Wednesday, April 17, 2024
The Convert: theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 175 plus films later, here is the review for April 2024.
The Convert
A film review by Dr Steve Taylor
The Convert works as a historical drama of importance for all who live in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Aotearoa in the 1830s was a period of time during which te reo Māori was central and hapu were powerful. Māori chiefs defined trade, shaped politics and enacted justice.
A few Pākeha clutched the edges of the Land of the Long White Cloud. Some brought Christianity. Others brought guns, mixed with visions of a European good life. These Pākeha intrusions inflamed the tribal conflicts that beset Aotearoa through the 1830s. As lay preacher Thomas Munroe notes so astutely, he sailed from a land steeped in blood, only to step ashore on another land also soaked in blood.
The film, directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors and Mahana), draws from Wulf, a debut novel by Hamish Clayton. Bradford Haami, Laidlaw College lecturer and Māori historian, provides cultural advice. Extended sequences of The Convert are set in Māori pa. These include several delightful scenes that illuminate the role of tohunga, waka voyaging and Māori perceptions of Pākeha. The result is a rich immersion in Māori worldview.
Several strong performances carry the film. Guy Pearce (previous roles in L.A. Confidential and Memento) plays as Thomas Munroe, challenging stereotypes of missionaries as pious destroyers of culture. Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne (previous roles in Cousins and Whina) plays Rangimai, who as a grieving widow offers quiet karakia, dignified courage and assertive actions to showcase the place of wahine toa (strong women) in Māori culture.
Birds are also a feature of The Convert. They express another dimension of Māori filmmaking, given that for Māori, ngā manu are tohu of the future. In an opening sequence, a marauding karearea (falcon) savages a lone kāhu (hawk). Turiwhatu (dotterel) skip across a beach scene, while in a joyous moment of cross-cultural encounter, Rangimai and Charlotte (played by Jacqueline McKenzie) mimic tui call. In a closing sequence, a flock of birds offer a sense of kotahitanga. Flying together, they illustrate a movie that turns from solo violence to collective action.
These shifts required profound transformations. The Convert bears witness to the multiple conversions that occurred in pre-colonial New Zealand. Politically, iwi were reforming to ensure a collective identity. Individually, emerging leaders were transforming the practices of utu.
Utu is often defined as revenge. Yet the term emerges from an indigenous worldview that values balance and applauds those who uphold harmony in relationships. While a wrong must be put right, how restoration happens can vary greatly. Utu can include the possibilities of gift exchange to create and restore social bonds.
The transformations around utu evidenced in The Convert offer significant theological resources. Māori Christian historian Hirini Kaa, in his groundbreaking Te Hāhi Mihinare: The Māori Anglican Church, demonstrated how Māori creatively responded to Christianity, drawing on rongopai (gospel) to enhance maungārongo (peace) and seek rangimarie (harmony). Approaching Easter, The Convert resonates with Christian themes of peace and reconciliation.
Whakarongo mai, Ki te kupu o te manu rongo
(Listen, to the words of the bird of peace )
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is the author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Compassionate Collaboration, Christian Mission and the Bank of Dave
“Compassionate Collaboration, Christian Mission and the Bank of Dave” is a piece of my writing now published in the Practical Theology Hub, (online in January 2024).
The piece works between contemporary culture and a theology of social innovation. I work to bring the ministry of Jesus into conversation with a movie and sugges surprising insights into the nature of compassion and the depth of collaboration in mission with Christ.
The back story. The piece began as a 500 word written film review for Touchstone magazine (for whom I write monthly). As I was writing the film review, I was also down to speak at my local Presbyterian church (where I also preach monthly). As I worked with the suggested Gospel reading from the lectionary, I found some fascinating connections between the reading (Matthew 9:35-41) and the film. A listener encouraged me to write it up. Which took me a lot longer than I anticipated, as I struggled to turn spoken words into a written piece.
I persisted, helped by the concept of a research stash, and the idea of a stash as a store or supply of something, and working to turn something hidden (shared with a congregation) into something more visible (written online). Practical theology hub were ideal. First, because they take pieces up to around 2,000 words, which was about the length of the sermon. Second, they are online and accessible, so my words would not be hidden behind paywall.
Monday, December 11, 2023
Loop Track: theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 170 plus films later, here is the review for December 2023.
Loop Track
A film review by Dr Steve Taylor
With days lengthening and summer peeking around the corner, many Kiwis will embrace the outdoors. Bush tracks beckon, with the promise of bird song and river bank. We might find ourselves walking behind tourists, eager for a sighting of our flightless birds. Loop Track is Kiwi made horror that presents a darker vision of our great outdoors.
In Loop Track, Ian (Thomas Sainsbury) heads bush. On the edge of a nervous breakdown, desperate to dodge human contact, Ian starts at every sound.
As Ian imagines the worst, his fellow trampers provide a kindly foil. Nicky (Hayden J. Weal) offers tramping socks for Ian’s blistered feet. Monica (Kate Simmonds) gives flowers to brighten Ian’s mood. Austin (Tawanda Manyimo) shares stories from his country of origin.
The mood of Loop Track darkens when Nicky disappears. A gentle humouring of a man jumping at every shadow suddenly shifts. What if dark, not light, lurks around the bend?
The bush as a character plays a variety of roles in the films of Aotearoa New Zealand. In Muru (2023), alienated Māori find identity in the bush. In We are Still Here (2023), the outdoors is shelter for Māori avoiding settler lust for land. In these films, the outdoors offers plenty as places of connection and re-connection.
In other Aotearoa films, the bush is a place of darkness. The suspense of Sleeping Dogs (1977) and the isolation of The Piano (1993) rely on the bush as a place of unease. These films are in step with the poetry of James K Baxter and his description in The Mountains of the outdoors as a cold and crouching menace.
Mention horror films, and we think of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960s film Psycho or Jonathan Demme’s 1991 The Silence of the Lambs. Horror films draw on light and sound. Shadows hide, creating uncertainty. Sound amplifies the beating of a fearful heart.
Both sound and light are skillfully used in Loop Track. Thomas Sainsbury not only plays Ian. He also writes and directs. Better known for comedy, Loop Track showcases Sainsbury’s many talents.
Horror is an increasingly popular genre of film, rising from 3 per cent of the market in 1995 to nearly 18 per cent in 2021. How might Christians engage with this trending genre? For theologian, Dr. Mark Eckel, horror offers a form of truth-telling. Watching horror, we find ourselves reflecting on the origins of evil, the nature of the supernatural and the darkness of human nature. For Chad and Carey Hayes, who partnered in writing the first two Conjuring movies, horror creates arcs of redemption.
“What we’ve tried to do is create films with redemption. They have happy endings.” (Acosta, Cedars, 2021).
An arc of redemption summarises the long journey of Loop Track. As the movie ends, Ian walks down the road he drives up as the film begins. Stopping a passing car, he utters a single word, “Help.” For a person on the edge of the horror of a breakdown, asking for help is a perfect place to begin a walk toward redemption.
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is the author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Friday, March 17, 2023
theological film review of We Are Still Here
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for March 2023.
We are still here
A film review by Dr Steve Taylor
We Are Still Here offers a powerful cinematic experience. Over 90 minutes, ten indigenous directors offer an imaginative response to the arrival of James Cook and the realities of 250 years of colonialism.
We Are Still Here moves across geographies – between Aotearoa, Australia and Gallipoli in 1916 – and shifts between times. Narratives swiftly switch – from Arrernte lands near Mparntwe (Alice Springs) to Tuhoe lands around the 1860s, between Invasion Day protests and a post-apocalyptic Auckland in 2274.
These distinct narratives are delightfully held together by an unfolding animated rendering as a mother and daughter search for connection. The use of visual metaphor is compellingly beautiful; the rope that dredges Cook’s ship from the deep is the twine that seeks a daughter lost in urban exile.
Together the episodes offer a powerful portrayal of colonisation, not as a past event, but as a present and relentless structuring of power and economics. Colonisation is police beatings inside prisons named after Queen Victoria and the greedy hunger for indigenous taonga by a merchant working for Cook Ltd in 2274. Power and privilege is etched into a copper’s repeated request for ID from a young Aboriginal man and the shop assistants’ apology. ‘Sorry you had to go through that yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.’
Christian faith is notably absent from We are still here. This is not unexpected. By accident and design, Christianity in Aotearoa and Australia has found itself entwined in the structures of colonisation. In Sydney, Samuel Marsden was known as the flogging parson, while in the New Zealand Wars, Bishop Selwyn offered chaplaincy to soldiers, seemingly oblivious to the ways the churches’ presence with the military becomes an absence for those caught in the horrors of Rangiaowhia in 1864.
These legacies generate transforming questions. Can we imagine a 2274 future in which indigenous peoples might be glad Christians also are still here? Could the liberating story of oppressed midwives in Exodus resisting the death cult of Pharoah’s empire create any dialogue within an Invasion Day protest camp? Such are the questions provoked by We Are Still Here.
Amid the multiple absences, Christian faith is clearly present as the Lord’s Prayer is uttered in the trenches of Gallipoli. A Māori soldier ponders the temptation of death by suicide as a way to escape the hell of World War I trench warfare.
This moment of prayer brought to mind a recent class on pastoral care offered by Anglican Māori Pihopa (Bishop) Te Kitohi Wiremu Pikaahu. Pihopa shared the story of a widely respected Māori kaumatua who asked to be buried beside those of his people who had chosen to commit suicide. The request for burial was made in response to how some Christian communities choose to separate those who commit suicide from those buried in what is considered the sacred ground of the cemetery. Such acts of Christian presence, in life and through death, offer ways of transforming what it might mean to be here still.
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is the author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Muru: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for October 2022.
Muru
A film review by Dr Steve Taylor
Understanding the history of Aotearoa requires tracing a whakapapa, or lineage, of state violence. The invasion of Parikaha in 1881 and the shooting of two Māori at Maungapōhatu in 1915, continue to reverberate through our history.
In 2007, Police conducted dawn raids on private homes throughout New Zealand. Dressed in black, armed with machine guns and knives, Police smashed doors, windows and furniture. A school bus with three people on board was stopped and searched. The police press conference later that day used the language of ‘terror raids.’ While seventeen people were initially arrested, Solicitor General, Dr David Collins, refused to allow charges to be laid under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002.
In 2014, Police Commissioner Mike Bush apologised to the communities of Ruatoki and Taneatua. It was one attempt at muru, a Māori concept for reconciliation and forgiveness.
One of those arrested was Tama Iti. Interviewed at his art gallery on the main street of Taneatua ten years later, Iti spoke of the power of imagination. “We create [art] to keep communication open. Provoking thoughts and conversation is important.” (“Tuhoe community 10 years after the Urewera raids,” Stuff).
Muru is an imaginative rely to Iti’s gracious invitation to keep conversations open. Director Tearepa Kahi wanted to respond, rather than recreate, the terror raids of 2007. One way to provoke thought is to ask, “What if”?
What if people are angry and alienated? In the forests of Te Urewera, Tama Iti runs Camp Rama (fire light), teaching survival skills and preserving Tūhoe identity. Around a campfire, one man’s joke about a politician becomes a credible threat in the eyes of an eves-dropping Special Tactics Group (STG) surveillance team.
What if a drunk young man smashes mainstreet windows? Local Police officer ‘Taffy’ Tawharau (Cliff Curtis) guides a drunk Rusty (Poroaki Merritt-McDonald) back to his bed. The following day, a regretful Rusty sets off with his broom to make muru. In the eyes of another, one man’s broom handle becomes a long-handled weapon.
What if Police misused their powers? An armed STG officer (Manu Bennet as Kimiora) takes aim at a running Rusty and his bobbling broom. Shots kill a chasing Police officer and injure Rusty. With the operation spiralling out of control, STG are ordered to clean up their mess. Kimiora, armed with a high powered assault rifle, takes the law into his already blood-stained hands.
What if reconciliation could give history a new heart? In Te Hāhi Mihinare, Rev Dr Hirini Kaa begins with a Māori phrase, he ngākau hou (a new heart). For Kaa, when the gospel comes to Ngāti Porou through Piripi Taumata-a-kura, it reveals processes of debate and change. Tribes think creatively in the light of entirely new understandings they have derived from theological sources. Central to the Gospel is the sacrament of reconciliation. We often apply the gospel as individual acts of confession and reconciliation. Dr Kaa applies it communally. What might it take to reveal he ngākau hou (a new heart) amongst all who experience Aotearoa’s whakapapa of state violence? Such is the “what if” muru questions provoked by Muru.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
The Quiet Girl: A theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for September 2022.
The Quiet Girl
A film review by Dr Steve Taylor
“The Quiet Girl” rewards, but requires considerable patience. Cait (Catherine Clinch), a lonely child from a low-income family, is farmed out to distant relatives. In the hands of Eibhlin Cinnsealach (Carrie Crowley) and Sean Cinnsealach (Andrew Bennett), through simple acts of fingernails being scrubbed, hair brushed, and money offered as a treat, we witness Cait begin to flourish.
The movie (“An Cailín Ciúin” in the Irish) is based on Foster, Claire Keegan’s 2010 novella. In 2022 “The Quiet Girl” gained eight Irish Film and Television Academy awards, including best Irish film. Despite these accolades, the movie requires persistence. Time is slowed by sounds– the cuckoo’s call, the clock’s tick, the cry of a baby. Set in Ireland, with much of the dialogue in Irish, the occasional subtitle is lost.
First-time director Colm Bairéad works hard. The camera work is superb, capturing the summer splendour of rural Ireland. The plot is skilfully strengthened through delightful parallelism. Rhubarb appears twice, puncturing domestic tensions with garden humour. Runs recur, initially away from school, then timed toward letterboxes and back, finally toward embrace.
The acting is superb, particularly Catherine Clinch as the quiet Cait. Her vulnerability and growing joy as she finds the freedom to play are a delightful reminder of the transforming power of love. There are equally strong performances from Carrie Crowley as Eibhlin Cinnsealach and Andrew Bennett as Sean Cinnsealach. While Cait is the quiet girl, Sean names the wisdom of silence. In the face of a neighbour’s probing and destructive questions, he offers insight. “You can be quiet.” Sean’s sage advice provides needed wisdom as Cait returns to her family.
A movie set in Ireland tends to offer plenty for the theologically imaginative. “The Quiet Girl” is no exception, with religion evident in the rosaries held in dead hands and the priests who request their communities to pray for rain.
Light also does theological work in “The Quiet Girl”. The reflection of light and forest as water is scooped from the well evokes the wisdom of thirteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich. In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian wrote of how all of creation is enclosed in every little thing. Whether a small hazelnut or, in the case of “The Quiet Girl”, a scoop of water, we witness visual evidence that God made it; God loves it; God keeps it.
Another way to work imaginatively with film is to bring gospel stories into dialogue with specific scenes. As Cait returns home, Athair Chait (Michael Patric) announces, “The prodigal has come back.” His use of Biblical language sets up the emotionally charged final scene, in which, like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:20, the Quiet Girl is enveloped in the loving embrace of Sean Cinnsealach. Her one word, “Daddy,” is enough. A relationally impoverished childhood lost has been redeemed through persistent acts of care and attention. It is a rewarding and richly satisfying ending, a fitting reward for the patient viewer.
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Whina: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for August 2022.
Whina
Reviewed by Rev Dr Steve Taylor
Dame Whina Cooper towers over Aotearoa. Aged 80, she trod the 1,000 kilometres from Panguru, the land of her birth, to Parliament. Joined by 5,000 others, Te Matakite (the Māori Land March) gathered 60,000 signatures to a memorial of rights, asking the Crown to honour Te Tiriti and preserve Māori turangawaewae. Whina’s cry “not one more acre” inspired generations of Maori.
While the events of 1975 are a central and recurring theme, the movie brings all of Whina’s justice-making to life. Born the daughter of Heremia Te Wake (played by Wayne Hapi), the young Whina (played by Miriama McDowell) is arrested for passive resistance. Aged 19, she filled in drainage ditches to halt a Pākehā farmer draining her local mudflats. She works with Sir Apirana Ngata (Ngāti Porou) on land development schemes in the Hokianga, then the centenary celebrations of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As the first President of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Whina became a pan-tribal Māori leader, honoured as Te Whāea-o-te-motu (Mother of the Nation).
Like all mothers, Whina is far from perfect. Rena Owen, who played the older Whina says she struggled as she learnt some things about Cooper. The advice from directors Napier Robertson and Paula Whetu Jones was necessary: “Just remember Rena, you are portraying a very flawed person.”
Yet flaws can form. Acting Dame Whina also led Rena Owen back to Mass. “I went to confession … I prayed a lot during those seven months because it was so important to me to get it right” (CathNews, Monday, June 13, 2022). Such was the faith that shaped Whina as Te Whāea-o-te-motu.
While Whina is a profoundly Aotearoa story, it cleverly works with global dynamics. We see the fatal impact of global pandemics as Whina’s father dies from the Spanish flu in 1919. The impact of World War 2 on the young men of Panguru shapes Whina’s building of a meeting house.
A highlight of Whina is the immersion in Māoritanga. Much of the dialogue is in te reo, while the creative dynamism of matauranga Māori is clearly evident. Whina challenges patriarchy by building a meeting house, not a marae so that women can speak. Describing Te Matakite, Whina reframes the march. “Māori only march for war. We march to wake the conscience of the Pakeha.” This is a dynamic approach to culture, demonstrating agile and creative approaches to tradition in the seeking of justice.
As Te Matakite march gathers support, it inevitably attracts protest. The final steps toward Parliament include an attack by young and angry white men. Whina falls, a poignant witness to the frailty of this 80-year-old woman.
The fall also provides a striking witness to her faith. Whina remains Catholic, despite the cultural ignorance of the movie’s only prominent Pakeha character, Catholic Priest, Father Mulder (played by Erroll Shand). Three of the fourteen Stations of the Cross involve Jesus falling. These stations illuminate the cost of Jesus marching toward peace. As Whina falls, the crucifix around her neck twisted by the violence of the impact, Te Matakite becomes an indigenous expression of Christian pilgrimage.
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Top Gun Maverick: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for July 2022.
Top Gun Maverick
Reviewed by Rev Dr Steve Taylor
Time and tide wait for no man. Not even a fighter pilot catapulted off a naval aircraft carrier can outfly time’s inevitable creep. Top Gun Maverick offers a stunt-fueled ode to the inevitability of time and tide.
Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, was the highest-grossing film of 1986. Songs written for Top Gun, like Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” launched the movie’s soundtrack to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums.
Top Gun Maverick opens with the melodramatic sounds of the 1980s. “Danger Zone” blasts as the elite of the US Navy power off aircraft carriers and into action.
But we live in the 2020s, not the 1980s. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell – still a Lieutenant, still played by Tom Cruise,still a lone ranger – is facing extinction. Funding for Mitchell’s hypersonic “Darkstar” program is being redirected to drone programs. Drones, as Rear Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris) informs “Maverick,” do not need sleep or toilet stops.
Recalled to North Island, the largest aerospace-industrial complex in the US Navy, Maverick’s age awaits him. The presence of a new generation of Top Guns, quick with nicknames like “Pops,” suggest a disturbing ageism.
Amid the action scenes, Top Gun Maverick draws on the past to provide emotional depth. One of the Top Guns that Mitchell must train is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Mitchell’s best friend, killed in action during Top Gun. Former girlfriend Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), now a single mother, is a North Island bar owner. Former rival, now mentor, Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), has been rendered speechless with throat cancer. No matter how many stunts we pull, mortality confronts us all.
While Top Gun Maverick works harder at emotions and character development than Top Gun, both movies sound an anthem in support of the American military machine. America’s Department of Defense has an Entertainment Media Office, which assists filmmakers in crafting military stories. Alongside props like fighter jets and aircraft carriers come script suggestions.
Critics call this the Military-Entertainment Complex. Following the release of Top Gun, Navy recruiters set up stands outside cinemas. Applications reportedly jumped 500 per cent as Top Gun recruited a new generation of wannabe Top Guns.
In 1990, Tom Cruise announced that Top Gun glorified war. A sequel, said Cruise, would be irresponsible. Yet time, tide and the persuasive pitch of Director Joseph Kosinski mean the wait for a sequel is no more.
Reportedly, the lure for Cruise was Kosinski’s suggestion of a reconciliation movie. Push aside the glorification of war, wade through the machismo, ignore the ageism, and Top Gun Maverick offers a reminder of the human need to face together our times and tides. As Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky whispers to Mitchell, the pilots “need you.” In time, every maverick needs to fly in formation.
Sunday, May 15, 2022
The Duke film review: a secularised ubuntu theology
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for May 2022.
The Duke
Reviewed by Rev Dr Steve Taylor
The Duke is heartwarming drama. Set in Newcastle, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent) writes plays, hoping for BBC fame. At the same time, he also protests TV licenses. For Kempton, television reduces isolation and should be free for pensioners. Shaped by socialist beliefs, Kempton is imprisoned for refusing to pay his TV license. Freed, he is outraged to hear that the British government is spending taxpayer dollars not for pensioner TV license relief but on purchasing a painting for the National Gallery.
The film is based on a true story. In 1961, Newcastle man Kempton Bunton was tried at the Old Bailey for the theft of the “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.” It makes the central character a silent character. Hidden in the spare room wardrobe, the Duke of Wellington becomes a silent observer of Bunton family life.
Character contrasts drive the plot. Dorothy, married to Kempton, is superbly played by Helen Mirren. Her dogged determination is a splendid foil for Kempton’s mercurial wit and political passions. Trying to make their way in the world, brothers Jackie (Fionn Whitehead) and Kenny (Jack Bandeira) embrace different approaches to law-breaking and law-abiding.
Amid the family tensions and building courtroom drama, The Duke offers a poignant meditation on grief. Marion Bunton is another central yet silent character. Killed in a bicycle accident aged eighteen, Dorothy mourns in silence while Jim needs to talk.
These different expressions of grief clash with Dorothy’s anger at “The girl on the bicycle,” the title of one of Kempton’s plays. For Kempton, these plays are a way of talking, and for Dorothy, this is “Making money from her memory.”
This festering sore in their relationship finds resolution as Kempton waits in prison. As the jury deliberates on guilty or not, Helen reaches her own verdict over Marion’s death. “You’re not to blame,” she declares. Her words of forgiveness offer healing from the past, even as the jury applies law and logic to Kempton’s present. Taking time to talk brings needed release.
On the witness stand, Kempton describes what shapes his plays and politics. As light illuminates his head, he professes faith; “A faith in people, not in God.” Washed out to sea as a teenager, Kempton waited. Floating, he trusted a neighbour might see his abandoned clothes and have the courage to come looking. This faith in neighbour saved his life. Since then, professed Kempton, “me-with-you” has shaped his life.
Hence The Duke offers a secularised ubuntu theology. Ubuntu is a distinctly African way of being. People and groups form their identities in relation to one another. Desmond Tutu, a South African bishop and theologian, located these relationships in God. For Tutu, “me-with-you” and “I am because you are” are possible because all persons are made in the image of God. The result was a practical theology of healing, seen most clearly in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu believed that a “me-with-you” talking in the community could meet the needs of the victims, offenders, and nation. Taking time to talk can bring release.
Monday, April 18, 2022
Bergman Island: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for April 2022.
Bergman Island is a delightfully plotted meditation on making. Director Mia Hansen-Løve offers creatively weaves reality and fantasy, probing the nature of imagination on the island of one of Europe’s finest filmmakers.
Creating as an act of fantasy and an embrace of vulnerability are central to island, plot and character. American filmmakers – Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) – ferry to Fårö Island. Each brings their creativity to the craft of film. Tony will bathe in the adoration of fans following a screening of one of his films. Chris will work on The White Dress, which becomes over time a film set on the island of Fårö.
The island is the central character. It offers the actors of Bergman Island and The White Dress places to play, including forests to wander, beaches for night swimming and summer showers through which to cycle. In real life, the island is Fårö Island, where Ingmar Bergman lived and made movies for forty years. After Bergman’s death, family and friends turned his houses into places for writers to work. For readers with writing fantasies, real-life application forms are here.
Films make worlds, and Bergman Island celebrates this making in light-hearted and poignant ways. There is the magical realism of wooden ducks that make noises and beach houses that suddenly appear. Some characters move between films. Hampus (Hampus Nordenson) guides Chris around the island, appears as she imagines The White Dress and returns as film (Bergman Island) and film (The White Dress) search for emotional resolution.
The weight of creative expectation is palpable. Any retreat to write has expectations. The pressures are magnified when one writes in the house of a man who produced forty-nine feature-length films.
These expectations allow a thoughtful probing of the origins of creativity. Searching for a new nib for her fountain pen, Chris flips through Tony’s journal. His hand-drawn pictures, misogynist in nature, suggest that for some creativity comes wrapped in unhealthy shadows. Much modern art is fascinated with the darker dimensions of being human.
When Chris shares The White Dress with Tony, her act of imagination seems diminished by Tony’s disinterest. Much postmodern art is preoccupied with the role of reception as a source of creativity.
Early in the film, Chris questions if faith played a role in Bergman’s creativity. A simple response is to visit his grave at the Fårö church. A more challenging response is to probe the place of retreat in the Christian imagination. Time away, to pray, to meditate, is often lauded as a Christian virtue. But what might the valorising of isolation say about the ordinary and everyday? As Cambridge theologian Janet Soskice writes, “What we want is a monk who finds God while cooking a meal with one child clamouring for a drink, another who needs a bottom wiped, and a baby throwing up over [a] shoulder” (The Kindness of God).
A final scene of Bergman Island affirms the everyday as a source of creativity. As Chris leaves her writing desk to be reunited with her daughter, we witness the domestic energy which inspires her making.
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Friday, March 25, 2022
Belfast: a theological mediation on film and music
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for March 2022.
Belfast
Reviewed by Rev Dr Steve Taylor
In 2001, our family enjoyed study leave in the United Kingdom. Top of the bucket list was Ireland. Arriving in Belfast by ferry, we went looking for a rental car.
The car we hired had a CD player, resulting in a search for Belfast music at a second-hand record shop stop. With Van Morrison turned up loud, we headed north, seeking links with ancestors and a Giant’s Causeway.
Belfast the movie is filled with Van Morrison songs, from well-known favourites like “Bright Side of the Road” to new songs specially written, like “Down To Joy.” For music journalist Stuart Bailie, Van Morrison’s Belfast is a “microcosmos of innocence and child-like visions” (Trouble Songs, 2018, 30).
Apt, given the way Belfast, the movie views the conflicts in Ireland through the eyes of 8-year old Buddy and his Protestant family. All the innocent Buddy wants is to talk with his dying grandfather (Ciarán Hinds) and walk to school with Catherine (Olive Tennant), a classroom crush. Instead, he must navigate life by avoiding armed soldiers and dodging religious tribalism.
“Belfast” is an ode to place. Central is a scene in which Buddy’s Ma (Caitríona Balfe) describes her street as a microcosmos. Every person is known, every child looked after by neighbours. It is these bonds of community that are being torn apart by
bigotry.
The perverse ways that nationalism and historical grievance can distort Christian faith is seen early in a fire and brimstone sermon. For weeks after, Buddy draws forked roads. But which, he asks his older brother (Lewis McAskie), is the narrow road?
Buddy draws with pencil and paper the existential challenge for his family. One response to violence is to fight and around Buddy and his family circle recruiters and troublemakers. Another is to flee. Buddy’s Da (Jamie Dornan) is offered work and accommodation in England. Such is the forked road for Buddy’s family and for all whose micro cosmoses are disturbed by bigotry and violence.
Fleeing Belfast is a recurring theme in the music of Van Morrison. His Astral Weeks album was released around the time Belfast the movie was set. “Madame George” is a song about leaving, while “Austral Weeks” paints visions of another world, another time, another land. Van Morrison uses Christian texts – a home on high, a stranger in this land, going to heaven – to justify a fleeing from reality.
Fleeing this world is a temptation ever-present in Christian theology. But what if the home on high that God is preparing is peace and goodwill in the here and now? What if, in the new song Van Morrison crafts for Belfast, faith is about coming down with joy? Such lyrics certainly harmonise with the glad tidings surrounding Christ at Christmas.
I returned to Belfast in 2018 to speak at an academic conference alongside music journalist Stuart Bailie. During my stay, I shared lunch with Presbyterian minister Rev Steve Stockman. Together with Fr Martin Magill, a Catholic parish priest, Stockman began 4 Corners Festival. Across religious tribes, they chose to neither fight nor flee. Instead, they offered innovative events that celebrate with joy the unique places that are Belfast.
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Sunday, February 27, 2022
Don’t Look Up: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for February 2022.
Don’t Look Up
Reviewed by Steve Taylor
As the world is ending, a meal is enjoyed. With the table set, words of gratefulness are spoken, then those gathered are blessed by a simple prayer. It’s a compelling scene, a moment of slow and meditative grace, amid the biting political satire that is Don’t Look Up.
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) a Ph.D. candidate in Michigan State’s astronomy department, discovers a comet. During the celebrations, her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), calculates that life on earth will end for all when the comet strikes in six months and fourteen days.
Some truth is hard to share, let alone like. In a world willing to amuse itself in death, news of a comet is spun, memed, then polarised for political purposes. Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), the CEO of fictional tech giant Bash Digital, markets innovative technologies at the expense of scientific collaboration. “Don’t Look Up” rallies are political tools to revive the scandal-ridden career of President Orlean (Meryl Streep). Much of Don’t Look Up runs as a smart, funny, yet depressing mirror on our world today.
Although never mentioned, the polarisations around climate change motivate the movie. Adam McKay wanted to direct a film about the impending climate apocalypse. Hence the challenging line by Randall “We really did have everything, didn’t we?” When set alongside the moving shots of whales, bees, and birds, it’s a poignant reminder of the beauty of creation humans are called to till and tend (Genesis 2:15).
Amid the ironic commentary on contemporary life, Don’t Look Up does significant theological work. The ending contemplates two futures. One is the hope of another planet, a second garden of Eden, in which new life can begin again. Peter Isherwell and President Orlean flee the comet on a spaceship, frozen in cryo chambers. The musical score is an original composition by composers Nicholas Britell and Bon Iver. Titled “Second Nature,” a new earth is sought, not as a refuge for all. Rather as an outworking of a Darwinian survival of the wealthiest.
A second future involves prayerful thanksgiving. Kate and Randall gather with those they love. There are echoes of thanksgiving in the meal and thankfulness, the North American tradition of gratitude for new and shared beginnings. In Don’t Look Up, thanksgiving becomes an ending. Waiting for their world to die, Kate’s boyfriend, Yule (Timothée Chalamet), asks to pray. Raised evangelical, finding an adult relationship with God, he speaks
“Dearest Father and almighty Creator,
We ask for your grace, despite our pride
Your forgiveness, despite our doubt
Most of all, Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times
May we face whatever is to come in your divine will, with courage, in open hearts of acceptance. Amen.”
Don’t Look Up is a contemplation of endings. Do we try in the hope of a better world for an elite few somewhere else? Or do we gather, after we have tilled and tended the gift of this world, in quiet trust in God?
(Don’t Look Up is available on Netflix, rated M for mature audiences).
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of “First Expressions” (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
The Power of the Dog: a theological film review
Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 165 plus films later, here is the review for December 2021.
The Power of the Dog
Reviewed by Steve Taylor
After a twelve-year silence, New Zealand director, Jane Campion, plays again. Acclaimed for her work on The Piano, Campion takes us to 1920’s Montana. Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) are brothers. Strikingly different, they share the lonely task of raising cattle on their parents’ ranch. Tensions are heightened when George marries, bringing Rose (Kirsten Dunst) to the family homestead.
A star cast offers powerful performances. Highlights include Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the talented, yet grief-stricken Phil, and Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Rose’s enigmatic son.
Amid a star cast, the films’ most important character is never seen. In a cowboy world of word of few words, the death twenty-five years ago of ranchhand Bronco Henry is a grief that refuses to be forgotten. It is intriguing to watch a film haunted by the main character’s absence, the unprocessed grief a festering wound, demanding attention.
The film is based on a novel by Thomas Savage. In books, words provide interior insight into motives. In films, the inner monologue can either be verbalised or visualised. Or, as in The Power of the Dog, a lack of words becomes a deliberate tool that deepens mystery and builds suspense.
In 1920’s Montana, anthrax is a killer, deadly to cows and humans. In a scene-setting cattle drive, a dead cow draws the attention of Phil and his faithful cattle dog. It wasn’t until 1937 that Max Sterne developed a vaccine. While this new vaccine was to bring immediate good news for humans working with cattle, its’ development was a few years after the movie’s final dramatic scenes.
The movies’ title is a quoting of Christian Scripture. In a final dramatic scene, Peter reads the words from a Funeral Order of the Service. Psalm 22:20 become the last words spoken in the movie: “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.”
Psalm 22 is a Psalm of lament. The hearer is invited to share in the experiences of a man needing deliverance, a person surrounded by enemies like prowling dogs (verse 16).
In history, the Christian church has connected Psalm 22 with the death of Jesus. In the drama of the cross, Jesus’ last words include the voicing of verse 1: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Yet in the drama of Jesus’ death, his final words also include a prayer that enemies might be forgiven.
The crucifixion thus presents a compelling contrast with the dramatic scenes that end The Power of the Dog. What emerges in the life and death of Jesus is a radically different understanding of justice. Isolated like Rose, Jesus offers a cry of forsakenness rather than a cry for rescue. Mocked like Peter, Jesus places the demand for justice in the hands of God. Such radical trust challenges the human seeking of deliverance, so dramatically enacted in The Power of the Dog.
(For those placed in Covid-19 red traffic lights, The Power of the Dog is available on Netflix from 1 December).
Friday, November 26, 2021
squid game – a theological film review
I sent off a film review (The Power of the Dog) to Touchstone magazine today. In 2005, the editor rang and asked me to theologically review a film of interest to their readers. 500 words please. And offered to pay! The editor liked the review so much, he asked again next month.
It’s now my 15th year of film reviewing. 11 reviews a year. 500 words a film review. Now over 82,000 words! Writing to a deadline month by month has been such a wonderful challenge. Viewing a film theologically, yet needing to be respectful of the art. This month, it was the realisation that the title – The Power of the Dog – was a quote from Scripture (Psalm 22:20). Last month, with Squid Game, a co-written review with my daughter, pondering the harrowing of hell …
Squid Game
Reviewed by Kayli Taylor and Steve Taylor
Squid Game is a survival drama television series streaming on Netflix. Hundreds of cash-strapped contestants compete in children’s games for a winner take all prize. Yet, the stakes are deadly. Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, set in South Korea, it has become a Netflix sensation. Rated R16, it is a dark and compelling mediation on contemporary life.
Central to Squid Game are children’s games. Episode 1 centres around Red Light, Green Light, also known as Statues. Participants run on the call of “Green Light” and must freeze on the call of “Red Light.” Any movement during “Red Light” results in elimination. At this point, the story shifts, and it becomes evident that in Squid Game, this children’s game involves real-life survival.
Children’s games should evoke the sounds of gentle laughter. In Squid Game, they illuminate the worst qualities of human character, holding a mirror on the desperation that results from lack of choice.
The lack of choice is brilliantly depicted. Participants begin each game by walking through a hallway of staircases. Painted in pink, yellow and green, it is similar to Dutch artist M. C. Escher’s famed Relativity. At first glance, Escher’s woodcut suggests an idyllic community in which participants enjoy life. Yet all the figures are featureless and identical in dress. The seven staircases are positioned in ways that evoke feelings of being trapped. None of the figures can move freely or escape the image.
The participants in Squid Game are similarly featureless and trapped. They are numbered, not named. Each has been selected based on an assessment of their debt. Yet each number is a person.
Episode 2, intriguingly titled “Hell,” shines a light on the lives of individual numbers. The main character, 456 (played by Lee Jung-jae) is a man caught in a gambling addiction. Number 199 (played by Anupam Tripathi) is a Pakistani migrant caught in an exploitive working environment. Number 067 (played by HoYeon Jung) is desperately trying to reconnect with her family stuck in North Korea – a reunion that comes with heavy costs. Hell exists in the here and now as the circumstances of life’s realities and the consequences of desperate choices play out in human relationships.
A masked man controls Squid Game, watching the carnage from a distance. The notion of an omnipotent being, usually male, controlling the game played by lesser mortals is a familiar image of the Christian God.
Where is God in Squid Game? Christian theology argues that in Jesus, God refuses to watch from a distance. Instead, God gambles by entering the game of life. Christ becomes a number, participating to repay the debts of those trapped by their human choices. An unknown fourth-century sermon describes the events of Easter as God being “swallowed” by Hades. This swallowing occurs so that Christ might search the very depths of human hell. Could God take the number of another human player inside the game of life, even to death?
Kayli Taylor is a Masters student at the University of Otago and researches queer feminist social histories.
Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of “First Expressions” (2019) and Director AngelWings Ltd, resourcing churches in mission.