by Brent Dickman, Master of Divinity Student

True Grit – the Oscar-nominated film that occupied my thoughts for days after viewing.  By the Coen brothers, it is based on a 1968 novel by the same name that was made famous in 1969 when it was turned into a feature film starring John Wayne.  The Duke (Wayne) would win his first and only Oscar that year for his performance.  The new film by the Joel and Ethan Coen strives to be more true to the original work, while undoubtedly drawing much visual and cinematic inspiration from the earlier movie.

The film has been a hit with both audiences and critics but surprisingly very little has been said about the film’s deeply religious aspects.  Even Christianity Today failed to reflect on such themes.  Yes, the film does treat standard Western themes just as death, justice, friendship, and issues of gender.  But, as Stanley Fish, writing for the New York Times, so succinctly considers, it is about so much more than that.

True Grit is a deeply theological film. Proverbs 28:1 (“The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion”) opens the film and sounds of hymns like “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” comprise the soundtrack.  It is, as Fish rightly points out, a film about God’s grace.  But it isn’t a Sunday School lesson.  It’s a Coen brother’s film.  And that is what makes it so fascinating.

The Coen’s are Hollywood’s masters of the darkly comedic.  They put amusing characters into grisly situations that if less comedic would seem appalling.  (One need look no further than the woodchipper in Fargo or the meeting of Brad Pitt and George Clooney in Burn After Reading).  True Grit is no different.  It uses its humor to examine the absurdity and incongruity that exists between what we expect in life (justice, fairness) and what we so often get (injustice, unfairness).

In such an incongruous and, in its way, comically absurd world, what does it mean to believe in a God who is just, sovereign, and full of grace and mercy?  True Grit examines the life of Christian faith from the eyes of a fourteen-year-old Presbyterian female from the Old West, Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld).

So what is it trying to say?  Well, honestly I am still trying to figure that out.  Fish, commenting in his review, sees the Coen-made world of True Grit to be one where God’s grace, in Calvinist fashion, is given or withheld according to his mysterious and sovereign will.  Which means that it is neither given to all nor given according to an individual’s merit.  The “comical absurdity” of such a world is that justice and judgment, salvation and damnation, are, to quote Fish, “distributed, as far as we can see, randomly and even capriciously.”

You will have to decide for yourself whether or not the film stands in praise, judgment, or some sort of indifference to this theology.  Have the Coen’s created a nihilistic world and filled it with a teenage Calvinist for us to both laugh at, because of her naïveté, and to admire, because of the strength of her faith and convictions?  Or have they created a world were Calvinism is undeniably correct in order to reveal the sort of heroic faith that is necessary whenever we trust in God and stand up to sin and injustice?  Is it possible that they are laughing at Calvinism even as they are admiring it?  I have no doubt that repeated viewings will help bring it all into focus, but until then I would love to hear what other people who may have seen the film have to say about these themes.

Written by Brent Dickman, Master of Divinity Student

Why do we like the movies that we do?  How is it that some find a certain film funny while others are not amused?  Films, whether art, entertainment, or some confusing combination therein, elicit a wide variety of responses and opinions.  Many of us have had the experience of having a certain movie recommended to us as something great and phenomenal only to discover that we found it boring and horrible.  There is something subjective about it all.  So any time we have a discussion about Beauty and the movies, it can be challenging to know what to say.  I am not yet an expert on theological questions of beauty, but I do have some studied opinions that I can share.

When we find something to be beautiful we are attracted to it.  We are lead by our own desire to return to that beauty.  And so we re-watch our favorite movies or make them a part of our lives and our identities.  We buy products, from posters, t-shirts, toys, to dvd’s and more, in the hope that they will remind us of what we found so beautiful and fascinating.  We revisit our favorite scenes, shots, characters, and situations in our memories and in our imaginations.  As we do we are changed.  What we find beautiful affects who we are, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large.

By “beautiful” I mean so much more than a notion that something is pretty or pleasing to look at.  As Paul Tillich once said, “If ‘beautiful’ means a creation whose harmonious forms produce immediate pleasure, only a few and very questionable artistic styles are concerned with beauty.  If, however, ‘beautiful’ means the power of mediating a special realm of meaning by transforming reality, art is bound to be beautiful.”[i]  This notion of the beautiful suggests a transcendent notion of beauty that, I believe, is divine.  God is beauty, just as he is truth and goodness.  And all things, including movies, are beautiful insomuch as they relate to that divine standard.

Now all of this is not to say that just because we find some movie to be fascinating and appealing that everything about it is beautiful.  Sin surely enters into the picture.  So we must ask ourselves, does my imagination glorify God?  How do I use my imagination and memory when considering things that fascinate me?  If I see an image even remotely sexual, am I able to give praise and worship to the God that made our beautiful human forms?  Or am I enticed to sin?  If I see an image of violence, am I able to reflect upon the consequences of free will?  Do I react by desiring justice, feeling compassion for victims and hoping that grace and mercy might come to a repentant offender?  Or do I delight in the power that one person might use to exploit another?

We respond to movies in different ways, because, I think, each of us perceives different things about the beauty of God.  We need each other to find the whole picture.  And just as we need to be held accountable for what we do with our imaginations, we need to be encouraged to use them in ways that glorify Christ.

So, very quickly, I would like to share some ways that I have been reflecting on the beauty apparent within another Oscar contender, The King’s Speech. I found the film to be very beautiful, in the sense that we are discussing here.  Here are some of my thoughts.

• Humor.  Apparently there is quite the history to the philosophical study of humor.  In my opinion, The King’s Speech is really a comedy, even though it has been billed as a drama.  It is a buddy movie and much funnier than I expected.  It got me to thinking about why we laugh at what we do.  Is humor sinful?  Do we laugh at the misfortune of others or do we laugh to relieve the stress of our own lives?  Is there grace and beauty in humor?  Where?  How?
• Heroes.  The King’s Speech follows the story of how King George VI of the United Kingdom overcame a speech impediment to lead his people during World War II.  An historical drama based on real events, it is a film about the making of a hero when one was badly needed.  Far too often we settle for celebrities, people who only remind us of truth, goodness, and beauty because we have seen such things surround their lives.  I’d rather have more heroes, people who call us to these things, inspiring us to live beautiful lives even as they themselves do.
• Hope. Faith helps us find what is true and love helps us learn to do good.  But hope shows us what is beautiful. The King’s Speech dares us to have hope.  It is about a man, the second son of George V, who has little hope and much fear.  But through love and friendship he overcomes his fear and stutter and finds meaning and hope for his life and through that, for his people.

I found The King’s Speech to be a beautiful and inspiring film.  I highly recommend it.  It is rated R for occasional vulgar language.  The rating’s board have their reasons, but I might add that if you spend any time on campus, you are likely to hear worse language while waiting in a long line for coffee.  Language aside, I welcomed the film’s addition to my memory and my imagination.  I only anticipate that with future viewing, reflection, and conversation, its beauty will only become ever more apparent.

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[i] Paul Tillich, first lecture to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1952, “Human Nature and Art,” reprinted in Paul Tillich on Art and Architecture, ed. John Dillenberger and Jane Dillenberger (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989), p 20; qtd. in Jobin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p 9-10.

Written by Brent Dickman, Master of Divinity student

Children, it is said, see the world with different eyes.  Their world is full of wonder, enchantment, and magic.  But while there is something charming about this there is also something naïve.  A child, for instance, often views the world animistically, believing that objects are animate, with actions the result of conscious feeling and intention.  As they grow they put such childish ways behind them.  They learn to see the world objectively.  The rational and scientific triumphs over the magical and mythic.

Magic still has it uses though.  Grown-up children, that is to say, adults, might turn to it from time to time for various purposes.  Science now teaches us how the world works.  But myths, fairy tales, and other stories of enchantment help us make sense of it.  They teach us about our place in the world, our purpose, and our behavior within it.  And foremost among these tales of enchantment are our movies.

The highest grossing films are never biopics, documentaries, or depictions of harsh and gritty reality.  They are fantasies and fairy tales.  This past year was no different.  The highest grossing movie of the year was Toy Story 3.  And you certainly do not get any more magical than a story about toys that come to life when no one is looking.  With the help of CG (computer-generated) animation we suspend our disbelief and for just under two hours again open our minds to that same animistic reality we believed in as children.

Toy Story 3 certainly has been successful.  Opening with the best June in film history, it is now the highest grossing G-rated film and animated film of all time.  So far, foreign and domestic, it has grossed over a billion dollars.  That makes it the fifth highest grossing film of all time (behind Avatar, Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) and the seventh movie to reach the one billion mark (ahead of Alice in Wonderland and The Dark Knight).  Match that with well-deserved critical acclaim and in a few short weeks it might become only the third animated flick to ever be nominated for best picture at the Oscars (joining Beauty and the Beast and Up).

For all its success, I don’t think that Toy Story 3 is actually a kid’s movie.  Rather it seems like a fairy tale for adults.  It helps us find answers to questions about aging, death, love, and loss.  What does it mean to retire or to no longer feel like we have a sure purpose in life?  And of course the film is also drawing our attention to issues of consumerism.  What is the nature of our relationships with those objects with which we surround ourselves?  What is it, what should it be, and what could it be?

Kids and adults alike probably like Toy Story 3 simply because it is a good movie.  But as art and as enchantment, I think it primarily appeals to adults.  Through the power of nostalgia and imagination, we are invited to ask very profound questions about our existence.  We allow toys to transcend their nature as consumer products and become living characters that guide us to answers.  And more than one Christian has probably taken comfort in the thought that the name “Jesus,” instead of “Andy,” is etched on their boot.  But, at least for me, there is something unsettling about all of it.

As some critics have pointed out, Toy Story 3, like its predecessors in the nineties, is a movie that harkens back to a time when children formed imaginative worlds without relying on video-generated imagery.  Yet it uses such imagery to invite us into that world.  We have to use our imagination to see beyond the world of our actual imaginative encounter.

Intuitively we seem to be able to navigate through these murky waters.  CG has become just another technology, or toy, perhaps, that helps us understand our world.  And those days gone by of old-fashioned playtime are meant to be appropriated nostalgically.  This nostalgia, like a melodramatic form of catharsis, helps us come to terms with the changes that inevitably come in life.  And perhaps those that have come in society, as well.  But are we missing something?  Is there more to be gained here than nostalgia?

I believe that there is something special about the magic to believe that toys might come to life.  As we grow we learn how to see our lives objectively and how to approach our lives rationally.  But this need not be the death knell of magical belief.  Christians, I think, intuitively understand this.  We understand that there is more to “magic” than the dark arts and sorcery.  Magical belief also extends to the supernatural and the miraculous, and the understanding that things are not always what they appear to be on the surface.  There is mystery and marvel in the universe.  That is also “magic.”  So as Christians we understand that there is something quite magical about an incarnation, a savior, and an empty tomb.

Movies like Toy Story 3 have led me to backward engineer a theology of magic and the supernatural.  We know that toys are, in fact, not animate.  But is there something to a worldview that accepts such a possibility?  Looking at this another way, we might consider the similarities that many secular people see between God and Santa Claus, dismissing both as fictions.  Or the number of people who, like Bruno Bettelheim, think that the book of Jonah is a fairy tale or myth (Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 1976).  Such people do not dismiss Jonah and other Bible stories as merely fictitious.  They understand them to be cultural narratives meant to teach religious lessons.  But as myths, not histories, questions of historicity are seen as unimportant to interpretation.  Their power to guide our lives lies within the narrative itself, not any possible history behind it.

Somehow, as Christians, we must find a way to respond to the above perceptions.  Does it matter whether or not a “whale” swallowed Jonah whole?  Or to bring the matter closer to home, does it matter whether of not the tomb was empty?  Is the Resurrection a matter of history or of myth?  I have struggled with and pondered such questions, hoping to understand.  I have come to embrace similarities between the Bible and myths.  So while Santa as we have him today is little more than an invention of Washington Irving and Coca-Cola, I likewise try to believe in the magic of Christmas.  And I think that the story of the empty tomb is history and myth (as defined in paragraph 2 above).

Fairy tales like Toy Story 3 are fictional stories filled with fantastical creatures (living toys) we won’t see in real life.  They serve their purpose and do so quite well.  They help us come to terms with our world and ourselves.  They enchant us because they depict a wondrous world where magic is real.  This is key.

Why in our scientific age do we still surround ourselves with the magical?  Perhaps there is more to our age-old fascination with magic and fairy tales than naïve superstitious thought or the utility of constructing meaning within our lives.  Such things might also be opportunities for us to open ourselves up to certain possibilities.  They invite us to see our world as a place of wonder and hope, where someone can spend three days and nights in the belly of a whale – or of a Tomb – and emerge, resurrected to new life.  They invite us to believe in a world not only where God is real, but also where he has an active, not passive, role to play in our lives and in everyday events.  And that is something worth thinking about.

Written by Brent Dickman, Master of Divinity student

It’s that time of year when we take down Christmas trees, polish off the last of those Christmas cookies, and instigate a plan to shed those holiday pounds.  Some of us are thankful to have the hectic world of the holidays behind us.  Others are sad to have ahead of us a long stretch of dreary winter months with little impending holiday magic.  Wherever you are in this first week of the new year, I invite you to join the merriments of one more season.  Now until February 27, 2011 is Oscar season.

Why bother with the Oscars?  Well, of course, no one, Christian or otherwise, need feel any obligation.  But there are many reasons to follow the drama of it all.  The films that will be shown in theatres and released on discs as Oscar contenders represent Hollywood’s most thoughtful and profound films.  The winners drive the industry for the years ahead.  Want to see more Westerns grace theatres during the summer blockbuster season?  Then root for True Grit to get nominations and awards.  Want to see more thoughtful and profound works of science fiction?  Then Inception is the movie for you.  Or maybe you think that Hollywood needs to be more family friendly.  Perhaps Toy Story 3 is your film.

Oscar films are works of art designed not only to entertain, but also to make us think or feel in certain ways.  And, of course, we might think that some fail, but arguing that can be part of the fun too.  Hollywood has something to say about truth, goodness, and beauty.  So do Christians, who, if they do it respectfully, have an opportunity to engage in a cultural conversation about these very theological themes.  The blog this month is dedicated to Christianity and film.  And with the seminary’s two classes on ministry and theology in our contemporary/cultural context approaching this spring, I thought it would be fun to consider briefly some current Oscar contenders.

This past weekend my wife and I went to see Black Swan.  I’m still not sure if I loved it or hated it.  Natalie Portman’s performance is phenomenal and Darren Aronofsky’s direction turns a flawed script into artistic brilliance.  This is high art and horror, all wrapped up in a messy and R-rated 108 minutes.  So I certainly would not recommend this movie to everyone.  But there is beauty here, alongside questions of truth and goodness.

Truth, goodness, and beauty have long been considered the three transcendentals of God’s nature.  God is true, good, and beautiful.  He always has been and always will be.  Yet even as God is perfectly beautiful (cf. Ps 50:2), beauty itself has been called the neglected theological stepsister of truth and goodness.  While her two sisters are understood as valuable in and of themselves, she must be content to merely serve them.  Truth and goodness can bring us to God, but can beauty?  Can a film, for instance, by its beauty alone bring people to God?  Or must it somehow serve some other ethical (goodness) or doctrinal (truth) purpose?  Many Christians often make beauty serve some other purpose.

The common way to theologically comment on Black Swan is to attempt to dissect what claims it might have about what is good and true.  Then we can divide this analysis into material that we think agrees with Christianity and that which doesn’t.  And there is some worth in this.  But to do that with a work of art runs the high risk of missing the point.  Art above all is meant to be beautiful.  And beauty is encountered through the imagination.  So when a Christian watches a film like Black Swan, he or she should let it enter his or her uniquely Christian imagination.  We need not fear.  Any beauty we find there belongs to God.

Black Swan follows the artistic endeavors of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a ballerina, about to perform the most famous of all ballet roles – the lead of Swan Lake.  Swan Lake, famously orchestrated by Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, is a ballet fairy tale about beauty, good and evil, love and death.  Ballet is an art form that seeks to be beautiful with every gesture, step, and nuance.  But it is highly demanding, often taking quite the toll on the bodies of the performers.

Black Swan is something of a ballet within a ballet.  It is about Swan Lake even as it retells Swan Lake. As such, as we watch we find ourselves considering the nature and cost of beauty in a confusing world of good and evil.  So for those willing to tolerate its language and drug use, and look away from its moments of strong sexual content and violent imagery, here are some things that you can consider along with my wife and I in your own cultural and cinematic exegesis of this beautiful film.

1. Cinema and Sin. There are things in Black Swan that, personally, I would rather not see, especially as Aronofsky films them.  As Christians, how do we respond to visual and thematic representations of things we consider sinful?  Do we unabashedly reject such films in whole?  Or do we try somehow to separate the ugly from the beautiful?  Where do we draw our line?  For some Black Swan is well over that line while for others it hovers right around it.  How do we let these issues affect our interpretations?  What do we say to coworkers around the water cooler or to Christians we lead in ministry?
2. Darren Aronofky. It’s helpful to know that Black Swan is, thematically, conceived as a companion film to Aronofsky’s previous work, The Wrestler.  Both films consider how performers use and abuse their own bodies to express their art.  Likewise Black Swan can be interpreted through the lens of Aronofsky’s previous work (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler), which has routinely examined madness, sexuality, love, family, and the nature of human existence.  Black Swan is no different.  Examining the director’s previous work can help you better understand his current release, including point number one above.
3. The Disenchantment and Reenchantment of the World. Swan Lake is a fairy tale, full of love, beauty, magic, curses, princes, and princesses.  It is a tale of enchantment.  As such, it is designed to reveal to us something about the nature of our lives.  But in an age when we’re not supposed to believe in magic (or even the supernatural) any longer, how do we tell such a tale?  As you watch, or reflect on the movie afterward, track how the elements of fairy-tale enchantment (magic, curses, princes, etc.) get transposed into the world of the film.  For instance, where is magic in Black Swan?  Is it the power art, imagination, hallucination, or something else?  What does the film’s “magic” suggest about life and the nature of our existence?  Does this high-art horror film act as a fairy tale?  At least one reviewer thinks so.  Do you?

For those of you out there who would chose to not watch a movie like Black Swan, please believe me, I completely understand.  Next week I promise to tackle something far less controversial.  But for those interested, Black Swan is still in local theatres.  I for one have not been able to get its beauty and artistry out of my head.  Aronofsky carefully orchestrates every scene and shot.  Nothing is without purpose.  Yet never have I been so captivated and bored by a movie all at the same time.  But if its pace dragged at the beginning of the film, it was, perhaps, worth it to experience the film’s breathtaking final act.  I can’t talk about it without giving it away, so see it yourself to experience what I mean.  They are the moments from this film that will stay with me.  And I welcome them.