Gravity: a review and brief reflections on earthbound existence

(Numerous spoiler alerts.)

"Life is impossible in space."

So begins the critically-acclaimed and blockbusting new film Gravity - the most humble, human and hopeful sci-fi film I've ever seen.

How can a sci-fi flick be humble? This was no "to infinity and beyond" celebration of hubristic human intergalactic imperialism. This was an extended study in our inability to survive a mere few hundred kilometres above the surface of the only habitable piece of rock in the known universe, a precarious existence in orbit (i.e. perpetually falling back to earth and missing, which is what orbit is) threatened not by aliens, not by an absent God, not by international tensions and conflicts, but simply and depressingly by the unforeseen consequences of our shortcuts and fundamentally by the inability to deal with our own junk.

Even amidst death and destruction, the Earth itself was the star of the show, the jewel in space, the pale blue dot on which all human hopes depended. The sheer beauty of the planet was the backdrop against which the crises and tragedies of the tiny cast played out. Indeed, the last line from the one human who felt somewhat at home in space was an appreciation of the beauty of the earth, praising the wonder of sunlight reflected on the Ganges.

When it all comes crashing back to earth, we are thrown again onto the ground, finding in the mud between our fingers the basis of our only hope. The sense of being "home" at the end was overwhelming. We are creatures of the dirt. It is no coincidence that the only survivor is named Stone.

The film was redolent with images of gestation and birth, symbolism that even became a little heavy handed at one point as Stone floated in the fetal position trailing a breathing tube. Numerous rapid dangerous movements through narrow spaces and a final desperate breaking into and out of water completed the natal symbolism. Stone, having found in space the ultimate womb in which to hide her maternal grief, the ultimate car ride to delay the full recognition of her loss, is reborn back into the world of pain and loss, the world of gravity, the word of dirt and mud. Her final embrace of the mud was a return to roots, an acceptance of her existence on a finite planet, a rediscovery of being fundamentally a pedestrian rather than celestial species.

We are humans from the humus, 'adam from 'adamah, and our destiny is tied intimately to the planet that is our only home, a home threatened by our inability to deal with our own junk.

Surviving Progress: Are we walking into our own trap?

"Things that start out to seem like improvements or progress, these things are very seductive; it seems like there's no downside to these. But when they reach a certain scale they turn out to be dead ends or traps. I came up with the term 'progress trap' to define human behaviours that seem to be good things, seem to provide benefits in the short term, but which ultimately lead to disaster because they are unsustainable. One example would be - going right back into the old stone age - the time when our ancestors were hunting mammoths. They reached a point when their weaponry and their hunting techniques got so good that they destroyed hunting as a way of life throughout most of the world. The people who discovered how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made real progress. But people who discovered that they could eat really well by driving a whole herd over a cliff and kill two hundred at once had fallen into a progress trap; they had made too much progress."

- Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress

A 2011 documentary produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks (The Corporation) called Surviving Progress was aired by the BBC over the weekend and for the next week is available on BBC iPlayer to UK residents (others can try here). Drawing on a wide range of interviewees including David Suzuki, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, Marina Silva and Jane Goodall the 82-minute documentary was inspired by a book by Ronald Wright called A Short History of Progress and investigates the reasons that our attempts at progress are sometimes tragically short-sighted. Are our attempts to catch more mammoth doomed to failure? Thought-provoking and beautifully if sometimes indulgently shot (with Scorsese as producer, I don't think they were short on money), the conclusion packs a slightly larger punch than the usual five minutes of feel good "we can change the world", though is still likely to leave you frustrated and wanting more. Two personal highlights are the rant by Vaclav Smil (starting at 69:40) and the great one-liner from David Suzuki: "Conventional economics is a form of brain damage." (which appears at the end of a speech starting at 53:45.) The final shot is nicely ambiguous, though to appreciate the full implications, you have to watch from the start. I doubt you'll regret doing so.

Why has the Titanic become a myth?

"People say, why are you so fascinated by this wreck? And for me it's a study of human psychology and the way people deal with crises. And they dealt with it in different ways. Some were in denial. Some were in a trance. Some just took action, didn't think, just went, just did. And others were craven cowards who thought only of their own survival. We all know that we would fall somewhere on that spectrum but until our lives are really put at risk - you know, the moment of truth - we don't know what we would do. [...]

"Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of the sense that we’re too big to fail. Well, where have we heard that one before? There was this big machine, this human system, that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn’t turn, it couldn’t stop in time to avert a disaster. And that’s what we have right now. Within that human system on board that ship, if you want to make it a microcosm of the world, you have different classes, you’ve got first class, second class, third class. In our world right now you’ve got developed nations, undeveloped nations. You’ve got the starving millions who are going to be the ones most affected by the next iceberg that we hit, which is going to be climate change. We can see that iceberg ahead of us right now, but we can’t turn. We can’t turn because of the momentum of the system, the political momentum, the business momentum. There too many people making money out of the system, the way the system works right now and those people frankly have their hands on the levers of power and aren’t ready to let ‘em go. Until they do we will not be able to turn to miss that iceberg and we’re going to hit it, and when we hit it, the rich are still going to be able to get their access to food, to arable land, to water and so on. It’s going to be poor, it’s going to be the steerage that are going to be impacted. It’s the same with Titanic. I think that’s why this story will always fascinate people."

- James Cameron, Director of Titanic (1997) and Titanic 3D (2012),
National Geographic: Titanic - the final word.

Today is the centenary of the sinking of the HMS Titanic. Some people have got excited at the fact that some young people took a while to discover that the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster film* was based (at least at the macro level) on actual events. But that is not what I mean by myth. The story itself has become a shared cultural reference point, a story picture of flexible but fairly-well defined meanings. Why has the story of this particular ship been so often invoked, when so many other (often numerically greater) maritime tragedies have been quickly forgotten? As Cameron points out, the narrative of these events is very easily turned into a parable, or a myth - as the ship itself was already mythic in name and epic in scope when it was launched. We want to make sense of tragedies, and this one, for all its mysteries, seems to offer some pretty clear morals. Pride goes before a fall. We're all in the same boat. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

And watch out for icebergs.
*And its recent perfectly-timed-for-maximal-cash-in-from-free-media-publicity 3D re-release.
H/T Joe Romm for the reference and second quote.

Inside Job: what's the deal with the credit crisis?

Yesterday we finally got around to watching Inside Job (despite having recommended it all the way back here). If you, like me, often feel out of your depth in discussions of banking, finance, stock markets and the global economic instability of the last few years, then this is the film for you. Bringing dry and complex details into vivid comprehensibility, this film cuts through the bafflement factor and, via a series of fascinating and jaw-dropping interviews with key players, lays out many of the key threads that that led to the headline-grabbing events of 2008 and its aftermath (which continues to play out today).

The film won best documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards and currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is easy to see why. Tackling an important subject with insight, emotion and sensitivity, this film is pure outrage mixed with damning evidence of systemic problems in the US financial industry from traders to CEOs, from regulators to investors, from president to ratings agencies, from academic economists to congress. There is plenty of blame to go around. And yet, somehow, no one is in gaol for the greatest inside job in history.

And very little has changed.

The theology of Harry Potter #7: book vs film

Brad Littlejohn has an excellent exposition of the theology of the final Harry Potter book in comparison to the final film (which doesn't stack up so well). If you ever wanted someone to demonstrate that there was much more going on christologically in Rowling than the all too common and wearily superficial assumption that her depiction of magic equalled a nefarious seduction of young minds into Satanic arts, then read his piece.

Warning: film plot spoilers.

Dogville: Grace as a test?

My wife and I saw Lars von Trier's Dogville recently. Our opinions of the controversial Danish director had been diametrically opposed. I loved both Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. Jess had heard their plots and refused to see them because they sounded awful. So convincing her to watch Dogville was a bit of a coup, helped by a friendly neighbour who dropped in the DVD without our requesting it and my pointing out that it would be rude to return it unwatched.

We loved it. The minimalist set creatively captured the panopticon experience of small town life. The acting was strong. But the most interesting thing was that Dogville is a very insightful picture of what so many people (including more Christians than we might realise) think the Christian message says. Without mentioning God (the town has no church and the mission house perpetually lacks a preacher), the film is deeply theological. Life is a test: will we accept Grace into our lives freely and discover a gift we didn't seek and didn't deserve? Or will we try to pay for Grace, or worse, constrain and even coerce Grace? And if we fail the test, then comes merciless judgement... but I don't want to give away the ending.

Highly recommended. Distressing scenes, but then you already knew that because it's Lars von Trier.

Climate Nation: why conservatives can love climate action

Here's a new film that is trying to bridge the abyss of the US culture wars. Focussed on the fringe benefits of climate change mitigation, it speaks in the voices of a CIA director, an army colonel, an airline executive, a Christian minister, a Texan farmer and a wild Alaskan: patriotic, God-loving, gun-toting, meat-eating, small town, red state Republican neoconservatives. It claims to be a "climate change solutions movie that doesn't even care if you believe in climate change". Rather than showing us how climate change is already fuelling conflict in Africa or projecting the extinction of millions of species in coming decades, this effort simply highlights the various advantages of taking actions that also happen to mitigate climate change.

Rather than saying climate action is a painful duty we cannot avoid, this film presents it as an opportunity to save money, reduce pollution, increase national security and reduce military casualties. One approach focuses on push - avoid this stick - and the other on pull - chase this carrot. Perhaps elements of both are necessary and different approaches will speak to different audiences.

Watching the trailer led me to ponder again how divisive this issue is, particularly in the US. Much has been written about the various causes of this: historical, psychological, political, cultural and economic (and I would add, theological). Some are put off by the commonly proposed responses, which clash with their ideological commitments. This film seems to be particularly addressing such people.

However, amongst all the other reasons, I think there is a very personal reason that some people resist the scientific understanding of the issue. For many people, acknowledging the existence and severity of the threat of anthropogenic climate change involves a reassessment of significant parts of our life story. It can mean realising that some of our most cherished experiences and dreams have a terrible cost associated with them. For those who have earned a livelihood from carbon intensive activities, it can threaten the virtue of some major life achievements and raise the question of whether one's life may have done more harm than good. To put it in Christian terms, acknowledging the reality and significance of anthropogenic climate change can require repentance. And that is too high a bar for some, who would rather reject the science than reassess their lives.

That is why it is important that grace precedes repentance. We don't repent in order for God to be gracious to us; we repent because when we were still far off, he has already seen us, run to us and embraced us.
H/T Sylvia Rowley.

Fifteen films meme

From Sam: "The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen films you’ve seen that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen films you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes."

I am going to arbitrarily exclude documentaries and I'm not claiming that these are my favourite fifteen, just that they fit this meme.

1. Magnolia
2. Fight Club
3. American Beauty
4. The Lives of Others
5. 3-Iron
6. Pan's Labyrinth
7. The Passion of the Christ
8. Let the Right One In
9. Hero
10. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
11. The Return of the King
12. The Royal Tenenbaums
13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
14. The Matrix
15. Millennium Actress

If you own a blog, then consider yourself tagged, unless you hate memes, are way too busy, or find this exercise trite or offensive, in which case, smugly consider yourself above such sillyness.

The point of no return was passed some time ago

"I believe we will see increasing nihilism. I think also there is a very big chance that if the science starts telling us we are beyond the point of no return, I think we could open up the box for a whole range of utterly aberrant responses. Some of which might be utter despair and a kind of last minute self-seeking behaviour. Some of which might go in who knows what direction in terms of aggressive scapegoating, projection, pushing this onto to other people, other issues that have nothing to do with climate change."

- George Marshall, "The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing in Climate Change".

This whole lecture (in three parts: one, two, three) is worth watching for many insights into the psychology of responding to the threat of climate change. These comments come towards the end of the presentation and concern the situation that I am particularly interested in: the perception that we are "too late" to avoid some really horrible outcomes. For many people, such a scenario may well lead to the kinds of reactions that Marshall mentions, and things could turn very ugly. The 2006 film Children of Men depicted a world a in 2027 where hope for the future has been lost and the social backdrop is not a pretty one.

The point of no return in terms of avoiding some seriously bad outcomes was passed some time ago. That doesn't justify inaction or "let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die", since (a) negative effects won't hit all at once tomorrow, or even The Day After Tomorrow, but will build over years, decades and centuries, (b) our current actions can still avoid even worse outcomes than are already "in the pipeline" and (c) because of the resurrection, in the Lord our labour is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15.58). No act of love, however apparently futile, is wasted, since love is the future.

The Age of Stupid

Today I went to a screening of The Age of Stupid, which was being shown as part of the Cineco Film Festival, a series of free ecological films showing around Edinburgh between September and November.


The Age of Stupid investigates the contradictions and myopia of our present age from the viewpoint of an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) living in a remote Arctic refuge storing what could be salvaged of the world's cultural treasures, looking back from the year 2055 at decades of catastrophic climate change and using a glorified iPad to create a documentary warning for extraterrestrials. It doesn't sound like a format that will fly, and the film opens with apocalyptic images of London underwater, the Swiss Alps without snow, Las Vegas being covered by sand dunes and Sydney's CBD consumed in a towering inferno, further confirming my expectations that the film would consist largely of terrifying crystal ball gazing, showing an unfolding series of disasters that would lead to Postlethwaite's archivist on his lonely refuge. Instead, the 2055 viewpoint is a mere framing device to allow a pastiche of archival documentary and news footage from prior to 2009, along with original interviews following six or seven figures from around the world. The period between 2009 and 2055 is left largely blank and we are confronted directly with the stupidity of our own age.

The archivist narrator begins with this question:

"The amazing thing is we had a chance to avert this. The conditions we are experiencing now were actually caused by our behaviour in the period leading up to 2015. In other words, we could have saved ourselves. We could have saved ourselves, but we didn't. What state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off?"

And that is the focus of the film: the inability of our present society to join the dots between fighting climate change and wanting cheap flights, or hating wind farms. It is a moving and at times darkly amusing film, but the apocalyptic framing which grabs your attention also proves somewhat distracting, since the full devastating effects of climate change are left largely unstated. There is a brief discussion with Mark Lynas (author of the widely-read Six Degrees) and a couple of other hints (passing references to food riots, for instance), but the shape of the threat that could conceivably lead to the archivist's world is largely unspoken. Perhaps this was for the sake of time, or perhaps to avoid the charge of fear-mongering, though I think that a rational discussion of the genuine threats identified in the scientific literature is far more responsible (even if initially more terrifying) than a few apocalyptic images and a heavy dose of post-apocalyptic regret.

Once again, the film was stronger on the diagnosis of the problem than on offering plausible paths to how we might indeed "save ourselves", or (what might now be more realistic) offering healthy ways of salvaging what we can from a disaster that is now unavoidable, but whose effects can still be significantly reduced.

That said, I would still recommend the film as worth seeing. One particular highlight was the brief and clear explanation of contraction and convergence, which is a serious suggestion for how it is possible to slash global emissions while allowing developing nations to get out of stupid poverty. Of course, this means developing nations cutting their emissions even faster in order to leave some room for the global poor to meet their basic needs. This option is not politically viable, especially in the places where per capita emissions would need to fall the fastest (US, Australia, Canada and parts of the Middle East), but it is the most equitable of all the options on the table and has received support from a number of nations, including the UK.

Also coming up as part of the Cineco film festival are two more films that look very interesting. The first is called Our Daily Bread and consists almost purely of footage of contemporary industrial agricultural processes with commentary or soundtrack beyond environmental noises recorded with the footage, allowing the viewer to form her own opinions. It is screening at 6pm on the 12th November.

The second is called Dirt! and traces one of the major ecological challenges that doesn't receive much attention: the soil beneath our feet (and all too often, beneath our concrete too). In the last one hundred years, in different ways we have squandered about a third of all fertile topsoil on the planet. It is screening at 6pm on 17th November (Martin Hall, New College) and will include a panel discussion with local religious leaders. Here is the trailer.

Top Ten Films III

Time for another top ten list. The earlier lists can be found here and here. As with those, these are not necessarily films released recently, but the best ten films I've seen (in cinema or on DVD) recently (last 12 months approximately). And as an arbitrary way of keeping the list a little more manageable than it might otherwise be, I'm excluding docos, which I'll post later.

10. Gran Torrino
9. Red Road
8. A Serious Man
7. The Wrestler
6. 4 Months, 3 weeks And 2 Days (Romanian: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile)
5. Breaking the Waves
4. The White Ribbon
3. In Bruges
2. Apocalypse Now Redux
1. Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in)

And some honourable mentions since I've had so long since the last list:
The Straight Story, Fish Tank, District 9.

Home: where we've come from; where we're going

What do you think of when you think of "home"? Warmth, food, comfort, safety, family? A place to relax and be yourself? A place to leave your dirty socks lying around?

This ninety-three minute film is titled simply Home. It is stunningly shot, beautifully scored, nicely narrated and serves as one of the best short introductions to the current human predicament that forms the backdrop to my PhD research. It was apparently the largest film release in history, but somehow I hadn't heard of it until today. It has intentionally also been released for free viewing on YouTube. I would love to hear your reactions to it.

Most of the film consists of breath-taking aerial shots of places you've never seen, or of common things you've never seen like this before, while a female narrator takes us through the history of humanity and how we got to be where we are today, all in carefully scripted prose. After a twenty-minute introduction to life on earth and the history of homo sapiens, the bulk of the film covers many of the most pressing issues that are both caused by and threatening the continued existence of modern industrial society: peak oil, climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, over-fishing, sea level rises, wetland destruction, biodiversity loss, water depletion, mineral depletion, population explosion and social inequality (perhaps the only significant issues not touched upon are soil salination, desertification and introduced species - but, hey, they only had ninety-three minutes). The images progress from one case-study to the next, each standing for one of the issues under discussion. It is wide-ranging, but there is a coherent thread ("faster and faster") that unites the images, and the narration only occasionally lapses into breathless hyperbole.

And of course there is also the obligatory uplifting section found at the end of every mainstream eco-film. However, the hopeful possibilities held out, while inspiring, still felt mainly like wishful thinking. While deeply moving, it ultimately failed to convince me that "together, we can do it".

"It is too late for pessimism" the narrator repeatedly claims, but I wonder whether most forms of optimism require dishonesty (or at least a fair dollop of willful ignorance). At least, where that optimism is for something more or less like today, but perhaps with fewer cars, more efficient light bulbs and wall to wall windfarms. I am all for windfarms, but if even half of the claims in the first eighty minutes of the film are true, then it is too late for sustainable development. Things will have to get much worse before they get anything that approximates better. May God have mercy on us all.
All images from the film. Can you guess what each is of? H/T to Garth for the link and bringing the film to my attention.

The Life of Jesus

The Centre for Public Christianity (CPX) are soon to release a new documentary called The Life of Jesus, a follow up to The Christ Files. Looks like it will be more quality work from Greg Clarke and John Dickson. Here is a short teaser:

H/T Matt.

Into the Wild: a review

When I first saw previews for Into the Wild, I must admit I was quite skeptical. I thought it looked like a Kathmandu ad, promoting adventure holidays and the rugged romantic individualism that seeks to find in nature either a beast to be conquered, or a god to be worshipped (both goals requiring suitably sensible hiking equipment at a reasonable price).

However, having watched it last night on the recommendation of my personal film critic (isn't it great when you come to trust the judgement of certain friends and so are willing to give apparently unlikely flicks a go on their so say?), I stand corrected. Managing to criticise both the shallowness of consumerism and the destructiveness of individualism, what it offers as an alternative is grace - forgiveness, covenant and the slow healing of memory and desire through the sharing of life with others.

Based on a true story from the early 90s, the film traces the journey of a young man who renounces society and comfort and ends up living in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Family and finances, career and college degree are all left behind for a battered copy of Thoreau and pair of sturdy walking boots. "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." On his exodus appear many potential surrogate family members, who offer companionship, understanding and love, but these are all rejected in the pursuit of purity.

Predictably, enlightenment takes a tragedy: "happiness [is] only real when shared". In this, Into the Wild echoes the best impulses of early monasticism, where flight to the desert was not to abandon one's neighbour, but to learn how to love him better.

The explicit theology of the film is good: "When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines on you." The implicit theology of the narrative is better: "When God's light shines on you, you are loved and learn to love. And when you are loved and learn to love, you are forgiven and can forgive."

Four out of five.

One Movie Meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
Coffee and Cigarettes

2. One movie that made you cry
Dancer in the Dark

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
The Return of the King

5. One movie you hated
Transformers

6. One movie that scared you
The Birds

7. One movie that bored you
Inland Empire - the most fascinating and compelling three hours of tedium I've ever seen. I love/hate Lynch.

8. One movie that made you happy
3-Iron

9. One movie that made you miserable
Nobody Knows

10. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
My Best Friend's Wedding

11. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Jim Curring (the cop) from Magnolia

12. A movie that surprised you
Devot

13. The last movie you saw
Black Sheep

14. The next movie you hope to see
Babette's Feast

15. Now tag five people:
Benjamin, Mark, Dave, Jason and anyone else who feels like it.

As it is in heaven

Having recently seen Så som i himmelen (As it is in heaven), I've had two thoughts:

• Swedish sounds easier to learn than I expected; there were many links to both German and Old English (not that I can speak either of those, but even the smattering of each was enough to pick up a few lines in the film).

• More importantly, the enduring popularity of the film* demonstrates our society's deep yearning for genuine community.

The story explores the development of a small Swedish village church choir under the guidance of a brilliant international conductor who unexpectedly retires in order to return to his roots. The choir are drawn together by a shared object of desire into a community that is creative, healing, honest, non-judgemental, transformative, sexuality-celebrating, fear-overcoming, a refuge and has space for difference and imperfection - in fact, all the things church is meant to be. No wonder the village pastor is driven into obsolescence.

This is a film that draws deeply upon Christian language and symbolism, not least in having a Christ-figure around whom the community formed, whose ‘crucifixion’ (first through being rejection, then symbolically in his own death) reconciled and established the community. Moreover, in this community angels can be glimpsed and life starts happening on earth as it is in heaven. In contrast, the village church, particularly through the figure of the repressed and repressive priest, is revealed as a sham community of control, conformity, fear, gossip and envy. The community claiming to be Christian is thus critiqued using many of its own standards.

Its alternative was a "church" with no prayer, no sin, no sacrament, no word. Just music. Although the slow growth into honesty amongst the choir led to many dramatic acknowledgements of long-buried tensions, and in (almost) every case this lead to new levels of love and acceptance and unity, the film would portray the dramatic outburst of hidden emotions, but not the long and sometimes slow process of working it through to reconciliation. Perhaps we have to assume this occurred off-camera, but it is of such stuff that real community is made.

Unfortunately, the film was more interesting theologically and musically than dramatically: wounded genius retires early and returns to his home village where he has to confront his past yet finds acceptance and love through learning to offer them to others.

Four out of five stars.
*I think it is still showing at the Orpheum in Cremorne, more than a year after it opened, making it the longest-running film in Australia. It's been showing continuously for the last two and a half years in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Images from here, which also suggested that the film is "a classic Western. Mysterious stranger rides into town, arousing the womenfolk and upsetting the menfolk. Although a man of peace, his presence excites violence. In the end, he must die for his beliefs, releasing the town from its troubles (it's kinda difficult to ride off into the sunset when the next one might not come for another 9 months)."

Top Ten Films II

A while ago, I posted my top ten films of the last six months (whether seen on DVD or at the cinema). Here is an updated list for the second half of the year, though I doubt any of these would make it onto my all time top ten, and most of them would come behind the earlier list.

10. Mad Max II 1981
9. Ten Canoes 2006
8. Lucky Miles 2007
7. The Thing 1982
6. Eastern Promises 2007
5. Perfect Blue 1998
4. Efter brylluppet (After the Wedding) 2006
3. Red Road 2006
2. Inland Empire 2006
1. Coffee and Cigarettes 2005

Two disappointments in the last week have been Lions for Lambs and Elizabeth: the Golden Age. I am looking forward to Night on Earth, Bladerunner and A Scanner Darkly, which are all sitting on my desk on loan from a friend. Any other recommendations?

UPDATE: Having now watched A Scanner Darkly, I think it would have made it onto this list around number 4 or 5.

Boring lies

On Saturday night I saw Forbidden Lie$ with some friends. An investigation of the disgraced author Norma Khouri, whose book Forbidden Love (US title: Honor Lost) sold hundreds of thousands of copies and claimed to tell the true story of a shocking honour killing of a close friend, a Jordanian Muslim woman murdered by her family for falling in love with a Christian. Khouri actively campaigned from self-imposed exile for the liberalisation of Jordanian laws regarding such crimes.

However, a year after its release, Khouri's story was discredited by Malcolm Knox, a SMH journalist, who discovered that the author had grown up in the US, and was married with two children (after implying otherwise in interviews). Khouri refused to concede that her book was essentially fiction, claiming that names, dates and locations were changed to protect reprisals against family and friends.

The documentary (written and directed by Anna Broinowski) quickly covers this familiar territory through dramatic re-enactments and a wide variety of interviews. But as the interviews continue, Broinowski allows the various subjects to watch recordings of other figures in the controversy and tapes their reactions. Layer upon layer of subterfuge develops and the audience is left wondering where the truth lies. The film's tagline is "Con or artist? You decide" and the official website allows you to vote on your impression of Norma. The poll shows that audiences are quite divided in their reaction to the author, with some impressed at how the book drew international attention to honour crimes and others less than impressed at her deceptions and alleged financial swindling.

Personally, although the phenomenon of the book and its aftermath is fascinating, I found Norma Khouri herself to be less and less interesting as the documentary progressed. Her lies end up simply being boring. In the end, sin is always boring.
Image from femail.com.au.

Sicko

Last night I went to see Michael Moore's new(-ish) doco Sicko on the US Health system (amongst other things). As usual for Moore, there were more stories and stunts than statistics, more emotion than evidence, more amusement than analysis. Nonetheless, this film is worth seeing and talking about. Not only is it less bitter and nasty than his other work that I've seen, it also raises issues more directly relevant to Australia than Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11. With a health system more privatised than the UK, but far more public than the US, debates about the direction of Australian health care continue.

Since being diagnosed with cancer in December, I have received thousands of dollars worth of consultation, treatment and drugs, at almost no cost (a few dollars for the drugs). I give thanks for the public health system and taxation that has enabled this. Yet thoughout the process, I noticed many encouragements towards private health cover, with some messages advising that to do so would help the public hospitals by giving them more funds.

While this may be true in the short term, I am very hesitant about doing my little bit to encourage us closer to the US system. The more patients on private cover, the easier it is for the government to justify health cuts, thus downgrading the public system and giving more incentive for people to switch to private cover. And the losers are those who can't afford it. Though as Moore points out, this means we all lose.

I realise this is a very complicate issue and that I only have a very basic grasp of it, but I'd love to understand more.

Do you have private insurance? If so, why? Do you think this makes any difference to the system as a whole for you to 'vote' this way? Any opinions from those who work in the health system?
Dr Perseus performs a tricky piece of surgery. Twelve points for the first to guess the city in which this work is found.

Transformers: substantially less than meets the eye

Speaking of films, on Friday night I saw Transformers. A mistake, I confess.

I was all ready to find references to the energy crisis in the Allspark (powerful forces pursuing a huge energy source to a distant land and turning it into a battle ground), or perhaps a Christ-figure in Optimus Prime (one of the cooler names from my childhood spent watching animations). But instead we had the usual advertisement for the military (Hollywood directors get to use expensive toys if they they let the US military turn the script into a recruitment drive) and yet another make-your-enemies-pay account of redemptive violence.

A friend with whom I saw the film (who shall retain his anonymitiy until I need a chance to name and shame) dared me to write a blog post titled "Transformers: fact or fiction?" and pose the question whether there might not actually be robots in disguise amongst us. But there's no need for discussion. The Allspark is not buried in Hoover Dam; he walks amongst us (or, more usually, flies above us). More commonly known as Steven Spielberg, his touch can instantly turn two hours of slush into a millions of dollars.
Fifteen points for the first to correctly name all three locations in the linked pictures.