The cultural year in review
by Gareth Higgins
SojoMail 1-05-2006
This year brought its share of cultural glories and tragedies – from the controversy surrounding the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer – The Opera to the worldwide audience for Live 8’s semi-successful promotion of the Make Poverty History campaign, from the return of Batman to the unleashing of King Kong, from a new Umberto Eco novel to new albums from Kate Bush, Sufjan Stevens, and Neil Diamond.
As for literature, I developed deep admiration and affection for the writing of Anne Lamott, and her Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith is the book that has most enriched my everyday spirituality this year. I was pleasantly surprised by Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You, in which he proposes that popular culture may actually be making us smarter – by educating the audience in complex problem-solving by means of Jack Bauer’s anti-espionage tactics in 24, or through building a whole society in Sim City, for instance. It will change the way you watch TV. For me, though, the greatest pleasure came with the publication of The Complete New Yorker – every single issue of the cultural and political weekly published since 1925. It’s a treasure trove of information and analysis, and a beyond cool experience to read pieces such as analyses of Hitler’s personality written before he invaded Poland, the unfolding of Watergate as it happened, and the reviews of Star Wars printed before it redefined financial success.
Music brought its share of new delights, with a 10-years-in-the-making work of mad genius from Stevie Wonder leading the pack with A Time to Love – proving that he sees more clearly than most on political issues and the Old Testament injunctions to do justice. An heir to this tradition burst into wider consciousness when Sufjan Stevens produced his third album Come On Feel The Illinoise. His angelic voice, unself-conscious love, concern for the margins, and ability to not take himself too seriously combine to reveal an artist of uncommon talent. Going to his October gig in Belfast was one of the most fun things I did all year, along with attending The Ennio Morricone Experience – junk band interpretations of Spaghetti Western soundtracks – with tissue paper and comb, plastic bags, and a cornflake box among their instruments. New albums from Neil Diamond (12 Songs) and Ry Cooder (Chavez Ravine) prove that there’s life in the old-timers yet – Diamond’s laments for lost love and Cooder’s hymn to a Los Angeles community ruined by property developers have more human depth than much of my life. I’m also really getting into the kind of Brazilian jazz that I don’t know the name for yet, but my friend Phil lets me borrow it from time to time and it makes me want to dance.
I began the year at the movies in the company of two rather unhappy, bloated men, one a wine aficionado, the other a fan only of women and his fading star, trying to make sense of their lives in Alexander Payne’s wonderful comedy Sideways. Paul Giamatti didn’t get an Oscar nomination though he gave the performance of the year, and his co-star Thomas Haden Church experienced the irony of resurrecting a career while playing a character with a dead one. This film has a gentle, but realistic, take on marital breakdown, and the challenge of relational commitment. The scene where Giamatti pours expensive wine into a polystyrene cup at a burger joint to mark the pain in his life reminded me that you don’t need to be in church to have a sacramental experience.
The community expanded into the large blended family in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic, a comic-tragic story of redemption on the high seas. Bill Murray continues to prove that he is in a period of late bloom as an actor, but the ensemble cast, including Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum, and Anjelica Huston create an environment that made me think I could quite happily live among them, and even in one scene organizes the group in such a way that they look like the tableau from da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” In a submarine of course.
For pure entertainment value, nothing came near to Christopher Nolan’s reinvention of the dark knight in Batman Begins – an action movie with brains, more plot than you could stuff a scarecrow with, and an appearance from Michael Caine. The most interesting aspect of the film is how Batman is revealed as not so much a superhero as a human being in circumstances that require a superhuman response.
There is no redemption in Downfall – the most vivid interpretation of Hitler’s character ever committed to film; Bruno Ganz dominates the screen in this story of the last weeks of Nazism. In its refusal to demonize Hitler, it takes him seriously as a human being. The easy way out – of suggesting that Hitler was subhuman, and therefore not like us – is no use to a world community seeking to understand evil and how to respond to it.
Understanding the human condition is also at the heart of Jonathan Caouette’s painfully intimate documentary Tarnation – which came out in DVD – culled from footage shot over the course of his still young life. A gay man struggling with his mother’s severe mental illness, his own neuroses, and the search for love, Caouette’s film is the cinematic equivalent of someone’s journal being unlocked – it would appear that he’s been willing to open his life to the rest of us, partly because it makes a powerful piece of cinema, and partly because he needs help. Tarnation – a biblical-sounding title – is like an angst-ridden psalm, crying out to heaven for the presence of God to come near. In this sense, it’s thematically similar to the Italian thriller The Consequences of Love, wherein a mysterious man lives alone in a Swiss hotel for eight years before he finally chooses to break free from the shackles placed on him by organized criminals. He is afraid to get close to anyone, for experience makes him believe that he can only hurt them (and himself). And while he ends his life with a negative view of the consequences of love, the last image of the film – of a middle-aged man remembering how much he loves his best friend – is a fitting candidate for scene of the year.
Two big-name movies make my top 10 list for the way they take on social issues in a manner that is neither trite nor overwhelms the cinematic art. Crash and The Constant Gardener are poles apart in terms of their targets, but their free-thinking engagement with North American racism and global economic injustice unite them as the most intelligent mainstream films released this year. Crash is evocative of the Christian cinephile’s favorite Magnolia, in that it takes in a multitude of characters, and does not allow the audience to judge too quickly the motives or inner lives of people who might initially attract our judgment. We see ourselves reflected in the brokenness of characters who retreat into prejudice toward others as a reaction against their own treatment by a different group, or who feel “angry all the time,” as one character puts it. On the other hand The Constant Gardener – ostensibly a thriller about nefarious practices in the pharmaceutical industry – is so attuned to ethical values that it could have been the official movie of the Make Poverty History campaign. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that matched my own politics so closely, or called more clearly for immediate action on the part of the audience.
To this I’d add King Kong, which is half an hour too long, yet still manages to conjure the magic I used to feel going to Saturday matinees at the Curzon. A History of Violence is cartoony, cool, looks and sounds great, has Ed Harris and William Hurt as bad guys, and Viggo Mortensen turns up to tell a story of midlife redemption in the American heartland. The same heartland is the location for Junebug – a gorgeous piece about simple yet deep American life that manages to take Midwesterners seriously without patronizing them.
And then, as the year drew to a close, Brokeback Mountain appeared out of the mist of film festival acclaim. It deserves the attention it is getting, not simply because it is a truly great piece of North American dramatic art, but because of the philosophical risks it takes. There has never before been a mainstream film that takes same-sex relationships so seriously; or that so strongly refuses to stereotype its gay characters, or that so fully honours the idea that love, when it is real, cannot be denied or restricted. As awards season approaches, this film is bound to attract both acclaim and misguided political criticism. And while its politics are to the fore, and they are likely to make the public conversation about sexuality easier, I hope this does not undermine the fact that Brokeback Mountain is simply a beautiful film.
Honorable mentions this year go to Thumbsucker and Somersault – two films about the painful journey toward growing up in collision with your parents and self; Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist – a high-minded Hollywood thriller about the loss and resurrection of faith; The Beat That My Heart Skipped – an existential French drama about the blending of sacred and profane in the same person; Kinsey, an intelligent and provocative film about sex, drugs, and academic journal articles; and Riding Giants – a documentary about the history and ecstasy of surfing that made me feel closer to God.
And finally, an item that many may have missed: President Bush’s Christmas video, featuring a conversation between George and his dogs intended to be hilarious. In a year when the invasion of Iraq has finally resulted in nothing less than a civil war, when the racist emperor’s new clothes of the U.S. economy were exposed in the callous initial response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and when the White House fought a ban on the use of torture, I find it almost impossible to laugh at the man in the driving seat. It is, I know, supposed to be the season of goodwill; but if the coming of Christ means anything to us today, wherever we locate ourselves in terms of our worldviews and beliefs, it should make us willing to name truth, even when that truth is unpalatable. And the unpalatable truth is that our popular culture has not yet inspired people to take seriously the fact that the asylum is currently run by the lunatics.
Gareth Higgins is a northern Ireland-based activist and writer, and director of the zero28 peace and justice project. His book on spirituality in film, How Movies Helped Save My Soul, is published by Relevant Books. You can find out more at www.zero28.org
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