A Movie You Might Have Missed #48: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

She raised 10 kids on 25 words or less.

Julianne Moore portrays Evelyn Ryan, a 1950s housewife with 10 children. Submitting jingles, slogans and songs to product contests, she wins prizes and cash that help their family scrape by. Her husband, Kelly, (Woody Harrelson) is an alcoholic who spends a hefty portion of his paycheck on the nightly fifth of whiskey and six-pack of beer so Evelyn's talent with words is much needed.

This started off fun and cute, with stylized presentation that made us think of Pushing Daisies. Then, just when we thought there wasn't more to say, it veered into deeper waters thanks to the complex issues caused by the alcoholic husband. Although it is treated more lightly than in some movies, the film's power comes from watching how Evelyn copes with her husband and the issues his dysfunction raises in the family.

NOTE: I subsequently read the book and found this movie to be a very good adaptation of it. Both are worth experiencing for their own worth.

Worth a Thousand Words: What Happens Next?

What Happens Next? Guglielmo Zocchi (Italian, 1874-1957)

Psalm 22 (part 1) — What Did It Mean Before Jesus Quoted It From the Cross?

In Psalm 22 he speaks in the person of the Savior about the manner of his death. ... The psalmist places all these teachings in front of us because the Lord suffered all this not on his own account but for us.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

After I became Christian I flipped open the Bible one day and came upon Psalm 22 with the distinctive opening line, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

I was stunned. Of course, these are words that Jesus said on the cross. Surely this was prophecy, being written so long before Jesus' passion. Reading further I came upon more familiar moments, all from  accounts of Jesus' crucifixion.

He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him! (Passersby, priests, soldiers and, specifically, one of the two thieves who was crucified with Christ.)

They pierced my hands and feet. (Crucifixion)

I can count all my bones (None of his bones were broken.)

They stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. (The soldiers dicing for Jesus' robe.)

We can see how this would have great resonance with Christians. It sure did with me. And the Church Fathers were all over it. But, of course, they had the example of Christ on the road to Emmaus showing how all the scriptures related to his coming as Messiah.

That makes it kind of easy to forget it was a psalm that the Jewish people prayed in ancient days before the time of Jesus. Psalm 22 is read on Purim, which commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from a Persian Empire official who was scheming to massacre them with government sanction. So it  is considered a prophetic psalm but about Queen Esther who saved the people. In fact, Jesus would have prayed it as an observant Jew within the community. The fact that he could quote that first line knowing people would get deeper meaning meant he was referring to the significance it already had to the faithful.

We're going to get a couple of takes on this psalm, today reflecting on the psalm itself and next week from Pope Benedict XVI meditating on Jesus quoting it on the cross.

Detail, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 150

This psalm is long and powerfully descriptive. The psalmist laments God's absence and silence and attacks by humans. However, interwoven in this is trust in God as strength, as one who is listening, as one who will reign and have dominion over nations. The big question in our own lives, as in that of the psalmist, is how do we react when we are in agony and God seems to be absent?

Only as we understand what the psalm means on its own are we better able to understand why Jesus chose these words to reflect his own agony of abandonment by his Father at the final moment of crisis represented by the cross.

Far from being just a prediction of events surrounding Jesus' death the psalm reflects a model of response to abandonment and divine delay ... By quoting just verse 1 of this psalm, Jesus could draw on a long history of awareness on the part of his listeners who knew how the first nineteen verses illustrate the struggle of the faithful sufferer who waits for deliverance by God. ...

The psalmist's faithful response to the absence of God is placed within a broader context of an eschatological* vision of hope. In the midst of fulfilling a vow of praise "in the congregation" — a praise grounded in the past history of Yahweh's faithfulness even in the face of his absence (22:22-24) — the psalmist suddenly sifts gears with a remarkable profession: "My praise in the great assembly [is] from with you!" This phrase is remarkable because the psalmist realizes that even when Yahweh is most distant and entirely absent from our experience, the ability to praise him is a testimony to his enduring presence with those who fear him. The very ability to praise comes from God himself.

This realization catapults the psalmist from a historical reflection to a vision of eschatological hope. ...

It admits the possibility that faithful living may not result in deliverance — that suffering and death are realities for the faithful. But, at the same time, it also understands that present suffering and evil will not ultimately prevent the fulfillment of God's plans. ... The faithful psalmist remains loyal and takes solace in the knowledge that regardless of the personal outcome, God's will will be done.

Psalms vol. 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

 Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

 

*relating to death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind

Mademoiselle Huquier Holding a Cat

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Mademoiselle Huquier Holding a Cat, 1747

 I love  the playful nature of this young lady's pet.

I feel as if life with dogs is easier but I do occasionally miss having a cat around the house. However, even if my husband were amenable, our little white Kaylee would surely try to kill any cat we brought home. So I will just enjoy them in art.

I could never be a Catholic because I'm such a snob.

9 May. Miss Shepherd's funeral is at Our Lady of Hal, the Catholic church round the corner. The service has been slotted into the ten o'clock mass, so that, in addition to a contingent of neighbors, the congregation includes what I take to be regulars: the fat little man in thick glasses and trainers who hobbles along to the church every day from Arlington House; several nuns, among them the ninety-nine-year-old sister who was in charge when Miss S. was briefly a novice; a woman in a green straw hat like an upturned plant pot who eats toffees throughout; and another lady who plays the harmonium in tan slacks and a tea-cozy wig. The server, a middle-aged man with white hair, doesn't wear a surplice, just ordinary clothes with an open-necked shirt, and, but for knowing all the sacred drill, might have been roped in from the group on the corner outside The Good Mixer. The priest is a young Irish boy with a big, red peasant face and sandy hair, and he, too, stripped of his cream-colored cassock, could be wielding a pneumatic drill in the roadworks outside. I keep thinking about these characters during the terrible service, and it reinforces what I have always known: that I could never be a Catholic because I'm such a snob, and that the biggest sacrifice Newman made when he turned his back on the C of E was the social one.

Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van

This might be one of the biggest compliments to the Church I've ever read.

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The Unbroken Thread by Sohrab Ahmari

Holy moly, what a great book!

Sohrab Ahmari wrote this book for his 2-year-old son, Max, after he began worrying about what sort of man Max would become when formed by our modern culture. Max is named for Maximilian Kolbe, a great saint of the 20th century. Ahmari thought about the gap between our cultural expectations and the culture that led Kolbe to to lay down his life for a man he didn't know. He wanted to bridge the gap between those two different cultures using the "unbroken thread" of tradition — both Tradition as Catholics would know it and tradition from other cultures such as from someone like Confucius.

He begins with the premise that the great traditions offer answers to questions that liberal modernity doesn't even begin to ask. Therefore, Ahmari asks twelve questions, each of which he explores through the life of different great thinkers from across the political and ideological spectrum. The style is kept very readable as it encompasses both story telling and intellectual thinking.

For example, his first question is "how do you justify your life?" What is at the bottom of that question is  modern scientism which says that everything must be measurable through cold, hard facts. The great thinker he uses to help examine this concept is C.S. Lewis.  First we are given a mini-biography so that the context of Lewis's thinking is clear. The place that Ahmari finds Lewis's thinking on science is in the first book of his science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet.

Some of the thinkers were those I'd heard a lot about, such as St. Thomas Aquinas. However, Ahmari also included people I'd never heard of like anthropologists Edith and Victor Turner. And there were plenty of in-betweens where the most I knew was a vague sense of their contributions, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It got to the point where I was excited to begin a new chapter to see what thinker was going to be highlighted.

I felt lucky to begin the book on a fairly open weekend so I finished it in two days. It was exciting and satisfying to read. And I was surprised to find myself moved in one spot where a teacher asked a former student, "May I hope that's the second volume of your Gnosticism book?" You'll have to read it yourself to see why that matters.

I really appreciated that Ahmari included people who are not 100% in lockstep with traditional Catholic teachings. It was enough that their basic premises showed logical thinking and that "unbroken thread" from past to present. That in itself is an important lesson to the modern reader in how to discern when someone has the big idea but may go astray on smaller details. He's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The others in my household are eagerly waiting their turn before this goes back to the library. Needless to say, I will be buying my own copy for rereading. Highly recommended.

Shop Sign of Gersaint

Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), Shop Sign of Gersaint

The picture was originally painted on one canvas, depicting clients and staff at the shop. As a worker packs away a portrait of Louis XIV at the left, in the centre a young man offers his hand to a woman who is stepping over the threshold of the shop. At the right an elderly couple examine a painting of nudes, and a pretty young shop assistant, possibly Gersaint's wife, shows a painting to a group of well-dressed young people.

I know that trade work was common for artists trying to keep their heads above water, but something about this shop sign really grabs me ... and amuses me at the same time.

Agua Dulce Wine

Agua Dulce Wine by Belinda Del Pesco

This is so evocative of place. I almost feel as if I'm standing in the vineyard.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #47: Art & Copy

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

Art serving capitalism.

We like documentaries. We love advertising.

So we were suckers for this film which looks at the creators of several campaigns which have lent our culture iconic phrases.

Got milk?

It's morning in America.

I want my MTV.

Just do it.

And many more.

The ad stories are told through interviews with some of the chief creative figures of the advertising world from the last few decades. It's interesting to watch the very different styles and ways they describe themselves and their process because they all have the essential ability to distill a product's appeal into key words and images that spark our imaginations.

Dropped into the narrative are facts and figures about advertising and the daily life of a laborer who changes billboard signs. Those added a nice bit of perspective to the sometimes high flown conversation.

"Are there any good coming of age books?"

My friend Meg asked this question during last week's book club and I could only think of Huckleberry Finn. Which I was loathe to include, as was Meg. Now that's crazy because it is, of course, a coming of age book. But, as it turns out, neither Meg nor I like coming of age stories and we both like Huckleberry Finn.

At the same time another friend, Emily, mentioned Anne of Green Gables, to which I automatically said "No." Now that's even more bonkers because, of course, it also is a coming of age story and a good book. To me, though, it seemed too simple and sweet, without the deep layers of angst that I hate when reading about coming of age.

So I went home thinking about Meg's question and my peremptory exclusions. 

Suddenly I understood why I never liked David Copperfield until the very end where he's wrestling with his marriage ... and is an adult! Right. The whole darned book is coming of age with angst. So much angst. (Not that I don't love Aunt Betsy and Mr. Dick because, you know, Dickens isn't going to let you out of any book without making you love at least some of the people in it.)

Rose and I talked this over and came to the conclusion that  coming of age stories are fairly predictable and boring unless that is just one element of a much more compelling, complex tale. 

Naturally, I made a list. 

I'm including two classic coming of age tales because I encountered them at just the right age to love them always. And they manage to be legitimately good books even without lots of other elements.

• Treasure Island
  Pirates! And ... no, that's it - Pirates!
  
  
• Anne of Green Gables
  Classic
  
  
• Little Women
  Classic
  
  
• Kim
  Adventure, espionage, and exotic India from all walks of society
  
  
• Northanger Abbey
  Deliciously fun satire of Gothic novels. And romance!
  
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird
  Small town life in the South, racial injustice, and the best father in the world
  
  
• Huckleberry Finn
  Road trip, adventures on the Mississippi, and racism
  
  
• Citizen of the Galaxy 
  Slavery, beggars, exotic far-off worlds, spaceships, espionage
  
  
• Dune
  Giant worms, interplanetary intrigue, and trying to spot the coming messiah
  
  
• Harry Potter (books 1-7)
  Super villain, wizards, magic, Muggles —you already know why this is fun and also great
  
  
• The Giver
  Fascinating utopian/dystopian society.
  
  
• The City (Dean Koontz)
  Supernatural horror with plenty of jazz
  
  
• The Jungle Book / The Graveyard Book
  Take your pick since Neil Gaiman wrote Graveyard in homage to Jungle. Raised by animals or ghosts, running from a tiger or a hired killer, encountering mysteries and wonders in a world that isn't human.
  
  
• Jane Eyre
  All things gothic and mysterious. Avoid the attic!
  
  
• Something Wicked This Way Comes
  The creepiest carnival ever. Do not — I repeat "do not" — ride the merry-go-round.
  
  
• Ender's Game
  Giant alien insects want to invade Earth. Who can possibly save us?
  

Notre Dame de Bayeaux Crypt

Notre Dame de Bayeux Crypt
By Anton Bielousov

Freedom and small daily acts of self-denial

Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us.

Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), 1969 radio address

I try to practice daily self denial (emphasis on try). Thinking of it as a "daily passion" is something new, which elevates it beyond my usual routine.

The Fading of Forgiveness by Timothy Keller

What are the influences that are making forgiveness problematic in our culture?

Pastor Timothy Keller's article about forgiveness is important and worth reading. The article can be found online from Comment magazine.

I came across this article via The Word on Fire podcast where Bishop Barron is discussing it in two parts. Here's part 1.

I finished Les Miserables!

 

I finished!!!

It took three months and so much skimming but I'm glad I read it, although I will never read it again. And I'm very impressed that the Les Miserables movie (Hugh Jackman) did such a good job of carrying through important characters and themes. In fact, if I hadn't seen the movie about 5 times I would occasionally have gotten lost in the novel. As it was, I was fascinated at the places where the plots diverged between the two with both still carrying the same message. In fact, I wound up being surprised that the movie's ending was so overtly religious when the book handled religious elements in that spot with much less emphasis.

At any rate, much as with Crime and Punishment — huzzah! My whole day is one of triumph!

Poppies

Augusto Giacometti - Poppies [1932]
via Gandalf's Gallery

Gardening had gone out the door, nature had returned in all its glory.

Gardening had gone out the door, nature had returned in all its glory. Weeds flourished, which is a wonderful adventure for a poor patch of dirt. The stocks there were having a field day, riotously splendid. Nothing in the garden opposed the sacred effort of things toward life; venerable growth was very much at home. The trees hung down toward the brambles, the brambles reached up toward the trees, the plant climbed, the branch bowed, what crawls on the ground had gone to look for what blossoms in the air, what floats on the wind had stooped toward what trails in the moss; trunks, limbs, leaves, twigs, tufts, tendrils, shoots, thorns mixed together, crossed, married, merged; in a close and powerful embrace, the vegetation had achieved and celebrated there, under the satisfied eye of the Creator, in this enclosure of three hundred square feet, the sacred mystery of His fraternity, a symbol of human fraternity. This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is, as impenetrable as a forest, as crowded as a town, as tremulous as a nest, as sombre as a cathedral, as fragrant as a bouquet, as lonely as a tomb, as full of life as the teeming multitudes.

In Floréal, this enormous bushland, free behind its gate and within its four walls, began to rut in the mute labour of universal germination, quivering in the rising sun almost like an animal gulping in the effluvia of cosmic love and feeling the April sap rise and boil in its veins; it shook its extravagant green hair in the wind, scattered over the wet ground, over the worn statues, over the crumbling steps of the villa and even over the pavement in the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity, beauty, life, joy, perfume. At noon, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine spectacle to see this living summer snow swirling there in flakes in the shade. There, in the jaunty gloom of the greenery, a host of innocent voices spoke softly to the soul, and what the warbling forgot to say, the humming completed. At night a dreamy vapour rose from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm celestial sadness covered it; that intensely intoxicating smell of honeysuckle and wild morning glory wafted up on all sides like an exquisite and subtle poison; you could hear the final calls of the tree creepers and the wagtails dozing off under the branches; you could feel the sacred intimacy of bird and tree; of a day, the wings rejoice the leaves, of a night, the leaves protect the wings.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Victor Hugo will take very long side trips in the course of telling his story, many of which I don't care about much. This description of the garden where Marius and Cosette meet, however, is so wonderfully described that I copied it into my quote journal and have read it over several times. It is so evocative.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #46: Intouchables

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

Sometimes you have to reach into someone else's world to find out what's missing in your own.

 

 Wealthy quadriplegic Philippe needs an assistant to help him with all the functions of daily life.

Immigrant, ex-con Driss needs a signature on his application to fulfill unemployment requirements.

Philippe hires Driss because the regular applicants are missing one important quality and the lives of both men are changed.

This sounds like a predictable enough plot except it is played as a sympathetic comedy. Philipe doesn't want pity. Driss has irrepressible honesty and humor that changes the dynamic of many scenes from what we expect to see. They make each other laugh. They enrich each other's lives. They broaden each other's worlds.

Omar Sy is a delight, as always. We've been enjoying him in the French series Lupin where his charm keeps coming through. Francois Cluzet is masterful in a role where all the acting must be done with voice and expressions. Both performances are nuanced.

It is based on a true story. The original Philippe turned down several movie offers until these filmmakers presented him with this comedic script. After watching the movie I can see why. There are moments of both pathos and comedy for both men. Neither is perfect and each is untouchable in his own way. It shows that no matter our handicaps, life goes on. We choose how to live it.

Study of a Hat

Study of a Hat (1889), Susan Merrill Ketcham
via Books and Art

Psalm 21 — Thanksgiving and Trust

Psalm 21 reveals Christ's kingdom, and the power of his judgment, and his coming again in the flesh to us and the summoning of the nations

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

This psalm is like an response to Psalm 20's anticipation of God's promised support. Both trust in victory and both are royal psalms.

 More importantly in our understanding, is that the king serves as a model for individual believers and their relationships with God. Reading this psalm do we see ourselves trusting God's strength and unfailing love?

The top of the photo has source information.
I look at this fragment and wonder who used it in prayer,
who was inspired by it, how long has it been used?
It's another reminder of the timelessness of the psalms.

Psalm 20. Contemporary Significance.

Characteristic of Israelite kingship was a tension that most of us face almost daily. If you look at the early narratives of the origins of Israel's monarchy, this tension is very apparent. The Kings constantly struggled with competing demands. On the one hand, the people wanted them to become political and military leaders winning victories against Israel's enemies. On the other hand, God  called them while demanding them to forego the normal kingly reliance on military, political, and financial power in order to lead the people in the ways of Yahweh. [...] Rather than the usual forms of kingly power, therefore, the kings were required to bind themselves to keep the law of Yahweh and to rely on him alone.

Psalms vol. 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here.