DJANGO UNCHAINED

'Django Unchained' is the perfect Quentin Tarantino film: fully alive to the possibilities of cinematic technique, mashing up an invented world with contemporary cultural references, gruesomely violent, and revealing something about ourselves that we haven't seen portrayed in a mainstream movie before. So 'Reservoir Dogs' shows us what gun shots really look like when they land in human stomachs, 'Kill Bill' reconfigures ancient myths about the extent to which parents may go to find their lost children, and 'Inglourious Basterds' makes the tastelessness of other combat films obvious to the point where it is difficult to imagine where the second world film can go next. And each of these films is profoundly paradoxical: does the violence represent, challenge, or reinforce the norm of justified horror that our sculpture worships?; does the use of the 'n' word confront audiences with our complicity in racism, or is it QT's way of getting away with his own?; does the fact that the wrapping is so sleek, so cool, so inviting, allow us to deny that we're also being entertained by stories in which people rip each other apart? 'Django Unchained' is, in this light, Tarantino's most fully realized vision of the world, not to mention his most financially successful film. His direction is so assured, he almost compels you to watch - Cecil B deMille used to come out from behind the curtain to remind his audience of the Importance of the movie they were about to see (in a lovely example of Hollywood over-self-importance, implicitly linking 'The Ten Commandments' to anti-Communist patriotism); Tarantino has made a film about US American history the debate about which is taking on the status of a political campaign. Spike Lee is refusing to watch this story about a freed slave and bounty hunter tracking down bad guys and rescuing the slave's wife, while I've heard other black critics here in the US speak of how liberated they feel by seeing a blockbuster movie entertainment that forces the audience out of collective denial about slavery. When given the opportunity to discuss the filmic references (primarily the Spaghetti Western, but also blaxploitation cinema, and plantation epics), Tarantino will talk all night; when asked to discuss the possible sociological impact of his fictional violence, he stays above the fray, denying any connection at all.

So what we're left with is a film. A film in which we see people torn to shreds by dogs, or beat each other to death, or be threatened with castration; because they are not considered people, but the industrial property of white privilege. This is yet a sanitized version of slavery: two and a half hours in a cinema isn't enough to grasp anything like the realities of involuntary transportation, family destruction, sexual torture, psychological degradation, and murder that considered normal enough that a civil war was fought partly in its name. For that, 'Django Unchained' is truly an important film. It tries to face historic evil, and manages to do it in a form that will maximize the audience.

It also portrays a different kind of black hero than has been previously seen - the range of emotions displayed by Django has not previously been permitted to black characters in mainstream movies. That, along with the sheer joy of filmmaking makes this a certain kind of magnificent film. But it's also a magnificent mess: climaxing with utter destruction wrought by Django in the cause of revenge. Tarantino seems to think that, as with 'Kill Bill's Bride, and the 'Inglourious Basterds', there is no alternative for Django but to slaughter everyone in his path. He doesn't seem to realize - or at least his characters don't know - that there are other morally viable, and dramatically interesting ways to respond to other people's cruelty. You don't have to meet horror with horror. Clint Eastwood knew that as long ago as in the ending of 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'. Tarantino is a fantastic stylist, and a courageous storyteller. But it's hard not to suggest that his philosophical paradigm could do with an extra shot of emotional maturity.

The Wonders of Wreck-It Ralph

Not much was made of the rules that Disney and PIXAR broke last year, but if you look closely enough, it's clear that 2012 was a ground-breaking moment for the myths our brother mouse typically prescribes. 'Brave' and 'Wreck-It Ralph' are two sides of a rather elegant coin: one a revisionist fairy tale in which a take-no-prisoners princess shakes off the pressure to conform to something more 'ladylike', and finds she can have a pretty decent relationship with her mother, both of whom end up more human (and funkier) as a result; the other an inversion of bully stories, in which the strongman is freed to use his clumsiness for good, and discovers what might more superficially be described as his 'feminine' side along the way. 'Wreck-It Ralph', released on BluRay this week, is the tale of Ralph, doomed to be the villain in a Mario Bros.- style game, trying to break free from his bumpiness, and Vanellope, a girl with a glitch who just wants to be allowed to take part. It's gloriously inventive - an opening sequence covers the gamut of video game nostalgia, evokes the power of 12-step programs (the computerized 'bad guys' keep their meetings anonymous by meeting in PacMan's central pen - at last we know what that's for), and even has a morose Satan giving advice on how to make peace with inner conflict. It's visually alive - with a delicious revisualization of Grand Central station as an architectural cornerstone; and its narrative is endlessly imaginative - blending the archetypes of Donkey Kong and racing games with cookery and dress-up, and inviting both Ralph and Vanellope to participate in all of it (not to mention the love affair between a butch female soldier and the wistful Felix), this movie's take on playing with gender is kind of revolutionary.

It's been criticized (including by me on first viewing) for having a villain - in the form of King Candy - who may see to represent the long line of Disney 'evil queer' stereotypes (think of Scar in 'The Lion King', Kaa in 'The Jungle Book', and Jafar in 'Aladdin'). But a second look at the context suggests otherwise - Candy is a more faux foppish royalty than homophobically effeminate, and the heart of this film has a macho guy baking cakes while a princess becomes something like Indiana Jones.

So it's a film about how different is good, masculine and feminine are inventions that only serve us as far as we want them to, and most of all, the age-old notion that you're fine just as you are. That's not far off a military recruiting slogan of course ('be all that you can be' fits with how the casual militarization of childhood in video games is not ignored here, along with continuing the unfortunate tendency to deal with the bad guy by simply killing him); but 'Wreck-It Ralph' does a much better job of imagining a hero's journey that's more about becoming human than warrior. It's a perfect companion piece to 'Brave', and a huge leap forward in the way Disney teaches us to imagine finding the gift within. It's also over-the-top entertaining, deliriously funny, and the best kids' film for adults that the Mouse has produced in years.

For Your Consideration

The best joke I heard about the Super Bowl blackout was that it might have been an extended and rather spectacular "For Your Consideration" ad for Beasts of the Southern Wild, the elegant, eloquent, and elevating film set in the Louisiana environs near the New Orleans Superdome.That movie, to my mind the best of the nine 2013 Best Picture Oscar nominees, a group of films selected to climb the strange competitive ladder in which artists are expected to act like racehorses and producers like the colorfully-jacketed employees of the New York Stock Exchange, is a magnificent work of art. It's magnificent because it makes something hugely universal out of a tiny story, and art because it does this with supreme craft and political meaning.

It's the anti-Argo, an unconsciously self-congratulatory thriller that starts well, with at least a semblance of acknowledgement that the problems faced by modern Iran are partly America's doing, yet descends into a "white savior vs brown savage" cliche that would make Dances with Wolves look like it was written by bell hooks (who, for other reasons, doesn't like Beasts either). It should be obvious that there is so much more to Iran than angry mobs and ruthless cops, but portraying one nervous housekeeper isn't enough to reflect the pressing need for today's Westerners to face our complicity in a system of media and artistic representation and political belligerence that sustains the myth that Tehran’s streets are innately more primitive than those found inside the Beltway. So my recommendation in this Oscar month is that we take note of the nine films nominated by watching the best one, and doing eight other things instead of obsessing about gold statuettes. My modest proposals follow.

Read the rest of this post at Fuller Seminary's Reel Spirituality blog

With Gratitude for Richard Twiss

My elder, mentor and brother Richard Twiss died, aged only 58, on Saturday February 9th, after a heart attack in Washington, DC. Since I met Richard four or five years ago, I felt close to him; and it's clear from the tributes emerging since his death this weekend that many others felt the same. I know that he loved me, that he wanted me to succeed, that he welcomed me as an immigrant into his native land. I will miss him a great deal. Of course, many others knew him better, and will memorialize him more elegantly, but I want to record some of the thoughts I've had since hearing of his sudden illness and death.

The first time we met, my friend Denise and I ended up sharing a tall round table with Richard in a Valley Forge, PA pub. Something in the air led us to decide to tell our best stories, our wildest versions of ourselves. I felt compelled to speak of the time I took all my clothes off in an attempt to intervene with someone who appeared to be close to a violent act, in a front yard in Santa Cruz; Richard laughed with me, the laughter of one who knows that sometimes a crazy fucked-up world requires crazy fucked-up interventions. It was the first time I had ever told that story. Richard had a way of helping you to find the better version of your story, and to live from a place of amused courage.

Next time I saw him we were in Atlanta for a public conversation on post-colonial theology, empire religion, and hearing the voices that are typically ignored. I was going through some personal difficulties at the time, and he invested time to listen and care; enough to call later to ask how things were going. Richard was realistic about personal suffering, and willing to sit in the ashes with you when you were going through it.

A month or so thereafter, we were at a gathering convened for leaders to offer mutual support and encouragement on the road. We found ourselves amidst an intense dialogue about sexuality and theology; a bunch of good people trying to come to good solutions about challenging questions. I spoke up, naming my own challenge: that the religious conversation about sexuality has scapegoated LGBTQ people and ignored both the wound and the gift of sexuality granted to each human being, whatever our sexual identity; among other things, I suggested that 'queer', for some people, has become a way of turning an insult into a sign of strength. That, so, yes, maybe I'm queer and I delight in my queerness - God has created me different (and you too), and I delight in my uniqueness. This can, with respect and care, be extended beyond the specific reference to sexuality, and apply to any form of difference that has caused marginalization, exclusion, or dehumanization. When we retired to the pub later, I announced that the four spaces in my car were reserved for anyone willing to identify with, or as, queer for the night: not as a token, but as a way of inviting conversation about the very thing we all seemed to want to address: who is 'them' and who is 'us', and how do we make journeys toward each other when the very roads we walk on depend on structures that have already committed genocide. Richard got in my car that night, and I'll never forget him walking alongside me in my own sense of vulnerability and loss. I don't know if he was afraid of what people might think, or if he even cared; I do know that, to him, solidarity with the marginalized meant more to him than his own reputation.

More recently, he taught me a brilliant lesson about success: when planning a large community gathering last year, I asked for his advice amidst my anxiety and fear that it might not work. His response was priceless: in my community, he said, we're so used to failure that we don't judge ourselves too harshly when things don't work out the way we wanted them to! And so, not for the first time, Richard helped me not take myself too seriously.

The last time I saw Richard Twiss, my elder, mentor, brother and friend, was two months ago; at the annual gathering that our friend Tony convenes. He led a substantive conversation about diversity in Christian contexts; and powerfully challenged us to respond to the fact that there is not one nationally recognized Native American Christian leader. My inner monologue wanted to scream 'But Richard! It's YOU! You are the voice we need to hear!' Of course he was speaking from a place of characteristic humility; and it has already been noted by others that he had recently spoken of wanting to take a step back from being on the road so much, and to spend time among his people, so perhaps he was speaking out of hope that others would come forward in his place. Whatever the case, Richard Twiss' voice was internationally recognized - and rightly so - for calling attention to his people's experience, suffering, and gifts. I am richer for having had the opportunity to hear it. I want to learn to listen, and as I pray for his family's comfort, and for his peace on what has now become this vast new journey, I want to commit to not forgetting what he taught me, how he showed me love, and why so many people loved him so much.

Following

1999 was the last great year for cinema until 2012 rolled around - and what might have been the greatest thing about it was the emergence of new/newish film-makers ready to reinvent the medium, and veterans trying to outdo them.  PT Anderson, David O Russell, Kimberly Peirce and Spike Jonze all released movies that firmly established themselves as new auteurs, 'The Blair Witch Project' shocked business mavens as much as audiences by showing how you could make a hundred million dollars out of a camcordered walk in the woods, and Michael Mann reinvented 'All the President's Men'.

Lost amidst the scrambling acclaim (and in some cases, genuine awe) inspired by 'Magnolia', 'Three Kings', 'Boys Don't Cry', and 'Being John Malkovich' was the feature debut of an English bloke with a tiny film, rejected by Sundance, and resembling nothing so much as a C-list noir made by a first year undergraduate who thinks he understands Nietzsche.  'Following' is a movie worth watching to remind yourself how beginnings are often messy, that making a film is bloody hard, and that the one thing (along with all the other things) that cannot be accounted for in the movie business is serendipity.  Its director, Christopher Nolan, went on to make 'Memento', 'Insomnia', 'Batman Begins', 'The Prestige', 'The Dark Knight', 'Inception', and 'The Dark Knight Rises'.  So you already know if you like him or not.  I do.  Very much.  He's a rare director - Nolan has massive industrial craftsmanship, a sense of aesthetics, and a moral vision.  The fact that this moral vision may seem ambiguous (he seems to support Bruce Wayne's inner struggle and heroic sacrifice for the sake of the economically marginalized, but presents an Occupy-style social movement as the domain of people who might arguably be labelled terrorists) reveals only that he, like the rest of us, is a work in progress; he's luxuriating in the freedom to make thought experiments that the world gets to see.

'Following' is pregnant with embryonic Nolanisms - huge close-ups, characters with shadowy inner lives, criminals aiming for class and ideas, violent set-pieces, and a twist ending.  It's a delight to visit it for the first time, perhaps most of all as a reminder of how much can made of limited resources.

'Following' is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion.