Minority Report

Here are the closing thoughts from tonight's Film Club Extra:

‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.’ The perennial cry of the wronged sibling.

But how about. ‘You can trust me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ Trust brings a whole new perspective into play. The cleaner won’t steal my things. The baby-sitter won’t abuse my children. The treasurer won’t steal the money. The minister won’t abuse young people.

All these break-downs in trust have occurred. They have occurred recently. And they have occurred not so very far from here.

Philip K. Dick’s short story, set in 2054 and directed by Steven Spielberg, appears to be set a long time in the future but let’s recall, some of us, reading the novel 1984 and feeling it was set a long time in the future. The future creeps up on us. Philip K. Dick also wrote the short story ‘Do robots dream of electric sheep?’ which became the cult classic movie Blade Runner. The future in that story, is very bleak. In Minority Report, whilst still set in a dark world, they seem to have a key to making the future better.

Films set in the future, often in the genre called ‘Science Fiction’ are good at asking ‘What if’ questions.

What if we could stop crime before it happened? But push it a bit and you get, ‘What if we could stop every wrong before it happened?’ What if we could stop selfishness, greed, sin? What if we didn’t have free will? How far do you want to push?

But, says the film to us, doesn’t a system that allows us to know, in advance, who will do these things and stop them seem brilliant. Well yes. Yes but...

Cultural commentator Nick Pollard argues that once upon a time most philosophical enquiry took place in universities and most spiritual reflection in churches. Today, he says, most philosophical investigation and spiritual enquiry takes place in the cinema.

The real heart of this film’s philosophical investigation is the exploration of questions about freedom and identity. Are we able to choose our future? If we are, are we morally accountable for it? Or are our actions in some way determined for us? This is the philosophical problem of determinism.

All parenting, training and teaching is a counter to determinism. We believe that people act wrong because they don’t know right so we educate them.

There was an accusation at the time of the murder of Jamie Bulger in Liverpool that the church had failed to teach people the difference between right and wrong. But the killers went to jail because the court found they did know the difference but still did wrong.

Education doesn’t solve everything.

However much I try I always seem to end up at movies which have eye surgery in them. It’s grim. But the film asks the question, ‘Do you see?’ Do you see what life would be like, how grim it would be under the surface, if we behaved like this? A vision of a crime-free utopia has an underside of back-street eye surgery. The same argument is often used in the matter of abortion.

If we could know so much by pre-cognition or genetic analysis would we simply swab a baby and decide to keep or discard? We stray into the world of the film Gattaca which raises these issues and we may watch together some day

So is the future fixed? Determined? Am I the luckless, or lucky, product of my genes, my environment and the quality of my education?

St Paul beat himself up about this a lot. ‘Oh wretched man that I am,’ he said, ‘I can’t stop doing what I don’t want to do and not doing what I do want to do.’ If St Paul lived in the world of Minority Report he would have been taken out before he supervised the first murder of a disciple of Jesus, would never have become a follower himself and most of our New Testament would have been missing. Unless someone or something was determining his future perhaps, at which point I get brain ache.

A few weeks ago a man finally went to prison for his 52nd driving offence. Are we as a society leaning in the opposite direction to the film? Are we too lenient?

But is there a place in the world for repentance? If I stand over someone with a knife raised is it inevitable that I am going to kill them?

The message I want to shout at the screen is this; people change. So we must allow them to live in a world of second chances. However awkward that makes it that I am, from time to time going to be the victim of sin. And of course, occasionally the perpetrator.

But I won’t commit the sin of going on any longer so have a great weekend, whether someone is watching you or not.

3.08 at Kingshill

Quick reminder that 3.08 at Kingshill School, 45 minutes of all-age worship, prayer and organised mayhem, has continued on the second Sunday afternoon of each month. It is therefore this coming Sunday, May 11th. It's Pentecost so a lot of Holy Spirit stuff with balloons and wind and well you'd better come and see. Tea and cakes after as ever. Children, you can't come alone. Bring a responsible, well-trained adult with you.

That's eight minutes past three on Sunday afternoon. Don't you miss it

American Beauty

Here are the closing thoughts from last night's Film Club Extra.

There is a very fine line between tragedy and comedy. You may well have been to some gruelling films where a lighter moment had you laughing even though it wouldn’t have been that funny out of context. So was American Beauty a comedy or a tragedy? Perhaps the answer is its genius. It was both.

We laugh at Lester’s problems – they are so ridiculous. Yet we identify with his comi-tragic failure to deal with them sensibly. After all we live in a culture that gets more than usually uptight about consistent sporting failure, where our best selling books include:

· The Book of Heroic Failures
· Why is everything a bit shit?
· Crap days out
· Grumpy old men (and women)

And we laugh at our failure to make airport baggage systems work or trains run on time. We are not that good at putting things right without chuckling at our errors. There are parallels between Lester’s world and ours for sure.

Veteran movie reviewer Roger Ebert says, ‘The movie is about a man who fears growing older, losing the hope of true love and not being respected by those who know him best. If you never experience those feelings, take out a classified ad. People want to take lessons from you.’

In a world of rampant consumerism we are called to buy more and more. To replace the obsolete devices after months not years. To show we have no fear of terrorism by shopping as normal the following day. To colour co-ordinate everything – even our shears with our shoes. To update our car and buy a gym subscription. The film helps us question this by showing it to us.

‘Will you walk?’
‘Hey it’s like a mile.’

This from someone who has been doing an energetic cheer leader routine.

And so to lust. Forty something men fancying teenage girls is unavoidable. Acting on those feelings is. We see. We react. We edit. That is the proper way. Jesus said any man who looks at another woman with lust in his heart commits adultery. And all the men know what he meant. It is what you do with the desire for sex that demonstrates maturity, not having the desire in the first place.

Those of us who are male and the other side of our personal mid-life crises will have shuffled a bit as Lester made his decisions. A job with less responsibility but that he enjoyed. A sports car. A get fit campaign. Been there and got the T-shirt.

American Beauty is a powerful film full of pictures and metaphors. Even a bag blowing in the wind is made attractive.

Most notable of all the images is colour - a deep rich red. This is the colour of the door to the Burnham's house, the roses in the garden, the rose petals which figure in Lester's fantasies and in Lester's blood which is splattered across the kitchen wall and drips onto the floor. Is Mendes telling us death is actually beautiful and lamenting the way we hide it away and somehow make it clean, hygienic and detached? Since all this is narrated by a dead man this movie is all pathology – emotional pathology.

Clearly there is much in American Beauty that resonates with those who, like Lester, feel that they are living an empty life. Deep within us is the knowledge that there must be more to life than this, and that somehow discovering a new life is linked to the death of our old life. Like the film Pleasantville told us, that some of us watched last year – we need to see things in colour.

American Beauty maybe tells us that we need to change, to turn around, if we are to experience real life. And that process of turning involves some form of death, but a death which is beautiful and liberating; not ugly or pointless.

The philosopher’s words in the Old Testament were that the many things people pursue are meaningless, useless and a chasing after wind. Money, achievement, relationships, pleasure. All what management guru and philosopher Herzog called hygiene factors – their absence demotivates; their presence doesn’t motivate.

And artists down the ages, not just the writer of Ecclesiastes, have written and sung about it, about change, about turning around and seeing things the way they’re meant to be. Even St Paul had a go with his idea of seeing in a mirror dimly and looking forward to the day he would see face to face. Crystal clear next life communication was anticipated.

The film asks us all to be willing to change but not reckless with it. And the best sort of change would be the change that takes place before we get into the sort of mess the film’s characters are in. That way our lives would be very sorted, very fulfilled ... and would probably make a rubbish movie.

Time for us all to review and learn.

Have a beautiful weekend.

Chocolat

Here are Rosey Lunn's closing thoughts following February's Film Club Extra.

When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Fr. Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock – especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial. War is declared as the priest denounces the newcomer’s wares as the ultimate sin.

Suddenly Vianne’s shop-cum-café means that there is somewhere for secrets to be whispered, grievances to be aired, dreams to be tested. But Vianne’s plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival divide the whole community in a conflict that escalates into a ‘Church not Chocolate’ battle. As mouths water in anticipation, can the solemnity of the Church compare with the pagan passion of a chocolate eclair?’

Which one of us here has not resorted to chocolate in a moment of stress, a time when we were in need of comfort, when we felt ‘down’ and in need of a lift?

The image of chocolate is powerful and seductive; dark and bitter, rich and creamy:

Dairy Milk, Green & Black, Thorntons, truffles, caramels, fruit & nut, flakes, Mars Bars, Yorkies (not for the girls!), brownies, Mississippi mud pie...

It is significant that many people give up chocolate for Lent – and then celebrate Easter with an almost sickening overdose of it.

On one level, this film is a seductive celebration of the ‘if it feels good, do it’ philosophy of life, which is very much in the spirit of our times – enjoy life, give yourself a treat, let go of negative attitudes, learn to be yourself; it is a ‘feel good’ experience. How do we feel about that? On the one hand, it’s all lovely and positive and life-affirming (and everything that religion in the past has often not been!).

On the other hand, perhaps we should hesitate before abandoning the idea of self-denial; after all, there is a new puritanism very much in evidence in society today: a frugal minimalism pervading many aspects of modern life, from diet to design.

Is this the Shaker movement of the 21st century – a reaction to the affluence of the late 20th century. (‘Affluenza’) So in one sense, the ethos of chocolate could be said to be passe?

There is also the disquieting thought that most of the chocolate we eat in the West is produced in the 3rd world, in conditions of near slavery.

So that’s the issue of chocolate – but of course, there’s much more to this film than that.

There is the theme of people, relationships, community: there is a strong sense of community in Lansquenet when Vianne arrives – but it is a small, enclosed community, in which people have to conform if they are to fit in. There is a strong sense that undesirables must be kept out. Vianne is a liberator, an enabler, whose chocolate-café brings a new kind of openness into the confined stuffy atmosphere of Lansquenet – a place where people can meet and talk and make relationships which are more than superficial. Everyone is welcome – even those who would rather she hadn’t come to Lansquenet, even Reynaud, who mistakes her warmth for a calculated attempt to lure his parishioners away from the church. In fact, she is merely offering the hand of friendship to those who often find themselves on the chilly fringes of the community through no fault of their own. The shop becomes a refuge for those who do not meet with the expectations of Lansquenet society – Josephine, a battered wife, Armande, an elderly lady who refuses to give up life’s pleasures for the sake of her health; and Roux, a homeless village gypsy. For some, this itself is threatening – especially when Vianne and her friend Armande welcome the invading community of the river-gypsies whom the villagers despise and fear.

‘I want to give, to make people happy; surely that can do no harm?’

But Fr. Reynaud protests:

‘Why can’t they see what the woman is doing to us? Breaking down our community spirit, our sense of purpose... Earning for herself a kind of affection, of loyalty which – God help me! – I am weak enough to covet. Preaching a travesty of goodwill, of tolerance, of pity for the poor, homeless outcasts on the river while all the time the corruption grows deeper…’

All of which leads us to ask ourselves: what exactly is ‘community spirit’? Which community spirit was genuine – the sense that existed in the village before V. arrived? Or the challenging ideas she brought which blew a blast of fresh air through those village streets? And how does that relate to us – our families? Church communities? Nailsea?

V. speaks at the end of the novel of the neediness of the town having gone – what was that neediness? What is ours – in terms of our relationships? And how would we react to / welcome a Vianne? She goes on to say: I can feel satisfaction in its place – a full-bellied satiety with no more room for me. (She has done her work.) In homes everywhere in Lansquenet, couples are making love, children are playing, dogs barking, televisions blaring…

The theme running through the whole film is that of change: what does it take to bring about a radical change in the lives of individuals / in a community? What is the secret? What is the cost? What are the rewards? Linked with this is the issue of control: in Lansquenet, as with most communities, there is an unspoken pact between those who control and those who allow themselves to be controlled; and the routine of the place is ruled by habits and customs, and the church, of course, is the focal point of this control. The arrival of V, the stranger who refuses to accept these norms, throws everything into confusion.

Was the tranquility, so valued by the people of Lansquenet, in fact a way of being controlled?
For V. life was lived very differently: the only constant thing in her life was change. As a child she was always on the move – her mother’s desire to live in many places took them all over the world. It seems, when she arrives in Lansquenet, that her growing urge to settle in one place may at last be about to be satisfied – but for the people she has come to live with, this is the beginning of the most unsettling time of their lives. The wind of change was about to blow.

For Josephine, change meant becoming strong enough to move out of the abusive relationship with her husband, whereupon she blossomed into a beautiful young woman, thus embodying , in a way, what the whole film was about.

Vianne compared the town with an old clock, frozen in time. Armande later speaks of the changes that have happened:

‘Look at all the changes: Luc, Caro, the folks out on the river… All of us changing. Speeding up. Like an old clock being wound up after years of telling the same time.’

How do we accept change? Are there times to resist it? What things need to change? How did she do it? How could we bring about change - in our lives? In our communities? Who could bring about change? Could it happen here? What would we have to let go of? What would it cost? Who could blow like a breath of spring wind in our lives this Easter? Would we dare to let it happen?

Cafe Create

We've decided to go for it. Cafe Create will be launched in Nailsea on Friday evening May 16th in theTrinity Centre, Church Lane as part of the Nailsea Arts and Music Festival. 7.30 - 11.00 p.m.

No tickets will be necessary, although there may be a house limit on numbers around 120 or so. All payment for refreshment will be on a donation basis. It will be for over 18s.

There will be chilled music, a fair trade coffee/wine bar, a cafe atmosphere and two blocks of 'performance.' For those scared about such things when they happen on church premises I can assure you there will be no preaching.

Here's where you come in. Ever fancied trying five minutes of stand up? Reading a short story or a couple of your poems? Performing a short music set? Escapology? Juggling? Drama? Let me know.

We will also need people to give up a day's work and carry small objects to help with the set up. Start to be excited, in a chilled sort of way. This post is also on Trendleblog and Mustard Seed Shavings

Film Club Extra

Lovely to have a record attendance of 63 people last night to see Sliding Doors and discuss the issues raised. David's final thoughts follow for those who would like to study them some more.

Final thoughts – Sliding Doors (Feb 2008)

That split second in which you can catch or miss a train can make all the difference. Many years ago now I took the funeral service in Southampton of one of those who was tragically killed in the Clapham Train Crash. And in a packed crematorium were many of his fellow passengers, including one person who normally sat with him, but on that particular day had been delayed and had missed the train. And he was now pondering as he stared at his friends coffin how thin is the dividing line between two very different outcomes.

In what is a light hearted and gentle comedy, the director Peter Howitt the former star of the sitcom Bread, explores how life itself can take two very different paths. In many ways it’s a fairly conventional love story of boy meets girl and other girl discovers that boy has met this girl and then she herself re-meets a boy that had previously passed her by and then the first boy loses both girls and wants to wind back time. As I say pretty standard stuff - popular since the time of Shakespeare. But within that basic premise we do begin to explore the much deeper question of 'What if?' What would our life have looked like if a decision that we made, or one that was made for us, had been so very different?

So think for a moment. What have been the key moments in life and love, in work and play that have taken us down a particular route and determined all our future options?

And can we ever know whether the decision made at that time was the one we should have made; which of the alternate realities that we see Helen living out on screen was the one that should have been and which was the aberration? All things being equal was it better that she caught the train and discovered the truth, or that she missed the train and continued in blissful ignorance? Who were you hoping she’d end up with and why?

Well in this case it’s pretty black and white. We know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, and who is the scarlet woman for that matter. So does the romantic in us simply long for a happy ending? But in many other decisions in life it's not so clear cut - more shades of grey. And what is right and therefore good may not be so obvious. How do we decide what the best option is, how can we tell what is right, and what is good, not just for us but for others who may be deeply affected by our choice? It can all get pretty complicated, and you can see why some people feel the need to pray for guidance, when faced with such matters.

Is there someone out there who understands all the possible routes that life could take based on this moment of decision, all the possible ramifications of that decision and then in some way can help us to choose the better way?

Some having asked for such greater wisdom through prayer then carefully go back over all the options and make their choice based on the logic of what they now see. Others are guided at this stage more by a gut reaction and follow their heart doing what now seems to be right. Our spirit making these choices, being guided by the one to whom we pray probably needs to be fed by both a changed mind and a changed heart to make the best possible choice.

For Christians the prayer at such times of great decision, indeed at all times really if we can be bothered to stop and ask, is for the mind of Christ, in other words the priorities of Jesus the attitude that he had, his vision of the greater good which he called the Kingdom of God. It is that mind, that heart that could lead us to do what is best in the broadest sense.

Having said that, we watch this film at the start of Lent in the run up to Easter and it may be important to note that one of the choices that Jesus made, in his God given wisdom, was to invite Judas Iscariot to be on his team, the man who would in time betray him and hand him over for execution. But maybe in the fullness of time that was still for the best.

So far I’ve been talking about when we have the luxury of the choice being in our hands with time to weigh up all the options, but sometimes as with Helen getting on that train, or not, the choice is determined by random chance, or the actions of others. What then? Can we still check out whether we are in the right reality or do we just make the best of the hand that life has dealt us?

They say the grass is always greener on the other side. And a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, half a loaf is better than no bread and better the devil you know, all bits of folk wisdom that encourage us to be content with what we have, and not spend our time dreaming of what might have been. But can’t we be a bit more positive than that? Are there not ways to develop and improve whatever we have chosen or been dealt, and find within it - a deeper and fuller experience of loving and being loved? If we are as I believe, all made in the image of God, in other words if we all have a spiritual nature that gives us the capacity to love and be loved, then whatever our circumstances we can grow and develop in that capacity.

We will never know what might have been, nor do we know what is yet to be; what we do know is what we have and are. And if we cherish that which is, then it can only get better as we draw out of one another the very best that we are capable of. And one of the signs that we are in a healthy relationship is that we bring out the best in each other and not the worst.

There’s a classic quote on being good for each other in the film 'As good as it gets.' Perhaps we’ll watch it and discuss it together in a future showing. In that film, Carol, a waitress played by Helen Hunt pleads with Melvin, an obsessive compulsive, played by Jack Nicholson, to give her just one compliment and Jack Nicholson, who’s not used to all this romance stuff, thinks for a moment and then says in all sincerity , 'You make me want to be a better person.' We see then that these two most unlikely characters are indeed good for each other, meant for each other, and that is ‘as good as it gets’. Our Helen, catching the train, or not, is like all of us searching for the one who will bring the best out of her and help her to be the very best that she can be. And at the end of the film we are left with the hope that come what may she may yet find that person.

Good night and God bless.

David Bagwell. Feb 2008

Damaris

Damaris is an organisation which helps Christians to get to grips with contemporary culture. It is the brainchild of Nick Pollard, based in Southampton. They have just launched Pollardonfilm They say:

'Please do take a look at this - and particularly the launch programme on Charlie Wilson's War. We really believe this will be a valuable resource for people - because it is free to view AND republish (we hope many will put programmes on their church websites, blogs etc etc) - and the downloads are free to anyone with a subscription to Tools for Talks. Could you please join us in a 'viral campaign' by telling as many people as possible about this - and inviting them to tell others?'

Steve