DanSheffield

Cormac McCarthy's Little Fire

Keep a little fire burning.

However small,

However hidden.

 

Cormac McCarthy (American novelist who died last week; June 13/23)

 

I was really impacted by the visual imagery and storyline of The Road, the 2009 movie version of Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name.

 

In this short music video I sing Patty Griffin's song Little Fire, with images from the movie. (I'm not satisfied with my guitar playing, just so you know)

This imagery fits my picture of the role of Christian community in the midst of our post-Christendom, secular age. I've thought about this theme a lot more than my sparse words here.

mashup of mark's jesus and south african politics

Had a chance to watch a film called, Son of Man (nominated for Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize 2006). It is a unique telling of the Jesus story in the tradition of Jesus Christ Superstar, but set in a Judea looking surprising like South Africa of the past couple decades. The writers use the Gospel of Mark's narrative style coupled with the Marxist/Catholic/Liberation theology critique uniquely shaped by the South African struggle against apartheid. The Jesus character is a combination of Steve Biko, Ghandi and a traditional shaman (sangoma). There is a great combination of Nguni cosmology with a contextualized telling of the biblical story.  In a unique twist at the end, Jesus is shot and buried in an unmarked grave by petty political thugs, then dug up by his mother, Mary and placed on a cross in a public setting as symbol for 'the people' to rise up united and conquer evil through non-violent confrontation. And of course Jesus stays dead, cuz he's just a son of man...  -- that would be the part where the movie departs from truth :)

remembrance & symbols

There is an interesting debate going on in the public sphere in Canada this year about red & white poppies. We should not imagine that this is a new debate, or a particularly Canadian one. As early as 1926 Brits representing the No More War Movement were asking for adjustments to the fundraising campaign associated with the red poppies. The white poppy notion first emerged in 1933.

This British movement expresses itself this way:

"The White Poppy symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts than killing strangers. Our work, primarily educational, draws attention to many of our social values and habits which make continuing violence a likely outcome.

From economic reliance on arms sales (Britain is the world's second largest arms exporter) to maintaining manifestly useless nuclear weapons Britain contributes significantly to international instability. The outcome of the recent military adventures highlights their ineffectiveness in today's complex world.

Now 89 years after the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ we still have a long way to go to put an end to a social institution, which in the last decade alone killed over 10 million children."

I must admit that I have always been a bit ambivalent around this time of year, all of my 50 years. The memorial symbol notion is always coupled with the display of military gear and hardware, pride in our national accomplishments, as well as the repeated showings of Saving Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers -- bloody military movies, granted, with the stated intention of depicting the awful, often senseless deaths of young men and women at the whim, and often misdirection, of their governments. [when I was a teenager they were showing John Wayne's Green Beret and Clint Eastwood's Kelley's Heroes]

Then there is that bit about my own Anabaptist roots -- where one of my ancestors in Vaughan township was brought before the courts and fined for not providing his wagon and team, as a matter of conscience, for the use of the British in their defence of Canada in the War of 1812.

Not least the notion that as Christian I am first and foremost a citizen of a peaceable kingdom, in which we should all be uncomfortable with too close an identification with any given earthly kingdom. I am happy to sing 'O Canada' at my son's school program -- where of course no one sings it!! I am a bit more uncomfortable singing it in the gathering of 'called-out ones' on a Sunday morning -- where it is heartily sung...

That being said, I grieve deeply with anyone's loss of family or friend, whether lost in a car accident, to invasive disease, or in the midst of international conflict.

deconstructing Green Zone

just saw Green Zone tonight. what a blast. action-packed from beginning to end. Basically a look at the first few weeks of US presence in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

I remember thinking back then -- are there really no competent Middle East intelligence personnel talking to the White House? [the most serious, ridiculous, allegation wasn't about alleged WMDs, but that Saddam was actually connected to Al-Qaeda -- anyone that knew anything about Mid-East politics knew that was complete fabrication] So, the movie leads us to believe that there actually were Middle East intelligence veterans who were as dumb-founded as some of us -- its just that the Bush govt had its own agenda. This is all so self-evident now (2010), but at the time there were so few of us with dissenting, intercultural knowledge-able voices [actually that's not true either, there were many, just no one was listening].

One of the people I was with said, yeah, but the story is such a cliche now, to which I replied, no, really, there are people who still believe the manufactured story...

Some reviewers suggest the film "isn't cinema. It's slander. It will go down in history as one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio." New York Post article

Michael Moore is pretty incredulous about the film here

A UK journalist in the Guardian says

Ultimately what gives the film its credibility is that it avoids any simplistic idea that Iraq could have simply been "got right". Indeed Miller's vision of exposing the WMD conspiracy and the CIA's plan to keep the Iraq army is undermined by the film's wildcard – a nationalist Shia war veteran who turns the plot on its head before delivering the killer line to the Americans when he tells them: "It's not up to you to determine what happens in this country."

Brilliant moment in the film, that one.

remembering South African life

Our family was reflecting the other day on the tenth anniversary of our departure from South Africa. After spending 5 years living in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of KwaZulu-Natal province, we moved back to Hamilton in early Jan 2000. Those years had a significant impact on our whole family; Jared, age 2-7; Jamila, age 8-13; Kathy's studies in Human Geography, setting up a women's shelter, and then brain surgery; me leading a multicultural church plant and setting up a social housing company.

the occasion of our reminiscing was going to watch Invictus, the new Clint Eastwood movie about the 1995 Rugby World Cup and South Africa's win. That all took place during our years there, so the film brought back a lot of powerful memories (even though there are a variety of factual and geographical goofs in the movie). In fact the name of the movie is based on a poem, supposedly given by Mandela to the captain of the rugby team; Mandela did give him something just not that one, a portion of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt, "the man in the arena"

clashing cultures in the movies

I've recently watched two thought provoking movies about the clash of cultures in American society. Crossing Over stars Harrison Ford and Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood. Both are tough, gritty movies full of extreme language and violence, and definitely not recommended for a younger audience.

Crossing Over portrays a US immigration officer in southern California dealing with Mexican illegal aliens. Despite his desire to show compassion to the naive, the immigration system is not designed for compassionate people. In fact the whole movie portrays the immigration system as full of corruption, manipulation and face-saving. An female FBI agent of Middle Eastern background feels she has to play hardball with a 15 year old Bengali background Muslim schoolgirl who has grown up her whole life in the US, so that the agent is not seen to be showing favouritism. In fact the schoolgirl reminds me of the Tamil young people, who have grown up their whole lives under Canadian human rights and freedom of expression, defending the Tamil Tigers with righteous indignation on the streets of Toronto. In the end this film left me frustrated with a system that leaves some individuals within it struggling to do the right thing, but being continually thwarted by mindless bureaucracy.

Gran Torino tells the story of a grouchy, retired, Polish, recently-widowed, auto worker in Detroit, (who served in the Korean War) coming to terms with all the Hmong people moving into his neighbourhood. As he slowly is dragged into the extended family of his communally oriented neighbours, he begins to build the friendship of the two teenage children who serve as cultural informants to both their parents and the grouchy old man. When the teenagers are severely impacted by the gang culture of other disaffected Hmong youth, Eastwood's character feels he has to do something. And we start hoping that Dirty Harry will show up! But the old man embarks on a plan that involves sacrifice, violence and the recovery of voice and integrity in the neighbourhood. [don't want to give away the ending -- you need to watch this movie!]

great quote from Gran Torino:
Sue Lor: All the people in this house are very traditional. Number one: never touch a Hmong person on the head. Not even a child. The Hmong people believe that the soul resides on the head, so don't do that.
Walt Kowalski: Well... Sounds dumb, but fine.
Sue Lor: Yeah, and a lot of Hmong people consider looking someone in the eye to be very rude! That's why they look away when you look at them.
Walt Kowalski: Yeah. Anything else?
Sue Lor: Yeah... some Hmong people tend to smile or grin, when they're yelled at. It's a cultural thing, it expresses embarrassment or insecurity. It's not that they're laughing at you or anything.
Walt Kowalski: Right, you people are nuts.

A couple of years ago we had two movies, likewise dealing with the extreme clash of cultures, Crash and Babel. Babel left you feeling the issues very powerfully, but with little hope -- Crossing Over does the same. Crash pulled you into a complex overlay of cultures, but left you feeling that, yes, grace and mercy are still at work in the world -- Gran Torino is like that.

great quote from Crash: "It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

House M.D.

if I am able, my present favourite TV shows are House M.D. and Crossing Jordan. Both are medical oriented shows which feature grumpy, principled, workaholic, loners as the lead characters (hmm...). House received a Peabody Award in 2006, for what the Peabody board called an "unorthodox lead character – a misanthropic diagnostician" and for "cases fit for a medical Sherlock Holmes," both of which helped make House "the most distinctive new doctor drama in a decade." Every so often crusty House has a little epiphany, like in tonight's show where he refused to call a foetus, two week's short of viability, a baby. Until he had to operate on the foetus/baby and felt its living fingers grasp his finger. always lots of moral and medical ambiguity...

manufactured landscapes

had a chance to see this documentary on a flight to India. the opening sequence is 5 minutes of non-stop motion from one end to the other of a giant textile factory in China. Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky (he just did a show recently at my local Hamilton Art Gallery), moves from still camera to live action as Canadian director and sometime CBC arts critic, Jennifer Baichwal puts his vision of the changing landscape of the developing world on the big screen. how the beautiful National Geographic version of these lands is being changed (he won't say "corrupted") by encounter with industrialization and modernization. the viewer's encounter with the imagery is enough to evoke emotion; there is very little commentary.

Oscar nominated films

Here are the various Oscar-nominated films (in one category or another) that I have seen so far.

Blood Diamond, Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, Water, The Illusionist, The Devil Wears Prada

Catch a Fire

went with my wife and son and his friend to see Catch a Fire, the new film about the struggle in South Africa, starring Tim Robbins. The film tells the true story of Patrick Chamusso, a non-political mine worker who is bullied to the point that he decides to become a "freedom fighter". Chamusso was responsible for a renowned bombing attack on an oil refinery, the potential full damage being foiled by security police and "informants."

Some scenes were overwhelming for Kathy and I, having seen the results of the security police beatings, experienced the duplicity of white apartheid supporters, and having marched at the funeral of an ANC cadre. And I found myself giving the MK salute with Mandela in the theatre and saying "Amandla." We lived in SA 1989-90 (the last years of the apartheid regime) and again 1994-99 (the reconstruction era under Mandela).