It is interesting to me that two of the major film releases this weekend toy with themes of religious skepticism.
The Invention of Lying is Ricky Gervais’ film about a world in which everyone tells the truth all the time until one fellow (Gervais, of course) starts lying.
The biggest lie – not revealed in the trailer or the pre-release publicity – is the invention of God and an afterlife.
In a similar vein, Mark tries to comfort his dying mother, Martha (Fionnula Flanagan), who is tormented by the prospect of eternal nothingness, by inventing the fable of an afterlife in which she will be reunited with everyone she has ever loved and live in a mansion, experiencing perpetual joy.
The hospital attendants who overhear Mark’s reassuring fabrication are thrilled, and word soon spreads that he has some kind of secret knowledge. As crowds besiege his house, Mark works out a ludicrously simple-minded creed which he proclaims at his doorstep, a latter-day suburban Moses with a pair of pizza boxes taking the place of the tablets of the Law.
The main tenets of Mark’s freshly minted religion concern a “man in the sky” who controls and directly causes everything that happens — including both disease in individuals and large-scale natural disasters — and who rewards good deeds and punishes evil, though three serious sins per lifetime are forgivable. His credulous listeners accept his teachings with pathetic eagerness, but obsess about the smallest details.
The reviewer calls it a “calculated cinematic insult.”
(Gervais, in case you didn’t know, is an out ‘n’ proud atheist. It’s a part of his schtick.)
Interesting that the NYTimes review barely mentions the atheist element, concentrating (interestingly enough in its own right) on the flatness of a world without “lying” as Gervais envisions it, which then becomes a world without metaphor, imagination and art – and critiques Gervais for not taking up this theme.
In limited release is the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, in which the Coen’s use the landscape of their childhood (late 60’s suburban Jewish family in Minnesota) to bump up against serious questions. Denby at The New Yorker isn’t impressed:
As a piece of moviemaking craft, “A Serious Man” is fascinating; in every other way, it’s intolerable.
What happens in Minnesota has none of the warmth and expansiveness of a folktale, either traditional or modern. (Isaac Bashevis Singer would have been disgusted by the hero’s backing away from the babe next door.) The Coens’ humor is distant, dry, and shrivelling, and they make the people in “A Serious Man” so drably unappealing that you begin to wonder what kind of disgust the brothers are working off. Whatever indignities the Coens suffered as teens, they have hardly been hampered by those memories as adults. Philip Roth’s collection of stories “Goodbye, Columbus,” which tore into the timidity and prohibitions of middle-class American Jewish life, came out in 1959, when Ethan Coen was two and Joel five. The Coens’ laughter is not exactly fresh. Dozens of popular comics in the past half century have worked in the same satiric vein.
Larry applies to a series of local rabbis for help, and the rabbis, vain of their wisdom, either miss the point of his troubles or tell elaborate parables that illuminate nothing; they have no idea why Hashem is pursuing this man. And who is Hashem, anyway? I suppose one might say that all filmmakers, distributing rewards and punishments, come close to playing God. Surely the arbitrary and ruthless Coens are the only deity in sight. Larry Gopnik may teach the uncertainty principle in his class, but his own fate is sealed in advance, and we’re not surprised when, at the end, the apocalypse arrives in a dark whirl. Judging from “A Serious Man,” one can only say, without blasphemy, that the cinematic Hashem is a malevolent son of a bitch.
I haven’t seen either movie. Won’t be seeing the Gervais, but might check out the Coen if it’s around on one of those weeknights around 9pm when the little ones are in bed, Katie isn’t in too much IB/Theater/College App Angst, and I feel like taking in a movie.
(Saw The Informant! last week, and liked it. Not a masterpiece, but with great performances – not just from Damon, but from almost everyone else, including scads of “That Guy…Who’s That Guy?” faces. There is no great meaning – it turns the whistleblower genre on its head, but I think ultimately is rendered forgettable because in the midst of the wackiness, you know it’s (loosely) based on a true story, so you (or at least I) are left wondering about the deeper “why” question even though you know you’re really not supposed to.)
(There were, I think, 6 other people in the theater. One couple walked out about a third of the way through. One of the couples remaining – in their 20’s, probably – were behind me as I walked to my car and were just rabid about how much they hated the movie…I have no idea why.)
More than enough people over the past few years have given their attention to the professional atheists (I’m not putting the Coens in that category, btw), so there’s really not much to add on that score. I’ll just say that the pop professional atheists seem to be protesting a couple of things: First, the idea that anyone or anything could possible have authority over their life and secondly, pat answers to hard questions.
The first is a…what can I say…understandable response to life? Not a fruitful or mature one, perhaps, but a somewhat understandable one – a question that we all ask, because it’s part of the “who am I” question. If you believe that you came from nowhere and no one, of course you are on your own. Good for you. Good luck with that, as they say.
The second is what frustrates me the most. I tend not to get too exercised by the professional atheists, preferring to look at them for what they tell me about how theism, Christianity and Catholicism are doing in terms of getting the message out. Not that theism, Christianity or Catholicism are responsible for how hostile hearers mischaracterize and manipulate the truth, but still. It’s part of the picture.
The accusation, of course, is that believers offer nothing but pat, easy answers to life’s hard questions – wish fulfillment.
That’s frustrating because, of course, it’s a lie.
A lie!
Seriously!
Not that Pat Answers Blowing Off the Complexity and Mystery of Life have never been offered by religious people. But I don’t know about you, but when I read Scripture (those Psalms Kathleen Norris keeps telling you to read and live, you know?) and contemplate Catholic tradition, theology and spirituality, I don’t see Pat. I see..well, complexity, mystery and paradox and a peace and wholeness that comes when you see that the two actually match up. The Christian response actually answers the questions – and not just in their specifics but in their shape and general direction. I am sure that Chesterton or Lewis has said it better, but you get my point. Atheism has no answer for mystery, love, creativity, transcendence and suffering. At all. Christianity does, and it is not “The man in the sky will make you forget it. And while you’re absorbing that, give us some power and money.”
Would that the professional atheists do their perceived enemies the dignity of actually taking not just the philosophical claims, but the entire, living response seriously.
Anyway.
For today, the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, let me assure you that the suffering we embrace does in fact unite us to Christ. While I think I have felt every emotion going in the last month the one that prevails is unity to Christ. A comforted, loved feeling. Knowing that my Father in heaven has embraced my family and I and is holding us close is a warmth I can’t describe. To witness and experience the Body of Christ in the real, powerful and practical way that we have is evidence of the suffering doing good. It is evidence that God is in His heaven, that my son is there too and he is caring for Dave and I.
The cross will be triumphant, we shall all be united again.
Until then I can’t wait to hug my boy.
We were gifted by many words of love and support when we made Vivian’s diagnosis public. One comment has especially stuck with me, and I wish to center my words to you today on what was said to me then. A friend praised our decision to give Vivian the best life we could, and he said that love has no time constraints. Love has no time constraints. That statement captures why we yearned with all our hearts to meet our daughter and why we are so very grateful for the heavenly fifteen hours of life with which she and we were graced.The common response to anencephaly is a procedure we wouldn’t have considered, and I think Genece would have slugged anyone who suggested it. Our reason for not taking that route, for instead choosing to experience the months of heartbreak and brokenness was very simple: love has no time constraints. A few minutes, a few hours, a few days, no time but that lived in the womb? We would take what we were given. Love has no time constraints.