Friday 28 November 2008
Violence and Our Attitudes to War
Recently I saw the film "The Baader Meinhof Complex," which is a very dark and depressing based on the true story of the 1970s revolutionary terrorist group. There are some very interesting points to draw from the film on the subject of war and violence. The Baader Meinhof group was a group that fought against what they termed "American Imperialism" and they attacked American targets in West Germany with various demands including the USA ceasing military operations in Vietnam. The one rule of this group, as it was very influenced by the ideas of Marx, Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara, was that its attacks were not against the German people. However, after a series of attacks on American military bases the leaders of the group are captured and imprisoned. Their example inspires many others to join the cause and these new members of the group plan a number of attacks and kidnappings to force the government to release the captives. These attacks get increasingly violent until finally they enlist the help of an Arab terrorist group who capture a plane full of innocent people for them. This completely breaks the rule of not attacking the people. The group fought for a cause, that I had a certain amount of sympathy for, but they decided that their best hope was in violence. As the film unfolds it shows that as they sowed violence they reaped violence. An as they sowed violence they reaped much more that did not obey rules or discriminate against innocent or guilty. This is a principle that we can see today. Fighting hate with hate never inspires love. In both Afghanistan and Iraq the West has approached the "terrorists" with an attitude of hate, the precise tactics being let's kill them all. We are fighting the enemy with his weapons and are then surprised that we are losing. Humans are very impressionable, we are made like this so we can take the impression of our Creator Father, if you surround an English speaker with lots of French speakers over time they will learn to speak French. If you surround the people of Iraq with hate they will start hating. In their book "Jesus For President" Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw tell the story of an American soldier who shot an Iraqi man who was shooting at him. A young boy came out of a nearby house, picked up his father's gun and started shooting at the soldiers, they shot the boy too. This is not a problem that men can solve. In the West we have just about worked out that the war in Iraq is bad but I do not think we in the West have yet grasped just what kind of a problem we have caused in Iraq. There still seems to be this idea that if we go home and leave the Iraqis to their fate that the problem wil sort itself out or if not at least it will be, in the words of Futurama, "a tragic, BUT FAR AWAY, problem." Unfortunately I believe that God will hold us to account for our actions in Iraq until we attempt to reconcile ourselves to all the people we have hurt in the country and repent of our actions. The church in the West needs to pray for and support the church in Iraq as it is the only hope Iraq has left.
Monday 24 November 2008
October's Films
I try to keep up what has been out recently so here is my review of cinema in general through October.
Righteous Kill. It has been a long time since Robert De Niro has done a strong performance in a serious film and Al Pacino is just not getting the parts anymore. Neither of them have showed a great capacity for versatility either. However with Righteous Kill we have a gritty cop drama (which we know both De Niro and Pacino can do) and what’s more we have them together. What is unique about this film is they spend most of the film on screen at the same time. In the Godfather Part II they were not in the same scenes and in Heat they only had about 2 scenes together. So there was some potential to this film. However, the problem was the script. The dialogue was slow and gave the actors no room to work, the twist at the end was very predictable and there was only character in the film that was ever developed as the writer quite clearly didn’t care about anyone else. Neither Pacino nor De Niro are bad but they have no material with which to be good. 3/10 would be generous.
Eagle Eye. It’s quite hard to talk about this film without giving its central premise away but I will try. What we have in Eagle Eye is a special effects blockbuster reminiscent of Transformers. The objective of this type of film is enjoyment, pure and simple. When I went into Eagle Eye I did not expect Citizen Kane, I expected, or rather wanted anyway, a fast paced action thriller which kept me on the edge of my seat and gave me the feeling of having had a good time upon leaving the cinema. This I got and more. The film is well directed and well acted. It is fast paced, while there is a lot of action to over burden you, admittedly it takes a lot of action to overburden me, and there are a few laughs on the way to grease the wheels. The central premise of the film, which I can’t say, is quite clever and makes an interesting (and quite edgy) political point. Easily 8/10.
Death Race. Yes I went to see it. It’s called Death Race and that’s what it is. Predictable, not particularly clever but retains enough (only just) style and excitement to be watchable. 6/10
Tropic Thunder. Probably September but nonetheless… The premise of the film, a group of actors filming a war film straying into an actual war zone, is quite good. The cast is mostly strong with cameos from half of Hollywood. The film starts strongly with trailers for some of the characters previous films which are hilarious (especially Downey Jr.s). The plot makes enough sense, the jokes are mostly funny and the Tom Cruise cameo in the second half steals the show. The weaknesses of the film, which there are unfortunately, are: the film is more violent than it needs to be which distracts from the comedy, the Jack Back character is badly written and so consequently makes little sense and isn’t funny, the token black guy is so token he has few lines and even fewer jokes and Ben Stiller spends his time being Ben Stiller and doing what Ben Stiller does in every film he is in, having said that he is on occasion quite funny. Robert Downey Jr. is very good indeed and even Matthew McConaughey produces a strong cameo. Nevertheless a good film 7/10.
City of Ember. At last a believable post apocalyptic setting. One of the main assumptions of post apocalyptic films is that it is assumed that you will forgive the fact that never in a million, maybe more, years will the world ever be like this (The Matrix excluded). City of Ember, however, isn’t. The main premise of the film is that an unknown disaster occurs, I liked the fact that you do no know what happened, although it could be inferred to be nuclear war, and a group of scientists get together and build a settlement deep underground where a group of citizens can survive. The instructions to escape are put inside a box that is given the mayor of the city who is entrusted to hand it down to his successor as mayor for 200 years when the box is programmed to open. 200 years later the box has been lost and is in the cupboard of a teenage girl. The City that is called Ember is a small town out of the 1900s they re use everything, they have a small amount of tinned food but most of it they grow in greenhouses that have electric light. The city is powered by a generator that is breaking. All the citizens choose their job out of a hat and the city is governed but a corrupt mayor played by Bill Murray. The city is dying after 200 years and everyone is afraid to try and leave. The teenage girl, played very well by Saoise Ronan, finds the box and together with this boy she meets tries to find the way out. The film is well directed and well acted. The film made me laugh, made me cry, was visually beautiful and throughout it all had a sense of childlike innocence that we need more of. The few weaknesses of the film are that Bill Murray cannot play a bad guy, corrupt and decadent yes, but he can’t do bad. Also there I a mutant mole running about in the bowels of the city for no apparent reason but aside from these minor flaws a brilliant film 9/10.
Igor. A brilliant premise of a world of mad scientists, each with their own assistant called Igor, paid by the world not to release their inventions on them. The main character, an Igor, has created 2 inventions, a suicidal bunny who cannot die and a brain in a jar which has no intelligence. After his master dies in an experiment the Igor decides that he can build an experiment using his master’s identity. He creates life in a Bride of Frankensteinesque (it’s a word honest) way. The problem is that his monster, instead of being evil wants to play the lead in Annie. Sounds good doesn’t it. However, this is the entire film. These are all the jokes in the film that are repeated ad nauseam throughout. Despite the world it is set in the film tries to be pink and fluffy where it should have had an Addams family morbidity. The script lacks a quality that the likes of Shrek and Pixar thrive upon. The film simply doesn’t live up to its potential. 6/10
Notable absentees:
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Comedy is meant to make you laugh not cringe. I did not laugh at all in the trailer and saw nothing about the film to make me want to watch it. Simon Pegg should spend his time writing his own films, which he is very good at, rather than starring in films like this, I may forgive him being in Star Trek.
Brideshead Revisited. Too far down the list, didn’t have time.
The House Bunny. I do still have some self respect.
Bangkok Dangerous. Not going to lose sleep over missing this.
Ghost Town. It just looked like an excuse for Ricky Gervais to get on the big screen for 2 hours rather than a genuine attempt at cinema.
Anything else. What do you think I live in a cinema and am made of money. It’s an understandable mistake to make but is sadly not true.
Righteous Kill. It has been a long time since Robert De Niro has done a strong performance in a serious film and Al Pacino is just not getting the parts anymore. Neither of them have showed a great capacity for versatility either. However with Righteous Kill we have a gritty cop drama (which we know both De Niro and Pacino can do) and what’s more we have them together. What is unique about this film is they spend most of the film on screen at the same time. In the Godfather Part II they were not in the same scenes and in Heat they only had about 2 scenes together. So there was some potential to this film. However, the problem was the script. The dialogue was slow and gave the actors no room to work, the twist at the end was very predictable and there was only character in the film that was ever developed as the writer quite clearly didn’t care about anyone else. Neither Pacino nor De Niro are bad but they have no material with which to be good. 3/10 would be generous.
Eagle Eye. It’s quite hard to talk about this film without giving its central premise away but I will try. What we have in Eagle Eye is a special effects blockbuster reminiscent of Transformers. The objective of this type of film is enjoyment, pure and simple. When I went into Eagle Eye I did not expect Citizen Kane, I expected, or rather wanted anyway, a fast paced action thriller which kept me on the edge of my seat and gave me the feeling of having had a good time upon leaving the cinema. This I got and more. The film is well directed and well acted. It is fast paced, while there is a lot of action to over burden you, admittedly it takes a lot of action to overburden me, and there are a few laughs on the way to grease the wheels. The central premise of the film, which I can’t say, is quite clever and makes an interesting (and quite edgy) political point. Easily 8/10.
Death Race. Yes I went to see it. It’s called Death Race and that’s what it is. Predictable, not particularly clever but retains enough (only just) style and excitement to be watchable. 6/10
Tropic Thunder. Probably September but nonetheless… The premise of the film, a group of actors filming a war film straying into an actual war zone, is quite good. The cast is mostly strong with cameos from half of Hollywood. The film starts strongly with trailers for some of the characters previous films which are hilarious (especially Downey Jr.s). The plot makes enough sense, the jokes are mostly funny and the Tom Cruise cameo in the second half steals the show. The weaknesses of the film, which there are unfortunately, are: the film is more violent than it needs to be which distracts from the comedy, the Jack Back character is badly written and so consequently makes little sense and isn’t funny, the token black guy is so token he has few lines and even fewer jokes and Ben Stiller spends his time being Ben Stiller and doing what Ben Stiller does in every film he is in, having said that he is on occasion quite funny. Robert Downey Jr. is very good indeed and even Matthew McConaughey produces a strong cameo. Nevertheless a good film 7/10.
City of Ember. At last a believable post apocalyptic setting. One of the main assumptions of post apocalyptic films is that it is assumed that you will forgive the fact that never in a million, maybe more, years will the world ever be like this (The Matrix excluded). City of Ember, however, isn’t. The main premise of the film is that an unknown disaster occurs, I liked the fact that you do no know what happened, although it could be inferred to be nuclear war, and a group of scientists get together and build a settlement deep underground where a group of citizens can survive. The instructions to escape are put inside a box that is given the mayor of the city who is entrusted to hand it down to his successor as mayor for 200 years when the box is programmed to open. 200 years later the box has been lost and is in the cupboard of a teenage girl. The City that is called Ember is a small town out of the 1900s they re use everything, they have a small amount of tinned food but most of it they grow in greenhouses that have electric light. The city is powered by a generator that is breaking. All the citizens choose their job out of a hat and the city is governed but a corrupt mayor played by Bill Murray. The city is dying after 200 years and everyone is afraid to try and leave. The teenage girl, played very well by Saoise Ronan, finds the box and together with this boy she meets tries to find the way out. The film is well directed and well acted. The film made me laugh, made me cry, was visually beautiful and throughout it all had a sense of childlike innocence that we need more of. The few weaknesses of the film are that Bill Murray cannot play a bad guy, corrupt and decadent yes, but he can’t do bad. Also there I a mutant mole running about in the bowels of the city for no apparent reason but aside from these minor flaws a brilliant film 9/10.
Igor. A brilliant premise of a world of mad scientists, each with their own assistant called Igor, paid by the world not to release their inventions on them. The main character, an Igor, has created 2 inventions, a suicidal bunny who cannot die and a brain in a jar which has no intelligence. After his master dies in an experiment the Igor decides that he can build an experiment using his master’s identity. He creates life in a Bride of Frankensteinesque (it’s a word honest) way. The problem is that his monster, instead of being evil wants to play the lead in Annie. Sounds good doesn’t it. However, this is the entire film. These are all the jokes in the film that are repeated ad nauseam throughout. Despite the world it is set in the film tries to be pink and fluffy where it should have had an Addams family morbidity. The script lacks a quality that the likes of Shrek and Pixar thrive upon. The film simply doesn’t live up to its potential. 6/10
Notable absentees:
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Comedy is meant to make you laugh not cringe. I did not laugh at all in the trailer and saw nothing about the film to make me want to watch it. Simon Pegg should spend his time writing his own films, which he is very good at, rather than starring in films like this, I may forgive him being in Star Trek.
Brideshead Revisited. Too far down the list, didn’t have time.
The House Bunny. I do still have some self respect.
Bangkok Dangerous. Not going to lose sleep over missing this.
Ghost Town. It just looked like an excuse for Ricky Gervais to get on the big screen for 2 hours rather than a genuine attempt at cinema.
Anything else. What do you think I live in a cinema and am made of money. It’s an understandable mistake to make but is sadly not true.
Three Stories
The first story I want to tell is the story of the 1959 film “The Mouse That Roared.” It is a British film starring Peter Sellars playing most of the characters. The film is set in the world's smallest (fictional) nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The main export of this country is wine and when their wine becomes undercut but a Californian copy the nation is faced with bankruptcy. The Duchy decides to declare war on the United States, with the idea that it will certainly lose and will then be magnificently rehabilitated by the generous, victorious Americans. They then send 20 soldiers in chain main with bows and arrows to invade the USA. In New York, an air-raid exercise has closed the entire city, with the exception of the laboratory at the New York Institute of Physics, where a professor and his daughter are working on the new Q-bomb. When the Fenwickians arrive they look around New York but can find no one to surrender to as anyone they see think they are “men from Mars” due to their shiny mail. They eventually find their way to the Institute of Physics and gain control of the Q bomb. At which point the Americans surrender to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The upshot of everything is that the Americans discontinue the Californian wine and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick disarms the Q bomb which turns out to be a dud all along. The absurdity of the film and the underlying message of nuclear disarmament aside (for the moment) in the simple events of the film we have what could be described as the “normal Christian life.” The smallest, most unlikely country to ever win a war against the greatest military power on Earth does. With Jesus all things are possible. So what happens when things don’t quite work like that?
My second story is from the Argentinean revival. There were a group of pastors who were travelling around Argentina spreading the word of God. They received a message from a group of Satanists who were praying against them warning that if they came to their town they would be killed. This group of pastors decided to go anyway. On the way their bus crashed and they were all killed. Why this happened I do not, and never shall until I get to heaven and can ask (if I still care by then). I tell this story for one reason, even these people who were seeing loads of people come to the Lord and seeing revival in their land didn’t always win. There will be trials, there will be pain, God does not want us to always win against the odds.
The third story is from the book of Jeremiah. The second half of the book of Jeremiah recounts the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. At this point God has sent a number of prophets to the various kings of Judah telling them to repent warning that if they didn’t the kingdom would fall but mostly they didn’t so, as prophesied the Babylonians turned up to defeat them. The Babylonians besieged Jerusalem and God told Jeremiah who was inside to tell the people to lay down their weapons as they were going to lose, not the most heroic of attitudes. As telling everyone they were going to be defeated is not a wartime attitude that Churchill would have been proud of Jeremiah was locked up. When the king realised he was going to lose he went to Jeremiah to ask him what God’s will was, hoping that God was going to deliver a victory. Jeremiah told him, however, that God had given the victory to the enemy and his only hope was to surrender but that if he surrendered God would protect him. I was Babylonian custom to humiliate their enemies when they were defeated so that no one would dare to stand against them. Jeremiah told the king that if he surrendered God would influence the king of Babylon so that he would not harm the king or his family and that they would be left in Jerusalem rather than be taken back to Babylon and that he would be given favour with the man appointed to preside over the region. The king did not believe and refused to surrender. When Jerusalem finally fell he was caught trying to escape. His family was killed in front of him, his eyes were put out and he was taken to Babylon where he ate at the kings table so everyone could see what the king of Babylon did to those who defied him. Was it God’s will? No. Could he have got out of it? Yes. Was it God’s will for his people, the Israelites to win? No. This is the challenge to God’s people in the face of violence in modern day culture. Understanding that God has won the final victory but in many battles it is not always his will for the good (or the slightly less bad) guys to win. How do we bring God’s peace into these situations? This is the challenge that intend to explore in the future, how do we God’s peace rather than mans peace in the conflicts of today?
My second story is from the Argentinean revival. There were a group of pastors who were travelling around Argentina spreading the word of God. They received a message from a group of Satanists who were praying against them warning that if they came to their town they would be killed. This group of pastors decided to go anyway. On the way their bus crashed and they were all killed. Why this happened I do not, and never shall until I get to heaven and can ask (if I still care by then). I tell this story for one reason, even these people who were seeing loads of people come to the Lord and seeing revival in their land didn’t always win. There will be trials, there will be pain, God does not want us to always win against the odds.
The third story is from the book of Jeremiah. The second half of the book of Jeremiah recounts the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. At this point God has sent a number of prophets to the various kings of Judah telling them to repent warning that if they didn’t the kingdom would fall but mostly they didn’t so, as prophesied the Babylonians turned up to defeat them. The Babylonians besieged Jerusalem and God told Jeremiah who was inside to tell the people to lay down their weapons as they were going to lose, not the most heroic of attitudes. As telling everyone they were going to be defeated is not a wartime attitude that Churchill would have been proud of Jeremiah was locked up. When the king realised he was going to lose he went to Jeremiah to ask him what God’s will was, hoping that God was going to deliver a victory. Jeremiah told him, however, that God had given the victory to the enemy and his only hope was to surrender but that if he surrendered God would protect him. I was Babylonian custom to humiliate their enemies when they were defeated so that no one would dare to stand against them. Jeremiah told the king that if he surrendered God would influence the king of Babylon so that he would not harm the king or his family and that they would be left in Jerusalem rather than be taken back to Babylon and that he would be given favour with the man appointed to preside over the region. The king did not believe and refused to surrender. When Jerusalem finally fell he was caught trying to escape. His family was killed in front of him, his eyes were put out and he was taken to Babylon where he ate at the kings table so everyone could see what the king of Babylon did to those who defied him. Was it God’s will? No. Could he have got out of it? Yes. Was it God’s will for his people, the Israelites to win? No. This is the challenge to God’s people in the face of violence in modern day culture. Understanding that God has won the final victory but in many battles it is not always his will for the good (or the slightly less bad) guys to win. How do we bring God’s peace into these situations? This is the challenge that intend to explore in the future, how do we God’s peace rather than mans peace in the conflicts of today?
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