In Memory of John

Three years ago tonight my friend John O'Donohue crossed the threshold that he always considered helping others to travel  one of the greatest privileges of ministry.  He died in his sleep, his beloved at his side, at 52 years old, three weeks after I had last spoken to him.  His extraordinary book 'To Bless the Space Between Us' was near publication, and when it surfaced a couple of months later the opening chapter on thresholds and the inevitability of change made a different kind of sense than I imagine he intended when writing. Those who knew and loved him were bereft; the most astonishing funeral and memorial gatherings ensued in such rapid succession, and went so deep that it seemed to be several months before we ran out of organised events to attend to remember the poet, priest, mystic, artist, humorist, and friend; a man so large in spirit that thousands of people were changed by his death.  It was a privilege to know him, and to be known by him.  I hear his voice on my i-pod all the time - I'm grateful that there were so many recordings made of his work; and I hear his voice in my inner life, calling me to live from my best self.

This year begins with remembering John on this third anniversary; and with reflecting on my own life, amidst wonder and challenge.  I, too, would 'love to live as the river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding'.  I, too, wish to be a blessing to others.  I, too, am frail and flawed and broken; and frequently fail to give to others what I want to receive myself.  John would, I imagine, say to me what he often said, quoting his mighty friend Lelia Doolan, that in times of confusion and fear, you should 'steady yourself', and let the light shine through the cracks, even - perhaps especially - those you have created yourself.

If we are to honor John's memory, we might want to devote this year to one of his other sharpest and most elegant ideas: that the first friendship we must cultivate is the one we have with ourselves.  May 2011 be the year in which you become your own best friend.

The Thin Red Line

Two films released by the Criterion Collection this week focus on men at war.  We'll discuss Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' on the next episode of The Film Talk, and below; later in the week I'll post a piece on 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'.  These are two of the most compelling films released on DVD this year.

When I first saw Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line', it was the turn of the century, Bill Clinton was still in office, the Twin Towers were intact, and the film seemed to be about the past.  The distant past, to be sure: a film that begins with a reptile submerging and ends with a plant growing on a beach seems to exist a long time before we did.  The nearer past, ostensibly: it takes place in 1942 during the early Guadalcanal Campaign (although you'll look in vain for the caption that appeared on the print I saw over a decade ago to indicate it; Malick, it seems, has had that removed from the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD release: he wants the movie to exist outside time). This is only appropriate, as it aims to be a poem about the primitive roots of violence, the lack of maturity among men who see the world only as a fight, the power of love to sustain even when it is broken, the tragedy of human beings caught in a web that they think dictates that only violence can be the path to power in this life.

Voices of men mingle over images of nature, John Travolta pulls rank on Nick Nolte, ironically mirroring the tragic missing-the-point skirmishes between some blogospheric film critics, Jim Caviezel auditions for Jesus' last day by playing out some of his early life, prayers are sung and sound like food.  Watching it now, after what may be the defining decade of our generation has passed, it's impossible not to think of 'The Thin Red Line' as a film about the here and now.  Jared Leto sends men to their deaths not knowing why or what he's doing, and perhaps not even caring; how was I to know, in 1998, that this was a prophecy about the man about to steal the White House?  Bodies are on fire and I hear the voice of Max von Sydow in 'The Exorcist' invoking the notion that evil is allowed to happen to make us believe we are unlovable.  Youth is wasted as guys accidentally blow themselves up; identity is formed through 'having your own war'; loss is made flesh as its stewards are 'mocked with the sight of what we might have known'.  Terror rules the world.  And then, there's light.  And trees.  And a new, untouched space, underwater, unaware.  A place where poetry underwrites the state of things.  The paradox of 'The Thin Red Line' is that it makes you feel at peace even as it confronts you with horror. It opens up a space of wonder amidst decay, serving as an awe-striking religious shibboleth.  It's not a war film.  It's a warning: of what we are like when we make the economic and political purposes of life depend on an avoidance of the transcendent.

Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism Gathering

We're making some final plans for the Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism Event - a week in Northern Ireland in August, leading up to Greenbelt.  There are still some places left, but we need to make some decisions this week about numbers - so if you're interested we need to hear from you very soon.  More details on the event here - if you're interested in participating, let us know...

Letting Go...Some Thoughts on 'Lost'

Of course many of us saw, are still thinking, and want to talk about 'Lost'.  I'm no expert (that appelation belongs to good folk like Chris Seay), nor even that much of a fan, but I have followed the show, in good times and bad.  My brief thoughts on the implications of how it ended and why I liked it: 1: It does what good conclusions always do: allows for us to go back and watch from the start with enhanced enjoyment.

2: It genuinely lets characters breathe, and despite the surreal contexts of the narrative, do things that real people actually do, which makes it better than almost anything else currently screening on network television.

3: It ends up being more like a film that I never considered a progenitor until last night ('The Last Temptation of Christ') than its most obvious grandfather ('Star Wars').

4: It earned the right to attempt serious points partly because it was always able to laugh at itself.  ('Christian Shephard?  Really?')

5: It suggests something hugely significant about our current popular culture: the narrative of personal transformation dominates, and the link between facing your own death and making a good life is front and centred.  John O'Donohue always said that the greatest privilege of working in a pastoral context was helping people to die well; in that sense, at its best, 'Lost' is like a meta-level good priest, a comforting myth, a reassurance that every moment allows for the possibility of miracles: the miracle of human beings in conflict forgiving each other, the miracle of lives well lived, and the miracle perhaps most underthought, that of the ability to choose.

But before we get too excited and announce the Second Coming of Tolstoy, there's a shadow side:  I think part of why the ending of a show like 'Lost' affects people is because we're all longing for lives that seem as rich as the characters in good fiction; or, frankly, we want to have lives as rich as the lives of people who work in television seem.  Of course this is to collude in a myth that is ultimately oppressive: while we may be thoroughly enjoying and learning from 'The Sopranos', 'The Wire', 'Six Feet Under', 'Battlestar Galactica', 'Lost', and now 'Treme', we're also paying for it by sitting through advertising, or buying Dharma Initiative branded lasagna; more than that, we're subject to the temptation to confuse reading directions with climbing mountains (how many young men saw themselves in Neo, were inspired to re-evaluate their lives and sense of vocation, made emotional commitments to living subversively, and fleshed this out primarily [or exclusively] by purchasing the Playstation 2 game?)  The map is not the city.  'Lost' is over.  It's time to let go.

Summer Hours

Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche, and Charles Berling,

looking happier than they often feel in 'Summer Hours'

The premise that underlines Olivier Assayas’ film ‘Summer Hours’ couldn’t be more unfamiliar: elderly matriarch dies, her three adult children have to decide how to split up her estate, the Musee D’Orsay gets involved because said estate includes a lot of art and objets d’art, and some teenagers have a party in the rambling French country pile that has given the family shape for a generation. The end.

Given that I don’t have a) any objets d’art, b) a rambling French country pile, or c) contacts at the Musee D’Orsay, ‘Summer Hours’ nails what my old sociological colleagues would call ‘the condition of postmodernity’, and in that sense, ‘the condition of my life’ as if it were written about me. You might feel that way too, especially if you’re a middle class Westerner (in an ironic example of the limits of globalisation, that particular marker of non-diversity probably accounts for most of the readers of this blog, as well as the writer). ‘Summer Hours’ manages to make me think about be utterly compelling, to entertain and provoke, to suggest the contours of the world in which we currently live, and to suggest that its characters have existed before the film started, and will go on once it’s done.  A film of moments, because it knows life's biggest gravities often look tiny or even invisible when they're happening.  Trust me - as I look back over the past five years of my life, it seems to me entirely true that the most important thing I did was to spend fifteen minutes picking raspberries in New Zealand with my best friend.  All the external 'success', money, 'spectaculars' that may have happened are easily filed away into 'do not resuscitate' - they won't sustain me.  To sustain me in a sense of well-being, peace, and the possibility that I might do less harm to those around me?  Picking raspberries in a field in New Zealand.  That'll do.

(As for 'Summer Hours' moment of moments?: It's a close call between the protagonist (who dies in the first quarter of an hour - and that's not a spoiler) unpacking a new telephone, a 75th birthday gift that becomes something like the most heartbreaking metaphor you could imagine; or the way the camera lures itself up to Juliette Binoche’s face, and the sound rises as the camera closes in, and she weeps as her boyfriend leans toward her offering the relational closeness that the film is grieving.)

It’s a film about what drives the world, what family is, the role of art in living well, what the past means, the interconnection and fragmentation of the things; it creates a fully realised setting that I felt I could watch forever, partly because the way of life it is describing is itself becoming a museum piece.

Criterion releases ‘Summer Hours’ on DVD and Blu-Ray next week - gorgeous transfers as usual, and a pretty decent long interview with Assayas accompanies an essay by Kent Jones and making of documentary. It’s a magnificent film - one of the best of the past few years.