Tim Abbott

The Kings Speech

Brilliant, charming, moving, in places very funny and deserving of the Oscar nominations that it has attracted.

A royal heir overcoming a stammer sounds initially like a rather thin premise for a 2 hour film. But David Seidler's sensitive story of the future King George VI and his friendship with Lionel Logue, his slightly unconventional speech therapist, brings to the fore the social and cultural setting of its time and a monarchy struggling with controversy and coming to terms with a new age of communication.

Colin Firth is amazing as George VI, but I was also moved by Geoffrey Rush's portrayal of Lionel Logue, and Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth (the Queen's mother). Timothy Spall achieves a very passable Winston Churchill, with perhaps a slight comedic twist, though if stories about Churchill are to be believed this could be a fair reflection!

The characters, the wonderful settings and the unfolding story combine to give the film just the right pace without feeling either hurried or dragging. The sense of desparation in George VI as well as the urgency of needing to overcome his stammer remain palpable right up to the final speech of the film's title, delivered at the dawn of the second world war.

George VI's dilemma, and ultimately, triumph, is summed up in his frustrated recognition of the role that he plays in national life;

"If I am King, where is my power? Can I declare war? Form a government? Levy a tax? No! And yet I am the seat of all authority because they think that when I speak, I speak for them."
And so, in his day, he did.

The Road - the film

A fantastic screen adaptation of an amazing story. Viggo Mortensen as The Man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as The Boy are excellent, not only in their own right but also in the powerful and believeable chemistry they share on screen. If there's any justice there are some awards here.

McCarthy's almost cinematic storytelling tranfers well to screen. The film is visually arresting, lifting the bleak descriptions from the book and giving them three dimensional depth. Inevitably, some sequences from the book have been shortened, but none of this in any way reduces the impact or flow of the story. The added scenes of The Man and his wife, developed from fragments of detail in the book, work well, filling out a little more of the past in a way that supports the main thrust of the story but without treading on the unexplained mystery of the apocalypse.

This is one of those films that could almost do without a score. No Country for Old Men is somehow the darker for the absence of music for most of the film. However, if anyone could do it, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are a great choice for their insight and sensitivity in a score that is appropriate and works well without being intrusive.

But the main players in the film are the tortured landscape and the fragility of relationships. When you have nothing, what do you hold on to? After the end of any law, how are people to live?

Highly recommended.

The Road - the book

I was given this book for Christmas by Joel and read it in a day!

The story is now surely well enough known. A father and son making their way through a desolate America following an unexplained catastrophic event that has wiped out animal life and most people. Cormack McCarthy writes with a lean attention to detail that conveys powerfully the intimacy of the father / son relationship without ever losing the impact of the bleak, cold, grey, destroyed world through which they struggle. I felt the cold reading it.

There is no real explanation of the apocalyptic events that precede the story, but such is the lean power of his storytelling that no significant back-story is required. This is a world substantially without history, apart from this now distant cataclysmic event. The past hardly counts any more, morally or materially, except for what can be scavanged from it. The survivors are new citizens in a new world and are compelled to find a way and a morality that works. Most people, it seems, divide into 'the good guys' and 'the bad guys', the latter often defined by cannibalism, graphically implied in a way more shocking than any explicit description could be. The boy is anxious to know that he and his father are 'the good guys'. His natural inner compassion for others in a world stripped bare becomes, on a few occasions, a motivating morality for his father who has known the world before, unlike his son who only knows the world now. This is not a world that's going to get any better any time soon.

In keeping with McCarthy's stye there is no neat golden ending. We join a story that has been unfolding for a while, walk with the characters for a time and then leave them again to continue their journey into an unknown future. Actually most of life is like that which is why I love his style of writing. And there are no chapters. But in the end there is some hope.

Brazil / Blue Velvet

Joel has just gone back to Uni, but before he went we caught up on some films.

 
Brazil Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece of a retro future where bureaucracy has taken over. Visually both stunning and chilling, brilliantly cast, the story can sometimes feel like hard work but has a nihilistic twist in the tail. 4/5

Blue Velvet. Weird, shocking, but in spite of some of the themes (sexual violence, voyeurism, murder) it never becomes gratuitous. What lurks beneath the pleasant facade of a small town? Classic film noir, so lots of night and long shadows beautifully shot. Some defining performances from Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini. 4/5

Death Star over San Fransisco

I'm away, back home, and away again quite a bit this summer, so blogging is taking a bit of a break.
But I love this!

Jesus Film in anime

The Jesus Film has been dubbed into over 1000 languages and is probably the most watched film in history. But it's starting to look a bit dated. So the people behind it have started a project to create an anime version, reusing the many existing soundtracks in all the languages it's been translated into.

The Visual Translation Project is the homepage to the whole project.

They've uploaded some concept videos to YouTube. These are just visuals, not finished animation, but are designed to give a feel for the idea. The film is likely to take about 2 years to complete and in the meantime The Visual Translation Project is actively seeking feedback here. There's also a survey which includes five different sample styles to choose from.

This looks like a great way to update what is honestly a rather dated production - we've avoided using it in schools out of embarrassment. So we'll be watching developments here with interest.

Philip Pullman interview

Peter Chattaway has an extended e-mail interview with Philip Pullman.

Pullman is always quite clear about his atheism. But Christians who seek either to paint him as some kind of Satanist (which I've seen suggested) or to re-interpret his writings from some kind of mystic Christian perspective are not helping the level of debate.

The Golden Compass

Jeffrey Overstreet posts a helpful overview “The Golden Compass” - Questions I’ve been asked, answers I’ve given covering the main issues surrounding the impending release of the film this Christmas. Among other things he asks...

Should Christians be afraid of The Golden Compass?
Should anybody?
Do Pullman’s stories pose a threat to children?
What does Pullman say about his own beliefs?
Christians always point back to Lewis and Tolkien as exemplary storytellers. Why hasn’t anyone come along to step into their shoes?
Okay, so we shouldn’t start boycotts and complain. But what should Christians do?

Will Christians be able to engage constructively with the real issues raised by Pullman's epic, or will it all turn into another shouting match, a bit like what happened over 'Harry Potter'. I'm not optimistic.

For further thoughtful discussion, Tom Gilson has a series of posts over at Thinking Christian.

And for an insight into Philip Pullman, the person, try this interview in Third Way magazine from Feb 2002.

Me in The Simpsons?

Today's coffee break entertainment - create your own Simpsons character.
This is something of an approximation to me - it's the best I could do anyway. Back to work now...

Film - bring your own meaning...?

"God is so all over this film!"

I received this text message from my son as he and his friends left the cinema having watched Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Of course, him being a convinced Christian I would have been surprised if he hadn't seen the film this way. Most people, whether Christian or not, are at least vaguely aware that CS Lewis was a Christian and that Narnia has some allegorical connection with the story of Jesus. But I doubt that many left the cinema that same evening having seen God so clearly in the story. Which is a shame. Especially because sometimes we hope that talking with people about a film will open up a conversation about God.

People connect with films because they connect with the issues, ideas, characters or ideals expressed. But my suggestion is that, no matter how much we hope they'll see God, or an aspect of the gospel in a film, in general people miss any Christian perspective we might perceive because they bring their own meaning and worldview to the film and interpret it purely from that perspective.

Research into the impact that films (and a range of other media) have on the spirituality of young people found that films and TV soaps form a rich symbolic resource for young people to interpret, understand and create meaning from their actual and idealised lives. But this was limited to what is termed formative spirituality, the broad spirituality inherent in the human condition. Much as we might long that (young) people watching a film might experience a spirituality or spiritual moment that is transformative, leading them into an awareness or understanding of God ("God is so all over this film"), the reality is entirely different.

We did not find, however, that this engagement [with soap operas and films] led the young people to pursue further questions of a spiritual nature, to ask whether the ideal they periodically glimpsed or imagined through these popular arts could be indicative of a reality beyond their world, rather than being firmly limited to the worlds created by imaginative writers and technologically sophisticated special effects. In other words, we did not find our young people engaged in transformative spirituality through soap operas and films. The world view of Generation Y in this respect remains largely secular.
[Making sense of Generation Y - Savage, Collins-Mayo, Mayo, Cray]

Our experience is that young people are very happy to talk about films, the characters, issues and ideals. We love films and these kinds of discussion are a brilliant way of connecting quickly with young people. But any attempt, no matter how gently, to move the discussion into the area of transformative spirituality, the possibility of God or to draw parallels with elements of the gospel narrative, produces what may best be described as mild bewilderment. It's as if they can't quite understand what any of this has to do with the film, and especially with their understanding of the film. They bring their own meaning.

By way of encouragement, we've found that when we tell our own story of God at work in our lives, or share some part of the gospel narrative, young people are more than happy to discuss it. And, surprise surprise, many apply aspects of these stories to their own lives, often telling us that they are in some way seeking God or Christianity because they like it (their words!) The clue seems to be that people interpret any story from the perspective of their own lives, whether a film, a testimony or some part of the gospel. It's just that the gospel, sensitively told within a trusted relationship, tells them more about the transformative spirituality of a relationship with God than any conversation about a film.

You may have come to the same conclusion or your experiences may be totally different - I'd love to hear your stories.