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By Steve Lansingh
As I look back over the year of 1998 and select the five movies that affected me most deeply, I am struck by the fact that 4 out of the 5 were wildly successful at the box office and with critics. My reactions to these films were of such a personal nature that I was surprised others embraced them just as fiercely. Then I ran across this assertion by actor Richard E. Grant ("The Player," "Twelfth Night") in his collection of film diaries, "With Nails:" "All great artists seem to share this common denominator: they make YOU feel that YOU are the only one being addressed. No matter that you are surrounded by evidence to the contrary and like-minded folks blathering about this brushstroke, that note, this phrasing, that concept, this vision, those comparisons. You just want to say, 'BELT UP. IT'S ME! -- I'M THE ONE THAT GETS IT.'"
If it's true that each one of us feels that we're the only one who GETS IT, then chances are that we all get it in a slightly different way for slightly different reasons. And if that's the case, then we still have much to learn from each other, even about a film we all enjoyed. So belt up, 'cause here's how I "got" the following five movies:
If I could take everything I learned during the past seven years, condense it into two hours and sprinkle generously with panache, I would end up with "Shakespeare in Love." For those of you who haven't seen it, the film chronicles William Shakespeare's (Joseph Fiennes) early days in the theater as he's struggling to write a comedy called "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter" when he falls in love with a noblewoman named Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose father pledges her in marriage to another man. Out of that comes "Romeo and Juliet." The film shows how life influences art, and how art influence life in return. It shows how bringing our own experiences to an artwork will enrich our understanding of it. It is brilliantly funny and devastatingly sad. It deconstructs Shakespeare-the-legend and replaces him with the more impressive Shakespeare-the-human. It proves that art can indeed thrive even in a business marred by profit-margins, the trappings of fame, and finicky audiences. This film is the best answer I can think of to the question "What is art?" and somehow manages to pull it off with great wit, great performances, and great wisdom.
Director John Sayles' Spanish-language "Men With Guns" tackles this same atrocity, but instead of Christians it is doctors who are being slaughtered. The film follows an idealistic big-city doctor (Federico Luppi) who has trained a team of students to serve as doctors in remote villages in the nameless South American country where he lives. When he gets curious to see how they're doing, he ventures out into the mountains and discovers most of them have been killed by either government troops or guerrillas for tending to wounded soldiers from the opposing side. He is decimated by the loss, especially because he had never prepared them to expect this kind of dilemma in their ministry -- because he didn't know about it himself. The words spoken to him by a general who was his patient now ring loudly in his ears: The rich people sit safe in their cities thinking that the war and chaos around them is the problem of the unruly lower class, when in fact it is the rich who are paying for the war and keeping the chaos alive. The film displays in humbling terms how the problems in a society are the result of every person's actions or inaction -- that none of us is free from responsibility. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said about America during the Civil Rights Movement, "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and indifference of the good people. Our generation will have to repent not only for the words and acts of the children of evil, but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light."
On his journey from village to village, the doctor meets a wandering priest (Damian Alcazar) who is one of the most haunting characters I've even encountered. He and five other men in his village were told to kill themselves by the guerrilla army, or they would return and kill everyone in the whole village. He tells the doctor how he'd always wanted to be a martyr as a young priest, to give his life so others could live. But when faced with the reality of it, he turns tail and runs. He later returns to the village and finds everyone has been murdered -- men, women, children, pets -- all on his account. Having to live with the knowledge of his betrayal makes life horrible to live; he calls it being "doomed to life." What makes this character so haunting is that I don't know I would have done any differently; I love life so much and death is so unknown. One of my biggest struggles is to love God more than life. I think of this shamed priest whenever I hear Matthew 10:39: "If you cling to your life, you will lose it."
This film didn't end up on this list just because of my sense of humor, however. "There's Something About Mary" illuminated my relationships, first my past ones and then my spiritual ones. The film follows Ted (Ben Stiller), a 30-year-old geek who's still in love with the beauty who took him to the senior prom, Mary (Cameron Diaz), as he tracks her down and discovers that a host of other guys are angling for her affections as well. Toward the end of the film, Ted tells his fellow suitors that they didn't feel genuine love for Mary, but only a normal response to her kindness. That made such sense to me, because when I look back at many of the girls I "liked" growing up, they were the ones who were friendly toward me and took the time to talk to me. It dawned on me that I was just so hungry for connection, for someone to even acknowledge me, that I'd mistaken that for love.
For a month or so I didn't think this "revelation" was particularly useful, especially now that I've found real love. But over time I began thinking about this syndrome on a spiritual plane, and I realized that in many ways that's why I love God -- because he's been kind to me. I grew up in a Christian home, always had my needs and most of my wants met, went to a great college, never had anyone really close to me die, married a wonderful woman, etc. I wondered for the first time whether I would love God if he wasn't kind to me -- if he tested me like Job -- and I couldn't truthfully say whether I would or not. This began me thinking, and took me down a long road these past seven months as I really began to get to know God personally instead of letting myself be spiritually spoon-fed by others.
When I saw the film again recently, I discovered how much of the film reflected my relationship with God -- I was introduced to God early in life and I wanted to spend time with him because he was kind to me, just like Ted with Mary. Then I didn't really connect with him for a long time, and went searching for him only when I'd driven myself into a funk during college and I had to turn to him for guidance. I found him again, and he was kind to me still, so I began hanging around him again. The point where Ted makes his speech about not knowing what love is, and presents an alternative to himself (Brett, her former boyfriend), is the same point last summer where I admitted that my love for God was maybe just an infatuation, and decided that maybe I shouldn't continue to publish the magazine version of JoyOfMovies.com, but let others write encouragement for the Christian community. At the end of the film, (swipe your cursor over next sentence if you've seen the film or don't mind the ending being revealed) Mary pursues Ted to win him back -- a moment in the film that I first thought most phony considering it gives in to the romantic-comedy conventions the film upended. But now it feels right to me, because God has chosen me as well. Even though I spent so many years distant from him, even though he's given me so many chances to do right and I've let him down, he continues to pursue me. I finally understand the verse that says, "You did not choose me, but I chose you." (John 15:16) And I am amazed by his grace, because I in no way deserved to be chosen. And maybe that was the key to learning to love Him all along, to admit to God that I did nothing to deserve his kindness, that I am not worthy of it, and I cannot repay it. Only then can his fullness be revealed to me and I can worship him as the true God instead of a God-in-a-box, just as Ted learns to see Mary as a flesh-and-blood person instead of perfection on a pedestal.
It wasn't until months later that I realized the film was about the journey Truman takes in discovering his predicament and screwing up the courage to leave. I was writing about how my goal with JoyOfMovies.com is to help Christians discover that God speaks to us through our everyday experiences if we are open to hearing his voice -- which is so different from the distinct views of secular space and sacred space that I had grown up with in the church. And I remembered how it felt to cross over that boundary, to stop accepting the world as it had been configured for me and to instead seek God. I remember how scary it was to leave my safe little world, but also how thrilling it was to choose for myself how I would act. And I realized that Truman's exodus from his world was exactly the same. I began to see how Truman, too, was searching for something his world couldn't offer, a deeper connection that no one he knew could give him. I now see Truman as having a spiritual awakening, a hunger to fill the void inside himself, a hunger so strong he must break the confines of his world to search for it. In this interpretation Christof becomes not God but a human being who wants to be God. He obviously loves Truman, and he wants to give him everything he thinks a person needs -- the proverbial white picket fence, comfortable job, beautiful wife, friendly neighbors, etc. -- in short, the American dream. But "my ways are not your ways," says the Lord; even given the power to be God we cannot satisfy a person's deepest longings in the way of the one who designed him or her. To me, "The Truman Show" became an portait of our inner self when we first realize we are empty inside and must look outside ourselves to be filled.
The film follows a squad of eight men who, after making it through the horror of D-Day, are given the assignment to locate Private James Ryan, who is somewhere behind enemy lines. All four of his brothers have been killed in the war within weeks, so some officials in Washington try to avoid a press disaster by rescuing the last brother. (Swipe the following section if you've seen the film or you don't mind the ending being revealed.) Private Ryan is indeed located, but is rescued at the cost of the other men's lives. Captain Miller's (Tom Hanks) dying words to him are: "Earn this." And at the film's conclusion we see Ryan as an old man at Miller's grave, asking his wife whether he'd lived a good life and crying in her arms.
How can one man repay another man for his life? The film doesn't give any solid answer. (Although you could argue that it wraps up the story a little too neatly by implying that Ryan's Norman Rockwell family is enough to exonerate him -- the only bone I have to pick with this movie.)
I think that in both cases, death has bought us FREEDOM, one earthly, one spiritual. I do not believe I can earn my salvation in either case, but I MUST NOT abandon what the price of death has bought me. Now, as Paul writes, "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial" (I Corinthians 10:23), or, as Austin Powers puts it, "Now we have freedom and responsibility. Very groovy." It is my struggle to create an balance between the two, since as an American I am very used to using my freedoms wantonly, and as a Christian I am used to holding duty above freedom. This has been my challenge these past seven months, and although I can see myself making progress, I am sure there is a lifetime of refinement ahead of me. I do not believe I will ever be free of "Saving Private Ryan."
Shakespeare in Love My relationship with the arts has grown and progressed tremendously during the last seven years, and I can chart that progression most accurately with my changing attitude toward Shakespeare. There was a time when I thought that movies were purely entertainment, not art -- art was boring stuff like Shakespeare. Then I saw Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" and realized that Shakespeare could be fun, and in the hands of the right director, very accessible. I took a Shakespeare course in college and learned that his "high-brow" art was born out of the same "low-brow" showbiz constraints we have today -- sex and violence were as much a part of the bard's repertoire as they are in modern movies, and he was as concerned with his box-office draw and the tight-fisted bean counters as movie-makers are today. I discovered that art is not as disconnected with commerce and entertainment as I'd been lead to believe. That idea was strengthened as Shakespearean film enjoyed a resurgence in the cinema and I was treated to a wide variety of adaptations set during different time periods and countries. And for the first time I began to see that film could be art as well, and, if done well enough, as timeless and truthful as Shakespeare's plays.
Hombres Armados (Men With Guns) At The Bible League, where I work, we are emailed daily prayer requests from our church planters around the world. One that particularly stuck in my mind this year was from Colombia, where the army is at war with guerrilla forces. If any civilians are found to be helping the guerrillas, they are killed by the government. And if civilians help the government, the guerrillas kill them. Even being friendly toward one side raises enough suspicion for the other to kill that person, so Christians who are hungry to evangelize these soldiers are regularly slaughtered as traitors by the opposing side.
There's Something About Mary You probably didn't expect to find this on a list of influential films, not to mention a Christian's list of influential films. Its humor is very bawdy, which is generally frowned upon by refined viewers. But, frankly, I like bawdy humor if done cleverly and if the story has a genuine human element to it, as this has. (See above discussion of Shakespeare to see that truth and humor can co-exist.) Roger Ebert once said you can never account for what you find funny or what you find sexy, and I agree with him.
The Truman Show The first time I saw this film I didn't like it. The previews had set the film up as the story of a guy (Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey) who is the unwitting star of a 24-hour TV show and whose friends and relatives are all actors. Then he finds out the truth of his existence and tries to break free, much to the chagrin of the director, Christof (Ed Harris). Going into the theater I expected the film to be about what happens when Truman escapes and finds himself in the real world, but then found that the entire plot had been revealed in the preview. And I thought that the film was somewhat anti-Christian, since the God-like Christof is merely a controlling puppeteer and Truman wants to escape from him.
Saving Private Ryan I have never seen an on-screen depiction of warfare that frightened and sickened me more than "Saving Private Ryan." It made me wonder how anyone could possibly function in the heat of battle and also gave me deep reverence to those generations who have done so. But the real reason this film haunts me and I wrestle with it still is because of its theme of salvation.