sustain:if:able kiwi

film review: Australian film Mad Bastards

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

Mad bastards
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

Mad Bastards begins as an Aussie version of Once were Warriors.

Flames flicker as thirteen year-old Bullet (played by Lucas Yeeda), tosses a homemade Molotov Cocktail onto a wooden verandah in outback Australia. Meanwhile Bullet’s absent father, Aboriginal man, (TJ as Dean Daley-Jones), is drinking and fighting his way through Australia’s urban decay.

To resolve the distance, Mad Bastards becomes road movie. Think Convoy, Easy Rider, Smokey and the Bandit. Or closer to Australia, Mad Max.

TJ hitches toward the vast expanse that is the Kimberley (an area of north west Australia twice the size of New Zealand), seeking his son Bullet, whom he abandoned at birth. A quest, both physical and metaphorical, in which the journey provides opportunities for redemption. Which for TJ will include facing the past, including his estranged wife (Nella as Ngaire Pigram), father-in-law (Greg Tait as local police officer Texas) and his indigenous culture.

What Mad Bastards lacks in polish, it gains in reality. Director (Brendan Fletcher) began with oral stories from indigenous people and uses mostly untrained local actors. It makes for some ham moments but in a manner similar to Mike Lee (Secrets and Lies) allows them to improvise, threading their own experiences through the script.

This is a real movie about a culture and a country on a journey. In the week of the movie’s release, one of the actors, Roxanne Williams, was convicted of murdering her partner in their Kimberley home. In the month of release, journalist Nicholas Rothwell wrote of “a crisis of grief … a spiritual collapse so deep it cannot be held back … as an entire culture, acting collectively, destroys itself. (Living hard, dying young in the Kimberley, The Australian)

Kiwi readers might find such social comment difficult to comprehend. Where Maori have a treaty and a common language, indigenous Australians are in fact many nations with no historic legal protection.

The movie skillfully weaves in two further journeys, one therapeutic, another musical. Local cop, Greg Tait, responds to the violence and societal breakdown by starting a local men’s group. Sausages are devoured and no-one talks until Greg leads the way, sharing of his own struggles to parent and protect.

The musical soundtrack is a winner, made for the movie by local band, The Pigram Brothers and Alex Lloyd. Part calypso, part roots, part saltwater love songs, the band appear as actors in the film, traveling through the Kimberley, playing their quirky original music. It offers another thread in the road movie tapestry, upbeat and gorgeous yet at some dissonance with the themes being explored.

Curiously, the answer in Mad Bastards is baptism. TJ is told that while he does not belong to this indigenous community, he is welcome to become part of their lives. The next scene occurs by a river, where an elder stands, tipping water over TJ’s bowed head.

So begins transformation, as hospitality is offered, brokenness is faced and grace received.

film review of Never let me go: atonement theology at it’s worst and best

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

Never let me go
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

This is a haunting movie. Directed by Mark Romanek it remains deeply disturbing long after the credits roll. The film is based on a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. Short listed for the 2005 Booker, adapted for the big screen by Alex Garland, it provides some profound questions about being human and the person and work of Jesus.

The movie begins with Ruth (Carey Mulligan) watching her lover, Tommy (Andrew Garfield), preparing to be anesthetised on an operating table.

What follows is a cinematic triptych, elegantly woven together by the evolving love triangle between three friends, Ruth, Tommy and Kathy (Keira Knightley).

The year is 1978 and the friends are children (convincingly played by Ella Purnell, Charlie Rowe, Isobel Meikle-Small) at Hailsham School. What seems sheltered increasingly grows sinister, innocence hemmed by stories of dismembered bodies and evidence of repressed emotions.

Next, the year is 1985 and the children emerge into adolescence. The tension in the love triangle escalates and a sinister future becomes frightfully clearer. The three have been bred as organ donors, born to be broken apart in adulthood, spare lungs and limbs to ensure other humans are healthy.

Finally, the year is 1994 and in adulthood the three friends become re-entangled, each forced to confront their past and future.

Much of this makes little logical sense. Why don’t these three fight or flee? What events have breed a society in which humans exchange organs? Unnervingly, these unexplained absences, while perplexing, serve to make a plot simply more haunting.

In the final scene Ruth is alone. She contemplates her death, facing a fence on which pieces of plastic flap emptily on the wind. A chilling and senseless isolation is complete. All that remain are Ruth’s final words.

“Do we feel life so differently from the people we save?”

The word “save” jumped out, the idea that hunks of flesh ripped from one person’s body might prove essential to the salvation of another. Which brought to mind the Passion of Holy Week and the Christian gospels, which describe a body whipped and pierced. And the claim that such an act of brutality was essential to human redemption.

Are we really catching a glimpse of the Christian understanding of the person and work of Jesus?

Perhaps a difference is that of choice. Ruth, Kathy and Tommy are born to die, the days of their lives based on the whim of another. In contrast, in the Garden of Gethsemane we glimpse a Christ choosing to drink from the cup of human suffering.

While at Hailsham, Tommy gives Kathy a cassette tape of a (fictional) singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy grows to treasure one song in particular, titled, appropriately, “Never let me go.” She grasps it not as a love song, but as a mother’s plea to her baby. The song, a recurring musical note running the length of the movie, offers another way to understand the Easter experience. That in and through acts of perverse human brutality is the reality that in Jesus, we realise that God will “never let us go.”

a theology for mad b*****ds

I went to see the Australian movie, Mad Bastards, over the weekend.

Set in the Kimberley, in Western Australia, it is a window into the life of indigenous people in Australia today. I went as a film reviewer, to write a 500 word film review for a Christian newspaper. That’s in process, but it sits alongside the ongoing work of the Spirit in my life. Ultimately, this is a personal blog, that marks my journey, so it’s important to note that I’m in a bit of hard patch, with too much work on my to do list, to really enjoy the month of May. Add in a sick child and ongoing homesickness (Yep, the fiddle is playing). And the recent article by Nicholas Rothwell in The Australian, which continues to grieve and astound me.

A crisis of grief is unfolding, a spiritual collapse so deep it cannot be held back. … Those watching struggle for words and fear they may be watching as an entire culture, acting collectively, destroys itself. (for more go here)

That quote just keeps on undoing me. It just goes against every thing I know and profess about God and life and resurrection. Can I call myself Christian in this Aussie land when this sort of thing is happening?

Anyhow, one of the best parts of the movie was the soundtrack – original – by Alex Lloyd and Pigram Brothers. Fabulous folk rock. And all through the week, I’ve been enjoying one song in particular, Hearts and minds.

From within, from without,
There is fear and there is doubt

Nothing’s simple, nothing’s clear
Whats (?) the words we need to hear

Chorus
If we listen to the times
We can change your hearts and minds
We can change your hearts and minds
If we listen to the times

In your soul, the fire burns
round and round it spits and curls

In the flames, the truth may lie
Fumbling with the wrong and right

Chorus
If we listen to the times
We can change your hearts and minds
We can change your hearts and minds
If we listen to the times

I was asked to lead a devotional today. The lectionary text for Sunday is John 10:1-10. I think there’s a link; between my sadness, the song, the movie and the Biblical text. For example shared themes of listening to and in change. A sense of the complexity of listening. That it takes time and requires discernment. A requirement of courage, for to listen is to lay aside what we’ve heard in the past, and to listen to today.

Holy week at the movies: Never let me go, then Invictus on Easter Sunday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

Never let me go: again
While at Hailsham, Tommy gives Kathy a cassette tape of a (fictional) singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy grows to treasure one song in particular, titled, appropriately, “Never let me go.” She grasps it not as a love song, but as a mother’s plea to her baby. The song, a recurring musical note running the length of the movie, offers another way to understand the Easter experience. That in and through acts of perverse human brutality is the reality that in Jesus, we realise that God will “never let us go.”

Invictus

I’d want to focus on one stand out scene, when Matt Damon, playing Springbok Captain, looks out the bars of Mandela’s cell at Robben Island and struggles to grasp the impact of 27 years of back breaking hard labour:

“Thirty years in prison, cell and you come out and forgive the men who put you there.”

And Mandela’s understanding of leadership:

“The rainbow nation starts here. Reconciliation starts here. Forgiveness starts here. It liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it’s such a powerful weapon.”

Such is the power of “Invictus.” It offers a vision of the world in which forgiveness is centrally transformative, not just from the pulpit, but in leadership and through life.

Mark 16:6-7 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you.

Holy week at the movies: Never let me go on Friday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

This is a haunting movie. Directed by Mark Romanek it remains deeply disturbing long after the credits roll. The film is based on a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. Short listed for the 2005 Booker, adapted for the big screen by Alex Garland, it provides some profound questions about being human and the person and work of Jesus.

The movie begins with Ruth (Carey Mulligan) watching her lover, Tommy (Andrew Garfield), preparing to be anesthetised on an operating table.

What follows is a cinematic triptych, elegantly woven together by the evolving love triangle between three friends, Ruth, Tommy and Kathy (Keira Knightley).

The year is 1978 and the friends are children (convincingly played by Ella Purnell, Charlie Rowe, Isobel Meikle-Small) at Hailsham School. What seems sheltered increasingly grows sinister, innocence hemmed by stories of dismembered bodies and evidence of repressed emotions.

Next, the year is 1985 and the children emerge into adolescence. The tension in the love triangle escalates and a sinister future becomes frightfully clearer. The three have been bred as organ donors, born to be broken apart in adulthood, spare lungs and limbs to ensure other humans are healthy.

Finally, the year is 1994 and in adulthood the three friends become re-entangled, each forced to confront their past and future.

In the final scene Ruth is alone. She contemplates her death, facing a fence on which pieces of plastic flap emptily on the wind. A chilling and senseless isolation is complete. All that remain are Ruth’s final words.

“Do we feel life so differently from the people we save?”

The word “save” jumped out, the idea that hunks of flesh ripped from one person’s body might prove essential to the salvation of another. Which brought to mind the Passion of Holy Week and the Christian gospels, which describe a body whipped and pierced. And the claim that such an act of brutality was essential to human redemption.

Are we really catching a glimpse of the Christian understanding of the person and work of Jesus?

Mark 15:33 At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”–which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Holy week at the movies: Dark Knight on Thursday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

This has been a movie eagerly awaited.

First, because with Batman Begins, director Chris Nolan breathed fresh life into the comic genre and the darkly robed DC comic hero of Gotham City.

Second, because with the death earlier this year of Heath Ledger, this movie became a chance to honour the memory of a Hollywood star. Indeed (and sadly) it seems to somehow enhance the movie when you realise you are seeing in real time a man now dead.

The wonderful first. The pace is terrific and the plot is satisfying, the twists come faster than a batmobile. The special effects are eye-popping, with the Joker’s disappearing pencil trick and the truck crash a standout. The characters develop, with the Joker, malevolently superb. He outacts a star cast, including a convincing Michael Caine (Alfred), a mysterious Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), an authentic Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), but a strangely wooden Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes).

Heath Ledger is reported to have lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the Joker’s psychology, posture and voice. His performance is a reminder that human acting can shine alongside the biggest explosions and shiniest Batman suits. Take a bow, and probably an Academy, Heath Ledger and Chris Nolan.

Which leaves the disturbing. Nolan has now directed a string of excellent movies, including The Prestige (2006), Batman Begins (2005), Insomnia (2002) and Memento (2000) which probe the darkness around being human.

With the character of the Joker, we meet evil. As the Joker calmly walks the street, Gotham Hospital exploding behind him, we peer into the human abyss. If this is evil, what is the nature of redemption? In this sense, Dark Knight continues the theological work done in Batman Begins. Both movies explores the way evil and suffering shatters the human person. The ending offers little hope, with the choosing of a lie in the hope of preserving public truth. The movie shreds any feel good, Pollyannaish, liberal dreams of a better world, for the Joker remains a character you would not want to meet in either heaven or hell.

Dark Knight asks us to ponder seriously how low should grace go and how wide should redemption stretch. Don’t offer any Christian piety until you have faced the Joker.

Mark 14:10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 17When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. 18While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me–one who is eating with me.”

Holy week at the movies: Gran Torino on Wednesday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

A central figure in Holy week is Caiphas, the Jewish high priest, who announces that it is better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish (John 11:50). Such understandings, of the power of sacrifice to ensure community transformation, are ingrained in Christian faith and are powerfully explored in Gran Torino (2008).

Gran Torino is directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars as the main character, Walt Kowalski, an embittered veteran of the Korean war. Walt finds himself recently widowed, yet happily alienated from his family. From his front porch and down quiet Detroit suburban streets Walt growls over his changing neighbourhood and the growing presence of Hmong refugees. Like Walt, they too are struggling to cope with the evolving face of contemporary America, in which white picket fences serve as the battle lines for unresolved racism and unreconciled prejudice.

The silent star of this movie is Walt’s pride and joy, his 1972 mint condition Gran Torino car. Walt’s neighbour, Hmong teenager Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) is bullied into stealing the car in order to gain initiation into the local Hmong gang. Caught by Walt, an unlikely friendship develops, one that will change Walt, Thao and his neighbourhood for ever.

The ending provides one image of atonement. Clint, arms spread in the crucifix position, offers his life. His act of sacrifice lances a boil, exposing injustice on the streets of his community.

A subtle, yet more image of atonement is provided by Thao’s sister, Sue Lor (Ahney Her). She is the person of peace who steps over barriers to embrace Walt into his changing neighbourhood. It is her sacrifice that becomes a catalyst for community change. Viewed with Easter eyes, Sue becomes a female Christ figure.

Gran Torino is never a great film. The opening 45 minutes meander. Some scenes deserve a decent edit and the constant racism is hard to stomach. Despite these shortcomings, the plot themes of sacrifice, and their location in the grit of multi-cultural urban America make Gran Torino a disturbing, yet powerful, way to appreciate Easter.

John 12:23-14 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Holy week at the movies: Serenity on Tuesday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

The movie Serenity, directed by Joss Whedon, was released in 2005. It received generally positive reviews and opened at number two in the US box office and gaining a domestic box office gross of $25.5 million and a foreign box office gross of $13.3 million. Serenity won film of the year awards from Film 2005 and FilmFocus. It also won IGN Film’s Best Sci-Fi, Best Story and Best Trailer awards and was runner up for the Overall Best Movie.

The movie begins with the dramatic rescue of the imprisoned teenager River. She has mysterious origins, a past that has left her a tortured soul (a suffering servant). She exists in conflict with authority pursued by her former captors, the all-powerful Alliance. As a scapegoat, pursued by her former captors she is sheltered aboard a wilderness place, on board the renegade space ship, aptly named Serenity. She is performer of wonders, a woman in possession of intuitive powers of perception and superb fighting skills. As the movie reaches it’s climax, she chooses to enter her passion, offering her life to spare the crew of Serenity. Thought dead, she in fact experiences a metaphorical resurrection. The movie ends with River as the new co-pilot of Serenity, blasting into space, noting the first rule of flying “love keeps her in the air. love makes your ship a home.”

A theological gaze would note the development of River as a character. As she finds herself, drawn out by the love of her brother, Simon, she grows into a saviour. Her facing of her frightening mix of psychic and fighting powers parallels the gospel accounts of the Garden of Gethsemane in which Christ as a tortured soul seeks to discern his true identity.

Theologically, River gives her life for others. Firstly for her crew. In the climatic battle scene, River offers her life, retrieving the doctors medical bag to ensure his healing, then closing off a bulkhead door to seal the crew from the attacking Rivers.

Secondly River gives her life for truth. The crew of the ship Serenity have discovered that the Alliance have conducted a scientific experiment that has murdered millions. River discerns the pain and cries out that “somebody has to speak for these people.” A crew member quotes the advice of Shepherd Book, the religious figure in the movie: “If you can’t do something smart, do something right.” They crew of Serenity are thus on a mission to broadcast this truth through the universe, naming the Alliance’s evil. River’s act is part of unmasking the evil of the body corporate.

A closer theological reading would note the Biblical phrase, “It is finished,” during River’s “resurrection” scene.

Theologically, in Serenity, River is thus a form of Christus Victor, absorbing the evil of the world. Her tortured body undergoes a form of healing. River saves her body and the body of her crew. In the process she destroys the Reavers: who are “all made up of rage.” In her body she embodies intuition, emotional empathy and extraordinary feminine strength. Thus as a Christic-figure, she embodies a new way of saving the body.

Mark 14:3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Holy week at the movies: The Insatiable Moon on Monday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

Only last week, The Insatiable Moon became available in New Zealand on DVD. It is a fitting way to start the journey of Holy week.

“The Insatiable Moon,” introduces John, walking the streets of Ponsonby, with a commitment to bless every passing wall and bench and his friend Arthur, who believes he is the second son of God. With their boarding house under threat from Ponsonby gentrification, Arthur senses a mission from God, first to save his psychiatric haven and second to shower his love on the Queen of Heaven.

Kiwi movies tend to be bred with a dark underbelly, from the haunted hills of “Vigil” to the secrets buried “In My Fathers Den.” “The Insatiable Moon,” a film dealing with the clash between mental health and urban gentrification, has a similar potential. Happily, the movie demonstrates a simple commitment to bless contemporary life, infusing human pain and suffering with an earthy humour and gentle mystery.

Two scenes – one pastoral, the other prophetic – remain etched in one’s memory long after the final credits roll. These scenes showcase Mike Riddell’s remarkable talent, the artist’s ability to sketch life, the mystic’s eye for the spiritual in the ordinary.

The first is the funeral of John (Mike Innes) and the pastoral drama created by the open mic and the pain of colliding narratives. It allows a superbly theological reflection on God and the suffering of being human. The scene is a must see for all those who stake allegiance to a God of love in a world of suffering.

The second is the public meeting, another collision of narratives, this time of developer with Ponsonby locals. Arthur’s entrance is superb, a powerful enactment full of strength, oratory and tenderness. Another must see scene for all those who yearn for prophetic transformation in our urban communities today. A powerful way to ponder the events of Holy week.

Mark 11:15-16 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

Holy week at the movies

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

So I’m spending Holy Week at the movies. Each day I’ll be offering a film that I think speaks directly to the challenges, unsettling questions and faith demands of Jesus’ journey toward the cross.

On Monday, I’ll be watching The Insatiable Moon (2010), while reading Mark 11:15-16.

On Tuesday, I’ll be watching Serenity (2000), while reading Mark 14:3.

On Wednesday, I’ll be watching Gran Torino (2008), while reading John 12:23-14.

On Thursday, I’ll be watching Dark Knight (2008), while reading Mark 14:10.

On Friday, I’ll be watching Never let me go (2011), while reading Mark 15:33.

On Sunday, I’ll be watching two movies, Never let me go (again) and Invictus, while reading Mark 16:6-7.

Film review of The Adjustment Bureau: a theology beyond fearful puppetry

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

A contextual note: This review was written the weekend that a New Zealand magician, Ken Ring, was predicting that based on the moon, a major earthquake would occur again in Christchurch. Are we fearful puppets in the hands of an angry world? Or are there other ways to be human?

The Adjustment Bureau
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

The Adjustment Bureau (directed by George Nolfi) is adapted from a short story by Philip K Dick. Find a star like Matt Damon and the movie hints at being “Mr-Bourne-meets-Inception.” Sadly, the mix of action and animation is gloss for a turgid philosophical rumination on the relationship between free will and chance.

Life on earth is controlled by the “adjustment bureau.” They walk our streets, clasping black books complete with the chosen destiny in which humans must walk.

This includes the young and talented David Norris (Matt Damon). His life plan requires an “adjustment,” a casual spilling of coffee, in order that he miss a bus and thus arrive late for work. The “adjustment” fails and the life of Matt begins to go off plan.

Catching the bus, David meets the young and equally talented Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). Love beckons and a phone number is exchanged. Arriving at work on time, David stumbles onto the “adjustment bureau” in action, manipulating minds in order to engineer a chosen destiny.

This lengthy introduction sets up a number of plot tensions. Will David and Emily fall in love? How will David respond to his glimpse of the “adjustment bureau”? Do humans have free will?

A lengthy monologue explains “adjustment-theology.” In the beginning, a god upstairs gave humans free will. The result is a lengthy string of human disasters, from the Dark Ages to World Wars to global warming.

Hence the need for divine intervention, for “adjustments”, a bureau full of parent figures who control our lives with the task of making the world a better place.

Such “adjustment-theology” occurs in contrast to a moving scene (pun intended) in which Emily dances. As she does, the representative from the “adjustment bureau” offers David a choice. Without Elise (Emily Blunt), his chosen destiny will be President of the United States. The two men talk, caught in a world of logic and binary choice.

Meanwhile, Elise dances. This physical movement of fluid grace, her body supported by the strength of her partner, offers a different way to think about the relationship between divine and human, between destiny and free will.

The early church described God using the Greek word perichoresis. It is the root of the word choreography and was used to imagine God as a dancer, celebrating life in a mutual sharing of love and grace.

In the act of creation, rather than one chosen destiny, humans are instead invited into a dance – with each other, with God and with God’s creation. When history demonstrated that humans are better at stomping on feet than moving in response to God’s embrace, God intervened, not with an “adjustment bureau” but in Jesus, who enters creation and begins again the dance of life.

It provides a sharp contrast to the “adjustment bureau,” all men, all dressed mysteriously in dark suits.

It provides another contrast to responses to earthquakes, in which blame is apportioned to God, or humans (who have not listened to God), or the moon. Instead the dance invites us to move in grace and freedom no matter how shaken or stirred we might feel.

The Kings Speech: a film review with a missional twist

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

The King’s Speech. A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor
One of my biggest fears at school was the annual speech competition. I found multiple ways – pretending to be sick, skipping class – in order to avoid that moment of terror, the act of public speaking.

Nor am I alone. Studies have shown that fear of public speaking ranks with fear of dying. “The King’s Speech” speaks to these shared levels of primal human phobia.

The movie begins with a man, “Bertie” (Colin Firth). He is alone. He stands in front of a microphone. Slowly the camera pans to a waiting crowd and then zeroes in on the radio dials that signal a worldwide radio audience.

The tension of this primal moment is exacerbated with the realisation that this Bertie is no mere mortal. Instead he is born royal, inheriting the expectation of public performance and proficient patterns of speech. The movie commences to trace “Bertie’s” partnership with unorthodox Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush).

This personal drama is set against the backdrop of other battles concerning public speech. Will “Bertie’s” brother (Edward VIII, played by Guy Pearce), the current King of England, proclaim publicly his love for American divorcee Mrs. Simpson (played by Eve Best)? Will England speak out against Hitler’s expansionist aggression?

Directed by Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech” works on many levels. The plot skillfully weaves individual pathos and building tension. The scenes of 1930s London are artful, with Academy nominations for Costume design (Jenny Beavan), Cinematography (Danny Cohen), Production Design (Eve Stewart) and Set Decoration (Judy Farr). The acting is superb, with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter deserving their Academy Award nominations. Australasian audiences in particular will warm to the brash personality and unorthodox tactics of speech therapist, Lionel Logue.

Some critics have been less than charitable, raking “The King’s Speech” for factual errors. They suggest that “Bertie’s” stutter is exaggerated (as if the outward extent has any bearing on one’s inner embarrassment). They see as unlikely the presence of Winston Churchill and an adoring crowd outside Buckingham Palace on the day Britain declares war.

Such comments seem to misunderstand the genre, for “The King’s Speech” is docudrama rather than documentary.

Loss of voice can result from physical damage. It can also result from interior pain. Viewed at this level, “The King’s Speech” becomes a metaphor that enables corporate reflection. Can a nation lose voice? Can a church?

Viewed through this lens, “The King’s Speech” becomes a film for a church camp, followed by a discussion. What might it mean for God’s people to gain voice? If we could speak, what is the one word we might want to utter to our world? What prior patterns and previous memories are stifling our ability to speak confidently?

The King’s Speech suggests that the answer lies in a willingness to facing our pain and a commitment to persist despite discomfort. A message worth hearing, whether for a church today, or a geeky teenager so many school years ago.

a theology for friend me? a review of social network

The Social Network
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee (in the Gospel of Mark), he saw Simon and his brother Andrew. Come, be my facebook friend, Jesus said, and you can welcome new members into my social network.  Later (in the Gospel of John) Jesus said, Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s facebook friends.  Such is the RFV, the Revised Facebook Version. (more…)

film review: eat, pray, love

Battling away today on a “theological” film review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, reminded me that I have failed to post my November film review, of the movie Eat, Pray, Love, (for Touchstone New Zealand Methodist magazine.) It has probably my most provocative opening sentence in a while.

“Indulgent, wealthy, tourism porn” would be a more accurate title for this movie. (more…)