Safe House & Death In Art

Safe House, starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds is a cross between The Bourne Identity and Training Day: Reynolds (Matt Weston) gives a great performance, with lots of emotional highs and lows, but never too much, emotional, but balanced, while Mr. Washington (Tobin Frost) is in top form, as usual. What is rewarding about the film are all the golden nuggets hidden, hither and thither, which rewards the viewer with a greater understanding of the stakes for both characters and the psychological conversions.

For example, when Matt is in a high-speed chase, and Tobin breaks out into the back seat from the trunk of the car, Tobin uses his handcuffs to try and strangle Matt; well, that's common sense, you might say, of course he's going to do that, but given Tobin's understanding of psychology holding Matt's neck with the handcuffs symbolizes how Matt is "yoked" to the CIA and whatever they tell him to believe.

Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, a low-level CIA employee wanting to get "into the filed" and out of the safe house he operates. When Tobin Frost, the highly prized asset the CIA has been trying to track for years, is suddenly on his way to Matt's safe house, it's the most action he's ever seen. The safe house is attacked, everyone killed, and Matt has to get Tobin out of there, knowing that someone on the inside, in the CIA, betrayed them and told the attackers where they could get Tobin.

"You crushed my windpipe," Matt tells Tobin, and symbolically, we could look at that as a favor: breathing symbolizes what it is that we take in, and Tobin, crushing it, isn't allowing Matt to "take in" the lies his superiors are feeding him. When Tobin has escaped Matt, and threatens to kill him with a bullet to the head, firing instead at the brick wall, it explodes Matt's ear drum; why? Because this whole time Tobin, just like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, has been telling Matt what's going to happen and why, so it blocks out, symbolically, everything else the heads at the CIA tell Matt so all he hears is, "You've done a fine job, we'll take it from here," because the audience has had their ear drum exploded as well and that's all we hear. When we hear those words, just like Matt, we hear nothing else, because Tobin has programmed us to listen for those words as a clue of who not to trust and verification of Tobin's own psychological powers.

This is a great shot because, of course, the one in the driver's seat is the one driving, the one "steering" the relationship, and the one in the back seat is out of control. There is also the element of the rear view mirror (there are great uses made of reflections and glass throughout the film for all the characters): Tobin talking to Matt is also Tobin remembering himself as he was when he first started, so when Tobin tells Matt that "I only kill professionals," meaning that Matt isn't a professional so that's why Tobin isn't going to kill him, it also means (as I will elaborate upon below) that Matt isn't what Tobin is: a rogue murderer guilty of espionage and maybe a lot of other rotten stuff.

As I mentioned, there is a lot of violence in the film, but it's in a way that it materializes the inner-struggles of the characters, which in turn symbolizes the inner struggles of all these countries who are dealing with corruption in their intelligence offices. Towards the end, when Matt has successfully gotten Tobin to a safe house to await extraction, he has a brutal fight with the safe house keeper, Keller who is a killer. Keller stabs Matt with a large shard of glass in his stomach, symbolizing how "reflecting" upon the events, and "digesting" what has happened, has wounded Matt's ability to trust.

What is it that sets off the whole chain of events? Tobin obtains a file of all the crooked intelligence officers in the world, and one of them, pictured above, is not happy about being on Tobin's laundry list and will do anything to kill Tobin and delete the list, which is exactly the kind of behavior which landed them on the list to begin with.

 This wound has an interesting effect, the kind of effect that can only happen in art: he becomes stronger because of it. The last person in the world that should be set up to kill Matt is Keller, but that's exactly who tries to do Matt in. Although it looks like Matt could die from this wound--I certainly didn't expect to see him alive in the next scene--it's only after this wound that Matt is trusted by Tobin with what is in the file that Tobin is carrying. It's not so much that Matt can take this kind of injury that makes him worthy of Tobin's trust, it's that this wound heals previous wounds that was keeping Matt from applying his wisdom and own insight into human nature so he can finish this assignment.

David Barlow has a "low" "bar." Played by Brendan Gleeson, Barlow is Matt's mentor in the CIA and trying to get him a better posting and is even keeping the rest of the CIA from taking action against Matt for "going rogue" with Tobin because Matt's not following orders. When they meet last, Matt knows Barlow's name is on the list and Matt has become world-wise enough to know that Tobin is right about him.

But let's talk about Tobin.
When Tobin ditches Matt and gets to a hotel room, before he goes to get the forged papers, he shaves, cuts his hair and removes the file he injected into his stomach. This tells us that, besides just changing his identity so he won't be so easy to recognize, he's also changing his attitude: shaving of hair means a shedding of the animal instincts and passions, so Tobin is "reflecting more" (he's looking in the mirror while shaving) and going to try to behave differently so he doesn't become like the men on the laundry list he's been caring inside of him (like Matt being stabbed with the shard of glass and digesting everything that has happened to him).

It's rather ironic that the person who will give Tobin a false identity is also the only person who knows the real Tobin. Previously, in the soccer stadium, Tobin wore a security outfit, and that's pretty accurate, because Tobin is only dressing up to be in the security business, he's too corrupt to be able to administer justice fairly.

When Tobin first gets shot, he's in a green room, and the green wall is a sign of decay, because it's while Tobin is going down the stairs (a digression) that he gets shot: this is the moment we know that Tobin isn't going to make it through the rest of the film, because he is no better than the guys he's bringing to justice. But we see this again when Tobin actually dies. Earlier in the film, Carlos the document forger, calls Tobin "The black Dorian Gray," and, Dorian Gray, of course, is from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a young man who sells his soul to commit all kinds of sin, but a portrait takes on the weight of the sin leaving Dorian to continue looking young, until he meets his portrait. 

Just before he's fatally shot.

This is what the film does really well: when David Barlow comes out, his face half-blown off by a car explosion (which lets us know that his "mask of innocence" has been blown) this is the moment when "the black Dorian Gray" meets his portrait, because Barlow's shot is fatal. When Tobin slumps down against the wall, he tells Matt, "Be better than me," blood dribbles out of his mouth and he dies, we know that blood coming out of his mouth is the price for all the lies that he has told because he keeps telling Matt that you learn to lie automatically as if the lies were really the truth, and that's why Tobin dies: he's too bad to enforce justice, he's not strong enough to withstand the shot. There is a ray of hope, though, because the walls are yellow where he dies, suggesting that Matt was a good influence and Tobin had an interior repentance. 

Regrettably, Matt doesn't take Tobin's advice.
While Matt successfully exposes the corrupt heads of intelligence organizations around the world, he lies to the CIA chief Harlan Whitford that Tobin never mentioned a file to him, so Matt's telling lies exactly as Tobin predicted he would. The meaning of Safe House, then is that we are all the house, and the truth has to be safe within us or the truth doesn't actually exist anywhere. If we, like the CIA, "aren't interested in the truth anymore," than we ourselves are not safe houses and can't expect that of anyone else. When Matt goes to Paris to meet up with his girlfriend, Ana, the last shot of Matt suggest Mission Impossible, and the barriers of lies and mistrust that would always come between them will make Matt nothing more than a shadow because he has all ready started to tell the lies.

More Trailers

I really try to keep things organized, however, I have found even more trailers than what I posted Ash Wednesday and, instead of just tacking onto that post, decided to make a separate one. If you are looking forward to The Avengers, you may enjoy watching the road to making The Avengers and behind the scenes clips.

I am not going to say a whole lot about these clips because I have just seen Chronicle and Safe House, so in addition to getting up the posts for Ghost Rider 2 and This Means War, I have a lot on my plate that I am wanting to dish out to you. Also, in getting my research ready for The Raven, I am trying to figure out what to read before hand; I have seen, in the trailer, the cover for Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Raven; I am expecting the film to reference The Cask of Amontillado although I have not seen a clear indication of it in the trailer. I have, however, not the slightest idea which of his stories is about a person being shoved up the chimney; if anyone knows other works the film is going to invoke, please leave a comment or drop me an email, it would really cut down on my research time. I will be going over all these works so that, going in, we will be the informed viewers.
Yet another end of the world film, 4:44 Last Day On Earth is being released in Argentina on June 14:

The Woman In the Fifth was released in France last November, and I don't know if it has a US/UK release date or not, but it at least might make a good movie night at home if not:

Dark Tide does not have a release date at this point, but the synopsis is interesting: "A professional diver tutor Brady returns to deep waters after nine years following an almost fatal encounter with a great white shark, bringing a happy couple Kate and Jeff. However, before they know it they discover that the nightmare from the deep is still lurking in the deep, more carnivorous and hungry than ever." Because of the symbolism of sharks, this could easily translate to the economy and the American dream, but, as always, we won't know until we watch it:

Position Among the Stars is the final edition of a trilogy documentaries about the poor in the Philippines and follows a poor, elderly Christian woman; just watch this:

I have gathered some information that libraries are showing all three, so if you are unable to get it, check your local branch. On a somewhat similar vein, Hadewijch, about a young girl who is not allowed to become a nun, joins a Muslim group; the film explores the difference between faith and fanatics (I don't think this is something I would normally watch myself, so if you have seen it, let us know what you think):

And after all that serious stuff, here's a trailer that pretty much describes one of my typical days, Ice Age 4 Continental Drift set for a June release:

In the Cold Light of Day is set for an April 6 release; what we always need to remember about artistic depictions of father-son relationships, is that it's usually the "founding father" that is being represented, and the son is the younger generation, either validating the older generation or overthrowing it:

Guy Pearce's newest film, Lockout, loosely based on the 1981 Kurt Russell thriller Escape From New York City, and also set for an April release date, gives us some similar threads that we are going to find in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, with the escaped convicts, and like Man on a Ledge, gives us a wrongly convicted man:

I am not saying that this will be a good film, but it may highlight some of the messages that we are seeing in other films. Finally, besides the Oscars being this Sunday, out on DVD this week is Martha Marcy May Marlene, J. Edgar, Tower Heist and London Boulevard, all of which I have reviewed on this blog with the exception of London Boulevard, which I will now have to watch because it features the star of the new 300 sequel, Battle of Artemisia. I am going to be getting posts up continually this weekend to get caught up on all that I have seen this week, so keep checking back!

Christian Economics & The Secret World of Arrietty

The Secret World of Arrietty, while based on familiar childhood tales and fantasies, is very much an adult film, as is often the case. While I predicted films of 2012 would be about class-warfare, I didn't imagine that such a simple but wholesome view of a capitalist society would present itself with so much dignity and grace, yet The Secret World of Arrietty does just that.

What are the factors leading to an economic interpretation of this film? Primarily it's the presence of "little people" throughout films this year which allows an economic status to be associated with them, e.g., Mirror, Mirror shows Snow White commanding an army of "little warriors," and Jack the Giant Killer shows Jack being the "little person" in the land of giants, and amongst the giant cyclops, Perseus is a little person in Wrath of the Titans; there is also the dwarfs who form Snow White's army in Snow White and the Huntsman and, of course, the Hobbits in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The "little people," then, can be understood as the smallest in society, those who are not the economic giants ruling a capitalist society.
So, in 2012, size matters.

This is a doll's house made for the little people, the Borrowers. It was specifically made for them, the furniture hand-crafted by an English furniture maker and everything works perfectly. When Arrietty's father takes her on her first borrowing, and through this house, he tells her that it's not for them, it's a doll's house, and Borrowers are not toys. Shawn decides to take the custom made kitchen and give it as a gift to the Borrowers; by this time, however, they have decided that they need to move and will not take any of the items Shawn has given them. Why? This plays an important role in understanding the "exchange" that takes place in economics and, specifically, Christianity. At this point, Shawn doesn't understand what a "borrower" is because he hasn't been re-paid for what they have borrowed from him, so to Shawn, he is freely giving them something but he doesn't understand the "exchange rate" that will prompt Arrietty to give him her gift.

But what does a Christian economics mean?
Many may instantly think of G.K. Chesterton's Distributionism, which defends private ownership of property but is against really big corporations keeping the means of production all to itself (it's known as a "third way" between socialism and capitalism). But that's not what I am talking about, and I don't think it's even the conversation needed right now, especially as we are about to get snow-balled with class-warfare films. Rather, The Secret World of Arrietty provides us with a reminder of what it is that the poorest of the poor contribute to our society and not just what it costs to maintain them. This is a clip explaining what "borrowers" are:

I'm sure you're saying, that's nice, but what does this have to do with a Christian economics?
In every work of art, there's an element I call the "God factor," and it's whether or not the universe the artwork creates includes God or not; The Secret World of Arrietty provides two important clues that, in a world where there are people the size of leaves, so, too, there is God. First, the mother prays to God and asks that He protect Arrietty and her father when they go on their borrowing; secondly, the mother's name is Homily, which is what a sermon is called that provides instruction. Arrietty itself is a German form of the name Harriet and means "home ruler," so we have The Secret World of Arrietty existing within the same world that God as we know Him also exists.

Hair symbolizes our thoughts, so for Arrietty pulling her hair back in her clip means that she is disciplining how she thinks, specifically, about humans; that's why it is such a precious gift she gives to Shawn when she leaves, it's not the clip itself, rather, that she no longer "constrains" her thoughts on how humans are, but her thoughts have been freed by the friendship they have shared.

In both the Book of Job and the Gospels, we are provided with an understanding of why there are poor people amongst us: the poor, and those who are in need, bring out the best in us. When, like Job, we see someone in need, and we use the blessings that God has given us to alleviate their sufferings and wants, we are fulfilling Christ's command to "Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect" because then we are loving perfectly, as God loves us. All of us, at some point in time, are in need of something, including love, grace, salvation, forgiveness for our sins, a friend, food, money, clothes, shelter; they are called "borrowers" because they take what they need, and then they return it. Similarly, God gives us blessings on the understanding that we will give Him glory for it in some way: we borrow grace, for example, to pray for someone who will not pray for themselves; we borrow the financial blessings God gives us to pass onto the Church and those in need because He first gave to us in our need. Not returning these things means that we are not borrowers, but thieves.

Shawn is the main character, apart from Arrietty who has come to this house to rest before an important heart operation that he is certain will fail and result in his death. His parents, due to their divorce and the demands of their careers, cannot be there to take care of him so his Aunt Jessica is looking after him. Shawn's parents' neglect of him dehumanizes Shawn whereas Arrietty's parents' care and concern for her validates and verifies Arrietty's humanity; by caring for and protecting Arrietty and her family, Shawn reclaims his humanity because when we recognize the humanity in others, our own humanity comes out, and when we treat others like animals or sub-humans, we lose our humanity. When we do unto others as we would want done unto us, we are the ones who benefit the most.

What is it that the Borrowers return?
It's Arrietty who gives Shawn something more valuable than anything in the world: the will to fight his illness and get better. Before meeting Arrietty, Shawn seemed resigned to death that would result from the failure of his heart surgery either immediately or soon after wards. Arrietty, by her example, gives Shawn hope, and there is no price that can be put on that. But The Secret World of Arrietty gives us a choice: we can look at them as borrowers, that they do serve a useful role in society, or we can look at them as thieves, as Hara the maid does in this clip:

My relatives are found of quoting the Bible verse that "Those who do not work shall not eat," and using that as a basis for their economic and tax programs; we know from the the Desert Fathers that it was the "work of salvation," and the work of the soul that would bring the food of spiritual consolation and wisdom, it had nothing to do with the way society was supposed to create it's social programs. 

The cat Nina and Arrietty as she is leaving to find her new home. The reason the mother always thinks the cat ate her husband is because she thinks the cat doesn't realize their humanity (the cat, in this instance, is a symbol of the fat cats, the wealthy) and they will swallow up everything they can get. As the film progresses, and Arrietty increasingly shows fearlessness, it's because she's more confident in her being, her importance, her place in the universe.

It's not just that Jesus Christ chose to be poor Himself, but the way great people have chose to respond to the poor and validate their dignity and needs: what would the world be like without Mother Theresa? Without St. Francis of Assisi? St. Vincent de Paul? St. Thomas Aquinas is my patron saint, and when I converted, one of the first prayers I learned was when St. Thomas asked God to give him the grace to share with others what God had given to him, and the humility to ask others to share with him what he needed, and I try to remember that everyday.

Spiller, another borrower the family meets. We can say that there is an economic basis to borrowing because just as the family has borrowed, so now they are wanting to share with Spiller to have him for tea and dinner. One might say, how is sugar and cookies essential for survival? Because we all need a bit of the "sweet life" in order to survive and remember that we are humans, not beasts of burden. In a very innocent way, The Secret World of Arrietty is very much a romance between Shawn and Arrietty that reflects their different "class standing," her being from a "lower class" and he being from the upper class. When Arrietty's family leaves, Arrietty's affections seem to move to Spiller next, who--being something of a wild man of the forest--would be on a "lower" economic status than herself, but he still shares with her the berries and his knowledge to get them to safety. We all have something to give, and we all have something we need.

In conclusion, The Secret World Of Arrietty provides us with a unique understanding of what it means to live with others, but also challenges us as to who will "rule our home": either we will be dominated by the thought that the poor are thieves or that they are borrowers who play a special, though mysterious, role in society. When Shawn first sees Arrietty, she drops the sugar cube that her mother requested they bring back; why? When we see someone who is homeless or obviously in need, and our eyes meet their eyes, our souls meets their soul, and either we acknowledge them or we dismiss them, and being used to being dismissed and dehumanized, the borrowers have lost that sweetness from life, their dignity that we all need to survive. Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts," and when it comes to our fellow humans, we must remember that there is not a single person who does not count.
(Below is the closing song and video you might enjoy):

A Blessed Ash Wednesday & Film News

Ash Wednesday, 1881, Falat Julian Popielec.

A most blessed Ash Wednesday to all of you, and, for those not participating in the ceremony of ashes, please pray for us who are entering into a state of penance, prayer and fasting, that we will be faithful to our vows and the Lord will bless us with grace during this time.
There has been a lot of new film news coming out, so I just want to keep you in the know with these tidbits and a few new trailers I have found.

James Bond with beard, first production still released from newest Bond Skyfall set--at this time--for release in October. What does this tell us about Bond? We know that men's facial hair can mean two things: first, a digression into the animal appetites (especially a beard because it draws attention to the mouth which is symbolic of the appetites) because shaving is a sign of the civilized, so not shaving is a sign of the uncivilized (I am speaking in purely artistic terms here, guys). But the other possible meaning is the exact opposite: a sign of growing spirituality and introversion/interiorism. Because the growing of a beard can mean the renunciation of the world, rather than the succumbing to it (think of St. John the Baptist, do you think he shaved?), Bond "letting his hair down," so to speak, may be going deeper into himself. While Skyfall has nothing to do with Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace, this would be a good time for the British super-hero to do some soul-searching.

"It struck me that it is still possible to make a big, glamourous, fabulous, escapist movie and still say something about the world we're living in" says Sam Mendes, newest director of James Bond's Skyfall set for release in October; well, that's what I have been saying all along and I am anxiously awaiting the first trailers to be released! The only other pictures besides the one above released so far thus is Bond sitting on the edge of a swimming pool and M (Judi Dench) in her office with cameramen behind her.

Pablo Picasso (left) and Antonio Banderas (right).

Antonio Banderas is set to play fellow-Spaniard Pablo Picasso in a new film called 33 Days about the emotional turmoil while painting the enormous canvas Guernica. Banderas is also starring in Black Gold about warring Arabs trying to get control over a strip of desert with large oil reserves beneath. Filming for the anticipated Paradise Lost, based on the John Milton poem, and spear-headed by Bradley Cooper, is dead; reasons sited is that the war between heaven and hell would have been too expensive to film... on the other hand, there is a sequel being made to the Spartan film 300 called 300: Battle of Artemisia starring Jamie Blackley (London Boulevard, Snow White and the Huntsman).

Cherlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman

Here are a few trailers I have picked up since the last posting on upcoming films, including Damsels In Distress: "A trio of girls set out to change the male-dominated environment of the Seven Oaks college campus, and to rescue their fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards of every kind." It's set for an April release in New Zealand.

Set for release June 22, Seeking a freind For the End of the World gives us another end-of-the-world scenario based on a meteor. After his wife leaves him in a panic, he goes after an old sweetheart inadvertently aided by a neighbor who messes up his plans:

Another end-of-the-world trailer is for Ridley Scott's Prometheus set for a June release; I just don't trust Ridley Scott, and the limited information from the trailer makes me dis-trust him even more, but he has done a nice job of incorporating noise (as an artistic medium) into the trailer along with the static (something is being said that we are not going to be able to hear or understand).

I am working to get posts up for The Secret World of Arrietty, Ghost Rider 2 and This Means War. Have a blessed day!

The Vow & Obamacare

I had really high hopes for The Vow, but they was quickly dashed: it is, in short, a political platform for President Obama's re-election. It takes place in Chicago, where he is from. After Paige's memory loss (Rachel McAdams) she tells Leo (Channing Tatum) that she doesn't even know who the President is and he tells her that it's Obama; she replies, "The Senator?" and he tells her that she voted for him. When it's obvious that Paige is not falling back in love with Leo after the "crash," which should be understood as the economic crash of 2008, Bill Thornton (Sam Neill), Paige's father, tells Leo that he should get a divorce from her: since they didn't have health care (read: Obamacare) he's now drowning in debt and he can't save their marriage.

Paige symbolizes voters who "wedded" themselves to the Obama Administration but then lost the memory of why they voted for him. The Vow suggests that, just as Paige slowly starts to put her life back together the same way she did before the accident, so she would also vote for Obama again and the country should be like Paige, realizing that just as Paige's family tried to capitalize on her accident to get her back with them, so Republicans are trying to capitalize on Obama's failures as a president to get voters back with them: just as Paige belongs with Leo, so voters belong with Obama. Obama, like Leo, is trying to get that love back that has been lost through, what he might call "accidents" but what Republicans call, "incompetence." Personally, I am in no way a supporter of Obama, but The Vow is reaching out to anyone who might have "accidentally" lost their love for him and he now wants another four years to make them fall back in love with him.

Blight Of Nature: Underworld Awakening

It would really be great if the aesthetic and cool factor of the Underworld franchise could be harnessed for characters who actually care about humans instead of just feeding off them. Alas, the problem with Underworld: Awakening is the same as with all previous editions of the story: we are asked to identify with a hero who hates us.

Selene almost always has weapons and that illusion of power is very appealing to people who do not constantly make an investment of faith and leave their lives up to God. I will not hesitate to confess that I wish I could take an axe and storm Congress like the Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer trailer, but the kind of power and action Selene takes in the Underworld series is not the kind of action that Christians are called to take, so the element of power and control vampires seemingly have undermines the most basic tenants of Christian faith when we are called to pray and have faith in God and leave vengeance to him (and granted, other films do this as well, GI Joe Retaliation will do this, for example, but there is a difference, a very fine line between sitting back and doing nothing and being a willing instrument of God's grace and taking power into your own hands and the later is what Underworld and like films do and why Christians have to be vigilant about them).

So, why should we care?
I'm not, by any means, saying, go out and see this film so you can expose yourself to it and feel the eroding in your soul; but Hollywood invested $70 million dollars to make this film, and it hasn't even grossed $60 million worldwide (which is the good news, maybe they will stop making them). That's an enormous amount of money to invest in a venture but, given the success of films such as Twilight and TV shows like Being Human, why wouldn't Hollywood producers think they could make money off this?

This is a great shot because it really provides the information that we need about this heroine with whom we are asked to sympathize with and identify. Please note her hair: hair is symbolic of the thoughts, it visualizes how our thoughts are holding together and taking shape; her hair is separating (the separate strands by her face that have been gelled to hold them together and apart from the rest of her hair), which is exactly how she thinks. Throughout the entire series, Selene makes up the rules as she goes along, she has no guiding principles and nothing is sacred to her, her thoughts are as separate and disparate as her hairstyle.

Why does American society so easily become entranced with vampires?
Because vampires have a threefold ingredient list making them appealing to younger people and people who have no spiritual grounding in their lives: first, their is usually some element of glamor; secondly, they appear to have power and, thirdly, vampires manage to find a dark place in a person's soul and bring that out, making the audience member think that they have vampire tendencies because sometimes they feel like outcasts or lonely (I did some posts on vampires last October and this post will build upon those; please see For the Dead Travel Fast: Dracula, The Undead: Nosferatu, The Children Of the Night: Dracula 1931, False Light: Interview With the Vampire).

Kate Beckinsale is a very beautiful woman, and has been named some men's magazine's most desirable woman in the world before and her beauty contributes to the aesthetic and glamor of the vampire (just as Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas and Brad Pitt contributed their good looks to the aesthetic in Interview With the Vampire). The different elements of Selene's outfit gives us a better understanding of how un-connected her thoughts and beliefs are. She wears a corset, military style boots and a black S & M leather body suit. While the corset is meant to emphasize her femininity, or at least her sex appeal, her boots are meant to show that she has a masculine will (feet symbolize the will) and in Selene's case, we know that she's "a warrior" because that is her reputation and legacy, which usually belongs to a man. Lastly, her body suit, tight and slick, puts her in a sexually dominating position above males. In short, Selene is a Frankenstein monster of a vampire and so is her code of conduct which Thomas (Charles Dance), the leader of a coven of vampires, points out.

We have to remember: a vampire is a vampire is a vampire.
Symbolically, a vampire drinks the blood of humans, because those humans have failed to drink the blood of Christ and find for themselves eternal life in the Light of God. Instead, these films will show the damned souls as living a comfortable life, usually in a large castle or manor house, and with great wealth wearing cool clothes, drinking blood from expensive crystal glasses and they are always beautiful and eternally young. Even when the "vampire self" comes out in Underworld, it retains that semblance of beauty and power and makes the damned life desirable.

Please note her eyes, which, beside a slight elongation of the canine teeth, are the only indications that the vampire self is taking over. Why are vampires always beautiful? We could say it's an extension of the deadly sin of vanity: because they were so beautiful physically, they didn't care how they looked spiritually, and hence they were open to becoming evil because their main priority was to stay looking beautiful, not gain eternal life. What Underworld does differently than say, Van Helsing, is that in Van Helsingthe thin veil of glamor is torn asunder and we see them how they really are: demons from hell.

Vampires appear to be powerful.
I do not deny that evil has power (it most certainly does) something I will discuss at length in my next posting on Ghost Rider, but there is a strong difference between the power--as in the type of power of Good and the Soul that is devoid of evil that we find in Mary and the saints--and earthly that its use not only corrupts but leads to damnation (because you are use to using it to protect yourself and get what you want, so you completely depend on it and do everything you have to to keep it as if it were life itself). In Underworld, Selene can jump, fight, shoot guns, run fast, but what's the point, really? In an isolated context, this seems like cool stuff, but when compared to the soul's loss of grace, it is nothing, but that is never brought out.

The child of Selene and Michael, a hybrid vampire-werewolf, Eve. The fight for her really comes down to a power struggle in the film because Eve is supposed to be the most powerful of them all.

Lastly, vampires exhibit human characteristics which "feed on" the dark places within our souls to forge a bond with them so we start to identify with them and ultimately, want to become like them, they become role models. Vampires are demons, and that is all there is to it hence, they no more exhibit human characteristics than the heavenly angels who watch over us because both sets of angels are pure spirit that have nothing earthly about them. Selene, very much, is an evil Christ figure, the kind of Christ figure that Judas Iscariot wanted: God who would come down and fight, with swords and guns, our political and personal battles and make us rulers over the earthly world. These are people who reject the Good Shepherd, the Crucified One, the Eucharist and when we allow ourselves to be tempted by these visions of power, so do we.

In the closing lines, which are included in the trailer above, Selene prophecies that not only will the vampires survive in the world, but reclaim the world back from humans. Riding like a parasite upon a weak and tragic love story that would be familiar to humans, Underworld and other vampire films package anti-Christian practices and temptations to lure us away from our faith and the difficult path of eternal life. The problem is, all too often it works. If we know the aesthetic and the techniques, we can show others--especially our children--why these films are full of poison that must be rejected by Christians. It's not enough to say, "Don't watch that because I told you," by articulating the strategies of these films, we will teach others to recognize the forbidden fruit, the sugar-coating they put on evil, and why it means only death for us.

What I Saw This Weekend

I got in three films this weekend: Underworld: Awakening, which was released a while ago, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance which came out this weekend and also released this weekend, This Means War. Once upon a time, I thought that critics were paid to say that a film was good regardless of how bad it was; now, I know from empirical evidence, that you can judge the amount of morality in a film by how much critics hate it. While Underworld Awakening was exactly what I was expecting, Ghost Rider was better than what I thought it would be, but very much like Underworld; This Means War, however, was much better than what I was expecting (I just don't like rom-coms) and it's because of the morality that critics don't like it. I will be getting those posts up asap and tweeting them when they are up!

Why does this shot of Selene (Kate Becksindale) say everything we need to know about her?

Promiscuity & Gender in the 1950s: The Thing From Another World

Howard Hawks' 1951 Sci-Fi essential The Thing From Another World contains what is probably the most important dialogue trapped in celluloid during the 1950s between Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan) and Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey).  Using his sophisticated trademark techniques,  (the uncredited director) Hawks gives us an alien, "The Thing" (James Arness) who is a psychoanalytic projection for two characters, Pat Hendry and scientist Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) providing Sci-Fi fans with a unique and high-stakes battle between dominant forms of masculinity; Nikki, however, aptly shows us the feminine gender crossing over into the masculine, numerous times and the consequences for not only women but men as well.

What I believe to be the most important conversation in film of the 1950s between Pat Hendry and Nikki Nicholson:
Pat: That was a dirty trick you played.
Nikki: Now, Pat, don't lose your temper.
Pat: Why did you do it? Just tell me why.
Nikki: Well, your legs aren't very pretty.
Pat: You didn't have to write a note and put it on my chest. Plenty of people got up before I did.
Nikki: I'm sorry, Pat.

The scene wherein this conversation takes place.

Pat: Six people read it before I woke up. Now the whole Air Force is laughing at me.
Nikki: Not so loud. They'll hear.
Pat: They probably all ready heard.  The only place it hasn't been is on a billboard.
Nikki: Oh, I didn't know you had such a nasty temper. Now, Pat, just be careful. Now take it easy. Now wait a minute. We had a lot of fun when you were up here. Then when you asked me down to Anchorage, you deliberately fed me a lot of--
Pat: Tell me something, did you really drink all those drinks?
Nikki: Hm-mm.
Pat: You didn't throw any away? Not a one?
Nikki: No. 
Pat: Holy cat. I thought I was good. And another thing, why did you leave? When I woke up in the morning you were gone."
Nikki: "I told you I had to take that cargo plane back here."

This title card is done well: the light coming through the darkness to form the words is like certain images in the film coming through the darkness of plot and history to reveal to us who is the thing and where this other world is.

Captain Hendry and Nikki have had a sexual affair without being married, and everyone in the Air Force knows about it. "When I woke up you were gone," clearly indicates that they spent the night together, after both being heavily intoxicated. To say the least, this kind of expose in the 1950s--why it might have become common place in practice--was still scandalous to mention so abruptly in film, but it is this exact moment that gives birth to the whole rest of the film. To know someone in the Biblical sense (to have sexual relations with them) without knowing them ("My," Nikki says to Pat, "you have a nasty temper" because she's just now finding this out, that is, coming to know him) is to create a Frankenstein monster of them, choosing what you know and don't know about them, and that is why The Thing, when finally destroyed and shriveled up into nothing, is electrocuted like Frankenstein's monster. 

The opening shot of the film, the Officers' club in Anchorage. It's interesting because when we first meet Pat Hendry, he's playing cards, poker, specifically, and the comment is made, "Everyone knows you can't fool the captain unless you're a woman" and Pat ends up winning that hand; when he meets with Nikki, however, he says, "That was a dirty trick you played," and the correlation between playing cards and playing a trick shows us what his friends were thinking about.

When you are watching the film, the first style-defining characteristic to sit it apart from other films is the dialogue: Hawks doesn't hesitate to have several people talking at once, over each other, interrupting, and this is an employment of noise (just like Steven Soderbergh in Contagion and Christopher Nolan in the upcoming Dark Knight Rises). There are several people talking, for example, during the opening card game in the officers' club, and that reflects how we, the viewers will be listening to the film: we won't hear everything that is being said because we will get distracted or not understand what is trying to be communicated. But, with several viewings and careful attention, we can, like gold miners, separate everything out and find the golden nuggets.

The group has found a flying saucer and groups around the ice-enclosed shape to distinguish its boundaries. However, what is really "alien" about this shape is that it's a source of life: it's shaped, with the tail, just like male sperm. What's the purpose? The "passenger" from this "sperm shaped craft," was thrown out, meaning that the purpose, nature and gift that a man's sperm is has been separated from his very self and destroyed because he looks at it merely as an aspect of the sexual instead of the vehicle of life. When a man denies the importance of his sperm, i.e., he gets separated from it like the passenger and the craft, he becomes a vegetable just like The Thing because he forgets his spiritual calling and the great dignity of his physical body.

As I said, The Thing is a psychological projection for two characters in the film, Pat Hendry and Dr. Carrington, because both men, while seemingly different, actually exhibit similar characteristics, but the battle of The Thing gives us an idea about their qualities and values. The Thing is a walking vegetable able to regenerate itself and it lives on blood. Its purpose is to make more of itself.

When they first meet The Thing face to face in the greenhouse. The greenhouse could be a polar symbol for the Garden of Eden, since mention is made of keeping it locked up because the Eskimos like to steal the strawberries (the stolen fruit in Eden). This is likened to Pat stealing sexual favors from Nikki although they are not married. As in Them! when it's Dr. Patricia Medford who first sees the giant ants, so we know to correlate the ants as a symbol for her, in The Thing From Another World it's Captain Pat Hendry who sees it so we know to correlate The Thing with him.

The qualities Pat and The Thing share is self-dehumanization. Pat's illicit affair with Nikki not only dehumanizes himself--because he has failed to treat his own body with respect (which includes getting really drunk)--but he has dehumanized himself before the entire Air Force by his behavior which they all know about. Pat wanting to have a sexual relationship with Nikki, but not a committed sexual relationship, is the prominent feature Pat shares with The Thing because it is by our committed relationships that our own humanity is not only expressed, but perfected. Without a doubt, this is a theme in the film because the day The Thing lands is November 1, All Saints' Day and the day Pat arrives at the pole is All Souls' Day November 2. Scott the newspaper man (Douglas Spencer) mentions two Biblical references: the parting of the Red Sea by Moses and Noah's Ark.  

When Pat tries to get the door closed on The Thing, he gets its arm stuck in the door. It's in the dog attack that the arm is completely torn off. Symbolically, for both Pat and Dr. Carrington, the dogs attacking are (for Pat) his authority being attacked by the scientist who disagree with him and so undermine his strength as a Captain and for Dr. Carrington, his authority as a Nobel Prize winner is undermined by Pat not allowing him to examine The Thing.

The landing of the craft on All Saints' Day acts as the collision between the spiritual and earthly realms, the natural and the supernatural, reminding us that we are all called to be great saints and the story contained within the film is going to show us how to avoid becoming a vegetable instead. The reason Scott mentions the parting of the Red Sea in conjunction with the space craft discovery is because every man is called upon by God to be like Moses and Noah, to serve the Lord and thereby save the world, not be monsters and aliens who destroy it by their immoral behavior. The parting of the Red Sea was God leading his people from the bondage of sin to be his own (foreshadowing Christ leading us by the Crucifixion).

The Thing bound by ice. It actually looks like a child, still in the mother's womb, but because we know this monster is a projection of Pat, we could say that because Nikki is being an "unnatural woman," so she has an unnatural womb, and by failing in her femininity she fails to help Pat be the man he was called to be. So instead of the womb being a warm place, it is ice cold because there is the lack of the warmth of love just the heat of lust.

Then, Scott mentions in his closing news cast that, just as Noah saved the world from the flood by the ark, so they have saved humanity by the arc of electricity. Why did God destroy the world and only leave Noah to survive? Because of the flood of sinfulness into the world caused by mankind. The electricity that was used in Frankenstein to give the creature life is used in The Thing From Another World to take false life so genuine life can thrive.
What does that mean?

There is another interesting dimension connecting Pat to The Thing: his arms. When he and Nikki are talking about her visit to Anchorage, she says that his arms were like an octopuses' because they were all over her. The Thing has his arm torn off and is studied by the doctors and realized to be vegetable, not animal. This relates to Pat because instead of using his arms to defend Nikki and love her (genuinely) he abused his strength (again) to fuel his appetites instead of using the impetus of his emotions, his attraction to Nikki, to start a deep and meaningful relationship with her (which he attempts throughout the rest of the film).

"False life" is a standard of living according to the world, the idea of "living it up," and doing what you want to, going with your appetites; "genuine life" is a life lived according to the spirit, not the flesh, and by acknowledging the spirit, we acknowledge the needs of the spirit: God, prayer, the sacraments and abstaining from sin which destroys grace within us and our very identity (because God is our creator, not Satan, God wants us to fulfill our destiny and the potential of our soul, whereas Satan wants to ruin and destroy our identity just as his was destroyed when he revolted against God). This brings us to how The Thing is also a projection of Dr. Carrington. He says: "Knowledge is more important than life," and elsewhere, " We've only one excuse for existing. To think. To find out. To learn. . . . nothing counts except our thinking. We've thought our way into nature, we've split the atom," and then Eddie says, "That sure made the world happy, didn't it?" which references, again, the atomic bomb.

Carrington trying to "make friends" with The Thing.

Carrington, by denying the spiritual aspect of man's existence (we live for God and eternal salvation, not just to think) is also making man into a vegetable the same way that Pat is making himself into a vegetable by not having a meaningful relationship with Nikki. The Thing From Another World, then, is a man who is neither spiritual nor emotional, and exists in a world that is very much what the earth is becoming as the number of people continues to increase who exhibit these characteristics. Of The Thing's "seed pod reproduction" (as opposed to sexual reproduction), Dr. Carrington says, "No pain or pleasure as we know it. No emotions, no heart. Our superior, our superior in every way." And that is false, because our emotions are a gift from God (they can be a curse when we fail to use them appropriately or develop them into maturity) but our emotions are one of the ways that God guides us through life. Carrington, surely an atheist by the way he talks, wants humans who have no emotions, no pleasure, no pain, no relationships: vegetables.

The pods that Carrington grew from samples taken from The Thing's hand that was chewed off by the dogs. He planted them and gave them plasma to grow them and the scientists can listen to them breathing with a stethoscope: "Almost like the wail of a newborn child that is hungry." If The Thing is like Carrington and Pat, how are they trying to reproduce themselves? Pat is reproducing himself by everyone in the Air Force knowing what he has done and so they will start to behave just as he does. Carrington makes more scientists like himself because he gets the others to disobey Pat's order and they try to get The Thing when it returns to the greenhouse (another aspect of the Forbidden Fruit).

So this is the big question: why blood?
It doesn't really make sense for a vegetable to live off blood, does it? But the dog that is drained, and then the two scientists hung up in the greenhouse rafters as in a slaughterhouse, gives us a progression of the appetites. As we become more dehumanized, so we dehumanize others; as we become holy, so we treat others with greater respect. The dog that is locked away in the box and drained of blood is Nikki, because both she and Pat were giving into their appetites and acting like animals; the blood symbolizes life itself, and because--just like in the iconography of vampires--we lose our life if we are not drinking the Blood of Christ and our blood is drank instead by those who wish our death (whether monsters or other people wanting to use us to satisfy their appetites). The two scientists show Carrington's appetite to destroy other scientists so he can have all the glory of this new discovery (which is living giving to him the way the sexual act is life giving to Pat) and the scientists giving in because they don't know any better.

The idea of The Thing re-generating its life is the same as Pat wanting to "start all over again" with Nikki, that is, grow a new relationship. Just as The Thing is bound in ice, so Pat is bound with a rope. Just as the warm blanket melts the ice on The Thing, so Nikki's affections and confession about how much she likes him warms Pat and frees him from otherwise being gentlemanly with a more feminine woman.

The last important item: Nikki.
Remember, just as Them! opens in the New Mexico desert, so The Thing From Another World opens in a desert of ice and snow but instead of being frigid, Nikki's red hot (like Nikki says towards the end, before The Thing is dead, "If I start burning up again who will put out the fire?"). Why does Nikki return from her time in Anchorage on a cargo ship? Because she is cargo and her repeated bad behavior has dehumanized her to the point that she has lost her femininity and is no more spiritually advanced than a vegetable herself. But Nikki's bad behavior isn't as much a focal point of concern for The Thing From Another World as the men's bad behavior is: she can out drink a man, let everyone in the military know she's slept with Pat Hendry, take a hit on the chin, and propose marriage, but male promiscuity and scientific arrogance are the forces at work in 1951 threatening to turn the world into "another planet" full of people "completely alien" to what we are used to thinking of as human. (But we shouldn't forget how Nikki feminizes Pat by saying, "Your legs aren't very pretty").

When Nikki reads Dr. Carrington's notes to Pat, before they set out to find the crash site, she reads, "Such deviation (12 degrees) possible only if a disturbing force equivalent to 20,00 tons of steel or iron ore had become part of the earth at about a 50 mile radius." What does this mean to the story? From our discussion on The Monolith Monsters, we know how sin is translated into hardness of heart, so the immense crashing comes from/is related to the 12 degrees of the compass being off. The directions being messed up, being unable to find where you are going, is what happens when sin is committed, because then one wants to keep going in a path (think of drug addiction) that will let you hold onto the sin but you can't go towards your goal (God, remember, this is All Saints' Day) and keep living in a state of sin. The immense amount of steel is the film's attempt at conveying to its audience how serious sin is and its consequences, like the flood during Noah's time, our personal behavior is to the rest of the world and humanity.

Truly a reference to Frankenstein, so we can understand how things have changed as a result of scientists developing the atomic bomb (just as Frankenstein was a scientist) and how we need to get back on the "true path" (note, please, the walk way upon which The Thins is standing; the path we are to take gives our soul life and, simultaneously, robs sin of its power over us).

The Thing From Another World is an essential film to see because of its documenting of what was happening to us as a result of the dropping of the atomic bomb and our experiences which forced us into World War II and changed us as individuals and as a country. The changing social norms were disrupting sexuality and relationships, practically rotting us from the inside out, and the changes was working in conjunction with science, trying to guide us into a new kind of dehumanization that film makers such as those for The Thing From Another World were seeking out religion and art (Frankenstein) to guide us in a different direction. As with other films of the era, The Thing From Another World uses a code of symbols in which to communicate with the audience, but symbols that still speak to us, warning us to "watch the skies," and commands of the Lord who lives there, so we won't become aliens to ourselves and those we love.