Andrei Tarkovsky

The Heart - From 'Stalker' by Andrei Tarkovsky

Over at The Film Talk, my co-host Jett Loe and I are very excited at the prospect of watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky; the Russian director whose work represents a rare fusion of art and spirituality:

Jett: 'If there were one film to take to a desert island and the only one I could see for the rest of my life, it would be 'Andrei Rublev'.  It's an astonishing, engrossing film that feels like it was shot in the time it was set.  In the 14th century.'

Gareth: 'I probably haven't had a more transcendent experience with a film than when I saw 'Solaris''

Next month, our friends at Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC will present a week of cinematic mysticism with a complete retrospective of Tarkovsky's feature films.  We're going to record a podcast about Tarkovsky in a couple of weeks - and look forward to the extraordinary delight of watching all of his movies before recording.

We'll save the discussion of the meaning of his films for later; though their power probably can't be overstated, so I'll allow myself one comment: Andrei Tarkovsky's films leave me feeling as if cinema really does matter, make me excited to be alive, and remind me of the privilege of being human.  I feel more alive just thinking about them.

If you're in the area we can't encourage you enough to visit FilmLinc.  And if not, while DVD will be a poor substitute for the enveloping experience of watching this most spiritually expansive director's works in a cinema, I'd still visit the Mummy in Belfast's Ulster Museum even if I couldn't get to the pyramids.*

*Full disclosure: Much as I wish we had the budget to house me in New York for a week so I could sit at the Walter Reade Theater in the presence of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, only one of which I've actually seen in a cinema.  Alas The Film Talk ran on a shoestring even before the economic crisis...  So if you can't be in NYC for the season, don't feel lonely - we're in solidarity with you, watching at home.  Actually, it occurs to me that, given how Tarkovsky's films are as much about the interior journey of the individual human as they are about the macro-spiritual nature of the universe, ultimately each of them needs to be seen twice - once on the biggest screen you can find (try the Max Linder Kinopanorama in Paris if you're ever there), and once alone in your cave.  Doesn't particularly matter which order you do it in.  We're always living on at least two levels at the same time.  Or space.  Or the space between spaces.

The Trick is Not Minding

Kim Mitchell writes in response to my post on Glenn Beck and the end of the world: “I really appreciate what you had to say in this article about needing to have discernment and allowing any conversation or interaction between people be a chance to let God speak to both of us…So, may I ask how you’ve come to the conclusion that Revelations is “not a dime store almanac for future events”? Please do not read any sarcasm or condescension into my question – I really want to know.

I grew up with movies like A Distant Thunder and seminars from traveling “experts” with tribulation maps and have heard these people claim that the New Age movement and Care Bears were all signs of the “end times” – yeah, really, Care Bears. I came away for the movies scared – even though, as it was explained to me, I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be “left behind”. I spent time thinking the Devil might be able to fool me if he was so innocent looking as Care Bears. I have since come to my own conclusion – in a very small nut shell – that I don’t have to waste anytime worrying about when all that stuff is supposed to happen and that my responsibility is to be found loving God with all I am and my neighbor as myself regardless of my position on the time line of this world. And, in regard to what the Revelations are meant to reveal – in an even smaller nut shell – I’ve come to feel all those dream-like metaphors will be understood when they need to be.”

Thanks Kim - I too grew up with 'A Distant Thunder' and its sequel 'A Thief in the Night', in which, if I recall, the antichrist’s minions drive around the Midwest on motorcycles carrying portable guillotines to use on Christian necks; and I well remember a preacher saying he would 'stake [his] faith on it' that Jesus will one day return with traffic chaos and dead people in his wake. We were taught to be suspicious of almost everything - heavy metal, Coca Cola, and, yes, right there with you, Care Bears. This fear of the unknown was simply that: the anxiety of ignorance, mingled with a lack of confidence in our own identity.

There are many reasons for this - and we may get into them some day; but I wouldn't want to minimise the role of the socio-political tensions in the Northern Ireland of my youth as factors contributing to a fear-based experience of religion. As for why I no longer believe that Revelation is 'a dime store almanac'? Three reasons that I can think of just now. There are surely more; and I won’t know all of them – you’d need to ask people who know me what they think.

The first was a gradual shift in my understanding and experience of Scripture. I grew up among lovely, passionate, kind, often wise, beautiful people, most of whom also believed that the Bible gathers words that God literally told ancient Hebrew stenographers to type up. I didn’t know that there were other ways to read Scripture, that there are worlds to discover that you will never enter if you only read the Bible literally. Whatever else it may be, Scripture is poetry. It needs to be read therefore, as poetry; maybe it will become something else in the reading; but if we don’t begin by reading it as a genre of literature we may either write it off as insane, or end up taking the eschatological Kool Aid. This would be a tragedy, because I have a strong feeling that what we are supposed to be doing is to let the light shine in our darkness, realising that the darkness has not overcome it.

The second reason is linked: I realised that so much fear was, ironically enough, doing nothing but making me afraid. It took several years of good friendships, life experiences, a bit of therapy, and falling among people whose spirituality had become, or was becoming, a way of being rather than intellectual assertion. Questions about the existence of God or the meaning of doctrine or, especially, the end of the world just didn’t seem to fall within the category of argument or belief. These people – and you know who they are if you read this blog enough – are making space within themselves for what we still call God, despite the utter inadequacy of that word; they know that what that means is that they are allowing what is already happening in the universe to become realized in them: that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The third reason was encountering writers like Walter Wink and NT Wright who suggest that seeing Revelation as predictive in the way of a weather report reflects a mindset that characterised the medieval period: seeing the world like a three storey department store - hell in the basement, the here and now on the first floor, the afterlife upstairs; Revelation becomes then an ancient guy predicting the future 2000 years ago, and we get to live in the story right now, with the sands of eschatological time frittering away by the second. Wink, Wright, and many others make it far easier to see Revelation as macro-poetry: the world as it is: written to a violently persecuted church, but speaking today, a simple, but profound word: the light shines in the darkness, the darkness has not overcome it, and one day the darkness will disappear. Now, who knows what in practice that would mean? Who knows if my sense of this is correct? Who knows if ‘correct’ is even an appropriate theological category? Well, the anger and zeal of my earlier life was so destructive that I think I don't really mind.  Not that anger or zeal are inherently bad - we need them, in healthy proportions.  But whether or not I am certain about any of this?

For now, at least, the trick, as Peter O'Toole would say, is not minding. This may sound naïve or self-serving; but that’s not my intention.  I’ll say it clearly: it seems to me that one of the marks of mature humanity would be to stop minding most of the things that we use as reasons to feel pissed off, grumpy, unnecessarily angry, or somehow divided against other humans.  Every day presents reasons to get knocked off the path.  Every day.  We are not here to live in fear; and each day has enough opportunity to make us imagine all kinds of horror just waiting to pounce - the terrorising imagination of what Revelation might predict is just a larger, older version of this.  I spent too much time being frightened by Revelation; and then probably too much time also trying to argue with people who may be obsessed with it.  At this stage, however, I think the trick is not minding.

'Audience of One'

We've all had times when we knew, or thought we knew what we were doing was doomed to fail.  And we kept going.  Maybe we look back on these occasions as learning experiences, maybe they're embarrassing, maybe we ended up proving our pessimism wrong and actually won when it seemed that the likelihood of success was on a par with de Niro's hopes of getting to his island retirement at the end of 'Heat'.

Saw a fascinating little documentary last night, with one of the most unusual premises: Pastor Richard Grasowsky, the protagonist of 'Audience of One' saw his first movie at 40 years old, believes he then received a vision from God telling him to make the greatest film ever made - magnificently described as 'Star Wars' meets 'The Ten Commandments' - and so he tried to make it. His church appears to be put to the service of the movie, they go to Italy to shoot some of it, they rent an enormous studio, they hire actors who don't appear to know how to act, they pray and dance, they raise some of the money, they get sued by the city council, they pray some more, they behave without guile, they complete two shots of the movie (which show up in the DVD's deleted scenes and aren't too bad at all), and the further adventures of Moses Skywalker remains unfinished.

What's surprising about this film is the tenderness with which it treats the people on screen - it has become fashionable lately to only make fun of religious believers, but while 'Audience of One' has a good share of Christians making us laugh, it never mocks. The production company that Pastor Grasowsky set up is called 'What You See is What You Get' - and the documentary's director Mike Jacobs has taken this to heart: the church members are never portrayed as anything other than sincere, kind, good people; misguided, of course, and perhaps not harmless, but no less so than any other ideologically-driven movement that undervalues reason.  (In which category I include the New Atheists as well as fundamentalist religious believers; because both groups deny the evidence of alternative experience.  Sorry.  To readers who enjoy debating the merits of my religious adherence: I'm looking forward to discussing this movie with you.)

It's ultimately a sweet film, and the only one in which you're likely to hear an artist describe his vision for a particular film set as 'I want an ancient cappuccino shop/futuristic-ancient Starbucks deal'.

There's nothing like the passion that charismatic Christians can muster; but there may also be nothing like the apparent religious neurosis (that some might call arrogance) that takes over when people aren't able to subject their personal feelings to the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' (faith, tradition, reason and experience balanced against and with each other).   'Audience of One' doesn't look particularly deeply into the phenomenon of religious practices that allow Westerners to express their emotions in a manner reminiscent of fire-centered dances in National Geographic documentaries; but it raises the question: when we live in a world that tells us that the best thing a human being can do is to dream big dreams, what should we do when a friend's dream seems completely absurd?

Abortion, Murder, Terrorism/Language that Kills

Frank Schaeffer's contribution to the discussion about political responsibility in the US is significant: a former religious right leader acknowledging his part in the blame for creating the sparks that too easily turn into wildfires: "The reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

I am very sorry."

At the same time, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow's attempt to shock those who might feel something approaching ambivalence regarding Dr Tiller's murder, by portraying it as 'domestic terrorism', while understandable, comes close to mirroring the belligerence of those they are trying to denounce (O'Reilly, Limbaugh, etc.).  The use of terror terminology has a murky history.  I've written before that, for me, growing up in a society where the word 'terrorist' was bandied about as if it were as ubiquitous as sugar in tea, it served only to delay the inevitable: a process where we talked to, instead of killing each other.  Use the word 'terrorist' of an enemy and you make it much harder for political representatives to negotiate a less violent outcome.

So, because these things are more complicated than the tax code, let me say this, with apologies for not being able to find a way today to keep it brief:

1: The word 'murder' has become devalued.  So has the word 'terrorist'.  We need to be more careful when we use them.  Murder is far more serious than our popular culture allows - you only have to look at how the Phil Spector trial, which centered on the fact that the record producer regularly threatened women with guns, and then eventually destroyed a life by shooting a woman in the mouth, had its moral seriousness reduced by calling it a 'circus', where Spector's hairstyle received as much air time as his victim.  What was her name again?

2: It is appropriate to use 'terror' language to refer to any act part of whose purpose or consequence is to create terror, no matter who carries it out.  In that light, the attacks on 9/11 and the murder of Dr Tiller both can be called acts of terrorism.  But so is the bombing of Hiroshima by the Allied Forces.  And the interning of civilians without trial by the British state in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.  And the blowing up of bus stations or the targeting of police officers and soldiers by the IRA.  And any other act part of whose purpose or consequence is to create terror.  Whether or not you think this means that the word can be so broadly applied that it ceases to have any meaning, or that this definition may actually permit a more serious discussion of violence and how it is used (by non-state groups who call it 'freedom fighting', and by the state which calls it 'justice') is extremely important.

3: In this light, calling the murder of abortion providers 'terrorism' may be accurate, if only to shock those who feel ambivalence toward it into realising just what it is they are not condemning strongly enough.  But it may also have the effect of driving an even deeper wedge between groups of human beings who, if the rhetoric employed by their public representatives is to be believed, already hate each other.

4: However, using the word 'terrorist' as a noun to describe the totality of a person is not helpful, for the reasons I mentioned above: ultimately, violent conflicts are solved only either through negotiation or the total destruction or disempowerment of one party and its supporters. You can disagree with this statement if you like, but I doubt that you will be able to give me a example that disproves it.

It would be better to talk in general about terrorism, and specifically about abortion, and the murder of Dr Tiller, in the way Frank Schaeffer does.  There are things we can agree on in this context: that it would be better to have fewer abortions is perhaps chief among them.  People who are so angered by a political or moral matter that they want to kill its protagonists will not be calmed down by being vehemently denounced.  The person who killed Dr Tiller may well feed their rage on the kind of language being used by Olbermann and Maddow (two journalists whom I greatly respect, and am merely disagreeing with on this occasion - their talent for serious engagement with the issues, does, I hope, allow for such disagreement to occur without disparagement).  Let's have a conversation about what is really happening here:

An ancient myth is being played out: you kill me, I kill you, neither of us really knows why.  We inhabit a culture where violence is taken for granted.  It's on the air so much it feels like it's in it.  Acts of violence occur at the end of a continuum that begins with how we talk about being human.  Moral denunciations, even when focused on people who do awful things, need to be handled with care.  Bill O'Reilly isn't going to change if only enough liberals would shout at him.  People aren't going to stop killing people they disagree with if only our culture could isolate them further than they already are.

I have strong feelings about the Limbaughs and O'Reillys out there; sometimes it's difficult not to feel something approaching hatred for what I see as their insidious impact on the world; how they seem to start fires, and then run away.  But that's not going to get us anywhere; in fact, it may only serve to fuel their rage, although I don't imagine they're listening to me.

It would be far better to start with something we can immediately do something about: how we talk about what it means to be human, the reality of the fact that we are already prepared to accept certain forms of 'legalised terrorism' from the state, and, most of all, whether or not we are able to take the same kind of share in responsibility as Frank Schaeffer for the cultures we are nurturing.

David Lynch Interviews the Nation

David Lynch's Interview Project is quite something - a year-long endeavor in which the results of the director's mentored team crossing the country, asking strangers to talk about their lives will be broadcast.  On evidence of the first interview, up today, with Jess from Colorado, it's going to be a site I return to repeatedly during the year it will add new content.

There's a new interview every three days; Lynch's perspective on the world has produced some of the most compelling films of the past three decades; and despite a reputation for darkness and, let's face it, being more than a little offbeat, there's always compassion just under, or right on the surface.  The first interview in this project is deceptively simple: an old guy talks about regret while trains and traffic go by.  But there's a world etched into his face; a social history of the broken parts of the post-war era; a reflective man who doesn't seem able to get his feet on a stable path.  There may be more to this series than just people talking: it might just be Lynch's America, all-in-one, free, shot from slightly distorted angles, more alive in the margins than the heart of the machine would ever want to admit.