The Storm and Thunder of Hollywood Adolescence: Or, Why Many Movies Bore Me

Over the last month I've watched several movies that have suffered from a common flaw. It is this: their directors build their stories around adult characters who behave like adolescents. They then stylize their films with all kinds of jump cuts, colorful photos, eye-catching clothing, use of music and sound, and so on. In general, there seems to be a new breed of director in Hollywood, one who expects his audience to be endlessly fascinated by adolescent emotions and experiences and to be tricked by cinematic bells and whistles into thinking that style is substance.

In watching "Atonement" and "The Darjeeling Limited" (okay, give me hipster points for that one), and in reading reviews of "The Wackness" (just out), it became clear to me that the current generation of filmmaker seems personally trapped in adolescence. Why else would so many directors pour their lives into films that chronicle the ups and downs of the pre-adult years? Yet there's the catch--these films, while capturing the struggles of pre-adult life, are actually about adults. Furthermore, our moviemakers seem to think that it will be meaningful for audiences to watch their creations which attempt to ennoble adolescence, to baptize its rather small concerns and focuses as substantive and engrossing.

Here's the thing, though: while it can be fun to watch an occasional chronicle of adolescence (think "The Wonder Years" before it went off the rails), the stuff of true drama and comedy is found in the adult world, where people tackle real struggle and hardship. Heavy questions confront the adult. Difficult decisions besiege the adult. No such struggle exists for most adolescents. Beyond this, it is simply far more interesting to watch adults acting like adults attempt to handle the pathos of life. Think quickly: what would you rather watch--Russell Crowe trying to escape gladiator life to save his wife and son (in Gladiator), or Owen Wilson annoyingly bossing his brothers around on an Indian train (in The Darjeeling Limited)? It is amusing to watch Wilson, for sure (I think he can be hilarious), but it is far more meaningful to watch an adult acting like an adult try to handle the challenges of life.

"Atonement" suffered from the same problem. It presented us with two rather shallow characters living rather vacuous lives, threw a bunch of style into the mix, and then cooked everything in the surefire dramatic oven of World War Two. What was the result? Profound rumination on the sadness of life? Well, there was some of that, to be sure. But there was also a strong lack of concern on the viewer's part for the protagonists (played by James McAvoy and Keira Knightley). Put simply, they didn't do much except sit around on an English manor. Their drama was the drama of adolescents--will he ask her out? I don't know!!--of the sort that is whispered in high school hallways. Yes, the second half of the picture was poetic, but as a whole, the movie's adolescent characters, with their adolescent attitudes, failed to convey any real weight.

What does this all suggest? It suggests that the culture of the adolescent is no great thing for art. I've found the same is true in music. I don't know about you, but as one who sometimes listens to secular music, I find most of it simply boring. Not horrifyingly debauched (though much of it, particularly rap and r&b, is), not scarily nihilistic, but boring. Much of what's avant-garde and much of what's popular today centers thematically around things like breaking up and setting out in life and handling a cheating lover. Boooorrrriiiinnnngg. These are the concerns of adolescents. This is high school stuff. The true power of art is in its depiction of the deeper realities of life, the stuff that you can't plumb in a text message or a conversation on the bus. It's in showing what it looks like for a man to love his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife, or a lost soul to grapple with question of God's existence, or a father to ruminate on his legacy, or a woman to reflect on her empty nest, or a poet to delve into the causes of war. I could go on. This is the sort of thing that compels the artist to make great art.

Don't get me wrong. I found parts of the above movies engrossing and enjoyable. But both of them--and so many others--suffer from characters who are boys in men's bodies and girls in woman's bodies. They are immature, narcissistic, foolish, impetuous, and shallow. They possess little of the depth of an adult, and they are consumed by small things. They avoid the great matters of life and trivialize them when they cannot avoid them. Here is hoping for Christians to seize the day and to make a bunch of art that is meaningful and populated with mature people and mature, compelling existences.

In a culture that is making art that is both secular and boring, we have a chance to be neither.

Spike Lee on Death and Dignity

I've watched some of Spike Lee's films, and usually find them interesting, and sometimes revealing about the realities of life in a fallen world. When I came across a Lee comment spoken at the Cannes film festival from a piece in the Washington Post, I had to comment on it:

"I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't," Lee said at a news conference Tuesday. "Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."

This comment reveals something about the way Lee sees the world. He believes that human life has inherent dignity. Accordingly, he believes that films that depict the processes of life, including death, should treat the matter with dignity. The filmmakers to whom Lee refers, the Coen brothers, just won the Academy Award for Best Picture with their film No Country for Old Men. This picture, like others in the Coen corpus, approaches life and death as macabre realities. Fargo, also directed by the Coens, had a notoriously dark sense of humor. The brothers make films that invite viewers to view the nastiest aspects of life from a lightly comedic viewpoint. It is this cinematic tendency to which Lee refers. People do not simply die in Coen films, as they do in those of many other directors; they die in particularly twisted ways at the hands of gleefully strange characters. Though I don't know the exact worldview of the Coens, I can say from a limited engagement with their films that Lee is to some extent correct in his analysis of the brothers' filmmaking. For them, death is one part of a twisted comic tragedy.

Lee, for his part, declares a desire to treat death in a more respectful light in his films. Though he certainly is no role model for overly moral filmmaking, Spike Lee is onto something here. He recognizes the biblical reality that life is fashioned by God to an inherently dignified enterprise. The fact that humanity en masse carries the image of God reveals that we are naturally "little gods", made with care, invested with worth and meaning. Though it does some have dark moments, and some textual details that seem darkly comic, the Bible does not present life as an exercise in comedic tragedy. Ecclesiastes does portray life as purposeless outside of God, and Job's questions do reveal the desperateness of a life lived in opposition to God, but the biblical authors nowhere encourage us to view life as darkly comedic and God as a twisted puppeteer in the sense that the Coen films certainly do not. As far as I can tell, the brothers seem exceptionally gifted at portraying a world where God does not exist. Watch No Country for Old Men. You'll see a world where evil is stronger than good, where desperation and folly reigns, where providence runs in favor of the darkness, not the light. If this is not a world without God, and without the dignity of humanity, show me what is.

Spike Lee is not a Christian to my knowledge. But he has lighted on a Christian concept in his Cannes speech. God has given dignity to the lives and deaths of his creatures. He has a special place in His economy for His children, whose lives and deaths are precious to Him. He superintends our lives with care and love. He has given us souls, and He teaches us in His word that the souls of men are the most precious of all things in the created realm. Spike Lee has unwittingly wandered into territory that Scripture has staked out as its own. We commend him for not wanting to present death in an undignified light, for wanting to preserve a sense of beauty and worth even in the moment when a person's life is taken from him. Yet we as Christians note that there is a ground for this impulse. There is a reason for this desire as expressed in Lee's comment. It is not simply that it "makes sense", or "follows naturally" from living. It does not. No, it proceeds directly from the Christian worldview as delineated by the Bible. We who have a reason for faith also have a foundation for dignity. It is the image of God given us to by our Creator.

We ought not to think that there is some kind of massive principle to be implemented here which will then revolutionize society. We do need filmmakers who will show a watching world that life is precious. But humanity will likely always struggle with the question of inherent dignity. Why is it, people will ask, that though I do not like the idea of God, or the biblical God, that I nonetheless want to treat life and people as precious? Why do I care when I hear of a child being murdered, when I read of a terrible civil war, when I learn of massive social injustice at the hands of totalitarian governments? Where does this instinct come from? Why do I tenaciously protect the life of my child when I am pro-choice? Why do I think it is wrong for people to treat death in undignified ways? Why do I dress up at funerals, and talk softly, and sometimes cry?

People will ask these questions. We can see from the Coen brothers' films and Spike Lee's comments that this is a live issue for the unbelieving among us. How great is the need for local churches that stand as lighthouses in their communities that provide on a week-by-week basis the true ground for dignity and hope. How much do we need Christians not to bury their light by avoiding unbelievers, but to be among them, salting their speech, telling the truth about dignity and hope and salvation in Christ. Will we speak truth to the lost? Or will we leave it to honest but lost folk like Spike Lee to accomplish this task?

August Rush: Another Movie Searches for Transcendence and Finds it in Music, and Family

The movie August Rush, which debuted in November 2007, presents an uneven but inspiring tale of one sweet boy's search for transcendence in a world of isolation and evil. The movie is not flawless, but its depiction of the power of music alone makes the film well worth watching.

The plot centers in two musicians (played ably by Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who chance upon one another, sleep together, and then lose touch completely with one another, despite the fact that they developed an incredible bond with one another (yes, in one brief night of passion; cue eye-rolling now). Russell's character ends up pregnant and gives birth to a boy she never meets (you'll have to watch the film to see why). The boy, "Evan Taylor" (played by Freddie Highmore of Lost in Neverland), ends up in a miserable home for boys. Sweet-spirited and mystically in touch with music, which he hears in even the most ordinary of sounds, he escapes from the home, ends up in New York, and embarks upon an adventure in which he trains himself to play a number of instruments at a lyrical level. The plot, as noted above, is a bit uneven and seems half-heartedly devoted to aping the story of Oliver Twist. In addition, some of the characters are less than plausible (Robin Williams shows up for several scenes of extended, and unneeded, histrionics).

These factors, and the act of fornication that drives the movie, are regrettable, but the movie has significant strengths as well. This is a film that quite simply is in love with music. As one who loves music (a rather broad statement), I resonated with its appreciation of harmonic beauty. The film, though not Christian, does also pick up on elements of common grace (though it would not call them such). Though little Evan is mired in a painful station in life, he finds beauty all around him, and maintains a disposition of hope and good cheer. It's touching and challenging to watch. Most of us are far too swallowed up in our own selfish little existences to notice the beauty of the world, let alone to draw others into it through creation and celebration. The movie further succeeds in representing man realistically. He is not inherently satisfied with life as it is placed in front of him. No, he searches, and quests, and storms until he finds that which he deems transcendent. For Evan (or "August", as he is renamed), the search ends with music, and also with a reunited family. These same ends bring transcendence to Evan's parents; throughout their young lives, they wrestle with music as Jacob with the angel, and even when musically accomplished search for their other family members. There are two insights here: one, music elevates our earthly existence, and two, family does the same. Without these two goods, we are impoverished, living isolated, hopeless lives.

As Christians, we can resonate with these points. As I've very recently said (in writing on the movie Once, which carries some similar themes), music is imbued with transcendence. It is not cheap and small; it was given us by God to explore the moral and spiritual complexity of the universe. Though music is not God--and thus August Rush fatally overreaches in ascribing it such significance--yet we can say that music is a strange and magical thing. It is another language, a way of speaking about our lives and experiences and the truths and mysteries of this world that defies verbal communication. Music is not Transcendence, then, but it is a transcendent art form, capable of reaching across structures and thought patterns to grab hold of our soul and plunge us into pools of mysterious and beautiful reality. I love that August Rush believes this and seeks to communicate it. Though it strains in this endeavor, and misses the truth that music points us to--that God alone is Transcendence--yet it succeeds in capturing something of the essence of music. It is a beautiful film, and there are several scenes that moved me on a deeply emotional level and made me thankful that people take up cameras and attempt to capture aspects of human existence such as music.

The film, as noted, also shows a powerful belief in the family, and perhaps unintentionally, the nuclear family (dad, mom, child). This is a great insight as well. Though the family is also not ultimately transcendent, as August Rush might lead us to think, we may say that the family is perhaps God's greatest earthly gift to us. It is simply impossible to enumerate the ways in which we are blessed on a daily, even hourly, basis by our families, even if they are not families of considerable health. Just having a family is immensely meaningful. The support that one has in being part of a family is not often consciously thought of but is precious beyond quantification. The film knows this, and shows us what it means for people to live without the structures of family--and most clearly to live without parents as an abandoned boy. One can have talent, and beauty, and joy, but without a family, one is ultimately unhappy. We Christians would of course go beyond this to say that God alone is our greatest need, that it is our most urgent necessity to enter into not an earthly family but a spiritual family that transcends this earth. On an earthly level, though, it is clear that God has structured the family to be the central part of our earthly existence. He has done so, I would argue, to show us something of the taste of familial perfection as expressed in the Trinity, the union of Father, Son, and Spirit, of which our families are but a type and shadow.

August Rush seeks true transcendence and fails to find it. But we may commend it for its pursuit and enjoy for its depiction of two of the choicest gifts God has given humanity: music and family. This movie shows us for the hundredth time that the people around us are not living atomistic lives, at least not all of the time. No, they are looking for something; something greater, something higher, something unified, something beautiful. Though they may discover numerous gifts of common grace in their search, we know that until they find the Christ, the salvation-giver, this search will prove fruitless in the end. We must be around them, then, to tell them where transcendence, and joy, and true hope may be found. It is not in music, but the One who created music; not in the family, but in the One who created the family; it is not found in the gift, but only in the Giver.

The Strange and Terrifying World of "I Am Legend"

Enough of this theology stuff. Let's move on. Let's get to what true thinkers care most about: movies.

I recently saw the film "I Am Legend" and came away shocked by it. My friend Adam and I were expecting the typical Will Smith action movie, where lots of things are blown up rather entertainingly as Smith makes well-placed cracks at the expense of his enemies. You know the genre I'm talking about--comedic action, perhaps, with some hero complex thrown in for good measure. Well, "I Am Legend" blew my expectations away. What looks like a "comedic action" film is actually a "Sci-fi horror so tense and chilling it makes you want to leave the theater" film. Yes, there actually is a film category of this name; trust me, I'm a blogger (feel free to catch that irony).

In all seriousness, this is a seriously tense film. A sense of dread pervades the movie and never lets up. "I Am Legend" is alot of things, but it is fundamentally a meditation on man in the worst state imaginable--alone, imprisoned, hunted. I won't give the plot away, as I'm not much for that sort of thing, but I will tell you that the movie--though it seems like the typical blockbuster--paints an apt portrait of the human condition. Without God, we are alone, we do live in a prison, we are in a sense hunted by the soul-stealer, Satan. Without God, there is a sense of dread that pervades all of life, and we don't need a backfired virus to induce such a condition. We're already living in it.

Other reviewers have focused on other aspects of the film, but I was most gripped by the haunted look and feel of "I Am Legend" and the perfectly pitched performance of Will Smith. Smith manages to make his character's simultaneous weariness and hopefulness plausible, and he communicates poignantly the terror that would grip a man in his situation. There are a couple of scenes in particular that will leave you elevated in your seat, heart thrashing, breath heavy. It's always fun to go to a movie that draws the teen crowd, elicits some sense of immature attention-grabbing as they mock the film in its early stages, and then shuts them up due to its terrifying nature. This film did just that. After a few of the most suspenseful scenes, the teenyboppers in front of me went absolutely silent, and stayed that way for the rest of the movie. "I Am Legend" is that tense. (My buddy Reid Monaghan agrees--read his excellent review.)

There is much that the film leaves unexplored--there is a ton of fascinating backstory that could have been played out. The movie is much too short, and ends with barely a second's notice--it's as if the filmmakers simply got tired of making a great movie and decided to vacate the set. I wish that the film had been much longer, as I love this genre of movie and "I Am Legend" is so well crafted, but oh well. You can't have everything you want, right? That aside, the film also explores other interesting themes--the nature of faith, the double-sided blade of scientific inquiry, the power of sacrifice, the reward of virtue, the weight of loneliness, the companionship between man and dog (don't laugh--you'll understand, and you might even cry), the results of isolation and imprisonment, the curse of human hubris. All this to say, go see this film. It's very well done, it's haunting, it's powerful, it's quite scary, and Will Smith's performance is excellent. In the end, it shows us a world that is--in its apocalyptic state--unlike our own, but is--in its palpable sense of despair and dread--very much like this present order.