In Defense of III

Every once in a while, I like to challenge myself. Normally, these challenges are simple, like getting an A+ in a pass/fail course, detecting the time dilation from moving sixty miles an hour, or staying continuously upright on a rollercoaster with six inversions. But today, I take on a writing challenge, and perhaps one more difficult than the previously mentioned baubles. I aim to defend Revenge of the Sith, which shall be affectionately referred to in this piece as ‘III’. It is a thankless task, and one that might end with me curled up in the fetal position in a dark corner of a room somewhere, whispering about CGI like it was the One Ring, or with a Montana-sized double chin where the alien parasite resides. Nevertheless, the task is at hand.


It should first be noted that, unlike my other movie reviews, this one will not be in a segmented style where I make note of those aspects of a film which possessed a particular interest regarding cinema, morality, pop culture, or me. III demands more of a narrative, because to understand my defense of III, you have to understand how we got there.


Before the first dollar was spent, III was perhaps the most thematically constrained movie of all time (this seems like hyperbole, but I challenge you to come up with a better example). It was neither the end nor the beginning of the story, it was not a happy ending, everyone knew what was going to happen, and everyone knew what had already happened. In general, I am of the opinion that the middle movie of a trilogy has the greatest narrative advantages. It doesn’t have to wrap anything up, and it doesn’t have to get anything going because all the characters were already established in the first movie. But in III’s case, the movie had both the disadvantages of being in the middle—you can’t really wrap things up, and you didn’t really get a chance to start them—with none of the advantages. III couldn’t leave you hanging like Empire Strikes Back, because there was no more movie coming. The creative loop was closing. At the same time, thanks to the putridity of what had come before it, III couldn’t really rely on the characters having been already set up. They weren’t. III had to be the first, second and third part of a trilogy almost entirely on its own, and it had to do it even while we already knew the ending.


Yet I would suggest that this last point is the saving grace of III, indeed, the whole reason I can’t just throw it in the trash-heap with II or the basically-pointless-heap with I. I do not believe that George Lucas really had his story planned out all that well back in 1976, when they were creating the first Star Wars. In fact, if you have read The Book, you know that he did not. Yet, looking back on it, if you had to tell this story again, this is how you would tell it. You would start in the middle, get to the end, and then work your way back to the beginning.


The Original Trilogy is a salvation story. It is a triumph. It is a bringing back from the dead. Particularly in V, the stark reality of Good vs. Evil, love vs. hate, sacrifice vs. selfishness, Rebellion vs. Empire comes alive. You know the stakes and you meet the characters and by the end of the trilogy, Luke converting Vader is the Right Thing. But you can’t, and were never going to be able to, truly love Vader/Anakin. You love Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, etc. And you cry when Anakin saves Luke and then dies, not so much because you know anything about him but because you know what it took the heroes to bring this about. They sacrificed, they lost arms, they got frozen, they got shot in the arm (conveniently, with the weakest blaster of all time…), they got cut in half by lightsabers, died in their old age practically alone on distant Dagobah, and their sacrifice brought down the Evil Empire.


The Prequel Trilogy, by contrast, is obviously the tragedy. And tragedies are always more tragic when you see what’s coming. You want to reach through the screen and twist somebody’s arm until they recognize what is so plainly obvious to you, the viewer. And in this case, Anakin’s eventual fall into evil is obvious because we, the viewers, already know it is going to happen. And this is where III shines.


Anakin’s descent into darkness, and the tragedy which follows, is easily the highpoint of the film. Aided by John Williams’ haunting score (say what you will about him copying other composers and even himself, his Star Wars music is always fantastic, and it is best in V and III), Anakin marches into the Jedi Temple and starts killing people left and right, and thousands of Jedi meet their deaths in a montage with more fatalities than your average Godfather sequence, you cannot possibly feel okay about this. You have seen this coming, and now it is happening, and you couldn’t stop it. The Jedi all die. The Republic dies. Anakin walks into a room full of children and turns his lightsaber on.

III accomplishes this feat of tragedy despite the fact that the set-up was unmitigatedly terrible. Though often castigated for the wrong reasons, I does basically nothing to shepherd the Anakin story along. The only important part of the story is that he loves his mother. Surely, that could have been accomplished in less time than an entire movie. II, although it gives Anakin his love interest, makes him such a whiny brat, and completely aloof from Obi-Wan, that III had to spend an hour artificially—and, of course, badly—attempting to brainwash us into believing that Anakin and Obi-Wan like each other. Sure. Suuuure they do.

While the crapitude of II was entirely George Lucas’ fault, if we take II’s crapitude as a given, I’m not sure what else he could have done to save III, then what he did: throw away the first half of the movie trying to pretend I and II never happened, and then hit us with the big emotional guns, bring in the swelling music, and roll curtains. In some sense, Order 66 was the prequels. The Prequel Trilogy was the Fall to the Original’s Salvation, and Order 66 was the Fall in a nutshell. Everything goes wrong at once. Anakin lets everyone down at once. Vader’s selfishness tears a galaxy asunder, and it does so not only with the score haunting us, but with the memory of the Original Trilogy crystallizing in front of us. The Vader/Anakin pain and suffering which will be released in VI's emotional finale looms large over everything.

In a reversal of the Original Trilogy, Anakin does exactly what Luke did not do. In V, Luke, against the wishes of his betters, runs off to Cloud City to save his friends, and there confronts a more powerful Sith Lord. Luke gets in over his head, and finds himself down an arm. But he doesn’t take that last step toward Hell; he would rather die than do that. Similarly, Anakin, against the wishes of his betters, runs off to the Chancellor’s office in an attempt to save his wife, and there confronts a more powerful Sith Lord. He gets in over his head, but instead of refusing that final step toward evil, he chooses himself over others, and Mace Windu ends up down a hand. Order 66 follows, and the tragedy ensues.

The weaknesses of III are copious, but I think they all stem from elsewhere. Anakin’s sudden reversal is often criticized as being too quick, and unbelievable. I think this is not the result of Anakin being too quick to change, but too slow. The transformation seems weird because it is an odd time to do something so dumb. Oh, now you decide to turn on the Jedi? Now you decide that they’re all evil? I and II spent so much time trying to make Anakin a fear-ridden, angsty, wreck of a human being that his “Fall” ends up seeming too much in character. A fall should be a FALL, all caps. The strangely crappy personal interactions between Anakin and Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine—these are also products of the fact that III is too late to be doing this. The first two movies should have been making Anakin out to be the Wonder Boy who can do no wrong, feared by bad guys, admired by good guys, and lusted after by Palpatine. Instead, the first two movies did… none of that.

The signature awful moment of III, Vader’s comical “NOOOOOO!!!” near the end, is also a product of bad preparation. We never believed in Anakin and Padme’s love for each other, because it was, for lack of a better term, stupid. How could Padme be surprised by anything this guy does? She knows him better than us and even we know he’s a puerile loose cannon who would just as well wipe out a camp of sentient beings if he felt like it or if the script called for it. And she’s surprised when he goes Sith crazy…? Meanwhile, Anakin’s “love” for Padme is completely disingenuous. He even uses words like “intoxicating” to describe his attitude towards her. Padme to him is a drug to quench his appetite for companionship, and a spectator for his braggadocio. After killing Jedi kids, it seems like “finding a new muse” wouldn’t be that big a deal to him. So, to make us think that Vader really cares about her, we get the gratuitous scream. Notice how Leia didn’t need to scream when Han got frozen because… ummm… we believed that she loved him?

Again, though, these faults are faults that III was saddled with, and did not entirely overcome. They aren’t of III’s own making. Even then, for at least a few minutes, during Order 66, III did overcome them. Darth Vader is a tragedy. The horrors that the Original heroes will one day sacrifice life and limb for are the result of a deep, dark shadow cast by this terrible moment. If III can do that, even with all its failings, and even while having to make up for all the failings of I and II, it is doing something right. I think it does. I think the helplessness and inevitability (and did I mention the score?) make the purge of the Jedi about as well done as it could have been.

Of course, III did a lot wrong. A non-exhaustive list: Natalie Portman’s "acting." That ridiculous lightsaber duel between Yoda and Sidious. General Greivous. That ridiculous lightsaber duel between Palpatine and Mace Windu. The completely pointless Kashyyk battle. That ridiculous scene where Palpatine kills three Jedi without any of them so much as bothering to resist. (I think the moral here is: don’t give Palpatine a lightsaber).

I think my defense of III, then, is that it has the soul of what the Prequels were supposed to be, even in spite of all the multitudinous failings. The grandeur, the epic catastrophe, the horrible pit that develops in your stomach—ever so briefly, this all happens. It could very well be a testament to the Original Trilogy’s greatness. Maybe it is our leftover sense of wonder at what we know comes next that imbues III with tragedy. Maybe it is really a faint shadow of what III could have been that makes what III was worth watching. I’m not sure I would argue with that.

Until he turns his lightsaber on. Then I am utterly convinced that for at least twenty minutes, the alien parasite in his chin fell asleep, and George Lucas remembered how to make a movie.

~Right Thumb~

Picard, Augustine, Q, and God

Editors Note: Left Thumb actually wrote about three sentences in this one. It's not much, but it's a start. Of course, at the same time, he demanded that we changed all of the "I"s into "We"s, and that the post be credited to both of us. Three sentences and he thinks it becomes "we." I haven't seen this blatant of a credit-snatch since that time I talked to that British guy and he claimed that England played a role in WWII. Shameless.

Tapestry is not only one of the great Next Generation episodes, it is one of the great science-fiction stories. The premise is not outlandish or particularly original, but it is a compelling tale of the Fall, grace, redemption, and the great irony of mankind’s relationship to the Almighty. Not bad for 45 minutes.
For those who don’t recall the episode, Captain Picard is dying. After a plasma-something-or-other hits him in the chest, his artificial heart gives out, and Picard meets his maker—or, in this case, the next best thing. He meets Q. After an amusing conversation, Q drags from Picard a sense of regret at some of the things Johnny-Boy did in his youth. See, it turns out that even slightly stuffy Shakespearean sixty-somethings can have a past that is... colorful. As much as we’d like to envision boyish Picard curled up by the fire reading King Lear at the family estate in the Pyrenees, this was far from the reality. Jean-Luc apparently has some regrets, and that’s not counting the hair situation. Among these regrets was a gratuitous bar fight, in which he was stabbed and lost his real heart. Thirty years later, absent that altercation, Picard would have survived the plasma-something-or-other. Picard decries his youth as one full of arrogance and very little sense. Q decides to send Picard back in time to right the wrongs.

Picard does so, avoiding the fight while alienating his friends. Yet his life turns out quite a bit different this time. Instead of command of the Enterprise, Lieutenant Picard finds himself stuck in a rote scientific role, more becoming of a young pup than a grizzled Starfleet veteran. When Jean-Luc asks Riker and Troi about his career, they bluntly relate all of his failings to him: he never set himself apart, he never took any risks, he never did anything. He wasn’t command material, he was “…punctual.” As Jean-Luc sums it up to Q a moment later: that man is devoid of passion and imagination. And I would rather die the man I was than live life out like that. Q gives JLP another chance; this time the future Captain of the Enterprise takes no prisoners, the bar fight ensues, and the knife goes through his chest. Yet he wakes up, barely alive, on the Enterprise, apparently with a functioning artificial heart.

As we re-tell the story, we can’t possibly convey the awesomeness of the episode. Patrick Stewart was born for this type of story, and John de Lancie is, of course, perfect as Q—mischievous and a little sadistic but with a core of goodness you can’t deny. The story itself explains so much about Picard, that we think it is hard to remember at the end that we didn’t already know all of this about Picard.* It feels more like a friend retelling a story than a script dreamed up by a TNG writer.

But for now, we’ll leave out the general accolades and focus on how universal of a story this is—and how much it tells us about us. It hearkens back to all the great Saints. All the great Saints did stupid things in their youth. Paul killed people, Francis went off to war, Peter denied Jesus for crying out loud. But in particular it’s reminiscent of Saint Augustine, who went through a veritable theological bar fight in his youth, falling into agnosticism and Manichaeism before flourishing as one of the greatest theologians, philosophers and defenders that the Church has ever known. Somewhat fittingly, Augustine is one of the Big Two along with Aquinas, much like Picard is one of the Big Two along with Kirk. (For more on this parallel, be on the watch for Left Thumb’s upcoming book Summa Trekkologiae: An Introduction to Star Trek and Scholasticism.)**

Imagine, though, Saint Augustine, without his early experiences. Without personal experience, how could he have written the Confessions? How could he have poured forth the deeply personal yet universally applicable truths that he did, regarding original sin, free will, the grace of God, and so forth? He wouldn’t have; he couldn’t have. In the same way, Captain Picard, without having come close to death, and without having become so aware of the preciousness of each moment, how could he have led others into battle or commanded the starship which has been affectionately referred to as a Flying Fortress of Goodness, Bringing Happiness Wherever She Goes? Of course, he couldn’t. The most happiness he could legitimately hope to bring to others would be if he stood in the park and handed children free Happy Meals. (But given Picard’s feelings towards children, this seems unlikely. And slightly creepy. But we digress.)

Going one step further, Augustine and Picard seem to mirror human history. On Easter, we sing “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which has won for us so Great a Redeemer.” Now, this concept is a great mystery not only to us, but to the Church in general. How it is that God brought, out of our disobedience, greater good than imaginable is beyond our capacity to understand. But He did. Before the Fall, humans were created in God’s Image, of course, but after Jesus, God is one of us; this is the most stunning thing there is in the cosmos, anywhere. Nothing else even comes close. Through God’s condescension, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and our participation in the Eucharist, we become united with the Almighty in a way that even the angels do not know.

Augustine himself (conveniently enough) talks about how we fell from grace because our minds were turned from the eternal to the finite. Yet, oddly enough, it was our finitude that saved us—had we been pure spirit, as the angels, our sin would have been eternal as well, brooking no savior, and leaving us in perdition with Lucifer and his ilk. Of course, the irony is that had we not been temporal beings, perhaps we would never have drifted from the eternal. Yet because we were, God used our weakness to bring forth an Act so mighty that our temporal faults were taken on by His Son, and we are able to join the eternal in a way we never could have before.

We might not be articulating it well, but the point we’re trying to get across is nuts. Through our fault, through our limited nature, and through our weakness, God worked a miracle that gave us more than we had in the Garden of Eden.

Of course, none of this is to say that we should sin that grace might abound. But it is salvation history, and it resembles the personal history of so many (all?) of the Saints that one has to think God likes this story.

One of the great parts of Tapestry is that nowhere does Picard deny the fact that he made mistakes in his youth. Even at the end, Picard is a 56-year-old, seasoned, responsible captain who would no longer get into a bar fight with a Nausicaan. His youth was full of mistakes and he knows it. But to go back and wipe them out is to wipe out a lot of who he was.
Without this particular mistake, Picard never experiences real suffering, never comes to the conclusion that certain things are worth dying for, and that living is more important than just staying alive, and all those clichés which we repeat to ourselves but have trouble actually believing.*** That Picard could never lead an away team, could never face down Romulans, argue with Klingons, survive the Borg, and save the galaxy from multitudinous and multifarious dangers.

A Saint Augustine who had never known the pit of despair and lack of God that comes in the wilderness could never have so brilliantly and genuinely defended the Church against that wilderness. A Saint Augustine who had not known such suffering would not have had the same impetus to keep others from falling into that pit of despair.

Picard, in the alternate Tapestry reality, still makes mistakes, of course. He fools around with one of his best friends, basically ruining their relationship for all time. This is what makes the whole point: we are going to make mistakes. The question is, are we going to make mistakes in the pursuit of greatness, or in an attempt to avoid dying to self? In the lowest circle of Hell, nothing moves, save the wings of Satan, freezing all below. To get there, all we have to do is nothing.

If we aim High, we can’t help but reach God. We will falter and we will fail, and we might even get a knife stuck through us, but that very suffering draws us closer to God than we previously thought possible. That’s what Jesus did for mankind, that’s how Augustine became Saint Augustine, and that’s how Jean-Luc Picard became Captain of the Enterprise.


~Two Thumbs Sideways~




*And yes, you picayune, pointy-eared perfectionists, we know that his artificial heart and the bar fight is mentioned before, in “Samaritan Snare”. But the point remains. The full story is only unveiled here and it feels like we always knew.

**Note: No, do not be on the watch for this book. Let’s face it, LT can’t even get a stinking blog post on the web. A multi-volume tractate on the similarities of Starfleet command structure and Thomistic metaphysics? Talk about a one-way trip to Development Gehenna. Maybe he'll meet the Carthusians there.

***Although a large part of our culture today pretty much denies that there are things worth dying for. This is unfortunate. At the very least, deep space exploration and the invention of a blueberry pie/cookie dough extravaganza are worth dying for.

Prometheus, Alien, and the Wonder of Not Knowing

Spoiler Warning: If you have not yet seen Prometheus (or, for that matter, Alien, Aliens, Dark City or Contact) and desire to view it at some point in the future, I probably would not read this.



Prometheus is grand science fiction in the strain of Blade Runner, Alien, Solaris, Dark City, etc. It just isn’t as good. It is a worthwhile viewing experience, however, if for no other reason than the fact that Prometheus, in being not-great-but-merely-very-good, casts into sharp view those qualities which made the previous greats, Greats. Prometheus wants to ask grand questions, but it answers too many of its own questions. It wants to be fulfilling, but in satiating too much of our curiosity, it leaves one just a bit empty. And while the 70’s sci-fi look of the film—a science fiction mise-en-scene which no one has improved upon in the decades since—makes you feel like you are watching great science fiction, I came to the end with one overarching though: I want to watch Alien again, because, wow, Alien was amazing.

Prometheus starts off on completely the wrong foot. Even while watching the opening scene, I was horrified by its brutal opacity. As an alien spacecraft leaves the atmosphere, some humanoid creature, on a planet that looks very much like Earth, dissolves himself into the water using some strange liquid, and we see his DNA shred itself to pieces, leading to the inescapable conclusions that life on Earth was begun by an alien race. Mind you, this is the first scene. Already, I know more than I want to know. Already, I know that the crew of the Prometheus will find some origin point of this alien race, and that they will discover that they did, indeed, create humanity. At this point, the entire movie was practically ruined, in the first scene. The only thing that kept my interest piqued was the belief that Ridley Scott must have something up his sleeve. Surely he would not show us that, and then simply follow through with it? Surely, there is something about this scene that we do not understand?

There wasn’t. The twist was that, in fact, that the Engineers—the human scientists’ term for this proto-human race—are now trying to kill us. Thankfully, the movie refrains from telling us why this proto-human species is now determined to undo that which they started, but this is about the only thing the movie refrains from answering for us. The movie ends with the following things basically known: this species created us, they then wanted to destroy us, and to do so they engineered a black goo which mutates living things into horrendous monsters, and eventually one of these mutations will turn into the Alien we were all frightened by 33 years ago. The only thing left to the imagination is why this race of beings wants to kill us.

Now, for a moment, I will ignore the damage that this movie does to Alien’s original ideas. The fact that the Alien was actually bread to destroy us, specifically, is quite a let-down. It smacks of the same Everything-Is-About-Us science fiction that I normally ascribe to lesser sci-fi artists than Ridley Scott. Much more frightening was the idea that the Alien race was simply out there. It evolved, much like we did, except that it was a nearly perfect killing machine, and we just happened to run into it, and we just happened killed in the process, unless we happened to be Sigourney Weaver. Numerous other such mysteries and concepts were ruined as well.

But I ignore these because Prometheus can stand on its own terms, and it is its own terms which I believe are continually weakened by its lack of restraint. Think of the climactic suicide crash between the Prometheus and the alien vessel. In the film, this is a triumphant moment of good triumphing over evil—or at the very least, of humanity triumphing over someone else. It is also bland and predictable. Imagine, if you will, if we really were not sure what the proto-humans’ plans were, if we were not sure that this was a weapon meant to destroy us, and if we really were not sure what “this” was in the first place. The dramatic tension and existential questions involved in that hypothetical scene would have dwarfed the actual scene. Should we ram it? Should we not? Is it our business? Can we take it upon ourselves to assume evil intentions when they are not manifestly proved? Do we want to die for a pointless cause?

As another example, we turn to the tomb/sanctuary/giant head room. One of the panels on the wall very much—very much—resembled the Alien from the original Alien. Maybe I just saw something that wasn’t there. But it certainly seemed to share many characteristics. When I first saw this, I thought it was awesome. What was the proto-human species’ experience with the Alien? Why did they have a panel devoted to it? Had they been wiped out by this Alien species? Where did the Alien come from and how did it sneak up on such an advanced civilization? Where were they now? Or maybe the proto-humans created the Alien, and it got out of control? Or maybe the Alien was actually a more ancient species, and it created proto-humans before evolving—or devolving—into a more primal, vicious form?

The questions were endless, and the imaginative possibilities seemed boundless. The holograms showing the proto-humans running from… something… were haunting, terrifying, awe-inspiring, and so forth. Was it the Alien they were running from? If so, why? How did it get there? What in the blazes were they doing here? What was going on?!

Prometheus releases the vast majority of this tension by explicitly telling you 95% of what happened. In the end, we have a banal and uninteresting history of a biological weapon gone wrong. That is nothing new, and that is nothing particularly interesting. The original Alien was not such a success because of all the answers it provided. It was a success because of all the answers it did not provide.

Indeed, the original Alien’s success can entirely be chalked up to what we did not know, what we did not see, and what we could only guess about. This is true both in the high-minded, existential, What is our place in the universe? sense, and it was also true in the “Sweet mother of all things holy what is around the corner?!?!” sense. Alien was scary because you didn’t often see the Alien. It was meaningful because it didn’t answer the questions. They found a crashed extraterrestrial ship, with some sort of “Space Jockey” on board, whose stomach seemed to have exploded. You never discover who the ship belonged to, who the space jockey was, or, later on, what the Alien was doing there, how it survived, where it came from, etc. The universe seemed huge. It seemed nearly infinite. It seemed like there might have been a trillion possible answers because, in a universe as big as that, there were a trillion different possible answers.

The best science fiction has always understood this. Dark City, for instance, leaves you guessing for much of the movie. When you finally discover the truth about the city, you are still left wondering—why? Why this space-city? Why did they do it here? And what exactly were the Strangers doing? We are given hints, but never answers. Where did they come from? Why choose us?

Even the action oriented science fiction films understand this, on a more tactile level. Aliens, otherwise known as James Cameron’s original Ode To Stuff Getting Blown Up (Because of Evil Corporations), was an ultra-intense, paranoid movie where you never feel comfortable and the action means much more than simply numbing one’s mind. And it accomplishes this not through a blunt, “How many bad guys can we kill at once” attitude, but rather through a lot of sleight-of-hand artistry. Think of the scene where the auto-machine guns are defending the installation. We know they have a limited amount of ammo. We know they are tearing the aliens to pieces, for at least a bit. But we see nothing. We only hear. We hear the rapid fire bangs of the guns, for minutes on end, and then, all at once, the noise stops. And then we are terrified. It was not guns firing and aliens dying that was scary. It was silence. Because the guns are down, and our time was up.

Contact, a science fiction film that could have been so much more, suffers from the same problem Prometheus does. It wants to answer questions. So instead of a thoughtful, novel story about communicating with an alien race that is light years away, the movie develops a deus ex machina, Time-Space Portal Machine whereby Jodie Foster can meet the alien, who explains everything to her. What. A. Letdown.
Now, I know why movies do this. I think back to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which a lot of people really didn’t like. They didn’t like it because they didn’t think the aliens made any sense, they didn’t like it because their purpose was never explained, they didn’t like it because the ending came out of nowhere. But it was superb. It was superb because it didn’t just answer every trivial, or non-trivial, question we could throw at it. It hinted at possible explanations, as science fiction will often do, but it never drew us an outline. That lets you ponder. That lets you cogitate. That lets you sink into images and possibilities. In short, that is great science fiction.

Prometheus could have been great. Perhaps most sadly, it could have been great with very little change. Remove the first scene. Remove the needless explication regarding The Purpose of the goo, and the intentions of the proto-humans. Maybe add a scene or two with a little more wonder and a little less analysis. It would not have been hard to maintain the beautiful look, capable action scenes and decent characters with a narrative that did more wondering and less talking. It would not have been hard, in other words, to create a movie that understood Alien’s strengths, and was faithful to its science-fiction wonder. This is probably the main reason Prometheus was disappointing. Despite its grand attempt, and despite being fifty times as intelligent as most summer movies—while still being eminently watchable—and despite its superlative effects and sets, the movie could have had the depth and solemnity of the original Alien, and the many great science fiction works before and after. It could have been poetry, and instead it was a physics equation.

Loneliness, Learnedness, and the Ultimate Acquired Taste

Yes, I have used this picture before, but seriously, can you see it too many times?

I recently watched Citizen Kane for the first time in six years. It was a mind-blowing experience. In between the last time I watched Citizen Kane and this viewing, I have watched something approaching 400 new movies, read numerous books on movies, hundreds—nay, thousands—of reviews, essays and articles, and in general attempted to actually learn how to watch movies. Whereas the first time I saw Citizen Kane I merely sat there, and the second time I stared at the screen attempting—and mostly failing—to discern what was so great about it, this time I was enraptured. It was a feverish joy, watching this most famous of films. Every shot was stunning, every cut was new, every line was fresh, every shadow was crisp, every angle sharp, every tone pitch perfect—I don’t know if I have ever been so blown away by a movie, much less one I had seen a half a dozen times before.

Well, duh.

Citizen Kane is a fantastic movie, you are saying to yourself. What is so new about that? Nothing, of course. It was fantastic when he made it and now, when critics didn’t like it, when critics did like it, when audiences didn’t like it and when they did, when I didn’t really care about it and now that I do. But watching it again—and then, even more joyously, watching Roger Ebert’s commentary—made me think of a few things, the most important of which was obviously God. To explain this, I will have to explain my movie-watching story. I apologize for the personal anecdote; I don’t like it either.

When I first began my movie-trek, I liked movies that mostly everyone likes. No, I wouldn’t have enjoyed Transformers (Written By No One!) even then, but my tastes were relatively undiscerning and if they threw a few spaceships up on the screen I would probably be fine with it. Also, I didn’t particularly like old movies. There is a stink of outmoded narratives, affected acting and cheesy dialogue attached to old movies which it was hard to overcome. I might pretend to appreciate one here and then, but let’s face it, I didn’t. Part of this is due to the fact that most old movies—like most movies in general—do stink, and that I hadn’t gotten around to watching the good ones yet (why, why was I watching countless carbon-copy John Wayne movies when I could have been watching Red River or Rio Bravo?!). But much of it sprung from the fact that I didn’t have a clue how to watch movies. Of course, I was totally oblivious as to this fact. “Not know how to watch movies?” How can someone not know how to watch movies? You just sit there and stare at the screen, for crying out loud.

Then a few little things happened, in no particular order. I saw Batman Begins, and I didn’t like it at all. This was weird. It was a superhero movie—which I usually enjoy—and it wasn’t terribly cheesy. Why didn’t I like it? Why did I sit through it but not enjoy it? Was something wrong with me or the movie? I couldn’t answer that question.

Then, in my freshmen detective fiction class, we watched the eminently watchable John Huston masterpiece The Maltese Falcon. What’s this? An old movie with snappy dialogue, sordid plot and decent acting? Where did that come from?!

Then, in my freshmen film class: for an exam we had to watch a shot of a film and describe it using the terminology we had learned in class. The terminology itself was helpful if not overly important (it makes things easier to articulate, not easier to understand) but the notion of having to watch a shot and really figure out what made it what it is helped me think about watching a movie in a whole new way. The fact that the shot was the opening long take to Welles' Touch of Evil was even better. Now, when watching Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, I was able to express to myself why a certain shot was so amazing. (The first shot of them racing away in the mini-van, for those wondering). I had always loved that shot, but now I could express why I did.

Then, the kicker had to be Barry Lyndon. Over Spring Break of my freshmen year, Left Thumb and I (yes, he does exist) watched Barry Lyndon. I had never seen a film anything like it. Even my newfound vocabulary was at a loss to describe the assault of pulchritude that this film made on the eyes. I had no idea how to explain what I just saw, but I knew it was amazing.

So I decided I was going to watch movies. I didn’t do it overnight, per se, but I decided over time that this would be a hobby of mine. And so it became. It was helped along by the fact that, being lonely and socially inept at college, movies were something I could do on my own, in those many depressing lengths of time during which I had nothing else to do. Even when I did finally meet some friends, the movie-watching habit stuck.

But I still didn’t know how to watch movies! I would watch certain movies—like, say, the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple—and like them but not know why. Or I would watch others, such as William Wyler’s Sunset Boulevard, and know that I should think I was watching something important… but was I watching something important? I had no idea! If I hadn’t been told I never would have gotten past the twenty minute mark. I was watching movies out of a vague sense of duty to finally master them, but when someone told me that they didn’t like Sunset Boulevard (or countless other films) because it was boring, I didn’t really know what to say. They were kind of boring.

Well, suffice it to say that watching Citizen Kane last night was like coming full circle. After years of movie-watching and reading and writing and discussing, Sunset Boulevard is not boring to me in the least. Stagecoach is not just another black-and-white western, it is an exciting work of art. Citizen Kane isn’t just a myth, a legend, a movie you claim is great because you’re supposed to—it is actually, legitimately, one of my favorite movies.

Now, not all people are called to love movies. When someone tells me they just don’t “get” Blade Runner or that Kill Bill is the greatest movie ever made, I just assume they don’t know how to watch movies. And that is fine, not everyone can learn everything. I don’t know the first thing about wines and probably never will; it is up to others to detect the hint of vanilla and persimmon. Movies, like almost anything, are an acquired taste, and everyone can’t acquire every taste.

But there is one thing we are all called to acquire a taste for, the Ultimate Acquired Taste, if you will: God.

Due to our fallen nature, we don’t exactly have a “taste” for God. There is a deep seated longing somewhere in us, but most of us can go for quite some time ignoring God, pretending He doesn’t exist, or perhaps worst of all, pretending we are doing all the right things (much like I might have pretended to love Citizen Kane in the past) while doing nothing to actually bring that love about. I fall victim to this more than anyone I know (which makes sense because we do tend to be most aware of our own sinfulness). For quite a long period of time (i.e. my entire life) I would say things like: “Well, I just don’t feel anything. I go to Mass, but I don’t feel anything. I pray, but I don’t feel anything. I sin, and unfortunately I don’t feel that bad about it. I can’t do anything about the way that I feel, though. So it isn’t my fault.”

Isn’t my fault. We love saying that. That is only true in the same sense that not understanding movies or wine wasn’t my fault. I didn’t enjoy good movies because I hadn’t trained myself to love them. I don’t enjoy good wines because I haven’t taught myself anything about them. But while movie-watching is not a pre-requisite for Heavenly bliss, and wine-tasting is not something Saint Peter will probably be asking me about, loving God, loving what is good, and coming to hate sin are probably going to come up in the conversation at some point.

And it is learning to love God and hate sin which seems so obviously paralleled to me in movie watching. You can put forth anything you want here: music, movies, dance, food, economics, sports (baseball, in particular!)—you name it. To really learn to love something, you can’t just pick it up and say “how does this feel?” Picking it up repeatedly without ever going further than that is no better, and as Cardinal Henry Newman would say, it might even be worse, as you have convinced yourself you are doing what it takes to improve yourself when in fact you are stuck in a rut.

It starts with grace, obviously. In my own personal movie-story, the analogue for grace would be those first few encounters. Batman Begins, The Maltese Falcon, the exam where I had to analyze a shot, Barry Lyndon. Moments of movie-grace, if you will, that I did nothing to earn. They just happened. It is similar in our life of faith, except perhaps that God is pouring grace on us at a much higher rate.

Also, suffering and/or self denial is another important aspect. Without those constant lonely nights in Tower C, do I ever start watching Pulp Fiction, Seven Samurai, Paths of Glory or Miller’s Crossing? Probably not. Even though it seemed like a pointless piece of crapitude at the time, that loneliness meant something in the end.

Then, of course, after the journey is started, you have to do the right thing even though you don’t feel like it and sinning doesn’t seem so bad. You hve to make an actual, radical change to your life. And the amazing, stunning thing, is this: without you even realizing it, after a while, the path of righteousness begins to excite you and the sin does begin to seem hateful and opprobrious (because it is). The excuse that we don’t have control over our feelings doesn’t work any better with God than it does with movies. If I was willing to spend years of reading, watching and thought to become fluent in movies, shouldn’t I be willing to spend all the time in the world to become fluent in Holiness?

The particularly crazy part is this: I understand movies better now than I ever have, and yet only now do I realize how little I understand them, and how much there is which I don’t know. The same thing happens in our faith. The closer we get to God, the more we realize how much closer we need to become!

It often seems downright impossible to do what God is asking us to do. But then again, it seemed unthinkable that I would ever understand Sunset Boulevard in such a way that I actually enjoyed watching a movie like that. The discipline it takes to learn movies is unsurprising. What is surprising is that we don’t expect to have to do the same thing on a much larger scale with the Most Important Thing in Life. If we want to love God and hate sin it takes an enormous amount of work. The surprising thing is that by the end, the work itself becomes joyous, and we no longer understand what took us so long. We can empathize with those who do not understand Citizen Kane, and we can empathize with those who find God so hard (as we all do, at times; God is much harder than movies) but with each little thing we learn, the road becomes clearer and the burden lighter. Hopefully, by the end, we will all be watching Citizen Kane with God, wondering what on Earth took us so long.

~Right Thumb~

The Coolest of the Cool

Pictured: The coolest ship in the world. Does this post really need this picture? Of course not. But I will take any excuse to picture an aircraft carrier.


The coolest human beings of all time. I am not talking about Indiana Jones or Han Solo. They are fake. They might be incredibly cool, but they are artificial constructions, much like the Most Interesting Man in the World. If they were to be considered, surely they would be the coolest of the cool. But on this list, I refer to actual human beings. Human beings who are so cool that Indiana Jones and Han Solo and the Most Interesting Man in the World would be impressed. Human beings who are so cool that our honorable mention—that’s right, he doesn’t even make the list—is:

Michael Freaking Jordan. He is the honorable mention. The winningest, best, most famous, most “I don’t give a flying hoot what you think” athlete of all time doesn’t even make the list. He is merely honorably mentioned. Because while Mike was the incredibly cool, he is not as cool as…

Harrison Ford. The guy didn’t just play Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Richard Kimble. He also saves people in his personal helicopter. It’s one thing to play the coolest characters ever. But as I mentioned, that is just a fantasy. It turns out, Harrison’s key to pulling these characters off is that he practically is Indiana Jones. As this cracked article relates:

“Twice Ford has used his helicopter to come to the rescue of real-world hikers in distress, once by saving a woman on top of an Idaho mountain and once by joining a search and rescue mission for a 13-year-old Boy Scout lost in the woods. And out of all the people on the mission, Ford was the one who found the kid. In both cases, he volunteered his helicopter and piloting services free of charge, and also made himself available to the sheriff for future emergencies, undoubtedly prompting lonely middle-aged women all over the American Northwest to suddenly take up the sport of ill-planned hiking trips.”

He also led a relief operation to Haiti and personally flies special Olympics athletes to competitions. Yeah. He’s pretty cool.

Next up is:

William the Conqueror. You know he invaded England and basically began the march of the British Empire (granted, they only really got going 600 hundred years later, but the same could be said for Romulus and Rome).

You know the date 1066, when really, nothing happened in 1066 except for his being crowned in Westminster Abbey after a successful invasion of England.

You know that he was basically a bad bad man with a penchant for conquering things. But plenty of people have conquered stuff, you say; why was William different?

Napoleon conquered because of his Napoleon complex, Hitler conquered because he was a madman, Joan of Arc did it because of the voices in her head—but William did because someone called him a bad name. According to Wikipedia, William was originally known as “William the Bastard” due to his illegitimate birth.

So he needed to get people to stop calling him that ridiculous name, and in the process take out some righteous anger on the world. So he went and conquered a country and a half, just to change his name to “William the Conqueror” which is the coolest name you can have without living in the Star Wars universe.

William changed history just to get a cool name. Imagine what would have happened if someone from the Middle East had made fun of his hair? The Middle East wouldn’t even exist anymore, that’s what would have happened.

Up next:

Every. Astronaut. Ever. I mean… come on. This doesn’t need any explanation. But let’s put it this way: fighter pilots are as cool as they come, and astronauts are the best fighter pilots, AAAAAAAAAAAND as if that weren't enough, they go into space. Cool is to astronaut like rotund is to John Adams, fast is to Usain Bolt, or explosions are to Michael Bay. They define the word. The word defines them.

Up next:

Hannibal the Conqueror and Scipio. Hannibal is well known (and he seems to strengthen the theory that having a name which ends with “the Conqueror” is probably a good way to get on this list). He basically slapped around the Roman Empire for a decade, while being outmanned, outflanked, outsupplied and outpoliticked the entire time. He crossed the Alps with 200,000 men and war elephants. War elephants. It is tricky to FLY over the Alps, and Hannibal got elephants to walk over the Alps. Not just any elephants, either—war elephants were specifically trained to go beserk and run through columns of men at high speed. Somehow, Hannibal got these ten-ton ticking time bombs across the Alps.

Then, he beat a gigantic Roman army in an epic battle. Then, he did it again. Then, he did it again, and again, and again. All this despite that fact that Carthage, his home country, was refusing to send supplies and basically doing everything in their power to take the legs out from under him. Hannibal just won, won, won. And he did it against Rome. This is the Rome that, until it crumbled from within and succumbed to the barbarian hordes, never lost to anybody. Their Empire stretched from Spain and Britain to Mesopotamia and Egypt. They. Did. Not. Lose.

Except to Hannibal, who whooped their collective arse for 15 years.

That makes him cool.

Who was Scipio? Well, we all know Rome survivied the tornado of destruction that was Hannibal. How?

Scipio beat him.

But as cool as astronauts, Harrison Ford, and guys with names ending in “the Conqueror” are, there is one undisputed coolest guy ever. There is no one is his league, and no one particularly close to his league either, his name is:

Chuck Yeager. The simplest way of explaining why Chuck Yeager is as cool as they come is this. Astronauts are the coolest people on Earth, and their hero is Chuck Yeager. If William, Hannibal and Scipio were around today, they would all give up their conquering ways, morbidly depressed by the fact that, nay, they would never achieve the epic coolness of Chuck Yeager.

I recently attended a talk given by Alan Bean. Mr. Bean is one of only twelve men in the history of the universe to walk on the face of the Moon. Twelve. He is not only an astronaut, he is the cream of the astronaut crop. And when he mentioned Chuck Yeager, his eyes sparkled like a seven-year old, as if he couldn’t contain the admiration.

Anyone whose sheer coolness can strike an astronaut speechless is the epitome of cool. Chuck Yeager is the coolest man the world has ever known, and I defy you to suggest someone cooler. Even fake people can't approach Yeager. Indiana Jones wants to be Chuck Yeager when he grows up, but knows he never will.

~Right Thumb~

“I want much more than this provincial life.”

This line does not seem to mesh with the rest of Bell’s character. In Beauty and the Beast, Bell is selfless, charitable and wise. This particular song seems to indicate that she is ambitious, ungrateful and greedy. Seen in the proper light, however, I believe this song is the key to one of the more important themes in the film, which is often overlooked.

This is, in part, due to the fact that so many truths of human existence are present here. The importance of looking past superficial appearances, the vicious tendencies of mobs and crowds, the true nature of love as sacrifice, the wide-ranging effects of evil and many other themes are present in at least some fashion, subtle or otherwise.

But why is Bell so determined to escape “this provincial life” and why does she sing this song with a smile on her face? Is not this a mixed signal at best, or sheer greed at worst? Does she not love the books in this town, cheerfully “bonjour” the various characters and dance her way back to her father, whom she enthusiastically encourages regarding his science project?

Why yes, she does all of those things. She is very happy and yet she wants more. Some would call this greedy, I would call this saintly. Allow me to explain.

Cardinal Newman outlines the difference between the “watchful” Christian and the unwatchful Christian as being one of satisfaction. The watchful Christian is unsatisfied with this world, longs for the return of Christ, and so does not place his joy in material things; therefore, he is constantly on the lookout for the coming of the Lord. The unwatchful Christian, while attending Mass, going to confession and in general following the commandments, is satisfied with the things of this world. He likes them for what they are, and not for what they point him toward.

We are, of course, meant to appreciate the many good things God has given us, and Bell does. She likes her books and her horse and so on. But we are not supposed to be satisfied with them. The things of this world are imperfect and impermanent, and even as we thank God for them we should be begging Him to return, that we might participate in His goodness as fully as we were always supposed to do. Power, fame, money, stature—these things do not last.

Now observe what Bell does. She appreciates her life—but she is not satisfied with it. She turns down the greatest life a woman in her “world” (this provincial town) could possibly have. The stature of marriage to Gaston, the money this would avail her, the envy of all, the power of becoming a veritable village queen—all of this is unimportant to Bell. Instead, by the end of the film, she has a life much greater than this. The Beast’s castle is not simply a bigger palace over which to rule. It is, in a sense, the afterlife. And in this afterlife, because she died to self in the material world, and sacrificed herself in the most loving of ways, she has gained… everything. Much as Jesus promised us would happen if we were able to die to self.

Now hold on there, Mr. Crazy Theorist, you might be saying to yourself. What is this “afterlife”, “death to self” and other such nonsense of which you speak? She doesn’t die!

Actually… she does. Being a fan of the film, it is easy to overlook Bell’s act of love toward her father. She promises to stay with the beast forever in order that her father might go free. Forever. Knowing the end of the film, this seems, shall we say, less than horrifying. But just imagine what happens if the beast never softens, if love never enters his life, and if she is just stuck there.

Forever.

She basically died. She would never see her father, her town, her fellow human beings again. She would have lived out her days cold, alone and forlorn, subject to the vicissitudes and temperaments of a monster. She would have gone from village queen to lifelong prisoner in a matter of hours, and she would have done it all because she valued her father more than herself, and she valued the next life more than the trappings of “this provincial life.”

Then, of course, having died to herself, she goes about converting the Beast who also dies to self (but in a much more literal fashion) before they are united in the “Heaven” of the film’s finale. Note that the Beast also had to choose which was more important to him—having Bell in his castle forever, or giving Bell up because she needed to see her father. He, also, could have had his material dream—but let it go. Bell and the Beast forsook this world, and only in doing so were they able to live happily ever after in the next world.

This, to me, is the most enduring theme of Beauty and the Beast. As we view it from this angle, it becomes apparent that when we chase after money, or power, or fame in our lives, we are marrying Gaston. The most powerful man or woman in the world is still just the Gaston of a slightly bigger “provincial life.” Bell gave up all of this and even her basic freedom because she wanted more than that out of life. If only we would be so ambitious.

~Right Thumb~

Admirable Self-Restraint

See, I could have made use of a famous line from a corny song from Van Halen as my topic heading. But I didn't. So props to me for possessing so much self-control.

Props to me for another reason as well: here I am, in the Old Country, still bringing bloggy goodness to my faithful readers. And where is Left Thumb? I'll tell you where he is. He's on the computer. Right now. (No really, he is. He knows it, too, because he is reading this). And yet when was the last time we heard so much as a peep from Left Thumb?

January. It has been almost a half a year. Soon enough this blog will have to be renamed One Thumb Sideways. That will be dissapointing.

Since his last post, I have found myself in Europe. Doing some recon work for a secret organization, in fact. So secret, I haven't even found them yet. Think about that.

And with half of my reconaissance done, I report: The U.S. owns Europe like a sack of potatoes. (Not literally, of course. Literally, China owns both the U.S. and Europe. But that is besides the point).

What is the point? The point is that whatever adventurous, entreprenurial spirit that once existed here, that formed the Dutch East India Company, that sent millions of men (most of whom died) on voyages into the beyond to see what was there, that crossed oceans and challenged countries to duels and didn't back down from anything...

Well, that spirit is gone. There is a reason these people didn't invent the automobile. Or the plane. Or go into space. Or get to the Moon. Or invent the computer. Or the cell phone. Or, pretty much anything.

When I first arrived, the yearnings of many-a-Canadian to re-attain the lifestyle they wish they had never given up made some sense. The evenhandedness, the calmness, the prettiness... all very charming and you could see yourself lying in a hammock, reading a book by Spinoza or Sartre for the rest of your life.

And then about one week in, something funny happened. I woke up. I had fallen asleep. Not a bad thing, mind you. We need to sleep, spiritually, mentally, physically, grammatically, and so forth. But after about a week of charming prettiness, I wanted adventure and beauty and struggle--or at least something beyond the purely quiescent facade that Europe portrays. (By the way, I refrain from calling Amsterdam beautiful because it isn't. It is possibly the prettiest thing I have ever seen.)

Once upon a time these people did amazing things. Now, they seem to go out of their way not to. Americans might not be able to agree on anything, but at least we do stuff (and believe me, we do stupid things. Stupid, stupid things. But it is better to fail catastrophically one day and do something great the next than to never do anything at all). While we engaged on the greatest journey man has ever journeyed, what were Europeans doing? Yeah, I don't know either. They were probably just watching us ride missiles to the Moon. I would.

But perhaps the most amazing thing about this revelation is how easily it came. I haven't exactly spoken to every Amsterdammer. You can just tell. I am almost getting the sense that the French aren't so much unique as that they are extreme. They surrender no matter what. But other Europeans seem to have lied down in front of the rails of time, if not invaders. They don't seem too worried about being human. They set out to erase any differences among humans while people in Russia, the U.S. (and more recently, China) have been attempting to be humans. Maybe the Russians failed to get to the Moon (losers!) but at least they tried. The rest of Europe sat there like the fat white cat from SPECTRE, comfortably ensconced in a position of safety as they let real adventurers do all their work for them.

I wonder if the British are the same way. They are Europeans but they sailed the seas triumphantly, they helped win WWII, they have James Bond... Perhaps the English Channel was a sufficient buffer to keep the tendrils of European self-contentedness at bay. I suppose I'll have to go there to find out.

And I bet you Left Thumb still won't have written a post by the time I get there, either.

~Right Thumb~