Oscars 2020 Series

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers is sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. For the whole series, click here. Image Credit: The Joker Promotional Image, from gallery at https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/joker (Fair Use: Criticism)

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Joker (R, 122 mins.)

Director: Todd Phillips. Writers: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver (screenplay). Based on characters created by: Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller.

Plot Outline: In Gotham City, mentally troubled comedian Arthur Fleck is mistreated by society. He then embarks on a downward spiral of revolution and crime. This path brings him face-to-face with his alter-ego: the Joker.–Summary drawn from IMDB

Options for Viewing It: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube

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Joker centers on the most powerful performance of the year: Joaquin Phoenix as the title character. He deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actor. Phoenix is in almost every frame of the film and has been asked to play a character so physically and emotionally damaged that it must have been extremely taxing for him. He lost a lot of weight to play the role, but the really difficult part of the performance is psychological. He plays a psychopath, though one with a history, tied both to himself and his mother. Much of the film deals with the abuse he suffers from others and the uncertainty and horror of revelations he experiences about his mother and her former employer, Thomas Wayne, the father of Bruce Wayne, who of course grows up to be Batman. Add to this, his rejection by almost everyone he meets, and the slow descent into complete mental breakdown at the end of the film forces the viewer, against everything that one wants to feel, to be sympathetic to his horrific plight.

This journey wrenches the viewer back and forth between acts of extreme violence, comic episodes (Fleck works as a clown, though little humor results directly from his profession), and scenes of heart-breaking inquiry by Fleck, as he seeks to find out why he is the way he is. Not surprisingly, this makes the film very difficult to watch, and it is not for the squeamish of heart, but of course this is the mark of superb writing and filmmaking, i.e. getting the viewer so engrossed in what is happening on screen that they cannot pull back from it to an objective place. As grotesque and bloody as this film is, the viewer has to admit that the production values are very high, most of all the performance by Phoenix.

One of the most disturbing things about the movie—and, yes, disturbing is a very good word to describe its influence—is the thoroughgoing reality of its presentation. There is no reliance on super-powers or supernaturalism of any kind and certainly not an ounce of “cartoonish” feel, even though it is set in the traditional Gotham of Batman and Robin. One feels like one is watching something that could happen any moment, at least until the end, when chaos so breaks out in the streets that the scenes become too much to believe. By that time, though, the damage to the viewer is done. Again, great filmmaking, but tough on the viewer.

I believe that to keep up with what is happening in our society and to be fully aware of what our neighbors are experiencing, reading what others say about the arts isn’t enough—we need to experience films and other art directly. This is one reason I teach techniques of film-viewing that are centered in helping people to objectify the experience. We need to be able to come out on the other side of the film-going experience with critiques that demonstrate the strength, goodness, and relevance of the good news we believe to a desperately hopeless and alienated world. We cannot do this without experiencing the movie itself. But the hard work of seeing the film, analyzing it, and comparing its themes and ideas to those of Scripture and the Christian faith takes knowledge and practice, and I admit that not everyone can do it.

More can and should do it than try to, however, and I believe we need them to step up in these perilous times. The mammoth box-office response to Joker suggests that there are literally millions of kids out there (and maybe not a few adults), who are so pushed to the breaking point by their own states of alienation, loneliness, and especially hopelessness, that they find solace (let us pray not motivation!) in Joker’s finally letting loose and killing without conscience. It actually is worse than that: he explicitly states that, rather than feeling bad about his murders, he finds an exhilaration in them. This movie has a very dark and destructive take on life in our world, and, if its take is true, then we are certainly lost, and there is no hope but to burn everything down and hope against hope that something better, some new better society, will rise phoenix-like from the ashes, as some of the radicals in the sixties suggested.

But Christians know the dispiriting message of Joker is not true, that there is hope and goodness in the world, and that love will triumph in the end, and has already triumphed in Christ and His cross and resurrection. To be able to articulate this good news, though, to a world skeptical of its messengers will take those messengers going the extra mile by walking alongside the skeptics on their journeys, and, having allowed them to take their best shots at instilling in us thoughts of chaos and destruction, showing them a better way.

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers is sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. We welcome you to watch along with the series and share your thoughts in the comments or on Facebook. This week, continuing in alphabetical order, Drew invites us to reflect with him on The Irishman. For the whole series, click here. 

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The Irishman (R, 209 mins.)

Director: Martin Scorsese. Writers: Steven Zaillian (screenplay), Charles Brandt (book). Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Stephen Graham, Jesse Plemons.

Genre: Crime, Drama.
Plot Outline: A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa.

—Summary drawn from IMDB

Options for Viewing It: Netflix

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I love that the IMDb plot outline entry for this picture is a simple sentence: “A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa.” Like most simple sentences (that are true anyway), it hides a plethora of facts, thoughts, and meanings that could fill several books.

The Irishman may be master director Martin Scorsese’s finest work. Not only does it accomplish in feel and atmosphere what no one has ever accomplished like Scorsese, i.e. portraying the world of crime, especially the Italian Mafia, but it enters into almost all the realms of characterization, philosophy, and movie story magic that the master has ever visited.

Starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino, the supporting cast is superb with Stephen Graham, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, and Jesse Plemons doing quite a bit of heavy lifting. Scorsese’s direction is flawless; I can’t remember when a three-hour movie was this captivating. And that viewer-friendly pace is accomplished with relatively little action. Amazingly, Scorsese has made a character-driven relationship film out of a mob-based crime story. And it is historically founded to boot, which adds another layer of difficulty (Did that really happen? Does it matter?) to the story.

This movie may go down in history even more for a technical innovation than for the better-known elements of filmmaking at which it excels. De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino are all now over 70, but they are playing their characters at everywhere along the timeline from their 40s to their 70s. To be able to make each man appear younger—smooth out facial wrinkles, slim down faces, necks, and waistlines, etc.—Scorsese’s crew invented a new camera able to accomplish this remarkable feat with very little intrusion into the actor’s space.

One humorous story illustrates how some things which demonstrate age cannot so easily change as wrinkles on the face. Pacino has a scene in which he, as Hoffa, is sitting in a comfortable chair in his living room with his family, watching a news report on John F. Kennedy. Hoffa intensely disliked Kennedy because of the way Robert Kennedy as Attorney General was cracking down on the Teamsters Union, and he gets so fed up with what he is seeing onscreen, that he leaps up out of his chair, swearing at the television as he leaves the room. When they were filming the scene, on the first take Pacino got up out of the chair like a 75 year-old man would, and the camera man noticed it, went over to Scorsese, and pointed out to him how jarring this would be to the audience, given how young and virile Pacino would look on film. Scorsese agreed, but knowing how famously irritated Pacino can get on set, said to the camera man, “You tell him.” Pacino actually accepted the challenge and finally was able to leap out of his chair as a much younger man would do, and the scene was saved.

The film centers on a mob henchman named Frank Sheeran (De Niro), and is told in flashback through Sheeran’s eyes as he sits in a retirement home, thinking back over his life. Scorsese uses voice-over to fill in some information, but it is never used lazily. Sheeran was “loaned” as a bodyguard to Jimmy Hoffa when Hoffa became famous. The film chronicles Hoffa’s proud slide into oblivion, after his prison sentence causes his fall from grace as the head of the powerful Teamsters Union. Hoffa loses his grip on the reality that he is simply not as invincible as he thinks he is, and eventually he pays for his hubris with his life.

In history, of course, Hoffa simply disappeared; this film gives one (confessed, but not proven) theory of what happened to him. The movie shows the inch-by-inch way in which little decisions lead to ultimate ones, especially when attitudes and emotions like pride, anger, inattention, and unwavering loyalty get in the way of doing the right thing. There are several scenes at the end of the film demonstrating Sheeran’s remorse for his mob activity; confession, forgiveness, and absolution play an interesting role. One cannot help but be sympathetic toward the Sheeran, who through most of the movie talks about his mob work as matter-of-factly as a plumber would his work on the pipes of a house. At the end, though, the remorse seems genuine, as he realizes what he has done.

Sheeran’s remorse is worth dwelling on for a moment. The film opens with a long, hand-held tracking shot meandering down a hallway of what the viewer quickly recognizes is a nursing home. The people the camera passes are all with someone else. Significantly, the first couple passed, sitting in chairs facing one another and seemingly in animated conversation, are a young priest and an older woman. The camera continues its journey past groups playing cards, engaging in other games, eating with each other, until it finally comes to rest in front of, and facing, Sheeran as an older man sitting in a wheelchair. He is utterly alone in a remote room, unlike anyone else in the home. His alienation could not have been made more plain.

From this vantage point, Frank begins telling the story of his life from being a small-time trucker to joining the union to becoming one of the most trusted hit-men in the Italian mafia. His loyalty to the Buffalino mob was unwavering, but the viewer’s difficulty with Sheeran is he seems to treat his cold-blooded murders exactly like his earlier truck-driving: he’s just doing a job, carrying out orders, being a good company man. Late in the film, when he is reflecting on his life in the nursing home, we see flashbacks of him trying to make amends with family and God, but he is not sure at all how to do this or even what he has done wrong.

He tries to reconcile with his two daughters, who as adults have abandoned him. One daughter refuses to speak to him; she hasn’t for years. Poignantly, Sheeran can remember the date she walked out of his life so many years ago. His second daughter is willing to talk with him, but when she asks him what he is apologizing for, he simply stumbles around and can’t really answer. He is lost and confused about how to think about his life, a life he thinks he has led with honor and loyalty, but that has made him a pariah in the eyes of society and his own family.

But when we see him at confession, though the scene starts with him having to be coached word-by-word what to pray, it ends with him praying, confessing his sins personally (though still not being willing to specify what he has done), and receiving absolution from the kind and wise priest, who tries to press him ever closer to true repentance. At one point, Sheeran says quietly, “What kind of man makes a phone call like that?” remembering, presumably, the call to Hoffa’s wife to console her, when he knows he himself has murdered Hoffa just a few days before, but Sheeran cannot bring himself to talk to the priest about the phone call specifically.

He stays in that state until the film closes with a remarkable shot of him in the distance in his bedroom, visible from the hallway only through a small crack in the door. Tiny, alone at Christmas-time, physically disabled, he has lost anything resembling life, though perhaps the crack in the door, left open by the priest at Sheeran’s request, speaks of the hope he has that redemption is possible somehow. The film ends on that shot with a cut to black. Is Sheeran truly remorseful in any meaningful sense of the word? The viewers must decide for themselves.

What can we learn from The Irishman? Perhaps the most important lesson is that of the need for us all to have a moral compass outside ourselves, governing how we act. The Irishman, like The Godfather before it, raises huge questions of family, friendship, and loyalty as values used to determine one’s actions. Good as these are in many cases, when any person makes one or more of them absolute, the person who does so is headed for trouble. With no ultimate moral code, much less any revelation, providing the means for making decisions, we all go astray like sheep without a shepherd.

Image Credit: Ford v Ferrari Promotional Image, from: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/ford-v-ferrari (Fair Use: Criticism)

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers will be sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. We welcome you to watch along with the series and share your thoughts in the comments or on Facebook. This week, Drew invites us to reflect with him on Ford v Ferarri. For Drew’s introductory post, click here.

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Ford v Ferrari (PG-13, 152 mins.)

Director: James Mangold. Writers: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller. Cast: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe.

Genre: Action, Biography, Drama.

Plot Outline: American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference, the laws of physics and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford and challenge Ferrari at the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1966.

—Summary drawn from IMDB

Some Options for Viewing: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play

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In my last blog post, I announced this series of nine posts, one on each of the films nominated for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. We will look at the nine movies in alphabetical order, starting with the James Mangold helmed Ford v Ferrari.

Ford v Ferrari is not a “racing picture,” though Formula 1 racing, especially the grand-daddy race of them all, Le Mans, is at the heart of the plot. In this context, Mangold has given us a fine buddy picture utilizing two of the best actors on Hollywood’s A list: Matt Damon and Christian Bale. In the hands of these two performers Ferrari has that wonderful blend of being a sports movie with much deeper heart than the plot could ever realize on its own, looking into a variety of themes— perseverance, family vs. work, winning at all costs, corporate greed, the quest for excellence, the nature of friendship, and even the usefulness of words, when the world collapses. Though all these topics are treated in the movie with enough seriousness to make them worth discussing, we will concentrate on a few things the movie teaches us about friendship, perhaps the central theme of the film.

When the historically-based movie begins, the Italian luxury car company Ferrari has won Le Mans five years in a row, and has so outdistanced its competitors that Enzo Ferrari mocks them openly. He particularly picks on Ford, and its owner Henry Ford II. Ford, played by the wonderful Tracy Letts, fed up with his company’s declining sales, decides to follow a strategy pitched to him by Lee Iacocca (John Bernthal) to enter wholeheartedly into racing in order to make Ford a more attractive car to younger buyers. They first try to buy Ferrari, but after appearing to be very interested in selling the company to Ford, while actually using their offer to jack up the price Fiat ultimately pays him, Ferrari says to Ford’s envoy, Iacocca, “Tell him (Ford) he is not Henry Ford. He is Henry Ford… the Second.”

Back in Detroit, Ford decides to get more deeply into racing by building a car that can beat Ferrari. Enter Matt Damon, playing Carroll Shelby, who was the last American to win Le Mans, but has had to retire from racing because of a heart condition. Shelby is asked to design the car and put together a team to beat Ferrari at the next Le Mans, and he immediately hires the high-strung Ken Miles (Christian Bale), the best racer Shelby knows. The movie then proceeds through twists and turns to the finish line at Le Mans, where the inevitable happens: Ford wins but in a way the viewer would never expect.

This is a magnificent film, nominated by many festivals and film awards groups for everything from sound editing to production design to best actor (Christian Bale). It may be the best traditional, linear film of the nine Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, since many of the films this year use a number of different devices to keep the audience’s attention, as we shall see in future posts. There are no tricks, no camera bells and whistles, no editing jumps from here to there—just good, solid filmmaking. Ferrari offers a well-told story, acted superbly by all involved, directed with wisdom and creativity. A story which could have slipped into maudlin melodrama at a number of different places, remains on point the whole 2½ hours plus, holding together several threads without losing any of them or dragging the picture into the deserts of boredom.

The most interesting thematic element is in the friendship between Shelby and Miles, both of whom have gone down in racing history as legends in their fields. The two men were from modest backgrounds, and each was the epitome of the self-made man, so they often sparred. Two of those fights are shown in the film. One is a comic roll around outside in Miles’s neighborhood, his wife Mollie mockingly bringing both men some ice tea when it is over.

The other fight is more serious and more instructive of their friendship. It takes place when Miles’s hot temper loses a sponsorship for them from Porsche. The argument starts slowly, beginning with a disagreement with an official about a small rule they had violated, then escalates into getting Shelby and Miles disqualified from the race. Shelby asks Miles if he likes losing. The short-tempered Miles lashes back, and Shelby, noting that Miles’s son Peter is there, says, “Did you bring your son out here to watch you act like an idiot or to get disqualified? Which?” At this, Miles throws a wrench at Shelby and stalks off. Shelby picks up the wrench and later frames it, giving it to Miles, when Miles actually ends up winning the race. Shelby knows that Miles’s anger was worth tolerating because it was an essential part of his psychological “toolbox”. His relentless quest for perfection, also symbolized by the wrench, was inextricably linked to his anger, playing a large part in making Miles the man he was. Shelby loves him in spite of his faults.

The two men are friends, even though one is the boss (Shelby) and the other the employee. Their friendship is based in a mutual respect for the other’s talent: Shelby the cool, collected manager and designer of the renowned Shelby Cobra, Miles the hot-tempered, reckless, artist who can drive better than anyone in the world. The movie makes clear, as was apparently the case in life, that Shelby’s patience preserved their friendship more than once.

Friendship is a lot of things in the Christian life, but it is always patient and trusting. “…there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Prov 18:24, ESV).