X-Men: First Class (B+)

The film is strongest when it confines itself to moments of discovery between only two or three characters. By contrast, it's weakened by overblown CGI spectacle (as in the finale). Its hip production design (indebted to Connery's Bond era) and a setting during the Cuban Missile Crisis suggest a faux-gravitas that will be lost on many of this summer's popcorn munchers.

Many will remember the adoption of X-Men: The Last Stand as a metaphor for the gay community. That film asked "Is mutation illness or identity, sickness or signature?" Should the franchise continue on course as 1960s historical fiction, I'd expect future installments to similarly address themes of the Civil Rights Movement.

Thor (B--)

Fans of the Marvel comic reckoned Shakespeare vet Kenneth Branagh a natural fit for a King James-era script. And true to his Hamlet, scenes of royal intrigue were among the film’s most intense. More tepid was the chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman. Were these lovers truly destined to bridge the gulf of taboo between heaven and earth? Probably not. At least they managed to [barely] avoid some obvious fish-out-of-water yucks when the thunder god was banished to earth.

Back on Asgard, director Branagh was – as filmmakers have been for years – on the brink (not the bull’s eye) of telling tales believably set in other worlds. Some might argue that George Lucas told audiences such stories two decades ago. But, in general terms, our own laws of physics and weather hold on Tattooine and Naboo. Asgard (and Oa in the forthcoming Green Lantern flick) grasp at more, however. While Thor was admittedly a little better than good, man’s reach still exceeds his grasp.

False Chastity

During a talk last week, I asked Christian college students which was more morally troublesome: a movie, a car, a light bulb, or an apple. True to their upbringing they said with one voice "a movie." They said the things you'd perhaps expect them to say about language, nudity, violence, the erosion of social values, the absence of religion, the treatment of women. They told stories about the ways their parents had protected them from film's negative influence. "For a moment, let's set aside the film," I said. "Let's instead, consider the apple.

"We go to the grocery store and -- believing our bodies to be temples -- we stand in the produce section choosing which fresh fruits to buy. We see apples in broad variety; we buy half a dozen Honey Crisps. Because Honey Crisp apples are not in season in our part of the world in March, carbon monoxide has been pumped into the air on our behalf to ship them from elsewhere on the planet. We have thus weighed the benefits of personal health against creation care and chosen the former.

"We may also have made a decision between stewardship and shalom. We don't just want things that taste good; we also want them for a good price. And cheap apples are cheap because migrant workers seldom get health insurance. Indeed, the cinder block buildings in which they live sometimes don't have heat... or even floors for that matter. Given the Bible's preoccupation with the fate of widows, orphans, and aliens, our apple-purchasing habits are pretty disturbing.

"We're not ignorant. In the back of our minds, we are probably aware of the path our apples take from orchard to table. But we repress this knowledge.

"Now back to the hyper-violent film. Neo, Ahh-nold, or John Wayne (take your pick) spectacularly mows down an army of bad guys. And the director yells 'cut.' And all the extras dust themselves off and stand up. And they collect their paychecks and go home to spouses and children and sweethearts.

"We do understand, don't we, that the film's violence is fantasy? Not even animals were harmed in the making of this film. But our actions in the produce aisle result in real violence, done on our behalf to the planet and to our fellow humans. And yet, we say film is the more morally troublesome consumption."

"And consumption is precisely the problem. Jesus said it's not what goes into a person that makes her nasty; it is rather, what comes out of her. It is what she says, more than what she hears. It is the canvases she paints, more than the galleries she visits. It is what she cooks, more than what she eats. It is the movies she makes, more than the movies she pays to see.

"But because we have accepted that our relationship with the world is largely that of consumer, the church -- especially the Protestant church -- has virtually ignored its mandate to create. Instead, we practice suspicious ingestion (sometimes called "discernment") masquerading as the virtue of Chastity."

We are not chaste. We are fearful.

Everything

The title of last week's address, "Everything You Need to Know About Filmmaking," was chosen on my behalf by members of the Covenant College Film Club. Saying everything that can be said about filmmaking in one hour (to the extent it's even possible) would be like filling a thimble with a fire hose. Panicked by the aimless hopelessness of the task, I thought of a time when folks said to Jesus "Tell us everything." He said, "Okay, here's everything you need to know about the law, everything you need to take home from the prophets: love God. Hard. Hard like 'throwing-yourself-full-speed-against-the-wall hard.' And here's another thing that's kinda like it: Love even the folks you're inclined to hate as if they were your neighbors."

If those two great commandments constitute everything you need to know about life, then maybe everything you need to know about filmmaking is how to love God and neighbor with camera, microphone, and editing software. Easier said than done, of course.

Consider a not-too-recent shoot of a variety show episode. Our musical guest had, the night before her television appearance, suffered an acne outbreak of biblical proportions -- this in our studio's first semester after an $800,000 upgrade to High Definition. Now acne in standard def and acne in high def are two totally different things. My students sensed this and immediately huddled in the control room, asking "how do we use lighting, lenses, and shot size to love our neighbor and tell the truth?"

Many definitions of godly filmmaking are oversimplified contrasts of virtue and vice as regards a movie's content. "A godly movie doesn't have gratuitous sex, violence, or crude language," some might say. But choosing virtue over vice is milk. The acne incident represents a deeper, smarter, meatier faith-walk on the tight rope between one virtue and another.

Such walks are legs on the lifetime journey to "Everything."

Bored of the Rings

So Tolkein is a philologist by trade.  Not a claim many can make, but okay, one has to write something on a business card.  The story goes Tolkein began to ask himself the sort of academic question that philologists apparently ask themselves in their off hours:  "Just for grins -- could I create a language of my own?"  I think I can appreciate the appeal of this mental exercise.  Syntax, grammar, vocabulary -- what's not to love?  And having just returned from an extended stay in Scandinavia, is it so hard to guess what existing language Tolkein's iinvented one resembled?

He must have been pretty pleased with the outcome.  It shook loose a string of successive questions:  "Who speaks this language?", "Where do they live?", "What's the architecture and botany like there?" These are the sorts of world-building questions Tolkein answered with style and aplomb.  Few authors before Tolkein equal him in the creation of immersive diagesis.  Few authors after Tolkein can escape the crushing burden of his excellence.

Accounts of his writing process, however, indicate the final question he asked himself was "What do these people do ?"  That is, to say, of all the stuff required of authors, the last and least of Tolkein's concerns was plot. 

Go ahead.  Review the books or the movies.  It's impossible to defend the plot as anything but linear and pedestrian.  Fellowship is particularly frustrating in this regard since it almost never cuts away from the main character to offer a "meanwhile on the other side of the forest..." perspective.  Thus, the simple structure might be summarized "ring here; volcano there. 1000 freaking pages (or 12 hours of film) in between."  It's not a very inventive plot (and, frankly, could be circumvented pretty early on if only those giant eagles could fly in both directions). 

Let me be clear.  This simplistic narrative doesn't disqualify the trilogy as great literature.  We like episodic quest structures (The Wizard of Oz. Pilgrim's Progress).  In fact, its plot probably helps cement its reputation as great literature -- for adolescents.  Recall the age at which you first encountered Middle Earth.  12?  13?  It makes perfect sense that so many people develop their first Frodo-crush in early high school.  Tolkein is the perfect bridge between the books of childhood and adult fiction. All the detailed settings of Inception  with the easy-to-swallow plot of, say, Goodnight Moon.

But how does one explain the abiding affection for Tolkein that follows readers from high school into later life?  I submit that the 35-year-olds who took their children to see the films reveled in -- not high art -- but nostalgia.  They loved the way they felt, the people they were, the optimism they possessed, when they read Tolkein for the first time.  And they wanted to pass that on.  They want another generation of readers to catch fire as they themselves did.  Don't we all love it when our friends or children enjoy a book we've recommended?

I don't begrudge anyone their cultic worship at Tolkein's altar.  Indeed, a part of me enjoys the films as a benchmark of the medium's capacity (though that will surely pass as technology makes new images possible).  But mature, intricate storytelling?  Nah...

Timid Empathy

My latest documentary -- about a progressive arts/faith-based school in New Jersey -- contains a shot in which its students lead a reggae version of the birthday song. Three seconds long, maybe four. Some of the children are wearing dreadlocks as you might put on any wig to assume a dramatic role. The school distinguishes itself in the inclusive diversity of its student body. Yet in this one shot, no African-Americans are among the song's performers.

The shot fronts a section about teaching music through joy. Indeed, wild enthusiasm is a hallmark of the performance, with nearly the entire upper school participating with loud voices and clapping.

I was enjoined by one funding client to run a rough cut by a specialist in multicultural sensitivity -- the assumption being that, because the film's donors and creative crew are white, we might not possess the necessary sensitivity ourselves.

So, I showed it to the multicultural affairs officer and held my breath, hoping she wouldn't suggest any changes to the content of the film in the perilous interim between visual lock and audio mix. "Leave it in," she said. "It's joyous. The school's all about the welcoming examination of other culture's through the fine and performing arts. Go for it."

Okay, she came to the same conclusion I did. But I didn't trust myself. And I didn't trust the five other smart people to whom I'd shown it. Perhaps the distrust of self is a sign of empathy. Or perhaps it is an indemnification, an abdication of voice. Now if members of my audience bristle at kids with fake dreadlocks I can claim I had the film vetted by an African-American expert and shoulder less responsibility for my art.

I am pulled like taffy between vigorously loving my neighbor and honestly sharing who I am with the bold voice of prophets.

Liberal Arts Filmmakers

At this point in a grueling edit, I feel with every cut as if I've lopped off a finger. In today's ten-hour workday, I trimmed 21 seconds from a time line. Twenty-one seconds. I policed "ums" and "ahs" from 8 to 6, tightening the "A" roll like a strand of cat-gut across a tennis racket. It is painful place to be in the post-production. And yet, I would rather be throwing away gold to sculpt 26 beautiful minutes than gilding dross in the strain to fill a mediocre hour.

Meanwhile, my assistants labored as animators. Rachel populated a map of the hemisphere with trees; Taylor created a cutaway of an active volcano. These tasks required research into geography and geology, respectively. Perhaps student filmmakers think themselves lucky of they avoid classes in those subjects. Yet there we were, in a dim dungeon of editing suites, needing nothing so much as knowledge of the continent's population centers and the upward path of magma.

A string of such moments (in the most recent week of this project alone) affirm the liberal arts as the best preparation for a life of media production. Yes, one could attend any number of technical training institutes to master the discipline's soft- and hardware. But a holistic sense of form's fit with content, a researcher's ability to navigate fact and rhetoric -- these seem to me hallmarks of "big picture thinkers," the skillset that may distinguish artists from craftsmen or technicians.