Category Archives: Movies

Barth and the “No Country”

Posted by on October 11, 2010 28 comments

Today’s post at the KBBC on Barth in dialogue with the Coen Brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men has been a real treat. It seems to me that this dialogue which has been helpfully rendered by Coutts serves, among other purposes, to show us the utter radicality of Barth’s understanding of salvation. The film mercilessly and starkly portrays the utter ferocity and ubiquity of evil in the world. There is, ultimately no country for old men, or for anyone. Barth, I think, would agree with this. The “no country” is indeed all that there is for the old man, for humanity as it is. The sheer banality and ferocity of evil in this world is, quite simply, something with which we cannot deal. There is no way to deal with it, to, as it were, “have dealings” with it in such a way is to make life come out even marginally ok. There simply is no country there that can be had, only a wasteland.

Thus hope, if there is to be hope can only be hope for a new world that in no way could have been inferred, unfolded, or derived from the old. If there is to be redemption it can only the redemption that is new creation in the most fundamental sense. As such it makes perfect sense that the Coen brothers would refrain from including anything “redemptive” in their account. For any such redemption would be but a falsifying of the radicality of the problem which is that we all inhabit the “no country” of death. Any redemption that might come to us, that might bring us into a new country, or as Psalm 66 has it “into a wide open place” can only come from beyond, from a resurrection beyond death, a resumption beyond rupture.

In a sense, as has been discussed in the comments of the original post, one might argue that Carla Jean could be construed as a Christ-figure, but I think we can only say this in the strict sense that her death, refuses to “deal” with the evil that is Chigurh but rather manifests a sort of independence over against the determination his power seeks to impose on her. In that she does somewhat image Christ’s death, or perhaps better, a martyr’s death.

What the Coen brothers so rightly withhold from us is any image of resurrection. If there is to be a resurrection, an irruption of new creation beyond the “no country” we have, it can only come from beyond the story that the movie (and the world) is. This seems to get at the profound truth that the resurrection cannot be inferred from anything immanent within the course of the story that is the world.

Another angle on the matter would be to suggest that the story told in No Country for Old Men articulates, in the most profound way possible, the reality of Holy Saturday. As Alan Lewis puts it, Holy Saturday, is not the day before the resurrection in the disciples’ original experience of the event, rather it is nothing, a void, “the day after the end.” That is precisely the reality of the world which No Country for Old Men so starkly presents. There is no assurance that a resurrection is coming, and no reason to think there should be. If there is to be a resurrection it can only be an absolute and utter miracle that explodes and dissolves the whole reality that is the “no country”.

Precisely by eliminating redemption from the film, the Coen brothers have demanded that we think redemption in the most radical and truthful way possible—if we can bear to do so, wagering on a word of hope that hangs in the air and defies us the moral and religious certainty we so deeply crave.

Best. Review. Ever.

Posted by on June 29, 2010 13 comments

Its been a while since I’ve indulged in something linking to a movie review, but this is just too damn good to pass up. Drew McWeeny’s review of the latest Twilight schlock is just utterly fantastic:

Here’s where I have a problem.  I don’t care if they get married or not, because in this film, “get married” is just code for “now we can do it.”  Their marriage isn’t about building something together or creating a family.  Their marriage isn’t about time they’ve spent together and time they want to spend together.  It’s all hormonal.  It’s all impulse.  Bella Swan is defined as a character purely by who she wants to sleep with, and I don’t care if she actually consummates the act or not.  This movie is driven from start to finish by the real estate between her legs, and if that sounds blunt or harsh, good.  I want it to sound ugly, because I think it is ugly.  Deeply ugly.  She’s the weakest, most dependent lead in a film that I can imagine.  There is nothing interesting about Bella aside from her desire for these two boys.  It is a narcissistic teenage fantasy taken to a disturbing depth.  Nothing in the world of these movies matters beyond the resolution of whether or not Bella is going to bone Edward.  And when.  And how.  And whether she’s going to bone Jacob as well.

There is talk of love, but there is nothing like love in these movies.  These are not stories about love.  They are stories about infatuation, temporary teenage madness.  And, hey, man… I may be ancient at this point, but I remember what it’s like when you’re a teenager and everything feels so important, and I’ve seen films that get that frenzy just right and they still manage to feature real character work and stories that are interesting and actual events.  You can make a great movie about the rush of teenage love.  You can use it as a backdrop for all sorts of stories.  But for that to be the thing that holds us as an audience, we have to believe that there’s something behind it.  I have yet to see anything in any of these movies that would connect these characters beyond narrative convenience.

Bella doesn’t love these men because of things they have done together.  Instead, everything they do together is because they “love” Bella.  It’s a pissing contest.  And both of the guys are just as poorly defined and as grotesque as Bella in what they represent.  Edward is her “dream man,” and as depicted in the films, he’s basically a control freak who treats her like an object to possess.  He lies to her.  He manipulates her.  He is unable to tolerate her interacting with anyone else.  Ladies… if you have a chance to marry a man who acts like Edward while you’re dating, do it.  And then you can look forward to broken bones and mysterious bruises and a slow and methodical separation from friends and family until you exist only for him.  Which is obviously what you’re looking for, right?  Ooooh, romantic.

Or if Edward’s love isn’t the right kind for you, then maybe you can get lucky and earn yourself a Jacob.  A guy who is hot enough that he knows you will love him, and if you don’t, then it’s just a matter of time.  After all, look at his abs.  He doesn’t offer anything more substantial than Edward in terms of emotion or support, but he does have those abs.  He’s also got body heat, so obviously he is a better choice for Bella.  He has one scene where he actually tells her that he has not imprinted on her as a mate, as is the way with his kind, but that doesn’t matter.  We’re still supposed to believe that this is important, that this struggle over this pathetic, empty dishrag means something.

I love women.  I love all sorts of women.  And because I love real women, actual flesh and blood human being that happen to have a slightly different arrangement of chromosomes than I do, I despise these movies.  I hate them for what they offer up as a value system.  I hate them because there are girls who mistake their own chemical response to the male leads in the movie as an actual affection for the story that’s being told.  They invest on the surface level, and in the meantime, there is this poisonous cancer, this vile insidious message that’s being sold to them underneath.  I hate these movies because they tell girls that this is their value in the world.  Who you bang defines you.  You are worth your vagina and nothing more.  You are who your man is.  That is all.

I just want to point out that this is the first time that the categories of “awesomeness” and “Things that make you want to gouge your eyes out with your pinky, shove scalding hot pokers in your ears, and repeatedly slam the door of a 1950s-vintage, American-made sedan on your head” have become unified in one post.

H/T: Brad E.

The Easiness of Being Against Homosexuality

Posted by on August 14, 2009 7 comments

Matthew Yglesias has some rather trenchant remarks occasioned by Ross Douthat’s column on Funny People. Agreeing with Douthat that the reason American audiences haven’t enjoyed Apatow’s new film is that it portrays the conservative choice (in the case of the movie not ruining a marriage) as difficult, and indeed as something which doesn’t make it all work out. Americans want to be conservative–except when it is hard.

He makes a good point about this phenomenon in regard to homosexuality:

I think this explains a lot about the appeal of anti-gay crusades to social conservative leaders. Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex and bad parenting and whatnot take place because people actually want to do the things traditional values is telling them not to do. And the same goes for most of the rest of the Christian recipe. Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard. Loving your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Homosexuality is totally different. For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.

Making Conservatism Hard

Posted by on August 13, 2009 Comments Off

Ross Douthat has a superb column about the latest (and best, though worst-received) Judd Apatow movie, Funny People. It really gets at both the conservative subtext of Apatow’s films and the nature of the widespread conservative sentiments held by the American public:

More than most Westerners, Americans believe — deeply, madly, truly — in the sanctity of marriage. But we also have some of the most liberal divorce laws in the developed world, and one of the highest divorce rates. We sentimentalize the family, but boast one of the highest rates of unwed births. We’re more pro-life than Europeans, but we tolerate a much more permissive abortion regime than countries like Germany or France. We wring our hands over stem cell research, but our fertility clinics are among the least regulated in the world.

In other words, we’re conservative right up until the moment that it costs us.

Both “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” were designed to hit this worldview’s sweet spot. There were threads of darkness in both stories, but for the most part they made their moralism look appealing by making it look relatively easy.

Still a virgin in middle age? Not to worry — you’ll find a caring, foxy woman who’s been waiting her whole life for an awkward, idealistic guy like you. Pregnant from a drunken one-night stand? Good news — the oaf who knocked you up will turn out to be a decent guy, and you’ll be able to keep the baby and your career as a rising entertainment-news anchorwoman. Frittering away your life on porn and pot? Fear not — your wasted twenties won’t stop you from being a great dad.

With “Funny People,” though, Apatow is offering a more realistic morality play. This time, doing the right thing has significant costs — but you have to do it anyway. This time, doing the wrong things for too long has significant consequences — and you have to live with them. It’s the first Apatow film in which love doesn’t conquer all. And it’s the first Apatow film in which you get punished for your sins.

In that sense, “Funny People” is the most conservative of all his movies. That’s probably what American audiences don’t like about it. But it’s what makes this film his best work yet.

I Love You Man

Posted by on March 31, 2009 6 comments

I’m an unapologetic fan of the post-Apatow fallout in American romantic comedies. Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, et al are, in my mind the best and funniest thing that has happened to mainstream comedy in American cinema in years. However, most of these movies (with the notable exception of the unassailable Superbad) seem to end up awfully unsubversive in their endgame. At the end of the day everything comes to its apogee in conjugal or coital bliss (consider if you dare, the abysmally stupid Zack and Miri Make a Porno).

Not so with the latest, and to my mind the best, of these movies, I Love You Man. Rightly described as a bromance, this movie cuts against the usual grain of romantic comedies by focusing on the necessity of friendship in the scope of human flourishing. The oddly subversive message of the movie is that you can have the most perfect smoking hot girlfriend in the world, but you’re wedding day is going to suck and you’re going to feel incomplete if can’t share that experience with a true friend. In a wonderful twist, the movie cuts against the grain of the idolization of marriage and sex in contemporary culture by showing its emptiness, indeed, its pathetic character if it is not shaped and situated within sustaining friendships.

And its the funniest movie I’ve seen in ages.

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