sustain:if:able kiwi

film review: Moneyball

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of a wide range of contemporary films (over 65), each with a theological perspective, back to 2005 can be found here.

What do you value? Numbers, money, sentiment or fun?

“Moneyball”, (more…)

this is the house that Up built

The Up house is for real. And for sale.

A house modelled after the home featured in the animated movie “Up” has been sold to a family who are self-described Disney and Pixar fanatics … Builder Adam Bangerter has said the blueprints for the house were drawn based entirely on details found in the popular movie. Much of the home had to be custom-designed. (here)

It’s amazing to consider how an animated movie, can shape real life.

It’s also amazing to consider how that animated movie has shaped my real life. It was September 14, 2009 and we had taken the kids to see the movie. We loved it and I blogged about it here.

It’s the plot that makes Up great; that good old-fashioned ability to engage an audience by telling a story, in this case of childhoon dreams lost, the pain of life and the possibility of imagination rekindled.

At the time, we were considering whether or not to move to Adelaide, as the founding Director of Missiology at Uniting College. I was getting cold feet, considering the pain it would cause for us, for Opawa, for our family and friends. Watching Up, I felt it had some messages for me. Would I be like the old man in Up, Carl Fredricksen, who had been too scared to actually put an adventure into reality? Or would I, and team Taylor, be willing to trust God and go on a new adventure? Which became worship that Sunday. And was a part of our discernment and journey toward Australia.

So again, an animated movie shaping real life. The power of popular culture. To quote Tom Beaudoin:

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them.

film review: the cup

A confession. As a Baptist minister, I once found myself winning at the races.

Like all confessions, the slippery slope began some time prior, when I was teaching a class on crossing cultural boundaries. Which resulted in a lively discussion on the applications for life in New Zealand.

One Canterbury student suggests NZ Trotting Cup Day at Addington was for him a cross culture experience, a boundary he then suggested we should cross together. Finding it hard to resist such a public challenge, I found myself in a world of fine hats and fit horses.

As the day drew on, I decided that part of the cross cultural challenge must include meeting the bookies. I mean, if I as church minister expected people to not only enter, but also play in my religious world, then surely the least I could do was participate in theirs.

A bet was duly placed. Later, with a mighty surge my horse was in the money and I left the Addington Showgrounds a good deal hoarser, albiet a few dollars richly.

Memories of horse and hats returned as I watched “The Cup” (directed by Simon Wincer). Based on a true story, of Australian jockey, Damien Oliver (acted by Stephen Curry), who in 2003 rode the Irish horse, Magic Puzzle, to Melbourne Cup victory, a week after the death of his older brother and fellow-jockey, Jason (acted by Daniel MacPherson).

A feature of the film is the use of mirroring. Black and white footage of historic Melbourne Cups is placed alongside racing today; TV footage of Bali bombing is placed alongside the trackside death of Jason Oliver; colour footage of Jason’s body lying lifeless on a hospital bed is placed alongside black and white footage of Jason’s father, who also died while racing.

Such mirroring includes an intriguing window onto the entwined relationship between identity and spirituality, with Damien at the hospital wishes his brother well in death, while his mother at the church, prays for his soul in the afterlife.

Kiwi viewers will bristle at the film’s treatment of Temuka born Phar Lap and the assumption that he is Australian, so soon after the scene in which Irish horse owner Dermot Weld (played by Brendan Gleeson) complains: “They want our presence. They just don’t want us to win. This race is part of who they are. We’re up against the whole of Australia.”

The movie captures some, but not all of the racing industry. It finds the fashion, exploits the dangers and holds the traces on the relationships between horse and human. Yet it skims over the problems of gambling and misses the vulnerability of young girls drinking beyond limits. A movie worth your time, if not your dividend.

Which might leave some of you pondering the fate of my race winnings. A story best left untold, for it would require revealing a certain local Baptist building project built on winnings from the horses!

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

film review: Red Dog

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

Red Dog. A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

At first glance, “Red dog” is a delightful movie, suitable for adults and children, a heart warming mix of human life and canine love.

A stranger arrives in a strange town. Seeking life, knocking on the door of the local pub, instead he finds himself beside the bedside of a dying dog.

Around the bedside, he hears the stories. This is no ordinary dog. This is Red Dog.

The plot is a storytellers delight. The pace is well-varied, the suspense genuine. The stories interweave, lives threaded together, each story offering a different slice of Red Dog’s life – his arrival, his elevation to dog for everyone, his finding of his true master, his role as match-maker and life-saver.

The stories produce some laugh out loud moments of sheer delight, the fights between Red Dog and Red Cat worth the ticket price alone.

Red Dog is based on a true story, of a real life statue, erected in 1979 in Dampier (an outback mining town in the Pilbura area of Western Australia). It relies on the skilled acting of Koko (playing Red Dog) and definitely panting for an Academy nomination. While Australian in accent, location and plot, Kiwi audiences will appreciate seeing a familiar face, Keisha Castle-Hughes, playing veterinary assistant become wife and mother. And in the statue of Red Dog, they will catch a glimpse of the famous Tekapo statue of the Shepherds Dog.

While at first glance a delight, a more closer look reveals a glimpse of the poor and pale reflection that is White Australia.

In a final climatic speech, as the town waits beside Red Dog’s bed, the “Pommy”, the “general” and the “politician” are contrasted with one’s mining “mates.” The speech lauds the values of loyalty and generosity, the need for a person to understand their land, to appreciate the red dust of the outback. It is a fascinating summary of so many values of Australian culture.

Ironically, sadly, the faces of those listening are all white, and the “Hear, hear” all European in accent. Their is no sign of, nor respect for, indigenous Australians, who for thousands of years before the arrival of white people, lived and loved in this red dirt.

One wonders what Red Dog, lauded for being the friend of all, would make of the absence of indigenous Australia. Surely in a plot-line based on multiple stories, it would have been possible to include at least one story of culture-crossing and the gifts and insights of the first inhabitants of the outback?

Another sinister reflection shimmers in the heat haze, that of the place of mining in Australian culture. “Red Dog” is a window into the loneliness and social dislocation that drives the Australian mineral boom and the industrialised transport lines that stain the beauty of the Outback. It is mining that is in fact driving a two-speed economy in danger of poisoning any Red Dog in their ability to be a friend for all.

Killing Bono film review

Killing Bono is a film about fame. Specifically, U2 band fame. It is a movie adaptation of Neil McCormick’s Killing Bono: I Was Bono’s Doppelganger, a book which seeks to paint parallels between his life and that of U2′s Bono.

Both boys attend the same school. Both boys form a band. Everything one band touches turns to gold, as they become the world’s biggest band. Everything the other band touches, turns to failure, lost in the Irish hills as U2 play Croke Park in Ireland.

The film bears little resemblance to the real book ie real life. Or so the author, McCormack would have us believe

each rewrite it became more detached from my life as I remembered it. Characters were compressed. New characters invented. Incidents exaggerated. The story started to take on a logic of its own. By the 14th draft, they had me running around Dublin with a gun, hunting down my old friend.

Cinematically, the movie struggles. It is hard to find much empathy for the main character (Ben Barnes as Neil McCormack), so driven is he by his preoccupation with fame. Which makes the entire project somewhat ironic. Who would buy the book or care about the film without the famous word “Bono” in the title?

Which does, in turn, provide some theological interest. The film is essentially an anti-film, a celebration of failure, of the inability of a person with obvious musical talent to pursue their dreams. In a world awash with celebrity, McCormick finds fame (in the book and through the film), through telling the story of his inability to find fame.

There are some moments of humour. Most rely on band jokes – references to Bono’s height, or recognition of band posters. In sum, while the film Killing Bono might be of interest to U2 fans (of whom there are many), it struggles to rise beyond being a band film, a poor attempt to cash in on the fame of another.

(NB the film includes nudity, violence and drug use).

Of Gods and men: compulsive viewing

“compulsive viewing for a Western Christianity tempted to reduce faith to a decaffeinated religion of gentle Jesus hymns shared over civil pot-luck meals.” (a line from my just completed film review).

Based on a true story.

“This is mission as service. It draws energy from the life of Christ and finds expression in caring for the sick, filing forms for the illiterate and learning the Koran. The rhythms lap in gentle harmony with their Muslim neighbours. It is an uplifting and positive model of mission, a reminder that different religious faiths can – and have – lived in beneficial co-existence.” (a paragraph from the same review, for those with a missional bent).

For more
- on Christian-Muslim interaction on this blog see my summary of Jenkins Lost History of Christianity here and here.

Harry Potter as a Christ figure

I went to watch the final Harry Potter film last week. I’ve not read any of the books, but my kids had suggested I watch all the films in preparation for this grand cinematic finale. (For my review of Deathly Hallows part 1, with a focus on character, go here).

The theological part of my brain came away thinking about Harry Potter as a Christ figure. Lloyd Baugh, Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film , divides Jesus films into two categories.

First is films which tell the gospel story of the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth (eg King of Kings, Godspell, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Gospel according to Saint Matthew). Obviously that does not apply to Harry Potter.

Second are movies which on the surface are simply telling a story, but offer deeper links and parallels to Christ. Baugh calls this the arena of analogy; “They are not unlike the parables of Jesus which, when “read” on a literal level, remain brief narratives of human experience, but when interpreted metaphorically, fairly explode with theological and christological significance.”

Baugh suggests 11 elements by which to assess whether or not the characters in these movies function as Christ figures:

• mysterious origins
• conflict with authority
• performing of wonders
• attracting a group of followers
• becoming a scapegoat
• withdrawing to a deserted place
• acting as a suffering servant
• showing a commitment to justice
• entering passion
• reaching out to the repentant thief and
• a metaphorical resurrection.

Baugh asserts that, since “the filmic Christ-figure does not always reflect the totality of the Christ-event”, the eleven elements are descriptive and generative rather than exhaustive.

So let’s place the 11 alongside Harry Potter (after the fold line cos of spoilers) (more…)

film review: Australian film Mad Bastards

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

Mad bastards
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

Mad Bastards begins as an Aussie version of Once were Warriors.

Flames flicker as thirteen year-old Bullet (played by Lucas Yeeda), tosses a homemade Molotov Cocktail onto a wooden verandah in outback Australia. Meanwhile Bullet’s absent father, Aboriginal man, (TJ as Dean Daley-Jones), is drinking and fighting his way through Australia’s urban decay.

To resolve the distance, Mad Bastards becomes road movie. Think Convoy, Easy Rider, Smokey and the Bandit. Or closer to Australia, Mad Max.

TJ hitches toward the vast expanse that is the Kimberley (an area of north west Australia twice the size of New Zealand), seeking his son Bullet, whom he abandoned at birth. A quest, both physical and metaphorical, in which the journey provides opportunities for redemption. Which for TJ will include facing the past, including his estranged wife (Nella as Ngaire Pigram), father-in-law (Greg Tait as local police officer Texas) and his indigenous culture.

What Mad Bastards lacks in polish, it gains in reality. Director (Brendan Fletcher) began with oral stories from indigenous people and uses mostly untrained local actors. It makes for some ham moments but in a manner similar to Mike Lee (Secrets and Lies) allows them to improvise, threading their own experiences through the script.

This is a real movie about a culture and a country on a journey. In the week of the movie’s release, one of the actors, Roxanne Williams, was convicted of murdering her partner in their Kimberley home. In the month of release, journalist Nicholas Rothwell wrote of “a crisis of grief … a spiritual collapse so deep it cannot be held back … as an entire culture, acting collectively, destroys itself. (Living hard, dying young in the Kimberley, The Australian)

Kiwi readers might find such social comment difficult to comprehend. Where Maori have a treaty and a common language, indigenous Australians are in fact many nations with no historic legal protection.

The movie skillfully weaves in two further journeys, one therapeutic, another musical. Local cop, Greg Tait, responds to the violence and societal breakdown by starting a local men’s group. Sausages are devoured and no-one talks until Greg leads the way, sharing of his own struggles to parent and protect.

The musical soundtrack is a winner, made for the movie by local band, The Pigram Brothers and Alex Lloyd. Part calypso, part roots, part saltwater love songs, the band appear as actors in the film, traveling through the Kimberley, playing their quirky original music. It offers another thread in the road movie tapestry, upbeat and gorgeous yet at some dissonance with the themes being explored.

Curiously, the answer in Mad Bastards is baptism. TJ is told that while he does not belong to this indigenous community, he is welcome to become part of their lives. The next scene occurs by a river, where an elder stands, tipping water over TJ’s bowed head.

So begins transformation, as hospitality is offered, brokenness is faced and grace received.

film review of Never let me go: atonement theology at it’s worst and best

A 500 word (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine). Film reviews of the most common contemporary films, each with a theological perspective, (over 60) back to 2005 can be found here.

Never let me go
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

This is a haunting movie. Directed by Mark Romanek it remains deeply disturbing long after the credits roll. The film is based on a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. Short listed for the 2005 Booker, adapted for the big screen by Alex Garland, it provides some profound questions about being human and the person and work of Jesus.

The movie begins with Ruth (Carey Mulligan) watching her lover, Tommy (Andrew Garfield), preparing to be anesthetised on an operating table.

What follows is a cinematic triptych, elegantly woven together by the evolving love triangle between three friends, Ruth, Tommy and Kathy (Keira Knightley).

The year is 1978 and the friends are children (convincingly played by Ella Purnell, Charlie Rowe, Isobel Meikle-Small) at Hailsham School. What seems sheltered increasingly grows sinister, innocence hemmed by stories of dismembered bodies and evidence of repressed emotions.

Next, the year is 1985 and the children emerge into adolescence. The tension in the love triangle escalates and a sinister future becomes frightfully clearer. The three have been bred as organ donors, born to be broken apart in adulthood, spare lungs and limbs to ensure other humans are healthy.

Finally, the year is 1994 and in adulthood the three friends become re-entangled, each forced to confront their past and future.

Much of this makes little logical sense. Why don’t these three fight or flee? What events have breed a society in which humans exchange organs? Unnervingly, these unexplained absences, while perplexing, serve to make a plot simply more haunting.

In the final scene Ruth is alone. She contemplates her death, facing a fence on which pieces of plastic flap emptily on the wind. A chilling and senseless isolation is complete. All that remain are Ruth’s final words.

“Do we feel life so differently from the people we save?”

The word “save” jumped out, the idea that hunks of flesh ripped from one person’s body might prove essential to the salvation of another. Which brought to mind the Passion of Holy Week and the Christian gospels, which describe a body whipped and pierced. And the claim that such an act of brutality was essential to human redemption.

Are we really catching a glimpse of the Christian understanding of the person and work of Jesus?

Perhaps a difference is that of choice. Ruth, Kathy and Tommy are born to die, the days of their lives based on the whim of another. In contrast, in the Garden of Gethsemane we glimpse a Christ choosing to drink from the cup of human suffering.

While at Hailsham, Tommy gives Kathy a cassette tape of a (fictional) singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy grows to treasure one song in particular, titled, appropriately, “Never let me go.” She grasps it not as a love song, but as a mother’s plea to her baby. The song, a recurring musical note running the length of the movie, offers another way to understand the Easter experience. That in and through acts of perverse human brutality is the reality that in Jesus, we realise that God will “never let us go.”

a theology for mad b*****ds

I went to see the Australian movie, Mad Bastards, over the weekend.

Set in the Kimberley, in Western Australia, it is a window into the life of indigenous people in Australia today. I went as a film reviewer, to write a 500 word film review for a Christian newspaper. That’s in process, but it sits alongside the ongoing work of the Spirit in my life. Ultimately, this is a personal blog, that marks my journey, so it’s important to note that I’m in a bit of hard patch, with too much work on my to do list, to really enjoy the month of May. Add in a sick child and ongoing homesickness (Yep, the fiddle is playing). And the recent article by Nicholas Rothwell in The Australian, which continues to grieve and astound me.

A crisis of grief is unfolding, a spiritual collapse so deep it cannot be held back. … Those watching struggle for words and fear they may be watching as an entire culture, acting collectively, destroys itself. (for more go here)

That quote just keeps on undoing me. It just goes against every thing I know and profess about God and life and resurrection. Can I call myself Christian in this Aussie land when this sort of thing is happening?

Anyhow, one of the best parts of the movie was the soundtrack – original – by Alex Lloyd and Pigram Brothers. Fabulous folk rock. And all through the week, I’ve been enjoying one song in particular, Hearts and minds.

From within, from without,
There is fear and there is doubt

Nothing’s simple, nothing’s clear
Whats (?) the words we need to hear

Chorus
If we listen to the times
We can change your hearts and minds
We can change your hearts and minds
If we listen to the times

In your soul, the fire burns
round and round it spits and curls

In the flames, the truth may lie
Fumbling with the wrong and right

Chorus
If we listen to the times
We can change your hearts and minds
We can change your hearts and minds
If we listen to the times

I was asked to lead a devotional today. The lectionary text for Sunday is John 10:1-10. I think there’s a link; between my sadness, the song, the movie and the Biblical text. For example shared themes of listening to and in change. A sense of the complexity of listening. That it takes time and requires discernment. A requirement of courage, for to listen is to lay aside what we’ve heard in the past, and to listen to today.

Holy week at the movies: Never let me go, then Invictus on Easter Sunday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

Never let me go: again
While at Hailsham, Tommy gives Kathy a cassette tape of a (fictional) singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy grows to treasure one song in particular, titled, appropriately, “Never let me go.” She grasps it not as a love song, but as a mother’s plea to her baby. The song, a recurring musical note running the length of the movie, offers another way to understand the Easter experience. That in and through acts of perverse human brutality is the reality that in Jesus, we realise that God will “never let us go.”

Invictus

I’d want to focus on one stand out scene, when Matt Damon, playing Springbok Captain, looks out the bars of Mandela’s cell at Robben Island and struggles to grasp the impact of 27 years of back breaking hard labour:

“Thirty years in prison, cell and you come out and forgive the men who put you there.”

And Mandela’s understanding of leadership:

“The rainbow nation starts here. Reconciliation starts here. Forgiveness starts here. It liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it’s such a powerful weapon.”

Such is the power of “Invictus.” It offers a vision of the world in which forgiveness is centrally transformative, not just from the pulpit, but in leadership and through life.

Mark 16:6-7 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you.

Holy week at the movies: Never let me go on Friday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

This is a haunting movie. Directed by Mark Romanek it remains deeply disturbing long after the credits roll. The film is based on a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. Short listed for the 2005 Booker, adapted for the big screen by Alex Garland, it provides some profound questions about being human and the person and work of Jesus.

The movie begins with Ruth (Carey Mulligan) watching her lover, Tommy (Andrew Garfield), preparing to be anesthetised on an operating table.

What follows is a cinematic triptych, elegantly woven together by the evolving love triangle between three friends, Ruth, Tommy and Kathy (Keira Knightley).

The year is 1978 and the friends are children (convincingly played by Ella Purnell, Charlie Rowe, Isobel Meikle-Small) at Hailsham School. What seems sheltered increasingly grows sinister, innocence hemmed by stories of dismembered bodies and evidence of repressed emotions.

Next, the year is 1985 and the children emerge into adolescence. The tension in the love triangle escalates and a sinister future becomes frightfully clearer. The three have been bred as organ donors, born to be broken apart in adulthood, spare lungs and limbs to ensure other humans are healthy.

Finally, the year is 1994 and in adulthood the three friends become re-entangled, each forced to confront their past and future.

In the final scene Ruth is alone. She contemplates her death, facing a fence on which pieces of plastic flap emptily on the wind. A chilling and senseless isolation is complete. All that remain are Ruth’s final words.

“Do we feel life so differently from the people we save?”

The word “save” jumped out, the idea that hunks of flesh ripped from one person’s body might prove essential to the salvation of another. Which brought to mind the Passion of Holy Week and the Christian gospels, which describe a body whipped and pierced. And the claim that such an act of brutality was essential to human redemption.

Are we really catching a glimpse of the Christian understanding of the person and work of Jesus?

Mark 15:33 At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”–which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Holy week at the movies: Dark Knight on Thursday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

This has been a movie eagerly awaited.

First, because with Batman Begins, director Chris Nolan breathed fresh life into the comic genre and the darkly robed DC comic hero of Gotham City.

Second, because with the death earlier this year of Heath Ledger, this movie became a chance to honour the memory of a Hollywood star. Indeed (and sadly) it seems to somehow enhance the movie when you realise you are seeing in real time a man now dead.

The wonderful first. The pace is terrific and the plot is satisfying, the twists come faster than a batmobile. The special effects are eye-popping, with the Joker’s disappearing pencil trick and the truck crash a standout. The characters develop, with the Joker, malevolently superb. He outacts a star cast, including a convincing Michael Caine (Alfred), a mysterious Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), an authentic Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), but a strangely wooden Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes).

Heath Ledger is reported to have lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the Joker’s psychology, posture and voice. His performance is a reminder that human acting can shine alongside the biggest explosions and shiniest Batman suits. Take a bow, and probably an Academy, Heath Ledger and Chris Nolan.

Which leaves the disturbing. Nolan has now directed a string of excellent movies, including The Prestige (2006), Batman Begins (2005), Insomnia (2002) and Memento (2000) which probe the darkness around being human.

With the character of the Joker, we meet evil. As the Joker calmly walks the street, Gotham Hospital exploding behind him, we peer into the human abyss. If this is evil, what is the nature of redemption? In this sense, Dark Knight continues the theological work done in Batman Begins. Both movies explores the way evil and suffering shatters the human person. The ending offers little hope, with the choosing of a lie in the hope of preserving public truth. The movie shreds any feel good, Pollyannaish, liberal dreams of a better world, for the Joker remains a character you would not want to meet in either heaven or hell.

Dark Knight asks us to ponder seriously how low should grace go and how wide should redemption stretch. Don’t offer any Christian piety until you have faced the Joker.

Mark 14:10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 17When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. 18While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me–one who is eating with me.”

Holy week at the movies: Gran Torino on Wednesday

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

A central figure in Holy week is Caiphas, the Jewish high priest, who announces that it is better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish (John 11:50). Such understandings, of the power of sacrifice to ensure community transformation, are ingrained in Christian faith and are powerfully explored in Gran Torino (2008).

Gran Torino is directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars as the main character, Walt Kowalski, an embittered veteran of the Korean war. Walt finds himself recently widowed, yet happily alienated from his family. From his front porch and down quiet Detroit suburban streets Walt growls over his changing neighbourhood and the growing presence of Hmong refugees. Like Walt, they too are struggling to cope with the evolving face of contemporary America, in which white picket fences serve as the battle lines for unresolved racism and unreconciled prejudice.

The silent star of this movie is Walt’s pride and joy, his 1972 mint condition Gran Torino car. Walt’s neighbour, Hmong teenager Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) is bullied into stealing the car in order to gain initiation into the local Hmong gang. Caught by Walt, an unlikely friendship develops, one that will change Walt, Thao and his neighbourhood for ever.

The ending provides one image of atonement. Clint, arms spread in the crucifix position, offers his life. His act of sacrifice lances a boil, exposing injustice on the streets of his community.

A subtle, yet more image of atonement is provided by Thao’s sister, Sue Lor (Ahney Her). She is the person of peace who steps over barriers to embrace Walt into his changing neighbourhood. It is her sacrifice that becomes a catalyst for community change. Viewed with Easter eyes, Sue becomes a female Christ figure.

Gran Torino is never a great film. The opening 45 minutes meander. Some scenes deserve a decent edit and the constant racism is hard to stomach. Despite these shortcomings, the plot themes of sacrifice, and their location in the grit of multi-cultural urban America make Gran Torino a disturbing, yet powerful, way to appreciate Easter.

John 12:23-14 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.