What is Love? The Deep Blue Sea and Amour

Rachel Weisz (in a marvelous performance) is in deep trouble.  She has left her husband, who loves her for her passion, a younger man who does not love her.  Her despair in this triangle leads her to attempt suicide.  And this is just the first ten minutes of The Deep Blue Sea. 

The theme of the film is passion, and the consequences of giving in to our passions.  Passion is gorgeous, but dangerous; it is powerful and destructive.  Certainly it is shown in this film to be a double-edged sword, ending in destruction. 

Passion is often confused with love, especially among the young.  This is not to say that passion isn’t an important aspect of love.  Were it not for passion, would our rational minds ever get married, get pregnant, go through birth, raise children?  Passion gives us the energy and drive to accomplish that which our species most needs.  It is the engine that drives our survival.

But is that all of love, or even the foundation of love?  Perhaps it is the engine, but what is the hull, the keel, the sail?  Passion drives love, makes it do amazing stunts, but what keeps love afloat?  If passion were all that love was made of, love would look like a hyperactive boy, flitting this way and that, always attached to a shiny object, running over whatever or whoever is in his way.   Although drawn out, this is exactly what we see in The Deep Blue Sea—the destructiveness of passion, and the ultimate loneliness of it.

It is interesting that within The Deep Blue Sea is embedded the theme of a more recent film, Amour: “A lot of rubbish is talked about love.  You know what real love is?  It’s wiping someone’s ass or changing the sheets when they’ve wet themselves.  And letting them keep their dignity so you can both go on.”

Amour is about the slow demise of a wife and the faithful service to do whatever was needed by her husband.  She has a quiet stroke, almost unnoticeable.  Then another, which leaves her half-paralyzed.  She speaks of ending her life, but her husband convinces her not to, that she is not a burden to him.  As the movie wears on, she becomes more and more of a burden as she regresses to an infant state.  The performance by Emmanuelle Riva is easily the bravest acting I have ever seen, allowing her to be put in the most humiliating positions ever. 

Just by its title, Amour asks “Where is love in this couple?”  Love isn’t found primarily in the ending of the film, as some would say.  Love is found in the day-to-day faithfulness, awareness of the other’s need, and spending oneself to meet that need.  As is often true, we can see love in contrast to those who do not display it: the daughter who wants to push her own will because of her own emotional needs, the nurse who has a program and will follow it no matter what the cost to her patient.

Love is the dance of a couple moving to help her sit in a chair.  

Love is spoon feeding a spouse when she doesn't want to eat, and learning to give up.  

Love is giving her privacy so she doesn't have to inflict her misery upon others. 

Love is a wife who is unable to communicate anything but “Hurts… hurts…hurts…hurts… hurts” for hours, and a husband who stokes her hand, tells her a story, sings old songs, until she quiets and is at peace.

Both films speak of the limits of love as well.  The Deep Blue Sea displays passion as having a limited life, quick to begin and quick to end.  The true love of Amour also has a limit: the emotional demands of love takes an emotional toll and it eventually breaks into rash anger.  But the best love recognizes that limitation and prepares for it, even apologizes for the limitations. 

I wish I could recommend Amour as an example for all to observe.   But it is such a difficult film, like almost all of Michael Haneke’s films, that I cannot recommend it to everyone.  My parents are so close to this situation, that the example would only hurt them emotionally.  Others are so young and passionate that Amour would just seem dull and pointless.   But for those who are ready for it, Amour is the glory of love in its most raw display.   The Deep Blue Sea is more beautiful, and has wonderful performances we can relate to.  Amour takes us to the next level of teaching us depth and maturity.

Redeeming Violence: Tarantino's Revenge Philosophy

Quentin Tarantino’s fantasy revenge films are all the rage.  Django Unchained just passed Inglourious Basterds in the worldwide box office, raking in more than 350 million dollars in a couple months.   Revenge seems such a basic theme, and pulp revenge films have always had a low-brow charm, but Tarantino has now brought that lower class entertainment to allocates (and controversies) by granting it a wider audience, especially among cinephiles.

The four (or five) revenge films I count as these:  Kill Bill, where The Bride takes revenge against her co-assassins for killing herself and her unborn child; Deathproof, where a group of women attack a woman-killing stunt driver; Inglourious Basterds, where Jews kill Nazis with glee, even burning Hitler in a movie theatre; and Django Unchained where a former slave kills slave-owners and traders.

Revenge seems such a basic motive and it touches many people.  Let’s use QT’s films as a way to look at this fantasy and what it promotes.  There are four basic principles of QT’s revenge fantasies:

1.       Oppressors and killers are dispatched violently

This is the basis of all revenge: Lex Talionis.  Whatever violence one does, it will be done to them.  We see this perfectly in Deathproof, where Stunt Man Mike is destroyed by a car, even as he killed women with cars.  An oppressor is seen as one with power, but uses that power to harm those with less power, and so that power is used against them.  From Disney films to art films to novels to ancient literature, this is a basic theme of humanity.  It is also the foundational principle of religion, that each person will obtain, eventually, exactly what they deserve.

2.       The oppressed take their revenge in their own hands

This is a theme that QT emphasizes.  Each group takes their own vengeance.  So it is women who kill Stunt Man Mike, Jews that kill Nazis and a black man who kills white slavers.  This is opposed to most forms of Lex Talionis, where the oppressed are powerless and they hand the power of vengeance to someone else, whether that be the police, the military, God, or Prince Charming.  As Django learns, to get justice, you have to get your hands dirty: which means, you have to kill people.

3.       Those who allow or appreciate such oppression to continue are also dispatched

In a turn we haven’t seen since ancient times, QT also kills those who support or approve of oppression. So the sister of Candee who took advantage of the slavery system is gleefully killed.  Any Nazi soldier is killed as an act of justice, no matter what their participation in violence.   It doesn’t matter what level of participation they have, any is enough to be killed as punishment.

           4.   Movie audiences are seen as equal oppressors

In a fascinating move in Inglourious Basterds,  after the Nazis gleefully applaud and cheer after their enemies are destroyed on screen,  when the Nazis receive the same fate, the American audiences are encouraged to applaud and cheer the Nazi deaths.  QT is in equal parts condemning the approval of oppression and death, even of one’s enemies.  The audience cheering his film is made out to be the equals of Nazis.  In Django Unchained, whites are separated from blacks and all the whites are killed.  Even so, QT separates the whites from blacks in his audience, dispatching all the whites.  In Deathproof,  all men who do any kind of harm to women, including humiliation, is implicated.  Nor does QT exempt himself—not only is he implicated in his own films, being male and white—but he has himself killed in Django.  Support of oppression goes to the extent of cheering and glorifying oppression.

What is the end?

What happens to these heroes, the destroyers of oppressors?  Although QT often has his heroes have an uneasy victory at the end of his films, he is fully aware of the end of his destroyers of oppression: like Christoph Waltz in Django, they are killed as killers.  Dr. Schulz receives a similar end as John Brown, one of QT’s historic heroes.  John Brown, who gathered a band of vigilantes to kill slavers throughout Kansas and was later hung as a terrorist and murderer.   This is the end of Django, the Jews in Basterds, and the women in Deathproof—some sort of death penalty.  As for the Bride in Kill Bill, even QT says that if he made a third one it would be about the children of those the Bride killed, coming back for vengeance against her.  Because in QT’s philosophy, everyone should have their day of vengeance.  The world gone blind, indeed, or, in QT’s universe, at the end of a samurai sword.

If QT were to continue this series of films, what would be the next one?  Perhaps a vengeance film against oppressive governments?  Oh, no we have V for Vendetta for that.  What about a group of vigilantes taking vengeance against the rich for their oppressions?  It seems that the new film The East will fit that bill.  

Perhaps QT should do a film about an oppressed third world country,  taking glorious vengeance against the nations that warred against it, and against the nations that financed it?  Of course, we saw that movie play out in real life on September 11, 2001.  From the point of view of Al Qeada and their people, they are freedom fighters against Israel and the “Crusading” western nations that attacked the Palestinians and who refuse to recognize their legally voted in government.   

The Kansas Massacre and the Twin Towers burning: that is what QT’s revenge philosophy looks like in real life.  

Jiro Dreams of Sushi and I Wish

My family's fascination with Japanese culture probably originates with our joy in watching the films of Miyazaki.  The foreignness of the fantasy is not only because of the fantasy worlds themselves, or the unique beings, but from the deep culture of Japan that infuses them.  Now that my daughters are interested in Japanese anime and one daughter is taking Japanese in school, that fascination has only deepened.

For myself, I am usually spending time in an older Japan, the time of the samurais with Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Ran), or a spiritual Japan with Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro). Also a Japan of the 50's with Ozu (Floating Weeds). Recently, however, I spent a day in modern Japan, with two films from the last year that opens up many insights of what Japan is now. 

In I Wish, Goichi and Ryu are brothers in grade school who now live quite a distance from each other after their parents split up. Giochi lives with his mother and grandparents in a town underneath a constantly smoking volcano, while Ryu lives with his father, who has a casual life in music.  Goichi hears that if you stand at the place where the bullet trains pass each other, the energy created from the passing allows one to make a wish.  Goichi insists that he and Ryu must meet at the passing and wish for their family to come together again.  Kind of like The Parent Trap with magic. 

Of course, there is a lot of planning and difficulties along the way, growth and wonder and friendship and mentors. It is an utterly charming and joyful balance between dreams and reality.  It should be watched if only for the wonderful performance of Oshiro Maeda, (Ryu) who made me smile every time he came on screen. 

What surprised me in this film is just how similar the children's lives were to the children I knew, or my own childhood.  The friendships, the elaborate but childish plans, wise children and foolish adults, as well as the other way around.  In many films around Japanese children, they are always studying or working (when they aren't having amazing adventures), but these children are playing as often as anything else.  They don't take their schoolwork anymore seriously than American children, and they are just as picky about their food.  On the other hand, they aren't playing video games as often as Americans.  The adults aren't really very different, either.  There is less rigor or work ethic than I would have expected.  And grandparents are the same the world over.

I Wish seems to be a bridge between cultures, pointing out the similarities we all have, especially as children.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi has another fish to fry, so to speak.  It is a documentary of the greatest sushi chef in Tokyo, possibly the world.  Despite having no bathrooms or other amenities  Jiro's restaurant has received three stars (the highest mark) from the Michelin Guide for years.  This happens because of Jiro's tireless discipline, which he keeps for himself and for his assistants, including his 50 year old son.

One of the most remarkable things about the film is the mixture of cinematography and music.  This film has some of the best montages I've ever seen and the greatest I've ever seen in a documentary.  Even as the sushi is a piece of art, so is this film, a prime example in the art of documentary making.  

Jiro is about a continuous vision made reality through perseverance and hard work. His wisdom and his son's wisdom come through in this film, and the contentment with a life they have made their own through difficulty and strength.  The Japan that is presented in this film is a more traditional view: discipline, work, tradition, honor.  

Yet in the end, I suspect that these films are only two snapshots of a more complex and diverse Japan than could ever be imagined.  Much like the film Yi Yi expresses, both the frustration and the joys of living modern life.  How can I but touch the surface of such a complex culture through film?

I Wish 4/5
Jiro Dreams of Sushi 4/5

A New Kind of War Film: Zero Dark Thirty

I had tears in my eyes throughout most of Zero Dark Thirty.

Mind you, I’m ill (keeping away from everyone, though), and so I might be a little more prone to emotionalism.  And I left the film utterly exhausted because of that.  But the film as a whole pained me to no end.

This is less the fault of the film as it is the fault of the ideology I bring to the film.  I am a pacifist, and I am opposed to revenge and this film is, no matter what else it is, certainly a film about revenge.  So to spend two and a half hours seeing a Federal assassin track down her victim—even if the victim is Osama Bin Laden—is painful for me to watch.

I recognize that most others will watch this film with different eyes, and that is how it should be.  Because this is a film that will feed almost any ideology.  What you get from the film is what you came in with.  This doesn’t mean we won’t learn something about how spying works today or about war in a post-9-11 era.  But if we are opposed to torture, we can see that in this film.  If we think that any amount of cost is worth such a lofty goal, there is evidence for that in this film.

A new era of war requires a new kind of film to describe that war.  In the 40’s, war films were mostly propaganda, with the rare film showing the subtleties of personalities (Colonel Blimp).  Some aspects of war were criticized in film in the 50’s, but there is always a noble soldier for us to identify with (Paths of Glory).  In the 60’s there was quite a bit of discomfort after the Cuban Missile Crisis (Dr. Strangelove), but war was still often glorified in film (The Green Berets).   It wasn’t until the 70’s that film turned firmly against war, deconstructing the whole war film, showing it to be destructive to the soldiers and to the nation (Platoon, Apocalypse Now). 

After 9-11, though, war changed.  It is no longer nation against nation, but one nation in opposition to small enclaves of well-funded, well-organized enemies.  It requires subtlety, and the moral ground is different than it used to be.   Terrorists are horrible, but they are human beings as well, and they might even have a point.  The new war film is less ideology-heavy and more documentary style, allowing the viewer to be on the ground, seeing what we could never possibly see, giving us the experience of warfare, not an entertainment.

This was first done in a famous, amazing scene in Saving Private Ryan.   We had the opportunity to experience D-Day as it has never been seen before.  We were an allied soldier, hearing—even feeling!—the mass of bullets missile past us, seeing our comrades fall, the gore, and we feel the difficult courage it takes to keep moving up that deadly beach.  However, that scene was surrounded by a film deep in the old ideological presentation of war.

Paul Greengrass is the one who really introduces this new perspective on terrorism and war in two films: Bloody Sunday and United 93.  They are objective, documentary-style and while they give a very particular point of view, we have a sense of objectivity that we have never experienced before.  We were there, we are not just viewing the tragedies so much as experiencing them as they unfold in time, seeing people’s reactions as they happen.  Yes, it is a movie trick, but it works.  We are involved in these experiences like we have never seen.  This continues with Steve McQueen’s Hunger and with Kathryn Bigalow’s  The Hurt Locker.  Yes, they are told from a certain perspective, but we are on the ground with the characters, able to judge or to applaud them as we felt.

Most of all, these films didn’t tell us how to feel, but they opened discussion.  They gave us facts, and ideas and powerful experiences that we could look at and draw our own conclusions.

In Zero Dark Thirty, Bigalow continues this, showing us not only a documentary-like view of Bin Laden’s discovery, but also showing us the heart of the United State’s war on terror.  The new war, the new spying, is less about capturing cities, but about discovering who we are at war against.  Names and locations are hidden, and even with massive amounts of technology at one’s disposal, they are almost impossible to find.  Politics also gets involved and public opinion can cut funding even in an essential operation.  Researching and the military go hand-in-hand, but it feels like the scalpel is replaced with a sledgehammer—the two approaches make for strange bedfellows.

Nevertheless, the new war has heroes.  Tenacity and courage is still what wins the day, whether a soldier or an analyst.  No matter how we feel about the proceedings, we still see Maya as a powerful person, one we admire, a force of nature.  But we see the other side as smart, and those being tortured as very human.

Despite all the torture, the bombings, the threats, the shootings, the killing of parents in front of children—we are not told how to feel about all of this.  Yes, this is a film about revenge, but not like Inglorius Basterds, where we cheer the brutal killing of Nazis and then we are slapped on the wrist for being like them.  Again, we are given a difficult, even brutal, experience, and we are emotionally impacted, but not told what to think.

At the end of the film, Maya cries.  This isn’t a spoiler, really, although it is an amazing ending of the film.  But why does she cry?  Does she cry for her colleagues who suffered so much to get to this place? Does she cry for relief because it is done?  Does she cry because the tortures and deaths were too high a cost?  Does she cry because she doesn’t know what to do with her life now?  We don’t know.  We might guess, but that is putting our experience on Chastain’s marvelous performance. 

The new kind of war film is objective, but not emotionless.  Zero Dark Thirty made me feel, in turns, frustrated, laughing, angry, excited, relieved, and outraged.  But we know the difference in this: the new war film doesn’t leave the audience clapping.  They walk out in silence, both deeply considering and deeply stunned by what they have witnessed.

Wisdom of a Child: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Empowerment is a central focus of American society.  It is the heart of our discussion about freedom.  We want to be free to be who we are, to do what we want to do (so long as we hurt no one else),  and one of the main keys to this in American society is the power to tell people stopping us from wanting to do our own thing, “Leave us alone!”  This is a power that people in the past didn’t have.  We don’t have to go far back in history to find large masses of people being arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed because they were living their lives the way they wanted to live them.  Most Americans are offended by the idea of persecuting or prosecuting people because they are black, gay, atheist, or a child.  The American answer to all these cases is to empower the people to refute persecution with law.

However, there are still masses of people who are not given such empowerment.  One type of community that is still vulnerable to persecution is presented in Beasts of the Southern Wild.  The residents of The Bathtub, an island on the “wrong” side of a levy, are a truly wild people.  They make their own homes, determine their own work, create their own lifestyles, without regard to law or “normal” culture.  The way they raise their children, what they teach in schools, how they associate with one another is completely without regard to societal norms, and that’s the way they like it.  The scariest thing for them is to be institutionalized, to be forced to live according to someone else’s rules.  There are pockets of this feral community throughout the United States: you can find them in homeless camps and in outback rural areas.   And they frighten the majority of mainstream cultures.  Feral communities are depicted as dangerous in such films as Deliverance, The Wicker Man and in recent films like Winter’s Bone.

Beasts of the Southern Wild, however, takes a very different view of feral communities.  The Bathtub is a joyful, if not especially bright, community, full of innovation and support and love.  Even though many of them barely survive, they are still vibrant.   Although floods come to devastate their community, this isn’t a story of desperation and rescue.  In fact, salvation from the outside is the enemy.  While most of us would be on our roofs, waving to the helicopters, they crawl in drying hovels, hoping the helicopters would go away.  Because for the feral community, empowerment is separation from government, separation from laws and the police and from anyone who wants to “save” them.  Even when their land becomes unlivable.

This film is not about the community, as fascinating as I find it.  It is a movie about the empowerment of one person—Hushpuppy a very young girl tossed to and fro by circumstances.  In the mainstream community, we see such a child as necessary to be protected, because she is so frail, so vulnerable.   But is she really?  Does she have resources that we know nothing about?  Absolutely. 

Where the Wild Things Are, Tideland, Spirited Away and Pan’s Labyrinth are three films on my top 100 movies of all time.  The Spirit of the Beehive and the Iranian film The Mirror also are powerful films. And they all deal with a child’s resilience in the face of tremendous crises.  The Mirror is the most simple one, displaying a child lost in the midst of a huge city, but using her own independence and determination to make it home.  Pan’s Labyrinth and Beehive has a child in the midst of fascist oppression, undermining it through powerful determination.   Spirited Away has a child in a spirit world with rules she doesn’t really understand but her hard work and innate talents shine in the midst of crisis.  Tideland is perhaps the hardest of these films to watch, with a young girl becoming orphaned in a dangerous wilderness.  Where the Wild Things are has a child facing down the toughest opponent of all: his own lack of control and anger.

A child, along with the developmentally disabled and mentally ill, is the one who has the least ability to be empowered.   Yet all of these films give the main tools for empowerment for the most helpless and vulnerable.  It is not law, for law requires some legal standing and experience.  It is not governmental authority, because adults do not really understand the perspective and need of the child (or mentally ill).  How can a hopeless, helpless child be empowered?

For a change, movies give us a key.  All of these films, including Beasts of the Southern Wild, give us the key: determination and imagination. 

It is the imaginative who are empowered, because even if they cannot understand the complexities and massive scale of the trouble they are in, they can use their imagination to grasp it in a way they can grasp.  The solutions may be beyond their ability to intellectually fine, but they can use their imagination to find a path that will lead to survival.  As adults, we might dismiss imagination as being something less than reality.  But imagination can stand in place of reality, giving us empowerment in situations that we cannot live with otherwise.  This is the wisdom of the child.

It is the determined who are empowered, even if they have no other sword to wield.  Only the determined will see through their survival and safety to the end.  The determined can not only deliver themselves, but others as well.   The determined remains on the path to their goal, no matter what obstacles, no matter how wayward the path, no matter any naysayer.  Only the determined have the faith necessary to reach safety.  This is the wisdom of the child.

Although children, and others in powerless situations, may lack in traditional intelligence or resources that normally means survival, if they (or we) have that imaginative determination we can and will survive.  Perhaps these are qualities we should encourage.  For these are the true leaders of our society.

The Theology of Life of Pi

The most recent Ang Lee film, Life of Pi, is easily the most beautiful film of 2012.  I really enjoyed my time with it, as did my two daughters who watched it with me (since you asked, 12 and 16).  It is a simple tale, but wonderfully told and engaging.  I encourage you to see it.  4/5

There.  Now the review portion of this post is done.

But I have been asked a few times concerning my opinion about the religious themes of the film.  This makes sense, since the point of the film is a religious one and I am a pastor.  So I ought to have an opinion, right?  Well, I do.  I’ll try to be unpastorlike and keep it brief.

I have found five theological statements this movie makes.  Let me summarize them:

1. God, as a powerful being, exists

2. God has something to say

3. God speaks through stories

4. God speaks through a variety of stories, sometimes contradictory

5. God is less concerned about truth than communication

The first three points are in full agreement with Christianity, as well as Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.  Other religions, such as Buddhism, thinks that what a god might say isn’t as important as enlightened humans.  But few religious people should have a problem with these first three.

The fourth principle is a problem with certain orthodox believers and certainly fundamentalists.  They hold that God is completely contradiction-free and there is a logic and consistency in God’s communication.  If God gives us a narrative, it a cohesive narrative.  And if there is contradiction, it must mean that part of the narrative is not of God. 

The final principle speaks directly against the fundamentalist point of view, because that point is all about the one truth.

What I want to point out is that the movie doesn’t disagree that there could very well be one truth.  What it actually questions is whether the direct communication of that truth is the best way to create a world.  People don't always handle truth well.  Jesus spoke truth, and it wasn’t received well at all, and so he spoke in parables which were not understood, but people then just scratched their heads or came to Jesus and asked.  Indirect truth seems to have done work equally well.

If God’s perspective is to bring people to a certain place—let’s say to train people to love, or to prepare them for eternal life—and truth isn’t the best way to bring people to that place, would God be so restrictive as to not give a narrative that might be more flexible with statistics?  Must every jot and tittle be historically, scientifically, measurably accurate?  Or can the details be fudged in order to bring people to the place where He wants them to be?

I am not saying God has done that.  Nor is the film.  It is just a question, a thought, to put us in the mindset of God and to possibly not be so narrow minded about our “truths” we hold dear.  After all, it could be that we have a stranglehold on a “truth” that has been colored, let’s say.  And that would be very embarrassing when we found out the real truth.

For me, it is more important to find out the direction God wants us to move than to find out the details of all that He has done in the past.  The stories are clues and the principles we are given are directions.  But it is up to our relationship with God here and now to determine what it means.







Important visual commentary by Kilgore and his daughters:

What Counts: Interpretation and Intention

I am an arrogant SOB.  At least so I have been told.  I am so convinced that I am right that I won’t listen to other points of view.  Mind you, I am perfectly willing to allow others their (wrong) point of view, but I very rarely will allow their points of view to shake my own.

This only makes sense because my opinion is distinctly my own and it doesn’t make any sense to me to adapt another person’s point of view.  That seems very invasive, to allow another’s mind to rest in my own as if it lived there.

And this goes with movies as well.  You might notice that I don’t very often post a typical “review” of a film, as if it is “good” or “bad”, enjoyable or not.  I typically am writing about movies that meant something to me and I am writing at least a part of what I understood about the film.  I am not asking others to agree with me necessarily.  But unless you give me pretty solid evidence, I won’t change my mind about what the film means to me.

In my review of Martha Marcy Mae Marline, I gave an opinion of the meaning of the last name in the film title, and a couple readers wrote in to tell me I was wrong and they gave me evidence from the film.  Well, I was wrong.  I’m disappointed I was wrong, but there it is.

Now recently I watched the film Looper, the popular time travel flick by Rian Johnson, who is a director I really enjoy.  The plot, like all good time travel stories, is complicated and intricate.  But there seemed to be a clear contradiction in the plot, involving the end which I won’t get into.  I thought it through and decided that there must have been an unexpressed, subtle twist in the film that isn’t usually seen.  I was pretty excited about it, and I was ready to share it with my film friends, to see what they thought.

Then I listened to an interview with Rian Johnson and he happened to be talking about the plot of the film and he made it clear that, as writer/director, he had no thought as to my subtle twist.  It just wasn’t there.  Which meant that the contradiction stood.  This really irritated me.  I didn’t want the film to have a logical problem with it.  Admittedly, it is difficult to have a complex time travel without a misstep, but I wanted RJ to have it right.  I like him a lot, both as a person and as a moviemaker and I wanted him to get it right.  But he just didn’t.  That sucks.

Now, I have some friends who, it might be argued, are more arrogant than I.  They would tell me, “The director cannot tell us the ‘real’ meaning of his film.  Once the film is released, it is in the public arena.  He can have his opinion of the film and you can have yours and both can stand as equals, each must stand under the scrutiny of the text of the film.” 

I can certainly see this point of view for most films.  Because most film is art created by committee.  So the director may have one intention, but the scriptwriter another, the studio another, the cinematographer another.  So while my opinion isn’t reflecting one imaginative mindset, it could represent another.  The intention of the director, or the writer or the cinematographer or lead actor is only one point of view on this art.  There are other creative people who have input into this and my point of view might be representing another equally valid point of view.

I have a harder time doing that with a writer/director like Johnson or Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman.  These artists have more control over their work, and have a singular mindset, a point or point of view they want to express.  They are more like novelists, and when a novelist expresses an opinion about the meaning of their work, their view, while not completely authoritative, is certainly more authoritative than anyone else’s.   

I can express my point of view about Looper’s plot, and it might disagree with Rian Johnson,  and if anyone pointed out that it disagreed with the 90 percent creator, I would hang my head in shame.  I still think that I have the right to my point of view.  And it is as good as anyone else’s , unless I am proven otherwise.  But just because I like my interpretation better, the main creator of a work still gets first say.

All this is to say I wish writer/directors would just shut up about their work.  Just release the work and then let it go.  You’re stepping on my toes. L

(Just joking, Rian.  You are so cool, I like listening to you. But let us have some mystery, okay?)