This is only for the Middle Earth fans out there. I’m doing this thing called a “link” exchange, wherein I post a link to these guys’ awesome Lord of the Rings Collector site and they will post a link to my blog. Check it out. I want the pinball machine.
http://thecollectionary.com/club/lord-of-the-rings
A word before: We are all hypocrites. I am a hypocrite. That guy over there shoveling his driveway is a hypocrite. You have most likely been a hypocrite at some point. Liberals, Conservatives, Christians, and Atheists—all hypocrites. This is not so much a statement of judgment as it is a statement of human nature. It is unavoidable and so wonderfully human. All of us have double standards and fail to practice what we preach, simultaneously looking down on others who do the same thing. We have so many logs in our eyes we could start a lumber mill.
That being said, I am about to criticize something in which the act of criticizing will itself be an act of hypocrisy, because I am in fact criticizing the vast swarm of words, opinions, responses, and re-posts that have a tendency to take over the internets and our modern day consciousness. So now I will simply add to the chatter (though for your sake, hopefully briefly) and then depart to spend at least one day, God-willing, in some form of peace and quiet before Christmas, because really that’s why I’m so perturbed. It seems as if we are in a rather confusing tale about two Christmases.
There is one Christmas as celebrated by orthodox Christians in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus into a manger, coming not as King, but as beggar and blue-collar worker, born amid shit and hay, eventually coming to signify and proclaim the reconciliation of heaven, earth, and nations, and trumpeting peace, joy, love, and life. There is another Christmas, which is on the surface very similar looking, which is the Christmas of empire and generally speaking, America, in which pundits on both sides use the day of Christmas as fodder to further their political, ideological, and religious views and people bludgeon each other to death with action figures.
Backup: What a week. In case you didn’t know the Internet has been erupting like a volcano of old this past week. First there was the Fox lady who claimed both Jesus and Santa were white, there’s the whole ongoing NSA investigation which we really should’ve seen coming what with all the Bourne movies, Utah became the 17th state to recognize gay marriage, and then surprise! A guy from Louisiana says he doesn’t understand gay people and makes a few other racial/homophobic slurs. Cue the matches. Cue the gasoline. Internet ignite. Post after post and article after article have been written and the comments below make me want to double-lock my door at night and get a pit-bull. Two good articles are:https://benirwin.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/phil-robertson-and-pope-francis/-about Christian “persecution” and seeing human beings as humans, and: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/the-real-em-duck-dynasty-em-scandal-phil-robertsons-comments-on-race/282538/
A few observations however.
1. Politics and religion need a long overdue divorce.
Or if that’s too much, the hypocrisy amongst supposed “Christians” on either side of the political aisle has simply gone too far. Sarah Palin saying that she loves the “commercialization” of Christmas and Megyn Kelley claiming Jesus was white, or using the saying “Merry Christmas” as another bullet in the culture war gun are just a few examples from the conservative side. On the left the whole PC thing can get taken a little too far. There is however a difference between being politically correct and respecting all people regardless of race, age, gender, sex, or religion. The line however, is where the arguments erupt. Was it the liberal police making a big deal of man simply espousing his religious beliefs? Or was Robertson a racist homophobe who went too far in his disrespectful comments? Realistically it was probably neither extreme. Regardless, in these scenarios the Internet wins and we divide against ourselves, even in the church.
I for one cringe whenever I hear someone say something disrespectful with regards to homosexuality in the media. “Please don’t let it be a Christian,” I think. “Please don’t let it be a Christian. No! It is a Christian!” In all of this we lose sight of the true gospel of Jesus and obviously, the season of Christmas. A season, which is wonderful for us Christians, but should also not be fascistly imposed upon the rest of America, regardless of the “fact” that this is a supposed “Christian” nation and always has been. Christians have for far too long now gotten swept up in a culture war with a vendetta against certain specific sins, while ignoring others. Sin after all is sin. And the sin of materialism and greed that takes over this sacred holiday of ours is just as big of a deal as homosexuality (if you do believe it’s a sin in a monogamous marriage relationship).
America is going down the toilet say some. But I have a feeling it has to do more with our lack of concern for the poor and our preoccupation with money and power than it does with the homosexual agenda. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
2. Jesus came to reconcile all nations.
Jesus most likely looked like a member of the Taliban. This is just a geographical/historical fact. His parents were not Norwegian but Middle Eastern Jews. Throughout Jesus’ ministry he constantly hung around with “undesirables” such as Samaritans, the sick, and gentiles. There is the story of the Woman at the Well. The Roman Centurion. The Good Samaritan. The list goes on. The Bible itself criticizes sins of idolatry and greed more than anything else, but we tend to lose sight of this.
In America we have sent people of color to different water fountains and sent Japanese people to internment camps. My wife’s older family members spent a considerable amount of time at the camp in Manzanar in the desert of California. Her grandfather had to have someone else purchase land to build a house on for him because he was Japanese and would not be sold to.
And yet, somehow we hear this saying that Jesus has come to bring peace and reconcile all nations. The Jews and Greeks. Men and women. White and black. Straight and gay. How does it all work? I have no freaking idea. But I do know that we are at the very least called to participate in this proclamation of peace in whatever way we can. That means respecting and even loving our enemies and those we disagree with. It means being a jar of clay rather than a clanging symbol. It means, I think, maybe quieting ourselves and living out this thing day after day in humility and service of others.
Unfortunately I’m sure there are many lovely people who are doing wonderful things for others over Christmas, and Christians loving Gay people even if they disagree with their lifestyle, and people who are not caught up in the culture wars and hate comments, but these people will never get recognized because at the end of the day the only bias all media has is conflict. Sometimes it’s pro-right and sometimes pro-left but it’s undoubtedly pro-conflict. It’s all about inciting chaos and drumming up the hot topics of the day which really amounts to about the same thing as frying a piece of poop on the oven and calling it sustenance.
Ultimately it means praying and waiting for this moment from Revelation 22: “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Christmas can get over-hyped, over-sold, and easily lost, but if it does still mean anything today, then let it at least mean a day or two when we can all calm down and celebrate the entrance of redemption that started in a barn.
I love rap music, and though I’ve never been a huge Eminem fan (for no reason really), this has to go down as one of the greatest rap songs in history. Minus some homophobic slurs. But seriously, Eminem reminds us why he’s great. Kendrick and Earl are my new favorite artists, but Eminem reminds us why he’s not to be forgotten.
“My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfill my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were, lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction.”
Leo Tolstoy
Perfectly captures the inner orientation of a soul’s disposition to depression. Hard to characterize, obviously. The lack of desire. The darkness. The blackness. It’s been called many things.
Such an uplifting quote!
The Life of Fantasy
This is about to get nerdy real quick so prepare yo’ self. Lord of the Rings or, LOTR, is popular for many reasons, perhaps mostly (and maybe sadly) because of their recent cinematic interpretation by Peter Jackson. I myself have no problem with the movies and think they are wonderful, it would just be sad to me if more people had watched the movies than read the books. I like to watch the LOTR series now late at night after too much whiskey or on Sunday afternoons when I’m feeling despondent and want to watch something heroic. The recent Hobbit movies have been something else entirely (mainly a ploy for cash and hours of wasted cinema spent in ever increasing climactic battles that go nowhere) but I will still watch all of them many times, because that’s how much I love Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth.
I’ve never known what it was that drew me to Lord of the Rings until I re-read the introduction by Peter S. Beagle. I knew that I liked the story. I knew that I liked disappearing into another world. I knew that I liked adventure and journey and wanted more of it in my own mundane life. I knew that I liked it better than Chronicles of Narnia because it was less allegorical and therefore, harder to characterize and explain.
It was December. I hadn’t read the books in over five years and wanted a nice shift from heavy reading to simply a good story with a fast plot. The Hobbit (the movie) was coming out and so I had just finished re reading it and decided to go on with the others. I was trying to quit smoking and get my life on track, which meant that I needed an escape outside of my usual escape of whiskey and American Spirits. Reading was always a good escape but it couldn’t be anything too corny and it couldn’t be anything to heavy either, some depressing novel by Kafka would only make me want to drink and smoke all the more.
So this time when I sent out to read the books, I read the introduction. Perhaps I had read the introduction before and it didn’t mean anything to me, or perhaps I read a version where there was no introduction by Peter S. Beagle, either way, it felt new to me. Beagle in it says of Tolkien, “He is a great enough magician to tap into our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world.”
“A green alternative to each day’s madness in a poisoned world.” I knew then what it was that I liked about Lord of the Rings. It gave me respite from a poisoned world. It gave me strength. It made me believe that a world was possible where one could walk in a world unhindered by cubicles and freeways. Where caves and mountains replaced strip malls and parking garages. Where one could fight one’s enemies face to face, rather than by drone or through the lens of a computer screen. There were clear demarcations of who was good and who was bad. Sure, there were Men who were fickle and prone, morally confused and at times complex characters, but at the end of the day, we knew who was good and bad and this humanity of men only made their decision to be good all the better.
One afternoon in July my friend Jeremy and I found ourselves sitting on the porch talking about the very same thing, when a thunderstorm rolled in, bringing with it a minor relief from the heat. As the rain picked up my feet started to get wet as the drain on the narrow porch began to overflow. At the time I was living with Jeremy and his family. The household was eerily quiet as Emily and their three spawn had taken a trip to Oregon. Lightning struck a little ways off and the clap of the thunder got louder
We watched the rain. I’ve always liked days when it rains. It feels more honest. Like the outside matches the inside. I always feel bad being all dark and broody on a beautiful summer day.
“I like the weather when it’s like this.” I said. “Reminds me of Oregon.”
Jeremy nodded.
“What are you reading?”
“This.” I said, as I held up the book.
“Oh…nice.” I couldn’t help but notice a slight hint of condescension within those two eye spheres of his.
The book was Harry Potter. What was a twenty-three year old man with a beard doing reading Harry Potter on a summer afternoon? Exactly what he wanted. That’s what he was doing.
Jeremy took a seat on the Winder Farms cooler. My entire body itched from mosquito bites.
“Have I told you my problem with Harry Potter?” I said. “It’s a philosophical one.”
Jeremy tried to look interested, his eyes focused on some image known only to him in the distance. “Hm?”
“My problem is…I’m not really sure if life is supposed to be…I don’t know what the word would be, ‘Epic.’ I’m not sure if life is supposed to be epic or not. Harry Potter, or any fantasy really, Lord of the Rings, paint a picture of life very different from what we experience. They’re obviously fantasy, but what I’m wondering is if these novels, or movies or whatever, are actually pointing to a truth in life that should be more exciting and adventurous, or if we should just merely accept the monotony of life and realize that it has some good parts but a lot of really boring ones. My life is incredibly boring, not bad all the time, just, you know very…ordinary. In movies you have two hour glimpses of the most dramatic parts of a characters life, or maybe not even dramatic, but parts that matter.”
“Yeah, I see that,” said Jeremy.
“So,” I asked. “Is life epic…or normal? I feel like I’ll be less disappointed in life if I accept the grueling monotony of it and think less about how I’m missing out on some supposed greatness. I feel as if I read somewhere that some of the happiest people in life are those with the lowest expectations.”
“That could be,” said Jeremy. “ I think it’s fascinating that people never go to the bathroom in movies.”
I stared.
“You know?” He looked at me. “You never see it. No one ever goes to the bathroom In fact, there’s a lot of stuff that would never make it into a movie.”
“Like going to the bathroom?”
“Like going to the bathroom.”
We both stared off into the rain for a good fifteen minutes. No words.
“It’s like—” Jeremy broke the silence, “we all have these things we never talk about in our lives.”
I nodded.
“I think someone should make a movie about all the boring parts of life,” he said.
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Like what if you wrote a book or made a movie about four years of half hour boring conversations with someone that eventually lead to one interesting sentence of truth or meaning?
“No one would want to buy it.” I said. “Who would want to read a book about people going to work, sleeping, and going to the bathroom?”
“Probably, no one, and yet, these activities take up most of our day.”
“Yes. Who would want to read a book about people let’s say, in Salt Lake City? Maybe they have interesting lives, maybe not. Maybe they’re interesting people. Maybe they live in unconventional ways. Maybe they hang out together, go to BBQ’s, bars, each other birthday’s parties, maybe they talk about very boring things on the front porch, but still, is any of that interesting?” I said.
“I’m not sure it would be.” Jeremy said.
“Who would want to listen to the dialogue of everyday life? The incessant chatter of meaningless conversations?”
“I don’t know. I sure wouldn’t.”
We stared into the fog of July, the steam rising from the pavement.
Movies after all, are two-three hour compressions of life. Even boring indie movies have a sort of narrative trajectory that stretches through the screen. Life has no narrative trajectory. At least, not all the time. By movies I mean typical Hollywood stories with narrative arcs that include rising action, climax, and resolution, within which most stories stay. The formula is there for a reason—all I’m saying is that life often times does not resolve, and often times it is not epic or grandiose. I used to think that this was a bad thing, when my life was not caught up in some dangerous romance or high-speed car chase, but now I realize life is rarely, if ever, like this. Profound insight I know.
When I was in eighth grade I read a book called Wild At Heart. In this book the author told me I was the William Wallace of my own life. I thought this was very exciting news because I had always loved Scottish accents and kilts. However, soon I realized that my life resembled little to nothing to that of William Wallace’s. Mostly, I was in high school trying to pass physics and getting boners in math class.
What often happens is that these stories and movies masquerade as honest representations of life, when in fact they are not. In reality, the most honest cinema comes in forms of T.V. shows like Seinfeld and Louie, shows that do not necessarily evolve or end but simply are.
Undoubtedly, with most stories you need some sort of narrative structure so that your story will not become like some gargled John Cage composition, however, to assume that your life can and should follow a certain narrative structure wherein you hike Machu Picchu and marry someone like Tom Hanks? That to me, seems misleading. And yet, with the present generation, my generation, generation why? or whatever they’re calling it, it would appear we are all simultaneously sucked into this myth that we are born to be rock stars and movie stars. We’ve been told relentlessly how “special” we are, educated by talk shows and books on making your best life now, living the dream, taking the world by storm, how much we deserve it, etc. This is the reality I grew up in. A cruel reality once the curtain is torn down.
This is also why it is awful for me to imbibe any sort of fantasy. Because, reality, all of a sudden, is not enough. Reality is boring. It’s filled with trips to the grocery store and putting pants on. I find myself daydreaming about a greener world, a world in the past or future, where you can fly on a broom or ask an elf out on a date. Or I become bitter about the world I live in now, fantasizing about a world where cars do not exist and computers were never invented.
I have also recently picked up the Harry Potter books. As far as fantasy books go, I thought Harry Potter was ridiculous until about two months ago. But I grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia and then moved onto Lord of the Rings and now, Harry Potter, though it’s always slightly embarrassing to find yourself reading something they sell explicitly in the “Children’s” section of Barnes and Nobles. I’m not sure If I’m in a healthy place in life to move onto Game of Thrones as I’m positive I’d become a recluse with long fingernails until I finished them. Right now I’m almost finished now with book seven of Harry Potter and I’m beginning to get very sad.
In comes that feeling of when you finish a really good book. Where it leaves you feeling empty after you finish it. When you turn the last page of that book, and the back cover shutting makes a soft sound, subtle and sad. An act forcing you to sit in your chair for a while, as if contemplating 80-year-old scotch, because you didn’t want it to end, and it just has. You tried to read slower but it didn’t matter. When the black screen hits and the credits start rolling. When you realize that your last two weeks, months, years even, of following these characters through the gale and hiss, the triumph and the sickness, through misty mountains, dark caves, death’s cold mouth, love’s first hints, and love’s culmination—when you realize that it’s over—reality knocks, soft at first, but soon with fist.
There is no more rushing home from work to read another chapter. No more late nights where you know you should go to bed but just can’t because the story is so good.
And when you wake up the next morning and realize that there is no Sauron, or Voldemort to fight, when you realize that your broom can’t fly, that Rivendell is not a place on earth, a pale sadness creeps in. Perhaps I should say “me.”
Because when I wake up and realize that life is filled with school and work, taking the trash out, doing dishes, feeding myself somehow, etc. I want nothing to do with it.
And I really don’t know what to do with this, the realization, that life is very…ordinary.
That it is profoundly normal, filled with some good and exciting things every now and then, but honestly it’s just very…plain.
It’s not bad, but it’s not really good either. Our friendships are messier. Our battles vague, ambiguous, non-existent. Or at least boring. I have battles. My battles are to not be depressed, and to not look at porn, and not drink too much, to not do other things and really they are just boring as hell.
Some battles are tangible. As tangible as dragons and evil lords. But others are not fun. There is no adventure. We have battles to keep our marriages together. Battles to stay sober, to not get addicted, to fight our selfishness.
There is no dark lord to defeat. There are horrible things happening around the world: poverty, sex-trafficking, corruption, greed, addiction, and so on, but really fighting these things just seems like it involves a lot of paperwork.
I’m not sure how much life changes, as in, we can change the world. For a while, I went to political protests. I got tired of them.
As that cliché saying goes, it really is harder to live for something than die for it. Dying is easy. Living is hard. It’s hard because it’s messy. It’s vague, and ambiguous, and a lot of the time you’re not really sure what the hell is happening,
Tomorrow I have to do homework and laundry, and make at least enough money to feed myself and pay someone to live in their house, and perhaps I will try and help someone or have a good conversation or listen to a good song, or do something artistic, or actually make a difference, but really I’ll just be tired from daily obligations and will go home tired, exhausted, passing out to re-runs of The Office.
Perhaps this whole idea of living “life to the fullest,” is a privileged, bourgeoisie ideology. Perhaps we say such things because in the Western, postmodern, technological age, we are so distanced from life that we think going in kayaking in Costa Rica or biking across the U.S. is going to help us really experience life. And yet others, all around the world, are not worried about such things. Maybe commercials, advertisements, and movies have us all confused.
Andy Warhol made a movie called Sleep. It shows a man sleeping for six hours. Perhaps this was the most accurate movie ever made about humanity.
The only things left
intact
are the rubber balls rocking inside an open metal cage
the porcelain teapots had no chance, neither did the plastic t-shirts, eel
lectric lectronics
The crowd will carry us
voluminous and entrancing
brace your elbows
crack your knuckles
asphyxiation will only take the weak
Washing the blood off entrance doors
she wipes her underpaid brow
picks up a hand
tries to find whose torso it belongs to, not bad considering
it looks like two tornadoes
went dancing, then one got liquored up
bickered with the Barbie doll aisle,
now Barbie has one leg and a
little girl cries, shhhhs, capitalism
When we get home we put up lights
make a pie, admire the fights we attended for our children.
Notice: This Friday will require one sacrifice
human, employee or non
you can always blame someone else
shut your eyes
listen to the trance of the black box
There are upsides to depression. For instance, say you are on your way home from a long day working at a factory somewhere and you find out your dog has eaten your favorite pair of shoes and/or your birthday cake. Most people would become furious, start waving their arms and raising their voices all shrill like. But you simply walk in the door, notice both the shoes and the cake, and just sort of shrug your shoulders because you don’t really care about anything these days. Your nihilism has reached an all time high. See what I mean? It’s not all bad having a chemical imbalance in your brain that makes everything as bleak as a Bergman film. Anger for instance goes away and the caring about small things like a pair of shoes and/or a birthday cake. Of course happiness goes along with it but no one ever said you could have it all.
Another upside to depression is that you never expect anything good to happen in life so when something good does happen well, it really makes your day. Like when someone offers to pay for your coffee or your parents remember your name. I mean, sometimes you wish for death and when that doesn’t happen it can be a little bit disappointing but this can also be a good thing because you don’t really fear death. You welcome it. And because you don’t fear death you are completely immune to the worries and fears of other people’s lives such as “What if I get hit by a train?” or “What if I get cancer and my balls get chopped off?”
Are there other upsides to depression? Probably not. But I one or two upsides is better than none.
I just finished watching the “Before” trilogy with my friend Tim who works for Sundance. For those unfamiliar it includes the films Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I had heard of these movies in passing but never given them much thought. I think I had read a review of Before Midnight since it just premiered at Sundance here in Utah last year, but from what little I heard of the films I knew that people liked them but they sounded, to be honest, not very interesting. I had been on a David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick kick, watching really “weird” movies.
But, let me just tell you as objective as is possible, these movies are incredible. They stick with you in the way a good novel does, they sink beneath your skin with their whimsy, depth, and beautiful dialogue. In fact, this piece is not so much of a review, as pure praise and a plea to go see these films.
The premise is quite simple. In fact very little plot at all flows through the first to the third film. Think of it as the opposite of Inception. Scenery and plot exist primarily as a vehicle for the romantic, wandering, and endearing dialogue between two human beings.
The first film introduces characters Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) travelling on a train in Europe. Jesse is on the way to Vienna to catch a flight home to the U.S. after a break up and two subsequent weeks of train travel. Celine is on the way home from Budapest to Paris to continue school. The two strike up conversation and immediately sense a connection. Jesse—young, talkative, and audacious, asks Celine if she would want to accompany him around Vienna for the night until his flight takes off in the morning. She agrees and the two spend the rest of the night conversing around the streets of Vienna visiting café’s and bars.
Sound romantic? It did to me. It’s practically a fantasy of mine. Meet some girl on the train and spend a romantic night wandering around an old European city, yes please (except that I’m married and I love my wife, love you dear!). The only catch is that the two agree not to share any contact information when they say goodbye. They don’t want the awkward calls or letters that could follow and they accept the pragmatism of their situation (She lives in Paris, he in the U.S. and the chances of anything working are slim). They simply want to accept the night for what it is—not in a one-night-stand-debauchery sort of way—but simply for the fact that each enjoys the other’s company.
The second film (spoiler alert) picks up in Paris nine years later and the third film occurs eighteen years after their first encounter on the train. What’s remarkable is that the span between the characters happen in real time, meaning Before Sunrise came out in 1995 and Before Sunset came out in 2004, nine years in real time. So Hawk and Delpy are quite literally nine years older than their last encounter each time. The timing works as such that it feels remarkably honest and true to life, functioning as a near documentary. Before Sunset unfolds also literally in real time, existing in eighty-minute time between when Jesse meets Celine again and then has to depart for his flight.
All films exist solely in the world of dialogue. If you’re skeptic about this, that’s okay, these characters and brilliant performances by both Hawke and Delpy will win you over. Each film with such a simple premise is able to tap into something beyond itself. They’re more than love stories or commentary on relationships and marriage. Providing both a healthy dose of realism and romanticism, the Before trilogy goes beyond sentimentality or intellect, tapping into an other worldly sense of humanity you thought had disappeared.
I have this vision of what it’s going to be like when I get up to heaven. I’ll die and then my body will float or fly or take some glass elevator up into the sky. I’ll step off onto the landing. There could be clouds or it could just be more of a white courtroom or white city. There could be gates, there could not be. I personally like to think of the city of Gondor from Lord of the Rings, all white stone and beautiful. My religious upbringing has dictated into my mind a vision of a sort of chamber lined with Greco-Roman pillars and a modern day courtroom feel because, after all, the first part of dying and ascending up into heaven is to face judgment. Kind of like when you get a traffic ticket or murder someone. I’m not sure what the mood is. It could be celebratory or it could be more like the DMV with a bunch of people waiting in line to get processed through.
I realize that this is probably nothing what heaven will be like. But growing up I used to hear a story about how facing judgment was like facing a trial. You’d stand before God and perhaps He’d read your sins out loud from His chair or perhaps a movie of your life would play behind Him on the walls on heavens super high quality HD screens. After looking at your life he would read the verdict “guilty.” Only then, Jesus would burst in and declare you innocent because he had died for your sins on the cross. Then when God looked back at you all he would see was Jesus and your innocence. It was a good story. Full of the sort of courtroom legal drama we in America have come to love.
The idea behind it was theologically correct and it was quite literally the good news of the gospel. To be fully known and yet fully loved. However, the vision I have of heaven is getting off the great glass elevator and then shuffling my feet up to the front of this white, possibly courthouse-ish room. God (as judge) will be shuffling papers around in his hand until he gets to “Rogers, Levi Justin.” He’ll look up at me then look back to the papers and then back to me and then say murmur something like, “hmmmm.” Then God just sort of shakes his head in an empathetic way giving me the look I’ve been expecting. Kind of like a good try but not quite sort of look. Almost a I wish there was something I could do sort of look. He’s about to say something when I interrupt him. “I know,” I’ll say, murmuring in agreement. “Don’t worry about it God,” and then I’ll wave goodbye. He’ll look at me, his eyes sad, but his hands tied. And then I’ll turn around and go to hell.
If you’re like me and follow movies even in the slightest bit, you’ll know that Gravity has pulled off an impressive feat at the box office the last couple weeks and currently retains a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Suffice it to say the movie has been received very well by critics and audiences alike.
Now when I first saw the trailer, my first thought was “Hmm, that could be interesting.” Then the film began to receive all sorts of insane praise and my next thought was, “That movie? The one where two people are flung around in space by some sort of space shuttle crash?” How could it be that good?
Well, it is good. The obvious problem with highly rated movies is the amount of expectation one can bring with them into the film. This is why it seems the Best Picture winner every year always seems to disappoint if you’ve seen it after the fact.
But director Alfonso Cuarón, who also did Children of Men and The Prisoner of Azakaban (in my opinion the most well directed Harry Potter film), pulls off a stunning visual feat that keeps us enthralled with wonder for the entire 100 minutes.
It follows the story of medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) who is attempting to install a new “prototype” on the hubble telescope. It’s her first mission to space and she shares it with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney). Inevitably though the mission does not go according to plan. “Houston, I’ve got a bad feeling about this mission,” say Kowalsky and we’re never quite sure if he’s joking or not.
Beyond this the film cannot be explained other than you need to go see it. Words do in fact fall short of this film as it lends itself almost entirely to visual hypnosis. The camera work hangs and floats like being, I want to say “underwater” but in fact it’s just the opposite, in space. This lack of gravity upon the camera both disorients and enchants the viewer (I almost found myself getting slightly nauseous and dizzy at one point). Stunning visual after stunning visual makes up the central framework for the movie, as the action speeds up and slows down in fascinating terror.
The only complaint I can muster is that parts get slightly sentimental, dare I say sappy, and almost cause me to disengage. Then again I am a cynical bastard, and, (Spoiler) though not really a surprise, it’s not like everyone lives.
People who should watch this movie: People who can never leave earth.
People who shouldn’t watch this movie: People who get carsick.