Called to a Destiny

Brave is Pixar's much-awaited new venture, featuring the first heroine in their seventeen-year run as an animation studio. The film is set in medieval times, in scraggy Scotland, with spectacular waterfalls, glowing sunsets and forbidding forests, giving Pixar plenty of scope for some stunning animation.
Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), the feisty young princess with a head of unruly red locks and a talent for archery, is learning to be a lady. So far it's proving to be a lesson that stretches the limits of her patience when she'd rather be out riding 'through the glen firing arrows into the sunset'. There to ensure that she does not do precisely that is her firm and sensible mother, Queen Elinor (voiced by Emma Thompson). In charge of Merida's training, Queen Elinor is forever instructing her impulsive daughter on table manners, court etiquette, dress and deportment, while her triplet sons run amok through the castle, leaving destruction in their wake. Their father, King Fergus (voiced by Billy Connolly), is the indulgent type and takes a more lackadaisical attitude toward their upbringing. He majors on dinner-time stories and rough play, leaving the disciplining to his wife.


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Culturewatch - Exploring the message behind the media

Seeing through the tears

Film title: Welcome to the Rileys
Director: Jake Scott
Screenplay: Ken Hixon
Starring: Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Tiffany Coty
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films (USA); High Fliers Films (UK)
Cinema Release Date: 29 October 2010 (USA); 18 November 2011 (UK)
Certificate: R (USA); 15 (UK) Contains strong language and sex references

 



‘You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.’
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

On the surface Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) seems to be doing OK. He has the wife, the house and the Cadillac, and is still liked by everyone. But the veneer hides a lonely man, floundering in the agony of his daughter’s death. Doug has mastered the part he must play to keep the veneer intact though – the genial work buddy, the concerned husband – and is managing to fool everyone, including, to a large extent, himself.

He is shaken out of his sham existence when he finds his name on a tombstone on the plot adjoining his daughter’s grave – his wife’s approach to planning for the future. ‘I’m not dead yet’, he protests angrily, his first expression of real emotion cracking the long-held veneer. Both Doug and his wife of thirty years, Lois (Melissa Leo), are unable to communicate anything beyond the mundane since the tragic accident that took their daughter’s life. Both just exist instead of engaging with life. Whereas Doug goes through the motions, pretending all is well, Lois has withdrawn from the world, rarely leaving the house even to retrieve the mail from the end of the driveway.

The next day, Doug leaves for New Orleans on a business trip. While there, he ends up in a strip club and meets a young prostitute, Mallory (Kristen Stewart), who reminds him of his daughter. At first he has to fend off her sexual advances, but once she gets the fact that he isn’t interested in soliciting her services, they develop a camaraderie. Doug is drawn to Mallory and her vulnerable position as an underage stripper; her likeness to his daughter stirs him from his apathy and he decides to help. He calls his wife and tells her that he isn’t coming home – he doesn’t quite know what he is doing, but ‘I’m not dead yet’ is all the explanation he can offer her. He then moves in with Mallory, intending to help her turn her life round.

Doug believes that his roles as a father and a husband define who he is. His sense of purpose and his source of happiness are both linked to his identity of being a provider for his family. But his daughter’s death and his wife’s withdrawal shatter his sense of identity, and the experience of finding his own tombstone hits him with the reality of his apparently meaningless life. Desperate to make sense of his existence, Doug attempts to become the father figure in Mallory’s life. He needs to feel needed; it’s vital to his very identity. And he turns to Mallory to satisfy that need.

His ‘truth’ is that his identity is bound up in his role as a provider. And when the basis for this ‘truth’ (namely his wife and daughter) is taken away, he feels lost and set adrift. He has invested so much in his relationships with his family that he has raised them to the position of idols in his life. Nothing in this world can bear the weight of being the centre of our identity, or the sole source of our happiness. So where does that leave us? And what about Doug and Lois? Should they live the rest of their lives under the weight of this unbearable sorrow? Or can the loss of their daughter bring them to the realisation that they will never be fulfilled by the things of this world?

C.S. Lewis observed that God, who has made us, knows what we are and also knows that our happiness can only lie in him:

Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as he leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?[1]

This quote might make God seem like an insensitive tyrant and a ruthless, worship-hungry entity. But he isn’t. The Bible says that God is love itself. And out of his love for us, he keeps bringing us back to him – the unchangeable and true source of happiness. He isn’t a ruthless brute; he understands the pain of losing a child only too well: his own son was murdered. He empathises with the loss couples like the Rileys face, but he knows that nothing in this world will last forever, and when we set our hearts on any thing here we set ourselves up for disappointment. He also knows that if our hearts, our identity, our focus in life were set on the one, true, unchangeable God, we’d have a peace that would go beyond our circumstances, in the knowledge that he loves us regardless. Teary eyed, the world may seem blurry, but if we let it, our grief can help us focus on what is of the utmost importance in this life – knowing and loving God.

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Culturewatch - The Guard

Culturewatch - The Guard

A Different Set of Standards

Don’t we all love a story where, in spite of the odds stacked against him, the underdog manages to beat the villain after all? Regardless of society’s postmodernist expectations of unresolved endings, and increasingly blurred moral boundaries, we find the clear-cut good-defeats-bad conclusions oddly satisfying. The ending to Captain America, the latest superhero movie produced by Marvel Studios, is satisfyingly and unapologetically old-fashioned.

The eponymous Captain America starts off as the spindly ‘90-pound asthmatic’ Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who is so eager to fight for his country in the Second World War that, after being rejected in five different states, he goes to New York to try to enlist under a false name. This is where Dr Erskine (Stanley Tucci) recruits him for the government’s secret Super Soldier programme, which aims to increase the efficiency of the army by injecting soldiers with a newfangled cell-enhancing serum. Erskine sees something in Rogers that no one else seems to appreciate. He sees the character and courage beneath the skinny exterior; he sees the heart of the man, and that is what he bases his selection upon. There is a comically touching scene where, in boot camp, Rogers throws himself on a dummy grenade to protect his fellow soldiers, who have dived for cover. When Rogers is chosen as the first soldier to be tested with the serum, he has just one question: ‘Why me?’ Erskine replies, ‘A weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.’
The world lauds and rewards achievement and ability. While encouraging self-promotion and competitiveness, it often undervalues strength of character and personality. And though in many situations in real life we are quite likely to find ourselves responding in the way the world does, in the dark of a movie theatre we let our guard down and empathise with the underdog. Maybe it’s because we all are painfully aware of our own weaknesses and know the lengths we go to to hide them from the condemning eyes of the world. We’re afraid that our weaknesses might expose us to ridicule or abuse.

While Steve Rogers’s story is fictional, its theme isn’t original. Turning back the pages of history we find David, a scrawny little shepherd boy who went from tending sheep to ruling a nation. This change in circumstances came about, not because of his appearance or his abilities, but because, according to the Bible, God evaluated him for the position by looking at his heart. God sent a man called Samuel to select one of the eight sons of Jesse to be king. Samuel’s first inclination was to choose the eldest and handsomest of the lot, but God clearly didn’t agree:

The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

Following God’s instructions, Samuel sidestepped all of the seven older sons before settling on the youngest, and the most unlikely, David.

Throughout the Bible, God seems to favour what the world would consider to be the unlikely and the unlovely. Even for his own son’s genealogy God chose several people of low rank and no status. Jesus’s ancestry includes those with a rather colourful past – a prostitute and an adulterer amongst others; people who had a past they weren’t particularly proud of, who were aware of their shortcomings, but who realised their dependence on God. Apparently God is in the business of uplifting the weak, and has been in it since the beginning of time. According to the Bible,

God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world; things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. (1 Corinthians 1:27–28)

Our abilities or inabilities are not a hindrance to God’s love or his purposes for us. His love is not based on what we can or cannot do; he loves us with an unchanging and unchangeable love, and his love can transform us.

Steve Rogers is transformed from lanky lad to muscle man only because of the work of the serum in him. He realised that without the serum his strength didn’t amount to much and so he chose to have it injected into him. The one thing that can transform us as radically is God’s love which he offers to us, but which we need to choose to accept.

The greatest way God showed his love for us was by sending his own son Jesus to take the punishment we deserve for rebelling against God. Grace is the undeserved love and forgiveness God offers us through Jesus Christ. We can choose to accept Jesus’s sacrifice and be forgiven, and when we do we can enter into a relationship with God, who says, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV).

If our weakness makes us realise our dependence on God, then it is a good thing. Then, whatever the world’s take on weakness may be, we can live in the knowledge that we are loved completely and wholly as we are, and that, despite our weaknesses, God can use our lives for great things.

Calendar Space

In India life seemed to trundle along; following the seasons, shaped by a six-day work-week and the occasional national holiday. Sometimes I’d suddenly realise that I didn’t even know what the date was, and that didn’t really bother me; but now, here in England, I find that my time is planned out for the next six months at least! Meetings, appointments, birthdays and reminders are scrawled across the Highland Cows Calendar that hangs above my desk. How did life become so busy? At times, I resent the dictates of a tight schedule; but mostly I enjoy the order and productivity it encourages. It gives me a sense of being in control, which may or may not be right. But I know what is supposed to happen and when it’s supposed to happen; and usually things go according to plan.


Until a crisis comes along; loss of a job, a death in the family, a broken relationship – and the façade of control crumbles. Everything else is put on hold while we try to grapple with fate unexpected.

Recently a friend lost two members of her family, quite suddenly and in quick succession. Needless to say, the family is still recovering from the loss of their loved ones. This Christmas must have been a bit sombre than usual.

As I thought about the situation in her life, I realised afresh how important relationships are. And yet I find, sadly, that those closest to me I treat thoughtlessly. I love them, and they know I love them, but I don't often make a point of telling them how much they mean to me.

So this year I’ve decided that along with everything else that finds its way onto my calendar, I’m going to make a special place for reminders – to do an ‘inventory’ if you like, and take stock of the relationships in my life every so often.

And hopefully one day when eternity comes knocking, and time ceases to have meaning, there will be no regrets of words unsaid, and love unshared.

Rango

Keywords: Identity, relationships, hero, selflessness
Film title: Rango
Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenplay: John Logan
Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant,
Cinema Release Date: 14 February 2011 (USA) 4 March 2011 (UK)
DVD Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment (UK)
DVD Release date: 10 May 2011 (USA); 25 July 2011 (UK)
Certificate: PG (USA) Contains rude humour, language and smoking; PG (UK) Contains mild threat and violence


A nameless chameleon with protruding eyes, skinny neck, a penchant for long words, and an inclination to heroics is launched out of the back of his owner’s swerving car and, at the same time, out of his monotonous, self-centred existence. He finds himself in the middle of the Mojave Desert, surrounded by the shattered pieces of his terrarium and the remaining paraphernalia of his theatrical pastime. Following the advice of a wizened armadillo, the lizard leaves the highway and heads out into the desert in search of water and a frontier town called Dirt. The bright-coloured chameleon is a stark contrast to the medley of scaly, slimy and mangy creatures that inhabit the lawless outpost. An obvious outsider, he needs to make a good impression on this wily bunch and so he reinvents himself as Rango (voice of Johnny Depp), a legendary lizard who killed the Jenkins brothers – all seven of them – with one bullet. By a stroke of luck, Rango becomes the swashbuckling hero he always wanted to be, and is nominated sheriff for the drought-stricken town.

Rango is the clever conception and pet project of director Gore Verbinski. Filled with witty dialogue and subtle references to classic Westerns like Once Upon A Time In The West and Chinatown, it is a movie that will delight children and adults alike. Verbinski decided to buck the current 3D trend, and the resulting 2D product is commendable in its portrayal of gorgeous desert vistas and detailed characters, for which visual consultant Roger Deakins, director of photography on the Coen brothers’ films can be credited.

Rango is entirely unprepared for life in the desert; out of his element in this hostile environment he is desperately trying to blend in. Considering he is a chameleon, this should be easy, but unfortunately it isn’t. As a pet lizard at the start of the film, Rango is isolated and preoccupied with himself, whiling away the hours by acting as the hero in Shakespearean plays. However, as the movie progresses there occur several instances where he is confronted by the question, ‘Who am I?’ Verbinski highlights these moments by zooming in as Rango’s face freezes and the background darkens. Rango’s usual response is, ‘I could be anyone.’ He chooses whom he fancies being this time round and then promptly steps into character. So while he can easily act as whoever he chooses to be, he doesn’t know who he really is. The movie explores various existential themes through Rango’s search for an identity, and in the process raises a few questions for us to mull over: Can we be anyone we want to be? Or are we made with a specific identity? The Bible claims that God made each of us in his own image but with individual identities. But when we used the freedom God gave us to rebel, and go our own way, that image was marred. So while, to a large extent, our decisions mould our character and we can choose who we want to be, all of us have characteristics that are reflections of our maker.

Rango always dreams of being the hero. Perhaps, in his visualisati  ring audience, P P 0 inti P ' BC^ b2/ z L3 L4 C s, super-powers and Spandex, or figures like James Bond and Robin Hood. But doesn’t true heroism highlight a serving attitude and selflessness to the point of death?

According to this definition, Jesus is the most incredible hero of all time. As the Son of God, he loved us so much that he came to this world as a human being to take the punishment we so rightly deserved for our rebellion. He did that because he knew that the only way we could come back into a relationship with God was if he died instead of us, and so free us to choose whether or not we wanted to accept his sacrifice and reconnect with our maker. Now that kind of selfless giving seems like something only the ultimate hero would do. If heroism is one of God’s characteristics, that will explain why we, who are made in his image, all long to be the champions of our story.

For Rango, the realisation that heroism actually means serving comes slowly. In a predictable turn of events, his lies eventually catch up with him, and he is humiliated and evicted from Dirt. He heads out into the desert again, where in a daze he crosses the busy highway unscathed and makes it over to the proverbial ‘Other Side’. Again, as an indication of the movie’s existential leanings, the Other Side – visually, an over-exposed salt flat – can be interpreted as a depiction of heaven. Here Rango encounters the Spirit of the West (voice of Timothy Olyphant), who reprimands him for ‘walking out on his own story.’ Rango realises that the choices he has made so far have been primarily to gain new friends and be popular. The movie plays with the familiar western trope of a run-down town in need of a saviour, and its unlikely hero. Rango’s solitary life has made him self-centred. But now it is no longer only about him; it is about them – his friends. Now he must be, not who he wants to be, but who his new friends need him to be. His life-long uncertainty about his identity is resolved when he realises that the relationships he has built dictate, to a large extent, who he is supposed to be. Rango walks into the blinding light and there receives an understanding of his destiny. He becomes the person the town folk needed him to be. He becomes their hero.

If that is true for Rango, could it be true for us as well? The Bible says that when we agree to enter into a relationship with God, he calls us out of the darkness of our rebellion and into his marvellous light1 so that we can then represent God to others in our words and actions. Do our relationships define our identity? And if so, would a relationship with God give us a clearer understanding of who we were truly made to be?

The Fighter

Film title: The Fighter
Tagline(s): Every dream deserves a fighting chance
Director: David O. Russell
Screenplay: Paul Tamasy, Scott Silver, Eric Johnson
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, Amy Adams
Cinema Release Date: 10 December 2010 (USA) 2 February 2011 (UK)
DVD Distributor: Vision Video (UK); Universal Studios (USA)
DVD Release date: 02 December 2002 (UK); 14 January 2003 (USA)
Certificate: 15 (UK); R (USA) Contains strong language and hard drug use


Warning: This article contains plot spoilers

The Fighter is as much a movie about a family’s fight for reconciliation, as it is about a boxer and his comeback to the world of welterweight championship. Based on a true story, the film is set in Lowell, a town languishing in industrial decline. Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a light welterweight boxer, who has had a run of defeats against badly matched opponents. These fights were arranged by Dicky (Christian Bale), his trainer and older brother, and by his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), a know-it-all nagger, who runs her family of nine children and a timid husband with a tight reign.

All his life, Micky has lived in the shadow of his loud-mouthed, attention-seeking, elder brother. Surprisingly, for a boxer, Micky is a quiet, shy guy. Aware of his mother’s favouritism towards Dicky, he deals with being sidelined by retreating into a desperate silence. Family loyalty leads him to be clannish to the point where he cannot voice his frustration about his domineering mother, clingy sisters and overbearing brother without feeling guilty. He falls in love with Charlene (Amy Adams), a tough-talking waitress who encourages him to maintain a healthy distance from his family and set clear boundaries in his relationship with them.

Things begin to change when Dicky is sent to prison. Micky finds a new trainer and, with support from his father and Charlene, breaks away from his mother’s management and hires a new manager. Soon enough, he begins winning every match he fights.

One of the central themes is Micky’s struggle to separate himself from his family and to make an identity for himself. If we are to utilise our abilities and follow our dreams, it is often necessary that we first sort out the issues from our past that have the potential for affecting our future adversely. As the old proverb goes, we don’t get to choose the family we’re born in, and it can be very difficult to distance oneself from the influence of a destructive family. Micky found it incredibly hard admitting that the people who were supposed to be his family had let him down. He felt that his identity, and his talent as a boxer, was tied up with his relationship with his family. He needed the support of someone who believed in him because of who he was, not because of who he was related to. Charlene gave him the courage he required to define boundaries with his family. However, she would have preferred him to have nothing more to do with them from then on. She helped him on his way to finding out who he was when he wasn’t being influenced by his family. Clearly, the message being spelt out here is that, to become who you were meant to be, you need to get rid of the baggage that families can sometimes become.

However, in a deciding match before the title bout, Micky’s boxing plan fails miserably, and he takes a beating round after round until he resorts to the tactics his brother taught him, which leads to a win. He realizes that he needs to continue training with his brother, if he is going to use his potential to the utmost. Charlene, however, feels that Micky is risking his success on the chance that Dicky will prove to be reliable, and she decides to leave rather than watch him fail. Knowing that Micky needs the stability and support that she can offer, Dicky goes after Charlene and convinces her to return. And so the brothers begin training together again, and the Ward family attempts to be less criticising and more attentive to Micky’s opinion.

Families are important; other than the obvious fact that we need parents to bring us into being and then to nurture us, we are also relational beings by nature and our development into mature adults depends on the relationships we have growing up. The Bible very clearly explains that God intended that we live as part of families, and that we have a mutual responsibility within the framework of a family to make it work.



At first Micky resorts to the extreme of cutting himself off from his family as he tries to figure out who he is as an individual. We empathise with his need for a separate identity, as it is a need experienced by us all at some point. According to the Bible, our identity, in itself and in relation to others, needs to be found in our relationship with God. As human beings, we are created in the image of God. If that is true, perhaps we would find out more about ourselves if we can find out more about him. And while we can try various sources of information to find out more about God, the best way to get to know him would be by developing a relationship with him. However, the Bible also says that we all have rebelled and fallen short of God’s standards, and our imperfection acts as a barrier between us and God’s perfect nature. But despite our imperfections, God loves us and wants to give us a new identity in his family. The only solution to that problem was Jesus dying on the cross, to endure the punishment we deserved. In doing so, he made a way for us to come back to God. Accepting God’s offer of forgiveness for our rebellion allows us to become what God wants us to be. And since God is our maker, who would better know what we are supposed to be like, and what our identity should consist of? This realisation releases us from the need to live up to the unhealthy expectations that society tends to place on us and instead frees us to live, with God’s help, according to his expectation.

And perhaps that is a better way of getting rid of the baggage from our past, rather than, like Micky, getting rid of our families’ altogether. The Fighter demonstrates this note of reconciliation when the brothers get back together to train for the title match. Micky wins not only because he sets boundaries with his family, but also because he is able to rely on their support when he needs to. In the final scene, his family, his trainers, his girlfriend and his manager join him in the ring to celebrate his victory, which he would not have achieved without them all.