Category Archives: Movies

Special: The blurring of reality

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Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?

-Edgar Alan Poe

Casey Anthony – a case study in blurred reality: Source – Parismatch.com

The horrific murders of innocents at Sandy Hook ignited a political firestorm over gun ownership, an issue that is really a red herring. Much less mention occurs about our non-existent mental health system, or the effect of violent gaming in blurring the distinction between fiction and reality and thus desensitizing young people to graphically horrific violence.

Yet, when I think about how reality and fiction are blurred I can’t help but think that games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Medal of Honor are taking up more and more time in the lives of children as young as six or seven years old. Should we be concerned that such exposure might cause people to take fiction into reality at some future date?

Well, when I was growing up my generation was treated to bloodless violence in Westerns, cartoon characters struck by hammers and falling pianos, and Moe slapping and pounding Curly and Larry. Not to mention Superman flying. Now, I’m not saying that someone somewhere didn’t attempt to emulate this behavior with deadly consequences–some may in fact have done so. But neither I nor anyone I knew personally ever thought for one minute that you could hit someone with a hammer and not have it hurt.

So, if in fact young people are influenced towards violence today because of the entertainment afforded them; and if, in fact, we were not thus influenced (which I maintain we were not); what might be the difference?

Was is that we ourselves were more grounded in reality? Or was it that the world we lived in was? Did our parents and significant influences know the difference, and provide us with a security in our reality that is, somehow, missing today?

Are we, as a society, blurring the distinction between reality and fiction? If so, are consequences like Sandy Hook and the AMC shootings in Colorado simply symptomatic of this disconnect?

Rob Lowe (L) as Drew Peterson (R). Source:crimeticker.com

For the past several weeks, thousands have been glued to TruTV, mesmerized by testimony from a young woman in Arizona who murdered her lover by shooting him in the head, stabbing him 29 times, and slitting his throat. Her serial testimony about the various and sundry sex acts she committed with the deceased has drawn an ardent audience (probably mostly males!) and has been a ratings bonanza. This trial is the consequence of a gritty and horrific event that really happened: a bullet violated a man’s skull, a knife pierced flesh and vital organs, and an ear-to-ear slice across his throat segmented jugular veins. His body decomposed for days in a damp shower stall. Stinking to high heaven.

Now, we turn to TruTV for entertainment: the blood and stink has receded into a fog of unreality. Once the trial is over, it will probably be a year or less before Lifetime turns it into a movie. The reciprocity between reality and fiction will thus come full circle.

This is what happened with the heart-wrenching case of Casey Anthony and her beautiful but unbelievably murdered child Caylee. The performance value of her trial was evident not only in ratings for HLN and TruTV, but in the physical confrontations that sometimes occurred outside the courthouse as people literally fought for a place in line (some having come from many miles away to see the “show”).

And, of course, there was a Lifetime Movie.

There is another thing that connects the Jodi Arias case with Casey Anthony: both young women apparently have to think to tell the truth. Their reality is what they say it is at the time. Are they sociopaths, or are they merely reflective of a larger society that finds the distinction between truth and reality fuzzier and fuzzier? And did the Anthony jury perhaps suffer from the same inability to distinguish truth from fiction?

I could go on. Drew Peterson not only drew television cameras to him, he flaunted his newfound celebrity. And–guess what?– he was the subject of a Lifetime movie.

Now that I think about it, Rob Lowe played Peterson–and he also played the prosecuting attorney in the Casey Anthony movie. Blurred reality seems to have become a full-employment opportunity for Lowe!

Plato once illustrated a philosophy about reality and appearance with a simile about a cave. All people who sat in the darkness could see were shadows of things that were cast on the wall from a wall of flame behind them. Most people took the shadows for the reality, and lived their lives accordingly.

Could it be that we need to clear out the shadows, move into the light,  and ground ourselves in reality in order to live our lives properly? If so, how do we go about climbing out of the cave when it is so comfortable in there?

If I am onto something here, other innocents in the future may be on the path to destruction. And not just because of guns (Jodi Arias inflicted most of her damage with a kitchen knife), but because we can’t judge between what is real and what isn’t.

Sandy Hook was real.

My greatest fear is that we will reduce it to unreality with a–God forbid–Lifetime movie.

Anna Karenina: With love you can’t ask why

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Keira Knightlyas the doomed Anna Karenina Her finest performance to date. Photo: FirstShowing.net

I waited for naught for Anna Karenina to make it to Springfield theaters. I don’t know whether AMC thinks we midwestern rubes are too unsophisticated for a classic tale of love and self-destruction or whether we are, in fact, too unsophisticated for a classic tale of love and destruction. But we might have been given the chance to prove or disprove such an hypothesis. But at last I was able to watch Keira Knightley’s Oscar-worthy but overlooked performance as the doomed St. Petersburg socialite, and it was one of the finest translations of a classic work of fiction that I have ever witnessed. The performances by Knightley, Jude Law, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson–not to mention several dozen other cast members–made this stylish set piece a true dramatic tour de force. And Hollywood barely noticed. Talk about rubes.

Anna was required reading in a world literature course I took in college, and I found it surprisingly easy to read in spite of its length. I have re-read it three times since, and it still is as fresh an experience on each return as it was the first time around.

Anna is a book about family, and may well be the story that someone had in mind when coining the phrase “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”

The setting of the story, St. Petersburg high society in Czarist Russia, may put off some readers. But the landscape of the story, the abiding love of family and the destructive effects of adultery, is as modern as today’s Star magazine. There is one major difference, however. The stigma and social upheaval of adultery that existed in Anna’s world no longer exists. Had Anna strayed today, depending on the legal counsel given prior to walking away, she could have ended up with half the property and landed a spot on a Real Housewives reality show. Her ending was much more grim.

Anna is a respectable woman in a loveless marriage to a respected civil servant. They have a son, whom Anna loves dearly. As the story begins, Anna is leaving to go to her sister’s to help save a marriage. Her brother, Stiva,  has been caught in an affair, and his marriage is on the skids. Anna, renowned for her level headedness, is called upon to restore the domestic tranquility to a family torn by a man’s inability to keep certain things to himself. Not the first time in history such things would happen, nor the last; but in one of the most famous opening lines in any novel, Tolstoy reminds us that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

While away, Anna encounters a brash young soldier, Count Vronsky. The Count, a younger man, is immediately attracted to the beautiful Anna and begins to pursue her aggressively. She is amused at first, and puts off her suitor. It isn’t long, however, before she realizes how hungry she is for just such ardor. That ardor had left her marriage long ago, if in fact it ever existed. Eventually, she succumbs. A subsequent pregnancy forces Anna to face the consequences, which include the loss of her beloved son and her respectability in society. As she and Vronsky continue their relationship, her unhappiness makes her more and more self conscious and aware of the age difference between her and her new lover. She becomes a jealous harridan, which has the effect of driving her lover away.

In the latter half of the book, we witness Anna’s decompensation and eventual self-destruction. This unhappy ending is balanced, however, by a parallel story of two young lovers who find lasting happiness in a marriage that began in love and endured because of it. I was heartened to see that this movie adaptation incorporated the Kitty-Levin counterbalance, something that was usually passed over by filmmakers for the sake of the Anna-Vronsky romance. The story of Kitty and Levin is, perhaps, where the true lesson in Tolstoy’s novel lies.

Anna Karenina is a story about forbidden love and the price that it exacts. While the price was higher in 19th century society, the price in terms of pain and family disintegration is as real today as it ever was when love trumps social strictures. But, as Vronsky says to Anna in this very fine film, “You can’t ask why about love.”

This rube from the midwest really loved the movie version. I just wish I could have seen it in a theater. Thanks, AMC. Thanks a lot.

Copyright 2013 Isaac Morris

Special: While we’re arguing about guns, let’s look at Hollywood’s bill of fare

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Garbage in, garbage out. Reservoir Dogs (1992). Social relevance at its most poignant. Image: blogspot.com

While politicians are looking for ways to curb violence, focusing only on some of the implements of violence, I am curious about something that might be contributing to the culture of death with detachment: Hollywood.

The holidays are over, so there aren’t any animated movies playing in Springfield to take my pre-school grandkids to. On Fandango, filtering for “animated” I got zip. Filtering for “family” – zip. I did, however, get four returns filtering for “action / adventure.”

So which of these latest Hollywood bills of fare should I take my pre-school grandson to? Let’s see.

Arnold is back in The Last Stand. Rated R. The synopsis reads, “The sheriff of a sleepy border town becomes involved in a showdown with a violent fugitive.”  Sounds intriguing. Check out the trailer. Car crashes, bazookas, high powered weapons, explosions. And Arnold at his post-gubernatorial best dispensing justice in the form of death and destruction.

Well, probably not a good choice. So, let’s check out Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s latest contribution to culture. This looks intriguing, especially since I am all for movies about the end of racism in this country, and this one has the black guy overcoming the horrors of slavery. The synopsis: “Set in the South two years before the Civil War, Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty. The unorthodox Schultz acquires Django with a promise to free him upon the capture of the Brittles – dead or alive.”

But wait. This is Tarantino. You know, Reservoir Dogs? From Dusk Till Dawn 1, 2 and 3? Kill Bill I and !!? Inglorious Basterds? So I checked the trailer. Nope. Not for me. As for the social relevance, I need only refer you to Jaimie Foxx on SNL: “I get free. I save my wife and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?”  There’s an uplifting thought if I ever heard it.

So for this week, at any rate, it seems as though Hollywood and AMC are catering to the lowest common denominator, the way the Romans did at the gladiatorial games. And please, please don’t call me a hypocrite by pointing up all of the westerns that filled theaters in the 50’s and early 60s. Somehow comparing High Noon’s apple to Kill Bill’s orange just doesn’t work. Violence for the sake of violence is a phenomenon of the post-High Noon era, stemming from a society that discarded most of its moorings–ethical and social–in the search for liberation. Seems to me, we have just ended up in chains that are far more damaging to our psyches.

And we wonder why people find it exciting, romantic even, to want to pick up a weapon of major destruction and go out and end it all in a blaze of glory? Especially if our lives are less than glorious, and we sense that nothing will ever change in that regard? If we keep feeding people a steady diet of what Hollywood is dishing out of late, we can’t protect ourselves by taking away some of the weapons they might choose to pick up. Sad, lonely, damaged people with a hyped up need to bring meaning–however inglorious–to their lives will find a way, legally or illegally. Perhaps we need to think about feeding people a slightly different cultural diet. One in which the main course isn’t gratuitous mayhem.

Oh I almost forgot! Coming soon: Sly Stallone in “Bullet to the Head.”  Sounds like a plot we can all live with.

Copyright 2012 Isaac Morris

REPRISE: The movie is here — but you should still read the book!

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This picture of doomed Fantine’s orphaned daughter, Cosette, appeared in the first edition of Hugo’s novel, and would eventually become the icon for the Broadway musical. Source: Wikipedia

This was originally publised on September 18, 2012. The movie version of Les Miz opened in the U.S. on Christmas Day.

I was almost forty when I first managed to read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables for the first time (It’s pronounced “Lay Me-zur-AHB”– but if you just want to make it through a conversation, say “Lay MIZ.“). Frankly, just looking at a book that was almost 1,400 pages long was daunting, and so I never got around to it until later in life. As it turned out, it was a good thing. It takes some living to appreciate the intensity and the many themes that are represented in this novel. Also, the incentive for reading this was the appearance on Broadway of a musical based on the novel, the soundtrack for which I had purchased (on casette tapes), the beauty of which made me curious about the story.

What I wouldn’t give to have these comics available now for my grandkids! Image source: http://onlinebookplace.com

So, I opened the novel and started reading. It took me two weeks to finish it, reading just in the evenings; but when I was done I realized that I had just experienced something special.

Hugo was no stranger to me, as I had read an abridged version of Notre Dame de Paris (better known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) in high school, and as a kid I had read the Classics Illustrated version. I was also familiar with the movie version starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo, the misshapen and abandoned orphan whose love fo the gypsy Esmeralda ended with both of them lying side by side for eternity. While that was a fascinating story, Les Miserables touched me in a very different way. The way Hugo intended it to. He wanted to pluck our heartstrings and make us come face to face with the way human beings live beneath the facade of civilization. And that way is filled with poverty, pain, and death. Hugo may have been the first bleeding heart liberal, but sometimes our hearts need to bleed for our fellow man, or woman.

A few years after reading the novel, I finally saw the musical when I was in New York on business. I attended with several friends, one of whom was a former cop whose physical presence and no-nonsense approach to business was intimidating (no doubt why the insurance company he worked for hired him!). Early in the play, a young woman named Fantine–beaten down by cruel fate and even crueler humans, desperate, and rapidly approaching the end of her sad life–sings that song that most people have heard by now, “I Dreamed a Dream.” As she sang, I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks; and, when I turned to look at the tough, burly ex-cop sitting next to me, I saw his tears glistening in the soft stage light. I looked at him very differently after that.

A few years later, my wife and I saw a production at Springfield’s Sangamon Auditorium. As it happened, we attended on the very night that our troops were deployed in the first war against Iraq under George H. W. Bush.

There is a scene in which Jean Valjean kneels over a wounded boy named Marius (a boy who was in love with Valjean’s “daughter” Cosette) and sings a prayer to God begging for the boy’s life:

He is young

He is only a boy

You can take

You can give

Let him be

Let him live.

That very night the twenty-something son of one of our closest friends was in an airplane bound for Iraq. You can’t imagine the impact those words had on us at that moment in time.

That is the power of Les Miserables.

It is said that this novel was in the backpack of soldiers during the Civil War. The Confederates particularly enjoyed it, and towards the end of the war when all hope was vanishing many of them referred to themselves as “Lee’s Miserables.” No doubt, those Southern boys could identify with the men who fought a losing battle from behind the barricades for a cause they believed in. By the end of the war, they knew that they were about to be overcome.

This Christmas, a long awaited film version of the musical is coming out. This is one I am not going to miss.

If you haven’t seen the musical (it has been to Springfield, St. Louis, Champaign, Chicago, and St. Louis on numerous occasions), I urge you to see the movie. However, read the book first. Not an abridged version! I know, it’s tough to do, it’s tough to find the time. But if you do, you will find that the musical version thoroughly captures the power and you will understand how, and why. You may even cry. I did.

If you start reading now, you can be done before the movie hits the theaters. I promise you, it will make the experience that much more meaningful!

Watch the official trailer to the movie, due out at Christmas.

Copyright 2012 Isaac Morris

“Liberal Arts” The Movie; Liberal Arts in Life

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Dr. Lisa Winkler

The following is a guest article by Lisa K. Winkler. It first appeared on her blog site Septmber 16, 2012. Ms. Winkler is the author of On the Trail of the Ancestors: A Black Cowboy Rides Across America (Createspace, 2012), which was reviewed on this site April 30, 2012. Her review of Freeman, by Leonard Pitts, Jr. appeared on this site on 08/02/12.

“What do you do with a degree in religious studies?” my dinner companion asked, referring to his son, a Kenyon College senior and friend of my daughter’s, an American Studies major.

“Get a job, we hope,” I said.

We were attending an event planned by the college to see Liberal Arts, the movie written, directed and starring Josh Radnor, who graduated from Kenyon in 1996.

Radnor plays 35-year-old Jesse Fisher, who works as a college admissions officer in New York City and returns to the campus to attend a retirement dinner for one of his favorite professors, played by Richard Jenkins. He meets Zibby, a 19-year-old student (Elizabeth Olsen) and they begin a hand-written letter correspondence, where they discuss literature, life and music (she had given him a mix-tape cd based on her music survey course.) On a return visit, he confronts the 16-year-age difference, and fends off an intimate encounter, only to succumb to another former professor played by Allison Janney, (Kenyon’82).

Filmed on campus, and in the surrounding Gambier, Ohio, sprinkled with references to literature and music, the movie celebrates liberal arts;  its purpose and relevance that many convocation and graduation speakers address. The concept dates to the Greek and Roman philosophers who identified the Seven Liberal Arts or pillars of wisdom: The Trivium- the verbal arts comprised of logic, grammar, and rhetoric; and the Quadrivium, or numerical arts, consisting of mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy.

To study liberal arts, one is expected to achieve well-rounded, diverse exposure to many topics. The degree prepares one not for a specific vocation, but hopefully infuses the ability to think critically and creatively. Survey courses in art and music stay with you forever, informing cocktail party conversation and inspiring cultural tolerance.

The film is particularly relevant to me right now. I have a daughter about to graduate college, anticipating entering the workforce, and two nieces and a nephew, high school juniors beginning their college hunts.  The 16-year-olds are deciding: do they want a large university or a small school? City or country? East or West Coast? Distribution requirements or complete freedom? Will they be able to play sports.

Ruby

Sonia

Gabe

After the movie, I joined another set of parents on the subway. They wondered what their daughter, an International Studies major, would do with her degree. We joked. “Liberal Arts! They can do many things!”

(I wrote about jobs and college graduates here.)

If you’re a parent beginning this process, you might like this book. I have an essay in it.

Copyright 2o12 Lisa K. Winkler

Reprinted with permission