Rules

Many years ago a good friend of mine departed for the Air Force Academy in Colorado. We had often talked about how the military could change him, and perhaps this wouldn't be such a great thing—living in the conformity of military rules. Later on, in my naiveté, I admonished him to not let the Air Force change him. He replied, "you know, honestly I feel like I am even more myself." The strict discipline, the rigorous physical and mental challenges, the conformity, the rules, in fact, had shaped him and given him a sense of self, a confidence, and a freedom that neither of us expected.

Moments of ambiguity at work or at home, times when the right decision is unclear, situations when any decision seems to be the wrong one, even unstructured free time often seem to work against us in experiencing that profound sense of freedom.

Perhaps it seems counterintuitive, but rules provide freedom. It's taken many years for me to discover this, and quite honestly a little bit of pain too. Accomplishing any worthwhile thing takes tenacious discipline. It takes a rule. The Japanese author Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) wakes up every morning at 4 AM and writes for six hours straight. Every day. He goes to bed at 9 PM every night. This is his method of becoming an accomplished and popular author.

It's axiomatic that talent only takes a one so far.  Genius is "90% perspiration" as Thomas Edison famously noted, and it's true; the man or woman of high aspirations must doggedly pursue whatever goal has been entrusted to them.

Why would it be any different for the spiritual life? Why would the pursuit of prayer take less discipline than the pursuit of a career, an education or physical fitness? The spiritual geniuses we admire, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Maximus the Confessor, and hosts of other saints and martyrs were unwavering in their pursuit of the Holy Spirit.

Not many of us, and certainly not I, can approach that sort of discipline. Neither should we inflict our spiritual rules on other people. That's a good way to ruin relationships and make people hate you. Plus, it takes a special kind of egomaniac to dictate other's spiritual discipline.

Yet we need guidance. We can't know everything, and often we don't know that we don't know. Every accomplished athlete has a coach, every artist has a teacher, an influence, a direction. And so rules also open the way to true humility, so that when we fall short we can seek guidance from someone with more experience.*

*The caveat I'll offer is that distinguishing true spiritual guides from charlatans is challenging. Caution is the word.

Pasolini’s Gospel According to Saint Matthew

In Pasolini’s masterpiece, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, we encounter Jesus Christ praying in the morning on his knees with his arms lifted, palms open, ready to encounter his Father’s presence. Similarly, early Christian icons depict prayer in the same manner. Though an Atheist and a Marxist, Pier Paolo Pasolini still emerged from a devoutly Roman Catholic culture, and these ancient depictions would be familiar to him.

In this review we will discuss Pasolini’s much beloved film, demonstrate that it is truly a Christian film while also presenting particular problems and inadequacies as a text.

Can a non-Christian artist produce truly Christian art, or must the artist be a believer to transmit the lore of the Faith purely? Certainly there isn’t enough space to adequately discuss this question in this review, but suffice to say that we will approach the topic of The Gospel from the perspective that it is entirely possible for a nonbeliever to create Christian art. Lloyd Baugh, author of Imagining the Divine takes the opportunity to discuss this more thoroughly in his book. He makes three points that are worth repeating here: first the film must be judged on its own merits as a film (does the film accomplish its “mission”), secondly, and apropos our discussion, if The Gospel According to St. Matthew received official sanction by the Roman Catholic Church, then certainly others can produce films of the same caliber. Thirdly, Baugh makes an important point that the question of belief versus non-belief is a complex one. Baugh states, “ The lines of demarcation between belief and non-belief are sometimes very unclear and often include wide areas of grey. Perhaps…the sincere and coherent searching of the agnostic can be a valid position from which to search, to reflect artistically on the Christ-event by creating a Christ figure.” (111-112) Though Pasolini was unequivocal about his Atheism; we must offer the distinction that he was not necessarily anti-Christian (99).

The story of Pasolini’s decision to make The Gospel is a compelling one. Virtually confined to a house in Assisi awaiting preparations for the visit of Pope John XXIII (to whom his film is dedicated) while a guest of Pro Civitate Christiana, a Catholic cultural organization, Pasolini read the Gospel of Matthew straight through like a novel (95). The specific passage of scripture that riveted him was Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Pasolini’s desire was to depict the gospel strictly from the text, a “realist desire to show what lies hidden,” for often this passage glossed over or ignored. In it Pasolini discovered a Jesus who was a revolutionary (Viano 133).

Photographed in stark black and white, the Jesus of The Gospel According to Saint Matthew is a revolutionary. When a Pharisee chides him for healing on the Sabbath, this Christ replies in single-mindedness “ Is it not lawful to do well on the Sabbath.” He gives the Pharisee a scolding look as he (the Pharisee) was an insolent child.  Of course, the aforementioned scripture, the one that first inspired Pasolini to make the film takes prominence. Jesus walks through a city and prepares his disciples for a mission and for a future of martyrdom. The scene culminates with a swelling musical score. Jesus tells his disciples that he has not come to bring peace, but division. The ancient, crumbling city and the rugged hills of southern Italy make up the background.  This film-Jesus is a dynamic energetic figure, less the mystic sage, but ever on the move, and filling the screen space with his intensity. At least one critic has drawn a comparison between the fiery portrayal of Jesus by Enrique Irazoqui and the equally fiery revolutionary Che Guevara (Macnab 62). Truly, Irazoqui is only missing a beret. “Often Pasolini’s camera pictures him from behind, from the point of view of the disciples as they try to keep up with him. Jesus’ words acquire great power because they are spoken as he moves, or as he stops and twists his body to look back at them and us” (Baugh 102). Critic Maurizio Viano conjectures that Pasolini wanted his Jesus to evoke a love/hate relationship with tradition and the Law. “Such a gesture of simultaneous affirmation/negation,” Viano states, “is cleverly emphasized by a recurrent image in Pasolini’s film: Christ’s most often-repeated posture shows him walking decisively ahead, with his back to the camera and his face turned towards it, an image which stresses leadership but also conveys the sense of going ahead while looking back” (141).

Though very intense, this Jesus is not without mercy and compassion and genuine warmth. Jesus smiles happily, obviously full of joy when he is surrounded by the children in the temple. The encounter and healing of the leper—perhaps one of the most poignant, beautiful scenes in the entire film—is compelling. “…There is a marvelous warm exchange of smiles between him and the man.” Jesus also seems to enjoy very much the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and also speaks kindly to his disciples during the Last Supper scene (Baugh 103).

Far from being a complete word for word rendering of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Pasolini’s film is not without its problems. Pasolini completely leaves out the Transfiguration from Matthew 16. Jesus’ mother Mary is also inexplicably present at the Crucifixion whereas in the Gospel she is not. “Here Pasolini is blatantly violating his own rule of absolute faithfulness to Matthew’s text” (101). The disciples, whose presences unfortunately are mostly limited to long camera takes, get short shrift in Pasolini’s film. “The Apostles are not fully developed characters; none of them has a personal story, not even Judas who, as a rule, is the privileged locus of psychological interpretations.” The Pharisees themselves are only shown as virtually faceless, rigid symbols of power (Viano 139).

Though certainly not a Catholic or even a Christian of any stripe, being in fact an Atheist and a dedicated Marxist, Pier Paolo Pasolini dedicated The Gospel According to St. Matthew to Pope John XXIII. Pasolini was convinced that Christianity and Marxism, at there deepest level, were very similar (Baugh 99). Certainly, his film was an attempt to reconcile the two, hence his strong, revolutionary Jesus. Of course if Marxism shows any resemblance to Christianity it is because the religion influenced culture for almost 2,000 years before Marx published his writings. We can affirm that concern for the poor, and speaking truth to power “come with the territory,” when speaking of Christianity. Pasolini’s film, however, remains a beautiful, startling work, both truly representative of the revolutionary figure of Jesus Christ and the revolutionary time it was made.

Works Cited

Baugh, Lloyd. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ –Figures in Film. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (1997).

Macnab, Geoffrey, Lucy Neville, and Matthew Leyland. “The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Film).” Sight & Sound 12.12 (2002): 62. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 18 Jan. 2011.

Viano, Maurizio Sanzio. A Certain Realism : Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press (1993).

30 [40] Days of Blogging

It's no surprise that I have failed once again in my writing discipline, so in and effort to restart before the year ends I am going to participate in the Preacher Institute's 30 [40] Day's of Blogging. I will try...No! I resolve to write a blog every day for 30 or 40 days – the entire Advent season.

Each day you will see a new post from me on a variety of topics. Each post will be between 500 and 1000 words, because "brevity is the soul of wit," as everyone knows. Plus no one these days like to read large chunks of text. Word economy is goal.

So we'll see what happens. Read, enjoy, share. and have a blessed Advent season. Cheers!

Instinct

All the animals, plants and trees, all the rocks and streams, oceans and deserts follow the Way: The Eternal Path that brought life into being ages upon ages ago, which the entire Universe, in all its intricacies, paradoxes, and mysteries, follows without thinking. That is the goal, I believe: instinctual following of the Way, the Logos.

The Human Person

Who decides what a human being is? And who decides that a human has intrinsic value (that is, value beyond the capacity to contribute to a particular society in a meaningful way)? Is a gay person human? How about a black person? A Jewish person? A communist? Most would offer a resounding "Yes." Most, I'll wager, would say that all these people groups are human and are valuable and contribute meaningfully to society, enrich society with their talents and ideas. But what about a person who cannot contribute meaningfully? What about a person so disabled that there is no hope of them contributing? What about a criminal who has endangerd the way of life for others? As one atheist colleague put it, if we can say that foetus isn't human then it's a simple matter of degree. So who is a human being? Does a human being have intrinsic value and why?

Message to a Friend

Here's something else that occurred to me. Probably not entirely the truth but a good theory. We like to think that as Orthodox we have a pretty clear-eyed view of how things are, and certainly we do compared to Protestants (whatever they are nowadays, who knows?) but here in America all of us are formed in a consumerist culture. We approach all of life like that, religion included. However misguided this is, I don't believe it's something we can help as we are swimming in a sea of consumerist ideology. Neither is the atheist immune. In fact, atheism for most is really like an article of clothing to try on. I have one friend who said that after becoming an atheist he was kinder, more generous, loving, and overall much happier. Sounds like a commercial for atheism to me! Of course most like to assume that they are really being radical and asking all the tough questions, but if we peel that back a little what they're really after is some sort if identity security and an amorphous happiness. Atheism like religion is simply another product that will "do something for you." As we both know, products don't make us better people. Religion won't make us more moral. Atheism won't really make us more fulfilled, but it is powerful subterfuge. One compelling thing about Christianity is that virtue/morality/being better is never the goal but always the result of uniting with Christ. The atheist worth his salt will realize that he will always be the same, never really change, despite the gloss that he may use to cover things up. And that goes for the Christian too. 

And we are right to be suspicious of any ideology, product or system that promises fulfillment rather than reality. The atheist looks at American consumerist Christianity and condemns it because he knows it neither fulfills its promises nor reveals reality.

However, the atheist, I would venture, does not know himself beyond the sum of social controls and conditioning.

Movie Review: Side by Side

If one can make it through film school without having at least one debate about whether or not film is better than digital video, they either dodged a potentially tiresome bullet or live a decade in the future when all such arguments have presumably ceased to exist. Side by Side (2012), a documentary produced and presented by actor Keanu Reeves and directed by Christopher Kenneally, is perhaps the most sophisticated and interesting argument between film’s defenders  and those who are pioneering digital cinema. The documentary (shot on video) explores the history and technology of both film production and digital cinema production. A cacophony of voices, directors, cinematographers, actors, editors, digital effects artists, and technology company representatives, offer arguments on either side. Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Contagion) barely suppresses a seething hatred of film. Director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception) is film’s most stalwart defender, even if it looks like he is holding vigil against the sun rising. Martin Scorsese (Casino, Hugo) emerges as the voice of reason, seeing value in both mediums.

Make no mistake, there are serious issues to be considered; the documentary presents them with a lighthearted tone without evading the honest problems. For instance, the switch to digital video cameras impacts the actor’s performance. The two to three minute break that the actor was often afforded is lost when the camera team no longer has to reload the film magazines. This is either a boon or a bust, depending upon whether you ask John Malkovich or Robert Downey Jr.

Here’s something else: what about archiving digital media? Hard drives fail or become obsolete, sometimes only after a couple of years of having been developed. I do not own a VCR anymore, so playing old family videotapes is near impossible. Yet, if I wanted to dig out the super 8 film reels from my mother’s childhood, I could view them simply by turning on a light and holding them towards the ceiling. According to Scorsese, that film is the best method of archiving visual media is a bit ironic. In a climate controlled room, properly stored film can last hundreds of years. Better still, the medium happens to also be the method by which one gains access. In the mad rush to digital, according to some, the cinema industry has not yet taken into account the need for a foolproof method of archiving digital media. The optimistic digital video defenders, such as George Lucas and James Cameron, maintain that it is simply only a matter of time.

And there is the matter of “democratization.” High definition cameras are available to nearly everyone, creating a boom of freshly-minted auteurs. Some in the industry think this might not be a good thing because the tastemakers will be flung from their posts by a radical uprising of 5D-wielding adolescents. In other words, some are fearing for their jobs.

Like it or not, we are well into the digital video age. Mr. Reeves and Mr. Kenneally explore many of the logistical problems in this moment of transition, giving shrift to issues that deserve consideration in a culture so awash with images like ours.