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A Christmas Carol
Rated PG. Director: Robert Zemeckis. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes.
Scrooge’s former partner warns him of the consequences of a life of selfishness. Photo © 2009 Walt Disney Pictures.Since 1914 there have been 26 screen versions of Dickens’ classic, counting the numerous made-for-TV films, and even one in which the Muppets assume the various roles. So the question arises: Do we need a 27th version? It took but a few minutes into Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D motion-capture technology version for me to decide, “Yes, there is room for one more, especially when it is as imaginatively created as this one.” The special 3-D effects are best used in the opening few minutes as the camera flies us over the rooftops of London and then swooshes down a crowded street, rising and dropping to avoid hanging shop signs, twisting and turning around people and carriages, making this a few minutes of thrills equal to an amusement park ride. After that the 3-D effects are used in a fairly restrained way, adding to the realism, but seldom thrust at us as in most other 3-D films.
Best of all are the characterizations, with Jim Carrey voicing the parts of Scrooge at all ages, plus Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-Come. Joining him are Gary Oldman as Scrooge’s hectored but cheerful clerk, Bob Cratchit (and also as his son, Tiny Tim, and Scrooge’s former partner Jacob Marley); Colin Firth voicing the kind-hearted nephew Fred; and Bob Hoskins as delightful old Mr. Fezziwig, the portly former employer of young Ebenezer. Robin Wright Penn is the voice of Belle, Ebenezer’s one-time lover. Her part is a cameo, this being a very male-centered story; but Zameckis, unlike Dickens, at least gives her a name.
The dialogue is taken right from the book, which for adults is a very good thing. However, the Victorian English might put off children, and Scrooge’s spooky late night visitors could be unsettling to those under eight years of age. This is, after all, a ghost story, so parents should check out the film before taking young children to see it. Dickens wrote his morality tale for adults rather than for young readers.
I was especially glad that Zameckis included Scrooge’s astonished reaction to his former partner’s sad fate: “But you were always a good man of business.” To which Marley replies, “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were my business ....” Not a bad summary of the ethical side of the Christian faith, or of Jesus’ warning in Luke 9:25, “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”
The film’s musical director, Alan Silvestri, uses a number of Christmas carols — not just to create a Christmas atmosphere, but to bring out gospel implications. For example, we hear “Joy to the World” when the fully repentant Scrooge resolves to make things right again with everyone he has shortchanged, including the two businessmen who had come soliciting for a charity but were turned away empty-handed by his miserliness.
The film is a little too long due to a gratuitous chase sequence designed more to show off the filmmakers’ special effects than to contribute to the story. This and other action-film-like sequences tend to dilute the quieter, dramatic moments. But this year’s A Christmas Carol is still a worthy version to put alongside the early ones. It also compares well with the more modern Christmas perennial It’s a Wonderful Life, which no doubt was influenced by Dickens’ story. As a secular version of what the New Testament means by “metanoia” — to turn around, to repent — the film can be viewed and used by those teaching theology and Bible any time of the year. So by all means, go and enjoy the latest version of the old classic, one that will have you joining in with Tiny Tim’s “God bless us. Everyone!”
—Ed McNulty
Precious
Rated R. Director: Lee Daniels. Warner Brothers. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes.
Abused teenager Precious encounters a gracious adult for the first time in her new teacher Ms. Rain. Photo © 2009 Lionsgate Films.When I first saw the film’s title character I thought of the passage in which Isaiah of the Exile described the Suffering Servant: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2b). Claireece Precious Jones, 15 years old and weighing 300-plus pounds, has suffered enough rejection and abuse, both at home and at school, to destroy the spirit. As soon as the girl comes home from school, her toilet-mouth mother, Mary, hurls insults and put-downs and physical objects like frying pans in her direction. Seldom rising from the couch where she continually watches TV, Mary orders Precious to cook for her and tend to all of her whims. Worst of all, Mary’s common-law husband repeatedly rapes Precious, with Mary too afraid to utter a word of protest.
Precious has already delivered one child, which for obvious reasons the mother dubs “Little Mongo.” Mary’s only grounds for valuing the child is that he is their ticket to a monthly welfare check.
As narrator of the film, Precious eloquently expresses her despair: “Sometimes I wish I was not alive. But I don’t know how to die. Ain’t no plug to pull out. No matter how bad I feel my heart don’t stop beating and my eyes open in the morning.” Her lifeline to a shred of self-respect and sanity is her vivid imagination. During the last rape, resulting in her second pregnancy, Precious fanticizes that she is glamorously dressed and walking a red carpet while adoring fans call out to her and snap her picture.
The seeming calamity of pregnancy becomes a Godsend, because this time the school authorities cannot overlook her and pass her on to the next grade (she is currently in 9th grade, though reading at the level of a 1st or 2nd-grader). Her principal enrolls her in a special school called “Each One Teach One,” where she encounters a set of adults who truly care about her — a charismatic teacher who is also an outsider; a compassionate social worker who will not let Precious’ suspicious hostility stand between them; the school receptionist, and a male nurse at the hospital where Precious delivers another son. All of these form a sort of support community, lavishing her with the grace that she has never experienced before, and allowing her to hope for a better future.
Despite the foul language and stark scenes of rape and abuse, this is actually a very inspiring film. People of faith will be able to view the last half of the film as a vindication of the words of the ancient Hebrew psalmist, “For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish for ever” (Psalm 9:18).
The excellent cast includes newcomer Gabourey Sidibe as Precious, Paula Patton as the caring teacher with the unusual name of Blu Rain, Mariah Carey as persistent social worker Mrs. Weiss. Mo’Nique, until now an actress best known for her talents as a comedienne, plays Mary. No doubt there will be Oscar talk about her performance in the climactic scene in which Mrs. Weiss and Precious confront her for not protecting her daughter from sexual abuse. Like a volcano erupting, the woman spews out her own fears, frustrations and excuses.
Precious whisks us out of our own world and enables us to enter into the experience of what our Lord called “the least of these.”
— Ed McNulty
Where the Wild Things Are
Rated PG. Director Spike Jonze. Warner Brothers Pictures. Running Time: 1 hour 41 minutes.
MAD MAX: The costumed 9-year-old confronts his mother before going “wild.” Photo © 2009 Warner Brothers PicturesWhen Hollywood adapted Dr. Seuss’ culturally subversive How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the result was a grotesquely bloated film that considerably weakened the little book’s anti-commercialism message. (The 22-minute, animated TV version remains the priceless, definitive adaptation.) What would filmmakers do to Maurice Sendak’s even shorter story — nine sentences spread over 20 pages in which bizarre pictures bear most of the weight?
Sendak asked his friend Spike Jonze to film the adaptation and the result is a success because of the insight the director gives viewers into the little boy’s uncontrolled emotions, the book’s heart.
Working with co-scriptwriter Dave Eggers, Jonze provides a backstory to Max’s escapades. The 9-year-old boy feels neglected by his teenage sister, who is too busy to come outside and see his “igloo.” He gets jealous when his mother bestows attention on her new boyfriend, even though the man likes Max. A snowball fight with a group of teenagers ends badly when one of them jumps atop the igloo, smashing it down upon Max. And a science teacher only adds to the troubled boy’s anxieties by stating that the sun will eventually die.
It all comes to head with Max running through the house — dressed in a wolf costume — then jumping atop the dining table and refusing to get down. His mother yells that he is out of control, and he replies with three words that countless children have screamed at parents over the ages: “I hate you!”
In the movie version, Max then runs out of the house, dashes through the woods, jumps into a small sailboat, and sails all night through a storm. He eventually spies land and bonfires. After landing, he climbs a cliff toward the fires, but remains hidden as several bizarre-looking animals quarrel. When he emerges, Max saves himself by claiming that he is a king with special powers. The gullible creatures believe him, and thence commences several days of howling, cavorting and fort building. Max is indeed in the land “where the wild things are.”
In his six furry friends Max finds the family for which he has longed. However, relationships, even in an imaginary world, do not always go smoothly. And there is the pull of his real mother and his real home.
Using live characters rather making an animated film adds to the reality of Sendak’s exploration of the wild imagination of a child too young to reign-in his strong emotions. Jim Henson Company's Creature Shop does a marvelous job of bringing to life Sendak’s fierce and likeable horned/clawed creatures. The only defect is that the film sags a bit during a meandering middle segment.
The cast is excellent, especially Max Record as Max and Catherine Keener as his mother. The latter’s part is small but crucial in showing why Max would leave “where the wild things are” and return home. As Max eats his soup, her face perfectly expresses the love and concern of a mother for the lost child returned safely, somewhat like the father who welcomed back the strayed prodigal who “was lost and has been found.”
—Edward McNulty
Capitalism: A Love Story
Rated R. Director: Michael Moore. Overture Films. Running Time: 2 hours 7 minutes.
CAPITALIST JERICHO: Michael Moore announces his presence at the New York Stock Exchange. Photo © 2009 Overture FilmsControversial filmmaker Michael Moore’s first film, Roger and Me, attacked General Motors and its CEO, Roger Smith, pointing out the impoverishment of so many laid-off autoworkers in the firm’s hometown of Flint, Mich. Likewise, each of his subsequent films has taken the form of a quest by the filmmaker, setting off to find answers to questions such as why there is so much violence in the United States; what happened before, during and after 9/11; or why are so many Americans unable to receive health care?
Moore is a grandstanding iconoclast, but I was intrigued that his newest film, issued on the 20th anniversary of his first, reveals fully the Christian basis for his views and his championship of society’s “left-outs.”
Moore regards capitalism as a system devoted to “taking and giving, mostly taking.” He interviews a Michigan bishop who also argues that capitalism, as it has been practiced in the United States for the past 40 years, has become an evil institution built on unrestrained greed. Then Moore invokes the Gospel story of Jesus and the rich young man. His satirical use of scenes from Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (he literally puts words affirming the values of modern capitalism into the mouth of Jesus) will be appreciated by Christians who know that their Master affirmed the opposite of which the doctored image is saying.
Moore is at his best when he relates heart-wrenching stories of little people victimized by capitalist institutions. A Florida family videotapes police breaking down their locked door to serve foreclosure papers. Another family learns that their late loved one’s employer took out life “peasant insurance” (an actual phrase used in the policies) on the deceased. Without the man’s knowledge the firm bet on his life, reaping the reward when he died, and failing to inform or to share the death benefits with the family.
Moore makes good use of a newsreel clip of President Franklin Roosevelt issuing what the president called a “Second Bill of Rights” the year before his death. Among these was health care for every citizen, a proposal forgotten when the president died and the nation focused instead on ending World War II. Like Roosevelt, who wanted a “new deal” for American workers and their families, Moore argues passionately that we take a new look at capitalism and its effects.
Whatever one thinks about Moore and some of his tactics and claims, the fact that he sides with the One who came to bring “good news to the poor” and “release to the captives” seems beyond dispute.
—Edward McNulty.
A longer review with discussion questions is available on the Visual Parables Web site. |
