Thursday, September 29, 2005

Million Dollar Baby I finally watched Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's tour de force from 2004. I know I'm so late as to be mostly irrelevant when it comes to commenting on these things, but as a matter of practice, I thought I'd throw my two cents in. I confess I brought a bias into watching the film that wasn't good, and as a result, spoiled the experience for myself. I'm not a huge Clint Eastwood fan (though I loved Unforgiven), and knowing where the film was going (which wasn't true for so many who saw the film when it first came out), I was in a foul mood from the beginning. (NOTE: if you haven't seen the film, you might want to stop reading this, because I'm going to talk about the end of the film, or as they say in film reviews, SPOILERS AHEAD.) Clint Eastwood's face is an amazing presence on screen, but his acting does little for me. Hillary Swank, on the other hand, was superb, as was Morgan Freeman's gorgeous narrative score. The set-up has tons of promise. Estranged fathers and daughters, the plucky waitress from trailer trash America determined to fight her way (literally, she's a boxer) to her own life, the noble, toilet-cleaning servant who takes in plucky waitress, creating the bridge to the guilt-laden trainer/cut man who will be her path to both glory and suffering. With all that suffering going on, the film is either going to become a redemption film, or it's going to be just mean and leave these people where they are. Well, if it did the latter, nobody would have bothered with it. So redemption it is. The problem is that the redemption of Frankie (Eastwood's character), guilty of some unknown sin against his daughter, so terrible that she returns his weekly letters unopened, labeled "return to sender," follows the path of reconnection and engagement in the first two-thirds of the film, Frankie taking on Swank's character Maggie as a sort of stand-in daughter. But then, just as things reach the pinnacle of sports-movie glory, the title fight, the tale takes a sharp, gut-punching left, leading Frankie--and us--toward a horrific choice, a choice we don't want to face, yet one that will inevitably show itself (in fiction and in real life) as medicine becomes more and more able to extend our lives. Frankie can't do what Maggie asks of him (end her suffering), yet--with some rather inept help from a callous priest--comes to understand that in the end, the most compassionate thing--read loving--he can do is fulfill her wish to end her life. So he kills her. And with that compact statement, I make an act done in compassion seem criminal (I asked my wife, "Can't he get arrested for that?"), and anybody with a thread of feeling will react with force, accusing me of reducing a complex human reality to some kind of ideological stance that smacks of callousness, perhaps so much so that to have not assisted Maggie's suicide would have amounted to a sort of hate crime. So I retract the statement. He doesn't kill her, not in the manner those words seem to intend. He helps her end her life, which is just what she wanted, and of course, understandable given her character, her journey, and her choices. But the problem is that the world of the film is a world where God either doesn't exist, doesn't care, or worse, is totally inept, and in which human beings are really no different than dogs when you really come down to it. In fact, Maggie's request is couched in exactly those terms. "At least treat me with as much dignity as you would the dog that needs to be put down" is what she seems to say, (referencing an earlier story about just such a compassionate act). That's assuming that the dignity of the dog (and yes, I believe they have dignity) is the same as the dignity of the human being. Frankly, I believe humans have more. Can I conceive of situations where a human being might take the life of another out of compassion? Push come to shove, maybe. Given the messiness of life under the sun, reluctantly, kicking and screaming, maybe. But it's not this one. Read Jeffrey Overstreet's review. He says all this much better than I can... 3:52:09 PM    comment []

The Church and Spiritual Formation Last night, as I was doing some online reading, I came across George Barna's web site. Barna has been doing research on the state of the Christian church for some 20 years. In describing the new directions his own ministry was going to take, I came across this statement, which I've been thinking about ever since: "...our research has shown that most of the influence on what people think and do comes from just seven sources: movies, television, music, family, books, law, and the Internet. That same body of research shows that the local church has virtually no discernible influence on people's lives." -- George Barna, The Barna Group The local church has virtually no discernable influence on people's lives. Wow. Couple this with Bill Hybels' belief that the local church is the hope of the world. What does this mean? Here's an article featuring Dallas Willard and Richard Foster lamenting essentially the same thing:The Making of the Christian, from Christianity Today. Add to this mix of thought Dick Staub's contention that the superficial and shallow nature of our culture, including current Christian culture, is rendering faith virtually powerfess and insipid. What's happening for me is that I'm wondering whether or not I'm following Jesus very honestly. The residue of a works based upbringing, coupled with an early education in living in the unreachable subterrain of my inner life, mixed in now with my Wilow experience and my Willard/Foster/Merton reading, all lead me to conclude that there are some things I am fooling myself about. Today is my fast day, and God is speaking to me loud and clear. I keep asking "How does a person follow Jesus?" because I keep hoping someone is going to say "Why, you already are." But in my bones, I know that's only partially true. Unquestionably, there is something missing. And if many of my friends are honest, I think they feel something akin to this as well. Willard and Foster argue that in the end, following Jesus is neither primarily about the forgiveness of sins or about battling the social ills of our time on behalf of our neighbor, as popularly preached by the right and left, respectively. Certainly forgiveness of sin and taking care of neighbor are central to the whole notion of following Christ, but they are not the core. A person can claim and feel their sins are forgiven, and they can take care of the poor, but in the end, such people can walk on in their lives essentially unchanged on the level of functioning paradigms. The care of the poor does not necessarily lead to loving, nor does receiving forgiveness of sins necessarily make us forgiving. Honesty about this is difficult, mostly because of long, long habits of mind. We think we know what's what, and one day, and then another, and then another, we wake to discover it's not what we thought at all. And there it is again, the call of the Christ, still holding forth a vision of what might be. "Come and see." ...rousing up the spirit yet again... 1:43:24 PM    comment []

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