Gathering Voices: Faithful Conversations from The Thoughtful Christian

Red Tails

A Film review by Edward McNulty

Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 5 min.

Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
Psalm 37:5-6

Largely financed by George Lucas, this fact-based but fictional story of the Tuskegee Airmen chronicles just part of the fight on the ground required for the African American pilots to get the right to fight in the sky. It skips most of the ground battles against the racist Army heirarchy fought back in the US, so well told in the HBO filmThe Tuskegee Airmen, although Clarence Howard is shown as the Washington-bound black officer who fights the military bureaucracy and prejudiced congressmen for his squadron's right to fly and fight. (The HBO film depicts well Eleanor Roosevelt's role in making sure that the black squadron would receive a green light.)

This film focuses instead on the action in the skies where the pilots protected the B-17 bombers flying over Germany. The Germans had been able to lure away the fighters piloted by whites that were supposed to protect the bombers that the bomber attrition rate had climbed to an alarming rate. Ordered to stay with the bombers rather than engaging in dogfights, the Tuskegee pilots gave far better protection, and yet still managed to shoot down a great many enemy planes. The Airmen, the tails of their fighters painted red, performed so well that the once prejudiced bomber crews changed their views concerning African American pilots’ skills. (One wonders whether any of those white flyers ever questioned racist practices after the war when they returned home.)

The film succeeds far better as an action film than as one exploring the depths of racism. The computer generated aerial combat scenes overshadow the shallow dramatic ones, almost turning what could have been a sociological film into a comic book action movie. Indeed, with its stereotypical characters—there is the pipe smoking commander; a hot shot pilot who loves to show off his flying skills, a can-do maintenance man able to patch up a damaged plane overnight; a pilot with a drinking problem, a religious pilot with his picture of “Black Jesus” taped to his control panel, and a snarling Nazi airman whom we cannot wait to see going down in flames. There is a bit of flag-waving, so that the film reminded me a lot of those I enjoyed as a boy, films such as God Is My Co-Pilot and Flying Fortress. In such films here is never any doubt that God is on the side of Americans killing Germans, nor is there any qualm raised about thethousands of civilian deaths caused by our massive bombing attacks.

Cuba Gooding, Jr., who plays the desk-bound major in charge of the squadron also starred in the far better 1995 film mentioned above. To discover the enormity of the racial barrier faced by the squadron at its very inception I urge you to see it. In Red Tails, when one pilot enters into a liaison with a local Italian beauty, there is not a ripple of criticism from her family or from the Air Force brass. This romantic interlude might have been added out of concern for women viewers, but it brings into question the filmmakers' hold on the reality of the times. Despite this and other shortcomings, the film does a service by bringing to a mass audience a little known episode in the long march toward racial equality.

Evil Wins?

 

A Gathering Voices Post by Lara Blackwood Pickrel

Over the past few weeks I’ve been sucked in to the ABC television show Once Upon a Time.  (Don’t judge me - I know it’s a bit fluffy, but it’s also fun!) 

In the show, a child named Henry has lured his biological mother, Emma Swan, to the quiet town of Storybrooke so that she can help him wake the residents from a spell cast by his adoptive mother, who is simultaneously the mayor and a wicked sorceress queen.  (Again, don’t judge me!)

All the fairy tale characters we know and love are there:  Snow White, Prince Charming, Jiminy Cricket, the dwarves, Hansel & Gretel... but they don’t know who they really are.  With the arrival of Swan, things begin to change:  the clock in the town’s central tower starts ticking again, residents begin to dream dreams and find themselves drawn towards the people they loved in their past fairytale lives.  They begin to have eyes to see things for what they are.

But the queen is quick, stealthy, and cruel.  And she’s willing to kill in order to keep the town in thrall. 

In episode 8, after a character is killed, young Henry decides it is time to stop working towards the town’s liberation.  He tells Swan:

    “Good loses.  Good always loses, because good has to play fair.  Evil doesn’t.”


In this moment, Henry kicks up a question the fantasy genre is so adept at asking and answering:  Surrounded by so much that is worthy of despair, can goodness win the day if it “plays fair”? 

But this is not merely a query for fairy tales and Tolkien adventures.  Can good really win?  Really?  Is an ethical life worth the trouble?  Is standing for what is good and true simply postponing the inevitable?  These are central questions of our life together.

Some days it certainly appears that those who are greediest hold the best cards.  Some days it is clear that those who are most willing to abuse their power through violence, manipulation and coercion are the ones with the most power.  Some days the systems and mechanisms of inequity seem unstoppable.  Some days the world really does look hopeless.

As it turns out, this question of fantasy is also a Gospel question.  It names the pain, evil and despair of the world, holding them in sharp contrast to the goodness, compassion and joy we know are possible.  It questions the possibility and potency of the Kin-dom of God - that other reality that Christ calls us to simultaneously live in and create, day after day.   

Like Henry, we have moments of despair, where hope seems pointless.  We have moments where violence, war, greed, corruption, hatred, injustice, systemic poverty and oppression seem so powerful that surely they will have the final word.  If Good (or if God) must play by the rules, then hope holds no sway here...

But, then again, as people of “fantasy” - as Gospel people - we know how the story ends.  Light shines in the darkness and is not overcome by it.  Death is real, yet resurrection has the final word. 

As Gospel people, we come to the same conclusion as most fantasy tales: the road is rough, the choices are sometimes difficult, there's many a struggle... yet here and there on to the end, good wins.

God wins.

Oscar Nominations Good News for People of Faith

 

No doubt the recent release of the Oscar nominations is creating plenty of buzz in the workplace and at church gatherings. For people of faith there is a lot to cheer about this year. Six of the films nominated for “Best Picture” are on my annual “Top Ten” of films dealing with spiritual and human relationship themes that Presbyterian News Service just sent out. And then I got to see director Stephen Daldry's wonderful Extremely Close and Incredibly Close Up, and thus had to insert this and expel one of the films from the first list. To see which one, go to www.visualparables.net . (This might not get posted until Monday, Jan. 30)

 The Artist

Rated PG-13. Ecclesiastes 9:11-12; 1 Corinthians 13:4a
This blend of A Star is Born and Singing in the Rain is a delight to see, with no dialogue until the end. Set in the late 20s when sound is being introduced to motion pictures, it is story of a falling silent film actor and the rise of the young actress whom he helped break in to the profession. Themes of love, grace and the danger of pride are well developed.

 The Descendants

Rated R. Matthew 18:2; Psalm 24:1-2.

Grace, responsibility to the land, and family reconciliation—director Alexander Payne's film, set in Hawaii has all this and more. (See an earlier blog for more.)

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Rated PG-13. Matthew 5:4; Isaiah. 66:13.

This powerful film is not about 9/11 but about its aftermath, and in particular about a boy whose father was in the tower and struggles with a mixture of grief and guilt as he searches throughout the five borroughs of New York City to discover what a key that his father left will open. What seems at first like a father son film has a couple of surprises, especially in regard to his mother.

 

The Help
Rated PG-13. Psalm 146:7b-9; Proverbs 31:8.

This civil rights era story set in Jackson Mississippi affirms the importance of sisterhood and of the support of the church for the black maids and the white writer in exposing racism in the domestic workplace.

 

Hugo
Rated PG. Psalm 82:3-4; Isaiah 11:6d

An orphaned boy secretly living above the concourse of a Parisian train station during the 1930s discovers his purpose in life—to fix a complicated automaton left by his father and a broken man.

The Tree of Life
Rated PG-13. Job 38:4-7; Matthew 5:45b

Terence Malick's film can be seen as a visual meditation on the Job passage, which we see on the screen at the beginning of the film. Departing from the usual narrative structure, the film includes scenes of a family living in Texas in the Fifties, with the themes of law and grace of great beauty. The director even inserts the creation of the universe from the Big Bang through the dinosaurs, the family, and a reunion beyond this life.

 

War Horse.

Rated PG-13. Luke 2:13-14.

Steven Spielberg is up to his usual high form in that his war film shows the humanity of both the British and the German soldiers, drawn together at the climax by their love of the horse trapped and in pain between their lines.

 

All of the above will make for good viewing and discussion for church film groups, as well as provide some preaching material for pastors seeking to relate their sermons to the culture. And besides the seven briefly discussed above, other worthy nominees include My Week With Marilyn; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Iron Lady, and one which I wish could have been given more recognition, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2. I'm really looking forward to the Oscar Awards this year—and am somewhat glad that I don't have to pick “Best Picture,” torn as I am between so many good choices. What ones are you hoping to see honored on February 26?

 

Reviews of the above films are up, or in several cases, soon will be posted at visualparables.net.

My Week With Marilyn

A review by Edward McNulty

Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 39 min.

 Colin helps Marilyn through a mob of eager reporters.

© 2011The Weinstein Company

Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing…

And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the

weak, be patient with all of them.

                                                           1 Thessalonians 5:11, 14

 This film, based on Colin Clark's diaries, The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn, can be seen as a good addition to the movies about movie making genre, as well as a peek into the private life of what was once the most famous and adored actress in the world. And for people of faith director Simon Curtis’s film has the additional dimension as being a good story about encouragement and grace and their role in life. That the story’s events are more or less true makes it all the better.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) comes from an upper-class English family, his father being the famous art historian Kenneth Clark whose 13-part BBC Civilization: A Personal View is a classic television documentary. Wanting to develop his own life and escape from under his father’s shadow, Colin manages in the summer of 1956, through pluck and persuasion, to land a position at Pinewood Studios. It is an unpaid position at first as a “Third Assistant Director” to Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), which translates as “gofer.”  Olivier is directing and co-starring in The Prince and the Showgirl, and the actress regarded by the press as an American sex goddess is soon to arrive in London. This, of course, is Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), bringing with her new husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) and drama coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), wife of Method Acting guru Lee Strasberg.

Both at he airport and at Pinewood Marilyn is given the red carpet treatment, with Olivier heading the assembled cast and studio staff expressing warm greetings and words of admiration. For Olivier this will be the last time for a long while that he utters anything positive to or about his costar. The insecure actress is always late, sometimes hours late, and when she does leave her dressing room to show up on the set, she seeks guidance and reassurance not from director Olivier, but from Lee, whom she always keeps close at hand.

It is during this tumultuous period that the 23 year-old Colin, who like virtually every other male (Olivier included, as his wife Vivian Leigh observes) has developed a crush on the actress, is invited into the private life of the tormented actress. This becomes the intense week when Arthur Miller, who observes that Marilyn and her celebrityhood sucks all the air from him, decides to return to the USA so that he can get back to his writing. Feeling abandoned (again), Marilyn turns to Colin for the comfort and reassurance that she needs as badly as any heroin addict ever needed a fix.

During a week in which there is little call for her to be on the set, Colin escorts Marilyn around London. Earlier there had been a delightful exchange when someone says to her that she must get out more to see the sites of the city, to which she replies, “I am the sight.” This is not a vain boast, but a wry expression of the truth. She tries to go shopping, but is immediately spotted and quickly surrounded by a crowd pressing in upon her, everyone trying to touch her or acquire her autograph. She is as much a prisoner of her fame as a beneficiary of it.

When Colin takes her to his old university, she is quickly surrounded by admiring students, blessing one with a kiss on the cheek that he will never forget. Standing at the top of a short flight of steps, she senses that they want the screen Marilyn, so she graciously gives to them a brief performance of her famous shimmy and shake steps. They are enthralled. However when Colin is able to get them into the Queen’s palace, she shows her more serious side, making some intelligent remarks and questions to Colin’s grandfather, who is the royal librarian (and unaware of who she is).

Marilyn is wonderfully portrayed by Michelle Williams as a highly talented woman wracked by serious doubts about her ability and haunted by a sense of childhood abandonment. In one telling scene Colin sees two pictures on her vanity desk, one of her mother, he learns, and one of Abraham Lincoln. To his query, she says, “he is my Dad. I never knew my real father, so it might as well be him.” In scene after scene we see also that Marilyn is fearful in the presence of the man considered one of the greatest actors in the world. She worries that she cannot measure up to Olivier’s expectations, and sure enough, time after time she doesn’t, her mistakes requiring retake after retake. It is Colin who during their week spent together provides the comfort and support that not even longtime associate Lee Strasberg can offer.

Kenneth Branaugh should not be overlooked in this film, his performance as the frustrated director also being outstanding, though understandably overshadowed by that of Ms. Williams’. We see in Olivier’s interaction with Marilyn the clash between two approaches to acting, that of the classical in which practice and skill are paramount and that of the Method in which the actor strives to understand the motivation and inner life of the character. As Colin says to Marilyn, “It's agony because he's a great actor who wants to be a film star, and you're a film star who wants to be a great actress. This film won't help either of you.”  Marilyn, emerging from an insecure past and wanting to move beyond the straight jacket of “sex goddess” to which her fans would confine her, struggles to become an artist as serious as Olivier himself—and to be taken as seriously.

Earlier I wrote that this is a film of grace, and so it is. We see how young Colin, even more innocent in some ways than Marilyn, provides a measure of temporary security and comfort for the actress. But so do others serve as agents of grace, the most prominent being Judi Dench’s Dame Sybil Thorndike, an actress who immediately realizes Marilyn’s vulnerability and need for reassurance. Unlike Olivier, who as director is so focused on getting the film made within budget, she is able to reach out to the younger woman at various times. Marilyn as the child/woman also bestows grace—on the students who gaze at her in awe when she briefly performs for them, and also upon Colin, well before their magical week spent in close company. Sensing his concern for her, she treats him as a person and not just as a gofer. She lets him down gently when it comes time to part. And whether or not their relationship became physical the film leaves open to question. For this, and also because it takes us into the process of movie making, this is a film I will cherish henceforth.

 

The 99% and Two Current Films: In Time & Tower Heist

By Edward McNulty

 
                       In Time  (c)  Regency Enterprise                                           Tower Heist  (c) Universal Studios

The producers of two very different films-- In Time and Tower Heist--must be happy with their timing. Now that the Occupy Wall Street protest movement has spread to cities throughout the country, the movement appears to be more than just an ephemeral one. Its members, claiming to represent the 99% of the people who are hurting while the 1% stack the political and economic system in favor of themselves, might want to take a break from camping and marching and take in one or both of these pictures.

In Time, the heavier of the two films, is an intriguing science fiction dystopia in which the Haves and Have Nots live in a dozen (or so) segregated time zones. Everyone has been genetically engineered to live for 25 years, after which the poor must scramble to stay alive for a few more years while the wealthy have hundreds of years available. Time is the currency, and everyone has embedded in glowing numbers on their left the amount of years, hours, and minutes they have left. As soon as all of the numbers read “0,” the body stops functioning. The price of a cup of coffee has just doubled from two minutes to four, and the toll for traveling from one time zone to another is months at first, and then as one passes into a higher class zone, years. Transactions are made either by inserting one’s arm into a scanner or, between individuals, by touching wrists, the person with the top wrist being the recipient.

Our hero Will works in a factory and lives with his mother in the lowest of the zones. Like his neighbors, they always are just a few minutes away from running out of time. Two events trigger his awareness of the unfairness of the system—the death of his mother because she has run out of time before she can reach him to replenish her time, and an encounter with a wealthy man intent on dying because he has lived too long. This man explains the system of how there is a zone where people have an untold wealth of years. Deciding to accept death, the man bequeaths his hundred years to Will while the latter is asleep. Will then travels to the rich time zone where he confronts the wealthiest man of all and triggers a rebellion. Clearly Will would have been camping out in the park with the 99% people were he living in our midst.

Tower Heist also was begun long before Occupy Wall Street, but it exemplifies the same rage that motivates this movement. Arthur Shaw. a wealthy Wall Street magnate delightfully played by Alan Alda, occupies the top floor of The Tower, a high-rise condo building near New York’s Columbus Square. Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building manager who tends to all the needs of the occupants. He has come to trust the broker so much that he has persuaded the board to turn over the employees’ pension fund to the trader. Comes the day when the FBI arrests and leads Shaw away in handcuffs because the billions of dollars he oversaw have disappeared.

Shaw is soon released under house arrest. When Josh confronts him about their lost money that will be needed by his staff, the arrogant Shaw says, ““You people are working stiffs, clock-punchers. Easily replaced.” Josh vows, “I don't care what it takes. I will find a way to make it right.”  And does he ever, though it means committing some wrongs to set things right, including hiring a slick thief played by Eddie Murphy to train the staff who have reluctantly agreed to participate in the elaborate plot. Their goal is to lure Shaw and his FBI guards away from his apartment so they can enter and find the $20 million that they think he has stashed away there. Of course, there are many a twists and turns, many of them unexpected, before they can “make it right.”

Both of these films would have been enjoyable had they been released while the economy was booming, but now with so many people up in arms over the huge wage gap between CEOs and workers and with the Wall Street denizens blamed for our busted economy being given huge bonuses, the films pack an added punch.

Imaginary Friends

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

When I was three years old we lived in a neighborhood with very few children, so I created my own friend. My imaginary friend played with me and my Raggedy Andy doll every day. We drank tea together at the little table my parents bought for me. My imaginary friend got me through that year. When I was four and we moved to a new place, I jumped into friendships with real life children.

Characters in well loved novels function like imaginary friends in my life today. After a busy work day, I like nothing better than to curl up with a familiar novel. It feels like being with friends in a non-demanding way. I know what the characters will say and do. I enjoy spending time with them.

I truly believe I don’t use novels as a way to escape from real relationships. When I’m tired, I simply don’t have the energy to meet up with friends or even to phone them, write them an email or check on Facebook to find out what they’ve been doing. The familiar characters in novels meet some of the same needs that would be met by getting together with a friend.

I was wondering if this was a little bit crazy when I heard some people talking about the television show West Wing.

“Those people are like my friends,” one person said. “I love to play a DVD of the show before I go to bed at night to have a little time with those people.”

Someone else said, “After that show was cancelled, I found I missed spending time with those characters.”

A few weeks later, I was reading A Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870 by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh. He writes about some of the favorite characters in the Jane Austen novels, “who have been admitted as familiar guests to the firesides of so many families, and are known there as individually and intimately as if they were living neighbours.”

There’s a lot of black and white thinking about friendships these days, perhaps precipitated by the rise in social networking. I am continually amazed at the polarized views about Facebook that I hear. People seem to view it as all bad or all good. Why can’t we have a more nuanced approach?

The same applies, in a smaller way, to the question of imaginary friends. Some people will probably read the first six paragraphs of this post and decide that I must be wildly neurotic. And they may wonder if I have any real-life friends at all.

If I spent all my free time with familiar characters in novels, I would worry. If I expected all my real-life friendships to mirror the friendships in the TV show Friends or the friendships in novels, I would be treating my friends unfairly. But I don’t. I spend time with familiar characters in novels when I’m too tired to communicate with living human beings. Sometimes I learn things about friendship from novels, which is a nice bonus. And when I’m not reading, I do my best to love my real-life friends as much as I can and as often as I can.

When I did the interviews for my book on friendship, Friending, I heard so many polarized views about friendship today. In the book I have advocated for friendship practices centered on the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13, which mirrors the character of Jesus. Whether we’re talking about imaginary friends or Facebook use, our criteria for evaluation ought to be the characteristics of love modeled after Jesus Christ which requires some careful reflection, analysis and prayer.

The Way: A Modern Pilgrim's Progress

by Edward McNulty

Rated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 55 min.  Proverbs 4:11-13

(c) 2010 Arc Entertainment

Emilio Estevez directs his father Martin Sheen in this film about a father finishing a pilgrimage begun by his son on The  Camino de Santiago, in English known as "The Way of St. James" or, simply, "The Way.” Sheen plays Dr. Tom Avery, an ophthalmologist who has settled into the routine of life, estranged years earlier from his free-spirited son Daniel. Estavez plays the son in flashback scenes, and even wrote the script, inspired by experiences that he and his father had several years ago when they walked the same road.

Tom receives word of Daniel’s death due to a freak change in the weather, the young man having started out on a pilgrimage which began in the French Pyrenees and was to continue for over 500 miles through northern Spain to the great cathedral in Santiago. When he goes to retrieve the body, Tom impulsively decides to finish Daniel’s pilgrimage using the gear left behind. Carting Daniel’s ashes in an urn stowed into the backpack, he meets many people on the journey, including three who become his close companions, none of whom started with any religious motive.

The first of the three is a big bear of a friendly Dutchman named Joost (Yorick van Wageningen). When Tom rebuffs him several times and the guy keeps coming back, I couldn’t help but think of Donkey in Shrek. Joost is walking the Way to lose some of his weight, but he loves food so much that he keeps stuffing himself. Then there is the angry Canadian Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), who sees the trek as a way to quit smoking, and yet she keeps on lighting up, even when Tom urges her to stop. Put off by Tom’s reserve and seriousness, she asks, “Doesn't this guy ever stop to smell the flowers?” The third companion is the motor mouth Jack (James Nesbitt), an Irish writer who hopes to get over his writer’s block by walking the Way. What’s funny about him is that he writes guidebooks, not fiction! How can anyone get writer’s block while writing something as prosaic as a guidebook!?

Other facts about and motives of the characters are learned as they walk, sometimes together, often (in Tom’s case) alone, and when they stop along the way. Some of the people they meet are also interesting: an inn keeper who wants to be a bull fighter; a kindly priest suffering from brain cancer; and the head of a gypsy family distressed by the prejudice against his people. That his young son steals Tom’s backpack with the precious urn doesn’t help matters. What follows that night and next morning makes for moving viewing.

Along the way Tom thinks back upon a number of the times spent with his son. Regretting now that he had always disapproved of the young man’s free-spirited lifestyle, which he had regarded as irresponsible, he recalls Daniel’s response to his urging him to choose a life: “You don't choose a life, dad. You live one.”

The photography of the mountains and of the sea adds much to the story. A deeply spiritual film, without becoming explicitly Christian, the director/writer’s attention to small details, of the journey and of the development of the various characters (including that of a proud and honest gypsy father), will embed this film in your memory long after those of lesser films have into oblivion.

The Lion King on Big & Small Screen by Edward McNulty

Rated PG Running time: 93 min. Deut. 32:7

This marvelous Hamlet-related film has been a big hit in its 3-D re-release, and now is available in a superb take home package that features both the Blu-Ray and the DVD version.

It is a father-son story that the whole family can watch, though parents should be wary that there are violent scenes that will be scary for pre-school children. Elton John’s beautiful song celebrating the Circle of Life well supports the panoramic scene in which the shaman mandrill Rafiki climbs to the top of Pride Rock where little Simba and his parents King Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Queen Sarabi (Madge Sinclair) are waiting for him. In a baptism-like scene he anoints the cub and presents him as the new prince to the multitude of animals assembled below. All bow and rejoice at this happy occasion.

All, that is, except for Scar, brother of Mufasa. Ambitious and jealous, he has stayed away. As wonderfully voiced by Jeremy Irons, Scar masks his jealousy in sarcastic remarks, often with double meanings. Turning his evil thoughts into deeds with the help of a pack of hyenas, he kills his rival and seizes the throne, but his plan to kill Simba also is thwarted, and the cub escapes to a far off land. Raised by some curious creatures, Simba grows to adulthood, but only an encounter with his childhood friend Nala and Rafiki, convinces him to return from exile and confront Scar.

The film will resonate with people of faith with its theme near the end of the importance of remembrance. All through the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy—indeed, throughout the Scriptures—we find the exhortation, “Remember…” In a spiritual encounter with his father, Simba is inspired to remember his legacy and his responsibility to live up to it. Also, parents will appreciate the earlier scene showing the closeness of father and son and the call to honor that relationship.

The discs include a fine “making of the film,” the usual voice over commentary by the filmmakers, and, depending on what set you purchase, deleted scenes extended footage, song cuts, and some family On-line access to interactive features. This film lends itself to use by parents, grandparents, and church leaders who want more than just entertainment for the young child under their care.

What's Wrong with Old People Today?

It’s official.  I’m old.  If you need a definition, being older than the president is old!  He’s 50 and I’m 56.  I’m thrilled that he’s finally old enough to join AARP!  It was certainly a red-letter day for me.

I belong to the Baby Boomer generation.  It is said that we made being young a cult.  And we’ve certainly taken our share of licks over the years.  Comic George Carlin  sums up the collective take on Boomers pretty well, “The Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: ‘Gimme that! It's mine!’”

But even as we Boomers bemoan the absence of young adults from our pews, many kvetch relentlessly about ‘them’ as if the young are a plague.

A simple test to get at what I mean:  Google “What’s wrong with young people today?” and you’ll get 6,790 results.  Google the opposite: “What’s right with young people today?” and you’ll get a mere 235 hits.  

Maybe we should be asking instead:  what’s wrong with old people asking so much about what’s wrong with young people? 

Comments I’ve heard recently include:  They’re rude, referring to young folks on their cell phones.  They’re socially incompetent, referring to the changes in social interaction wrought by the reality of instantaneous communication with those not physically present.  They’re dumbing down everything.   And technology is to blame.  Usually a list of supposed things young folk ‘can’t’ do follows.  Yet my own experience has introduced me to a generation of people who handle massive amounts of information in wonderful ways, synthesizing what they know virtually with what they experience in real time.  I learn from them.

So to those of my own generation, my list of things young people have taught me:

1.            Don’t’ be afraid to try.  So what if you hit the wrong button?  You’re not going to start a nuclear war by experimenting with your computer, cell phone or remote control.  Mistakes are not the end of the world.

2.            Sometimes you just have to lay down in the grass and stare at the sky.

3.            Hard work to no good purpose is no virtue.

4.            Rest is no vice.

5.            Friends matter - nurture them, spend time with them, love them.

6.            “Everything happens for a reason” isn’t an excuse; it’s a world view.

7.            Everything is connected and so is everyone.

8.            Knowledge cannot be owned and people shouldn’t try to hog it to themselves.  Shakespeare could not have survived in a world where knowledge is considered property to be owned.

9.            All the gadgets make the world and your place within it larger, not smaller.

10.          It matters to what and to whom you give your loyalty.  Cling to what lasts and hold loosely that which does not.

Maybe we boomers could be a wee bit more humble about our own generation and a lot more generous about others.

Just a suggestion.

Fight Films That Are About More Than Fighting by Edward McNulty

Are you one of those who believe that boxing is a terrible sport because it requires its participants to deliberately try to injure the opponent to win the match—and yet find yourself drawn to films about the sport any way? I know I am, having enjoyed The Champ, Rocky, and a ring full of others. Last year’s The Fighter, based on the true story of two brothers and their families, who fought almost as much among themselves as in the ring, made my Top Ten Films list for my Visual Parables.

The appeal of such films, of course, is not the fighting, but the events beyond the ring, with underdog characters facing great odds outside the ring as well as within it. And now two more films are out centering on the fight game, though not exactly the traditional sport.

             
 

The sport in Warrior (Rated R) is Mixed Martial Arts, which involves kicking and wrestling, as well as boxing. There are two estranged brothers, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) a schoolteacher and the other Tommy (Tom Hardy) a Marine gone AWOL from Iraq. Each has good motives for going back to a sport they had given up years before. They have not spoken in years, but the one thing they agree on is that their alcoholic father Paddy (Nick Nolte) is no good, even if he has quit drinking and is trying to reform his life and reconnect with them. No one thinks either has a chance in the Big Tournament, but of course they do advance—and when they meet each other in the ring, we are not sure for whom to root. One of the strangest reconciliation scenes climaxes a long action sequence that keeps the audience leaning toward the screen.

Real Steel (Rated PG-13) surprised me in that it was not a pale imitation of the Transformer movies, but turned out to be a heart-felt father/son story. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, once a boxing contender who came along too late to make a name for himself, 8-foot robots displacing human boxers in the ring. The sport of 2020 thus adds the crashing excitement of demolition derby to that of boxing. Director Shawn Levy’s film owes much to The Champ in that the appealing Dakota Goyo plays Charlie’s scrappy 11 year-old son Max. Unable to handle the responsibility of fatherhood, Charlie had left his wife shortly after Max was born and had not seen him since. Now his wife has died, leaving Max’s fate in Charlie’s hands. Her sister and wealthy husband want the boy, but have to leave the country during the summer for business reasons. Charlie secretly works out a deal with the husband to sell custody of Max for a large sum of money, but the deal requires him to take care of his son while they are away.

Max is less than happy to be with the father who had never been a part of his life, but Charlie’s work of piecing together a robot to fight in underground matches intrigues the boy, who soon displays an aptitude for robots. Through a series of events, which includes their finding in a junkyard an old but still intact robot which they call Atom, the two draw closer together. With the boy’s brains and Charlie’s boxing skills they turn the small robot (of course it has to be small compared to its opponents, or this wouldn’t be an underdog tale) into a formidable fighter.

If you liked Rocky and The Iron Giant, chances are you’ll like this one too, both films being paid tribute by the director. At least in this film there are no humans in the ring absorbing the terribly punishing blows from the opponent.