here's to hoping they continue)

2. The Old Don Draper is Back, Sort Of.  When last we saw our anti-hero he was sitting at a bar being hit on by proxy; one sweet young thing making a pitch on behalf of another.  Don had been faithful to his second wife up to this point, but the look in his eyes said the streak was about to end.  While we go the full length of the season opening two parter without a hint of infidelity, the closing scene brings us the ugly truth.  Not only is Don cheating, but he's doing it with the wife of a close friend; a neighbor, even.

I did read one blogger who was surprised he was cheating again. I wasn't (I can't see how you could read the season 5 finale any other way than that this was the road he was taking). Who he is cheating with did catch me by surprise.  Don hasn't had many (any?) real friends out side of Anna Draper, his "widow."  Now he seems to have a real respect for Dr. Rosen that is contradicted by this most wretched betrayal.

But there is a difference.  Don seems guilty, something he never did before.  The season one or two Don saw life as now and death is the big sleep in which there are no dreams and from which no one wakes.  So take what you can when you can and make sure you have a clean path to the door if a jealous husband shows up.  Now he's reading Dante and wondering about hell.  When asked by his illicit love what his New Year's resolution is he replies, "to stop doing this."  The old Don may have said these words, but with a twinkle in his eye and an inch of irony covering the words as he demonstrated the very thing he was going to give up.  Now he is a man conflicted; still in love with his wife but struggling to put on the new man. 

3. Betty Francis is Wacked.  I came in last night after the first commercial break, so when I saw Betty get all up in Henry's grill about his response to a teenage violinist I didn't have the context for her putting him on the spot until I caught the first twenty minutes on the replay.  It still didn't make any sense.  And maybe it wasn't supposed to.  Otherwise she tries to mentor the young musician, essentially trying to help her not make the same mistakes she made as an aspiring model.  She goes looking for her after she runs away and winds up on the set of Midnight Cowboy (not literally, of course) with a bunch of hippie squatters in an abandoned New York building.  Can you say, awkward?  To be honest I didn't really get who the house guest was and why they were responsible for her.  Even after she runs away Betty seems to be the only once concerned about a 15 year old wandering in the City.  What this character's journey is supposed to be, I'm not sure.  But it seems Weiner and his crew are setting her up for a wild ride.

4. A Pleasant Surprise. Usually when a character leaves SCDP they are off the show as well.  That was a fear when Peggy Olson jumped to a rival agency.  Not only was she in the show last night, she got a considerable amount of story time.  Here's hoping the trend continues.  

What Does the word "Catholic" mean? | Columbia Catholic Ministry

Oz The Great and Powerful

There are a few films that I don't believe anyone is ever going to have the guts to remake. Citizen Kane for one. Casablanca is another (though there was an attempt at making a TV series out of it in the 80's).  I would add almost anything by Stanley Kubrick, though again a TV mini-series was made of the Shining.  In fairness this was a try at being truer to the Stephan King source material than Kubrick had been.  Gus Van Sant made an ill advised shot for shot remake of Psycho in 1998, which was almost universally panned.  We may do prequels or sequels or spin offs focusing on once minor players, but rightly or wrongly certain films defy duplication because of their iconic stature.  And even attempting an origin story or sequel can be dicey in these cases since we are always going to have the original in our minds.   

The Wizard of Oz is one such film that defies recreation, and the deep impression it made on generations of youngsters makes adding to the story problematic.  An attempt was made by Disney at a sequel in the 80's to disastrous effect.  Now they've tried an origin story, Oz the Great and Powerful, with Sam Raimi directing, that has the critics polarized.  Though it's hanging on by its fingernails to a "Fresh" rating on the Rotten Tomatoes site, a majority of the "top critics" featured have savaged it.  The Daily News' Elizabeth Weitzman went so far as giving it zero stars.  I was not expecting to see it, thus I knew the critical buzz going in, something I generally avoid if I know I'm going to write something.  I must say, as I was watching the movie all I could think was, "OK, it ain't exactly Dorothy and Toto, but it isn't that bad. In fact, it isn't bad at all." 

John Franco plays the title role of a carnival huckster who finds himself transported to the magic land of Oz when he tries to escape from a jealous strong man via a hot air balloon.  He encounters three witches, played by Mila Kunis, Rachael Weisz and Michelle Williams.  All appear good, but are they?  Yes, we have Munchkins and flying monkeys, along with tinkers and lake fairies added to the mix.  A few of the conceits from original movie are used, most notably that many of the people he encounters in Oz bare uncanny similarities to those he left behind in Kansas.  There is a doubt sown as to whether all this is really happening or it's just his imagination.  But neither is used fully, and unlike the original you are left believing that Oz is a real place.

The bottom line is, I didn't love this movie but it isn't the unmitigated disaster some have made it out to be.  Yes, it's adding on to a legendary film that many people, including myself, practically have memorized; a hard thing to live up to.  But remember that L. Frank Baum wrote several books about Dorothy and the land of Oz; why not try to adapt more of these stories to the screen?  The Wizard of Oz itself was not a very popular film when it was released in 1939, only gaining it's large audience when it started to get shown on TV in the '50's.  I'm not sure Oz the Great and Powerful is destined for that kind of immortality, but for a rainy day you could do worse. 

Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

I was going to the movies Thursday afternoon when I checked the Drudge Report for any news on the North Korean crisis.  I know, one of their missiles couldn't hit Guam, let alone the main land U.S., but they could cause all sorts of other mischief that could have us stumble into war.  At the top left hand corner of the page were a series of headlines about the crisis, but as I scrolled down there was a photo of a familiar, bespectacled, roly poly man.  Bellow was the simple headline: "Ebert Dead."

Roger Ebert was the film critic for the Chicago Sun Times for 46 years, and co-hosted, along with the late Gene Siskel, a TV show for over 30 years that ran under various names that popularized film criticism.  He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, and both he and his partner in cinematic crime were greatly influential on many a budding film critic, including yours truly.   

Ebert was born and raised a Catholic.  Though he had strayed from the pious orthodoxy of his youth, he always identified himself as Catholic.  I must say, while I didn't always agree with his views on religion or film, he was always fair.  I remember a review he did of the film Mass Appeal, a favorite of many liberal Catholics.  While he sympathized with the point of view of the protagonists, he felt the opposition were treated like caricatures when the more traditional position deserved a fairer hearing.  Thus he gave it a "Thumbs Down," much to Siskel's surprise.  He also gave a strongly positive review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, when that film was accused of being anti-Semitic and too violent (he did feel it deserved an NC-17 for the violence, but didn't necessarily think the explicitness was out of place).  He was a man of the left who never let his political convictions stop him from saying a movie wasn't any good, no matter how much its heart bled.  

I know some people who thought he could come off as a bit pompous or as a know it all (I can't say that I was one of them).  A montage of outtakes from the 1980's that can be found on You Tube shows him to be viciously witty, and a tad cruel to his less articulate co-host.  But there was a humanity to his critical approach that showed a sensitivity to actors and subjects that taught me that to review a film is not simply a matter of understanding the technical aspects of the cinematic arts, but that you have to allow yourself to feel; that the emotional response to a film was just as important, more so even, than the intellectual considerations.

So I went to the movies this afternoon, but couldn't quite get myself to write a review.  I will though, in spite of the fact that I was distracted a bit once I shut my phone off and the credits rolled.  I will write a review, just, not right now. I never met Roger Ebert, of course, but in a way I felt like he had been my teacher; he and Gene Siskel both.  So, I mourn as for a lost mentor.  I pray for him, and his widow, Chaz.   

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.  May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen

Look here for a complete obituary,  

Why I Wear the Roman Collar (Most of the Time)

Two anecdotes:

Holy Rosary Parish has an adoration chapel that is attached to the residence where the Salesians live.  There is a small vestibule between the residence and the chapel, and the hours the Blessed Sacrament is exposed intersects the community prayer times, so it is common for members of the public to be with us as we pray, or to run into people coming or going in the hall.  There is one regular, an Irish lady, very devout, who is unafraid to tell you what she thinks, though always in a very pleasant manner.  It was an afternoon just before evening prayer and I had no responsibilities down the hill that night, so I had changed out of my clerical shirt into "civies," as we call them.  This lady stopped me at the door of the chapel and said, "Father, where is your Holy Collar?  I told you, you should always wear the Holy Collar!" Being tired, and in no mood to argue, I replied, politely mind you, "It's in the holy laundry." She protested, a bit frustrated with my flippant response, but I kept on moving into the chapel for evening prayer.

Anecdote Number Two: A friend of mine who is assigned to a high school was flying home for the Easter break, wearing his clerical shirt.  The lady sitting next to him on the plane was unimpressed, and in fact was quite hostile.  She said that he should be ashamed of himself wearing such a thing, considering the horrible things priests have done.  This lady went on to proclaim an unholy litany of crimes and mortal sins committed by members of the Catholic clergy over the years.  Fr. Matt, a far better man than I, in his typical passionate but charitable way told the lady, "I share your hurt and burn with the very same indignation. However, just as every officer doesn't abuse authority given or every teacher violate the trust of their students, so not every priest commits scandal."  I'm not sure that answer satisfied her, but it was more thoughtful and measured than I would have come up with on the spot.

I do wear the Roman collar regularly.  Certainly any time I'm ministering publicly, and usually, though not always, when I travel (I would say that more an more I choose to when traveling by air).  If I am around the house, out with friends or family, or simply running out to the Shoprite for milk I usually don't wear it, or at least I won't go out of my way to, unless the function calls for formal attire.  There are priests who wear it all the time, under every circumstance.  Others hardly wear it at all.  I guess if I were to pick an extreme, it would be toward the "wearing it too much" side, though I've always been a fan of moderation. There is a movement toward abandoning clerical dress among priests, and I think it a mistake.  Many priests don't don the collar because they see it as something that sets a barrier between themselves and the people; that it promotes a class system that Jesus would have rejected.  Is clericalism a danger? Sure it is.  But I encountered plenty of clericalism in my travels through Latin America and the vast majority of priests wear lay clothing there.  Clericalism has no dress code, so I wear it with absolutely no concern that people think that I'm putting on airs.

I wear it because symbols are important, and Catholicism relies heavily on symbols to get it's message across.  The collar is a symbol: it is the symbol of a public commitment to the Gospel.  It is a symbol of the simplicity of life I have been called to; there is no wasting time deciding what tie matches which shirt in the morning.  The black shirt symbolizes mortality, that I am to witness to the transience of life and that my heart is set on the world to come (this is a reason I reject colored clericals, though there are certainly good reasons to wear lighter colors, especially in the heat of summer).  Most of all it shows that there are still men following the call in an age of unbelief.  Is there a chance that the sight of the Holy Collar could stir up negative emotions in some people who have had bad experiences in the past?  Yes.  Nonetheless it's worth the risk if it reaches others positively.  If someone does have a negative reaction, like that woman had with Fr. Matt, it opens up an opportunity to share and change hearts that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.     

Parenthetically, I know and work with religious sisters who are very dedicated and faithful.  But I do believe it was a mistake for many of them to abandon the habit; not because a piece of cloth makes them better religious, but because they lost the ability to be public symbols of something larger than themselves.  I do wonder if rejecting the habit did something to exacerbate the vocation crisis; with so many religious, both men and women, out of sight, are they also out of mind to the public as well, especially to young people?  Does a habit for sisters have to include a veil (the question is not rhetorical, I really want to know)?  In Mexico many sisters wear distinctive cloths that clearly identify them as religious that do not include a veil.  It's a complex issue, I know, and my intent is not to finger point or condemn, simply to raise the question.

As I wrote above, there are those who object to the wearing of a habit or clerical clothing by priests and religious, but most of those who object are priests and religious.  I have never heard a parishioner, a student, or a lay colleague complain that we wear the collar too much, or that they feel somehow alienated by it.  Many will complain when we don't, and some are scandalized if our dress is a little too worldly.  Are there times when "dressing down" is acceptable?  Of course; even Bl. John Paul II wore "regular" cloths, including shorts, when he went camping.  On a regular basis though priests and religious do a greater service than they know by wearing their habit or clerical clothing, particularly when they're "on duty."  It is a way to preach without ever opening your mouth. 

Bishop Wojtyła kicking back with some friends, sans cassock