Film: Children of Men

Well, the weekend ran away from me before I was able to post again about another film I thought would be relevant to this blog, in addition to the marvelous film Saints and Soldiers, which I posted about earlier.

The film is Children of Men, an adaption of the novel of the same name by the author P.D. James (Baronness Phyllis Dorothy James), who is best known for her mystery novels featuring the detectives Adam Dalgliesh or Cordelia Gray. But in 1992, James wrote a book that can be classified as science fiction, although it is shies away from scientific detail. Instead, it simply starts from the premise that all human beings on planet Earth ceased to reproduce in 1995. All men ceased to produce sperm, and all sperm stored in laboratories became infertile. No more babies were born. The action of the novel then starts in the year 2021, when the youngest people on the planet are in their twenties, and all human societies have been changed - brutally, horribly, weirdly - in response to the departure of children from the world of men, which is now heading to extinction. The book takes its title, Children of Men, from a passage in the Psalms: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men."

I read the book when it first came out since I was very struck by the plot's main premise and the book is, indeed, a good read.

The film, on the other hand, is really excellent. Extreme liberties - EXTREME liberties - were taken in the adaptation of the book to film. It's probably more fair to call it a film inspired by the same premise as James's novel, but with a plot that takes on a quite different shape. And, speaking for myself, I enjoyed the film far more than I did the book. A rare event, but that is decidedly the case here. I do wonder what P.D. James herself thinks of what happened to her story! James's novel is extraordinarily bleak with very little human sentimentality of any kind to redeem it. That is not surprising; her mystery novels, too, are brimming over with desperate, sad, lamentable characters whose emotional lives are anything but sympathetic. (Don't get me wrong: her books are great to read, and I've read about a dozen of them... but sympathetic characters are not the appeal.)

In the film version of Children of Men, however, all kinds of changes are made to P.D. James's novel which give it an emotionally satisfying quality that the book, for all its intelligence, never achieved for me. As you can imagine, the plot does involve a woman who becomes pregnant (the story's premise essentially demands that, of course!) - but the film constructs a wholly new character for this expectant mother, and she is a character who resonates much more profoundly with the archetypal figure of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. And like Jesus, this new baby, born in desperate circumstances - circumstances far worse than a manger in Bethlehem - is destined to save the world, not from sin, but from extinction. The film does a brilliant job with the "nativity" of the child, and the stunning effect that the infant has on those around her (note: her, not him).

The film has garnered very high ratings at imdb.com (although it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it reaction, as you can see from the viewer reviews at amazon.com). The movie can definitely be appreciated without pondering the parallels between the miraculous birth story in the film and the account of Jesus's nativity. Yet for me, as I watched the film, it was even more satisfying to see in my mind's eye the nativity scenes of the infant Jesus and compare them to the scenes unfolding in the latter part of the film.

The filmmakers, of course, were very aware of this connection: in the U.S., the film was released on none other than December 25!

So, if you are curious, I would definitely recommend this as a film worth watching, especially if you want to ponder a modern inflection of the Christian nativity story from two thousand years ago.

Here's a still from the film, showing Theo, the film's reluctant hero, escorting the mother, Kee, and her newborn baby from the midst of a warzone. Both actors (Clive Owen, Claire-Hope Ashitey) do an excellent job in the film. It must have been a grueling experience to make the movie and, be warned, it is a bit grueling to watch - but well worth it, I think!

Film: Saints and Soldiers

This past week I watched two films that I wanted to post about here. They are not exactly religious films, but they are both films that raise profound religious questions and I definitely felt like my appreciate of the films was enhanced by bringing some "religious literacy" to the experience. I'll do one now, and hopefully I'll find time later this weekend to post about the other (the very fine film Children of Men, just in case I don't have time to post about it!).

The first film, which I thought was truly stupendous, is something everyone (EVERYONE) should see is Saints and Soldiers. This is a recent film (2003) about the Battle of Bulge. Although the film is fiction, it is woven together of material from incidents that took place during that terrible battle towards the very end of World War II.

The film begins with the massacre of American prisoners of war at Malmedy, Belgium, and then follows four soldiers who escape from that massacre, running out into the snowy woods, finding themselves behind enemy lines. They then meet a downed British pilot, and risk everything in order to get him safely to an Allied command post because of the vital information he is carrying. Over the course of the film, you get to know each of those five men as unforgettable individuals, with a beautiful revelation of their characters through the dialogue, their actions, and the choices they must make. It is without a doubt one of the best movies about war that I have ever seen.

All five characters get a great deal of attention in the film, but the most highly charged moments come from the interaction between two characters in particular. There is Gould, a medic from New York, angry (he tried to dodge the draft but got caught), cynical, defiantly anti-religious, with no interest in wartime heroics (he despises having to use his medical training to work on bodies shattered by wartime violence). Then there is Nathan, known as "Deke" (Deacon). He got his nickname from being such a pious guy, and we learn that he had been a missionary in Berlin before the war (his ability to speak German plays a crucial role in the plot). He is a perfect sharp-shooter (he grew up going hunting in Snowflake, Arizona), and keeps to the straight and narrow (he doesn't even drink coffee - and he doesn't smoke; cigarettes also become an issue in the story).

There are a couple of dialogues between these two characters - about whether there is an afterlife, and about the humanity of enemy soldiers - which were, for me, the most memorable parts of the film.

Here's where the religious literacy comes in - at a certain point during the movie my husband said to me, "You know, he must be a Mormon," which is exactly what I had been thinking myself! It was as if there were all these clues for us - being a missionary (which is a fundamental part of Mormon religious life), being from Arizona (which has a large Mormon population, and Snowflake, Arizona was founded by Mormon pioneers), and not drinking coffee (Mormons do not drink cofee, following an admonition in the Word of Wisdom section of the Doctrines and Covenants).

The film does not ever make explicit that Deacon is a Mormon, but according to the wikipedia article, the director's commentary for the film confirms that this is the case.

I thought this was very interesting on their part. On the one hand, it is lying there "in plain sight" so to speak, for people who know what to look for. The fact that my husband and I both reached that conclusion with certainty and independently shows that it is not hard to pick up on... if you know something about the LDS church.

For folks who do not know how to "read the clues," however, I think they could miss that entirely, which is a shame. When, after all, did you last see a Mormon character in a movie?

So, while there was a certain frisson to figuring this out on my own, I wish for the sake of religious literacy that the film had been more explicit about this, pointing out his wonderful character as a Mormon, and enriching people's appreciate of Mormonism in the process.

Anyway, it is an EXCELLENT film. Be sure also to watch the "Making Of" featurette that comes on the DVD - the way they made this film on an incredibly low budget is a great story in and of itself!

Film: Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas)

Although it is not the Christmas season by any means, we decided to watch this amazing film Joyeux Noël - and I can recommend it unreservedly. It is certainly one of the best World War I films that I have seen, and I am posting about it here because religion plays a pivotal role in the film.

The film is set on Christmas Eve in 1914, and shows the German soldiers of one trench making their private peace with the French and Scottish soldiers in the opposing trench. Each of the characters - a Scottish priest and a young boy from his parish, a French lieutenant and his orderly, a German lieutenant and an opera singer in his unit - are carefully and quickly sketched as the film opens. Each character is unmistakably familiar right from the start, so that you are able to follow their stories right through till the end.

The priest is played by Gary Lewis (so marvelous as the father in Billy Elliott back in 2000). He stands at the center of what happens on the Christmas Eve. He is the one who begins playing the bagpipes which starts the music in the trenches. At first, he plays a song and the Scottish soldiers join in, and then when the German begins singing "Silent Night," he is the one who accompanies the German on the bagpipes. Then, he plays the melody of "Adeste Fideles" on the pipes, and the German tenor continues. The rapprochement between the two sides carries on from there, with extraordinary, unexpected and unintended consequences.

I definitely should note that the German soldier sings Adeste Fideles in Latin, and the Scottish priest conducts the midnight mass in Latin (with all the French, Scottish and German soldiers who are Catholics saying the Latin responses), and when funerals are conducted the next day, he says the "De profundis" over the bodies. Given all the controversy over the return of Tridentine Mass, I thought it was very striking to see Latin used here to call attention to the intercultural role of Latin on that Christmas night in 1914. As the priest later says, "Tonight, these men were drawn to that altar like it was a fire in the middle of winter. Even those who aren't devout came to warm themselves."

Indeed, not all of the soldiers are Christian. The German lieutenant, as it turns out, is Jewish. With a French wife. And of the three officers, it is the German who comes across as the most complex and heroic, although you would not expect that from his first scenes in the movie. The development of his character was one of the most wonderful aspects of the movie, I thought.

It's a beautiful film. We plan to watch it again at Christmas.

Film Reviews

One thing I would like to share here in this blog would be film reviews.

Partly, this is because I love movies.

Perhaps more importantly, my students love movies - and a popular movie is one of the best ways to reach out to the students in a way that speaks to them very powerfully. I know Nina also has experience teaching a class based on film, which is something I would very much enjoy doing sometime myself!

One item that I am awaiting with great eagerness is the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's Golden Compass. Pullman's books are some of the best books I have read in the past ten years, and they certainly give plenty of religious food-for-thought. I hope so much that the film(s) will be worthy of the books!