I Don't Know How She Does It

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Michael Philips (2 Stars) Fr Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1742650/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv109.htm
Michael Philip's review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0913-i-dont-know-how-she-does-it-20110915,0,5672469.column

I Don't Know How She Does It (directed by Douglas McGrath, screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the novel by Allison Pearson) is a nice feel good comedy about a modern woman, Kate Reddy (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) who's trying really hard to do it all.  She and her husband Richard (played by Greg Kinnear) live somewhere in an upper middle class neighborhood in Boston.  They have two kids, a kindergartener named Emily (played by Emma Rayne Lyle) who's already getting something of an attitude and 2 year old Ben (played by Julius and Theadore Goldberg) who still loves his parents unconditionally but has the verbal skills of a, well, a two year old (boy).  Mother-in-law, Marla Reddy (played by Jane Curtin of 1st cast SNL fame) blames Kate for Ben's apparent poor verbal skills.

The generally happy but often frazzled couple, Kate and Richard, are both professionals.  Richard is/was an architect.  Kate works for the Boston branch of a New York headquartered Financial Services Company.  Both have had their careers effected by current financial crisis.  At the beginning of the movie, the two are celebrating (somewhat) a break that Richard has finally received ("no more remodeling basements").  But it's really Kate's career (at the bank, er FSC) that is clearly gearing-up to go somewhere, even if (1) Kate's keenly aware what most of the rest of the country thinks of bankers these days, and (2) she knows that the family is suffering even as she's asked to fly around the country as part of her work.  Kindergartener Emily, Mother-in-law Marla and eventually Richard make sure that she knows how much she's being missed.

At her job, Kate works for Clark Cooper (played by Kelsey Grammar) who isn't always the most sensitive of bosses.  He tries, but ... he is a man.  And it just doesn't fall anywhere in his experience that after returning from a cross-country business trip, Kate has to bake a pie for Emily's kindergarten bakesale the next day.  Kate also has to deal with a rival/suck-up to the boss Chris Bunce (played by Seth Meyers also of SNL, if more recent fame) whose experience of being a married man with a family also seems utterly different from Kate's (Chris' wife does everything at home so he has nothing to do other than plot ways to suck-up to Clark).

Kate also has a super-driven assistant named Momo Hahn (played by Olivia Munn) who looks at _her boss_, Kate, and just doesn't get her life at all (and doesn't want to), declaring early in the movie that she's long decided that she doesn't want to get married or have kids.  Career and an occasional "business-like" fling is all that Momo appears willing (or able) to undertake.  Kate and Richard's babysitter Paula (played by Jessica Szohr), who's on the beach holding a surf-board when not babysitting for them, also doesn't understand Kate.  Both Momo and Paula keep saying "I don't know how you do it" to Kate and neither means this as much of a compliment.  At least initially, both Momo and Paula think that Kate just doesn't know how to make choices.

More sympathetic is Kate's best friend, Allison Henderson (played by Christina Hendricks).  She's a single working mom of Kate's age and part of what Kate confesses that she likes about her is that Allison is the one person that she can always count-on for baking even worse than she does.  So when Kate, for lack of time and the grocery store being closed, comes to Emily's school with a store-bought pie that she mashed into a larger pie pan and sprinkled with powdered sugar for the Kindergarten bake sale, Allison comes with a malformed ball (or was it supposed to be a block) of orange jello.  To Allison, Kate with her powdered-sugar covered storebought pie is a hero.  Again, she says "I don't know how you do it ..."  But both Kate and Allison are hopeless home-economics losers to their stay-at-home wife/mommy rivals Wendy Best (played by Busy Philipps) and Janine LoPietro (played by Sarah Stahi) who when not baking for such bakesales seeming to spend the rest of their days at the health club or taking pallotti classes.

Such then is the ensemble cast which then act out the story: Even as husband Richard finally gets his break at his work, Kate is offered a far greater, though more time consuming opportunity as well.  She is given a chance by her boss Clark to pitch an idea to one of the big-wigs from New York, Jack Abelhammer (played by Pierce Brosnan), who likes both the idea, and ... frankly Kate as well ...

What to do?  Well having set the story up, this is what the movie's about.  IN THE BEST TRADITION of Comedy, it "all ends well."  Nobody ends up getting hurt.  And even the potential sexual harassment issue is handled quite nicely.

Earlier in my life when I was first reading about movies, I read from a number of authors that film as a mass medium when used well does have a mediating function: societal problems are first presented to a viewing audience and then  solutions proposed.  The audience _participates_ in this process by either accepting or rejecting (or partially both) both the articulation of the problem(s) presented in the film and then the film's proposed solution(s).

I found this film as fitting exactly this mold.  First, this movie is a comedy.  That doesn't mean that it doesn't deal with anything serious or with social problems.  It does, but it does so lightly (and in this case _quite gently_) in a way that the whole family can watch/participate.  It then proposes a number of optimistic/positive solutions to the problems presented.

What are the problems?  Well, let's tick them off: (1) Today, most parents either by choice or necessity work.  (2) The current financial crisis has damaged or destroyed entire industries.  So even college educated professionals who in past could count on getting work can't necessarily count on this any more. (3) These days, a lot women are finding themselves getting better jobs (or offered better job opportunities) than their husbands, yet (4) they remain simply indispensable at home as well.  Finally, (5) with both men and women in the work force even James Bond could find himself (or herself) falling for a co-worker.  How to manage all this?

Well, the movie made much of the metaphor that Kate had to be "a juggler."  Perhaps today, _we're all_ jugglers, and _all of us_ could be asked: "How do you do it (all)?"


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Drive

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars though the violence is excessive and actually detracts from the story)

IMBb Listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/
CNS/USCCB Review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv111.htm
Roger Ebert's Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110914/REVIEWS/110919988

Drive (directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, screenplay by Hossein Amini based on the book by James Sallis) is IMHO a needlessly violent contemporary noir flick set in Los Angeles.  Ryan Gosling plays an anonymous driver of very few words, so few in fact, that we never learn his name.  He works in a garage owned by Shannon (played by Bryan Cranston) who finds him occasional gigs stunt driving for Hollywood (and driving get-away cars for various local thieves).  He's _good_.  He knows not only how to drive fast, he knows how to drive smart.  In an early sequence in the movie, he manages to lose a pursuing LAPD helicopter by ditching under an underpass, totally changing his tempo and then leaving calmly in a completely different direction.

Shannon has big plans for him.  He brings in a couple of other guys, Bernie Rose (played by Albert Brooks) along with Bernie's business partner, a tough, named Nino (played by Ron Perlman) to help bankroll his dream -- of buying a stock car to be driven by none other than our fast/smart driving hero.

But alas it's not to be.  Our quiet man of few words falls for a neighbor Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) and her 8-10 year old son Benicio (played by Kaden Leos).  Her husband, Standard (played by Oscar Isaac), was serving time in jail.  When her husband is released, needless to say this produces some awkwardness between them.  However, when our hero finds Standard beat-up in the garage of their apartment complex one afternoon, our hero decides to help him.  Standard's being extorted by thugs who belong to the same gang that were extorting him while he was in prison.  They want to be paid off.  So our hero decides to help Standard do _one_ stickup job of a pawnshop that Standard is promised would pay-off his debt to this gang forever.

Instead the stickup job goes _horribly wrong_ and leads to a chain of events in which only the truly innocent in this story are left standing at its end.

In classic film noir fashion, it's not necessarily that the bad guys in this story are completely evil, but they are definitely fallen.  We encounter a gangster in this movie who tries at least to be an honest gangster.  He kills his victims, often brutally, but at least he does try to minimize their pain.  At the end of the movie, he tells the driver - "Just hand me over the money and your girl lives.  No one left knows about her except you and me.  She'll never even know what happened.  But I can't make the same promise for you.  Whatever dreams, hopes or plans you may have had, put them aside.  You'll spend the rest of your life looking over your back."

Again, I do believe that the violence depicted in the second half of this movie was unnecessary.  The same point could have been made leaving much more to the imagination.  I would even add that the violence depicted actually detracted from the story (something that I believe even Quentin Tarentino has learned over the years).

Still that line by the "honest" if fallen gangster is worth repeating and may have some deterrent value in perhaps saving some young person from doing something really stupid like the driver character in this movie.

Because if you do take a walk on the dark side, you'll _never know_ when your luck will run out, what lurking unspeakable evil you may disturb, what chain of events you may inadvertently set into motion or how many others may ultimately suffer for your transgression.  We may think we are smart, but this bit of wisdom has been with us since the Fall: Evil is generally smarter.


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Mozart's Sister (orig. Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart)

MPAA (unrated) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1653911/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110907/REVIEWS/110909992

Mozart's Sister (screenplay written and directed by René Féret) is a French language, English subtitled film about famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's older sister.  Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart has been the subject of numerous studies and novels in recent years because she herself was quite talented on the harpsichordist and pianist.  Like her younger brother, she began receiving instruction (on the harpichord) from her father at a very young age (at age 7).  During her teenage years, she would accompany her younger brother on the harpsichord and forte piano in his performances.  Finally especially during her brother's younger years, it was she who often received top-billing rather than her brother.  So what happened?  Why did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart get so famous and his older sister Nannerl become a very small footnote in music history, only recently being given more attention?  Well that's what the movie's about ...

This is a story that will irritate (once more) a good deal of younger and middle aged women of today because it becomes fairly clear what happened to Nannerl (played in the movie by Marie Féret): As soon as her younger brother Wolfgang (played by David Moreau) began to show his talent, Nannerl became of secondary concern even though she was older and also quite talented.  To her father, Leopold (played by Marc Barbé) Nannerl became important to him only as much as she could continue to accompany her younger brother on harpsichord / piano.  And her mother (Anna Maria played by Delphine Chuillot) was primarily concerned that her daughter grow-up to be a nice, happy and well-adjusted young lady (thus able to find a nice husband and find happiness raising a nice family...)  Sound familiar?  And what did Nannerl think of all this?

In reality, we don't particularly know.  The movie takes place in and around Paris, France just after Nannerl had her first menstrual period.  This coincidence is important for a number of reasons.  First up until recent decades, women tended to get their first period only in the middle or latter part of their teenage years.  This coincided well with the age in which a young woman became otherwise ready to both have and care for young children (and be therefore ready for marriage).  So in the movie with Nannerl having had her first period, we see that her mother took this as a sign that her daughter had arrived at marriageable age.  This proves important for those seeking historical accuracy because it is known that from the point in which Nannerl reached marriageable age onward, she _no longer_ traveled accompanying her young brother and father throughout Europe but instead remained at home in Salzburg.  So the movie is set at exactly the point when Nannerl's life was about to change.  The movie explores the possibilities that would have been still open to her at that point in her life but possibilities that were rapidly closing for her as well.

If the movie is set in a true biographically/historically attestable turning point in Nannerl's life, the rest of the story becomes _less_ historically attestable.  Sure, it is true that the Mozart family traveled the courts of Europe to display the talents of their musically gifted children, and particularly their son Wolfgang.  There are also indications that Nannerl did write compositions of her own, as apparently her brother Wolfgang would refer to them in his letters to her as they both got older (as yet, none of Nannerl's compositions have ever been found).  Finally later in life, Nannerl did support herself as a piano instructor and may have done so earlier (again attested to by correspondence between her and her brother during his life).  But that Nannerl would have become a confidant of the young and future Louis XVI (as well as one of his sisters who became a nun) or that she would have _stayed on her own_ in Paris for sometime at this critical moment in her life to see if she would make it on her own as an independent young woman at that time, seems _to me_ to stretch credibility, though I suppose it _could_ make for some interesting historical research a young person today who is interested in history.  (Note to whoever would like to take-on such a little historical quest -- you'd almost certainly need to know some French and German to do so, or perhaps make some French or German-speaking friends ;-).

In any case, I found the movie interesting.  And let's remember that Milos Forman certainly took some liberties with his portrayal of Mozart (and Mozart's supposed rival Salieri) in Amadeus.  Indeed, one of the joys of watching _this film_, Mozart's Sister, is the difference in how it presents young Mozart from how Forman did in Amadeus.  In Amadeus, Mozart was portrayed as a wild, spoiled almost "rock star," who could get away with his nutty, self-indulgent behavior because he was simply _that good_ (that talented).  In Féret's Mozart's Sister, Mozart, much younger than in Amadeus, is portrayed as simply a short, smug, somewhat chubby little 10 or 12 year old, who's just totally focused on the one thing he does really, really well -- play music.  In other words, one just wants to slap him, and tell him "get that smug look off of your face." ;-).

Compared to the late-teen "almost a woman" angst-ridden portrayal of Nannerl trying to figure-out where exactly she belongs in life, this portrayal of her talented younger brother as a chubby little 10-12 year old who knows _exactly_ what he's doing was, IMHO, brilliant ;-).

Anyway, though unrated, there's nothing in this film (short of a red stain on Nannerl's nightshirt one morning) that I would think could possibly be of concern to a parent today.  I don't think that young kids would find this movie particularly interesting.  However folks who like history, or otherwise "period pieces" would probably enjoy this film. 


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Higher Ground [2011]

MPAA (PG-13)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 stars) Fr Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1562568/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110831/REVIEWS/110839994

Higher Ground (directed by and starring Vera Farmiga, screenplay co-written by Carolyn S. Briggs and Tim Metcalfe based on the book This Dark World: Story of Salvation Found and Lost by Carolyn S. Briggs) is a film that would probably irritate a good number of Catholics and Christians in the United States today.

To a believer like me, it _feels_ like a straw man, even though I do believe that it _does try_ not to be.  

At its base, Higher Ground a story a woman, Corine (played as a child by McKenzie Turner, as a teenager/young adult by Taissa Farmiga and as an adult by Vera Farmiga) who (1) grew-up in a traditional evangelical/fundamentalist tinged Christian household, (2) _chose_ as a young adult to become a devout  evangelical/fundamentalist Christian as a result of both an immediate crisis soon after she married her high school sweetheart Ethan (played as a teenager/young adult by Boyd Holbrooke and as an adult by Joshua Leonard) and a more generalized yearning for order in her and her husband's young lives, and (3) eventually found it impossible to continue in that faith.

Her departure from her church (and apparently from her faith) appeared to be at least as complex as her entry.

Sure it was _clear as day_ that _a good part_ of it was the result of a very rigidly-held patriarchical understanding of Church by the group that she and husband belonged to.  In the film, Corrine found herself reprimanded by both the Pastor Bud (played by Paul Irwin) and _especially by his wife_ for "coming very close to preaching" one evening during a discussion or faith-sharing session (preaching in this group being considered to be the province only of men).  This kind of rigidity, _when observed from a few steps distance_ (like on a movie screen) seems _simply incomprehensible_ in the modern world.

Still, both the film and presumably the book (I did not read the book and probably won't for lack of time) make the point that this did not compose the entirety of Corrine's departure from her faith.  Instead it was partly the result of the experience of tragedy with regards to a close personal friend, Annika (played by Dagmara Dominczyk) and a general sense of distance from God.  At one point, Corrine says (shown even in the trailer): "Oh God, I want to _feel_ your presence.  Instead, I just feel _nothing_."

Near the end of the movie, she and her husband go to a Christian counselor.  The counselor initially sounds like an absolute quack speaking in _very uncomfortably_ grandiose terms.  TO THE MOVIE'S CREDIT the film does not simply dismiss his appalling if _certainly sincere_ words: "Listen Corrine, we're fighting for your soul.  We want you inside with us in the Church, not outside with the dogs."  Neither she, nor the most of the audience (including myself honestly) understand initially what he's talking about.  Yet, by the end of the movie, it's clear that Corrine (and probably most of the audience) understands.  And yet the movie _ends_ with her _at the Church door_ presumably _about to step out_.  It's a VERY, VERY NICE ENDING.

Folks, I've said this for years at house blessings, where the Reading in the Catholic ritual for such blessings is "Build your house on Rock" (Matt 7:24-28) that _sure_ it's possible to go through this life _without_ believing in God.  The experience of those around us, childhood friends, relatives, etc, in the modern world tell us that this is so.  BUT it is _so much easier_ to _believe_.  The crises in life happen _anyway_ whether we believe in God or not.  I just find it so much easier to believe that God is at my side (and really _with everybody_, _even those I don't particularly like_ or am arguing with) as I go through them.  And yes, _with the perspective of time_ and much prayer and reflection, I do find that events and _even tragedies of the past_ do come to have at least _some redeeming value_.

But I do "get" Corrine too (at least in the movie, again I haven't read the book).  I do hope that she comes to find a peace with her Church and her Church finds _a place_ for her.  And I do hope that all the Corrines of the world and their Churches come to find a similar peace/understanding as well.  For from the time of Jesus in Gethsemene to Mother Theresa in our time, "Dark Nights" have proven redemptive.


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Warrior

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  Roger Ebert (3 Stars)  Fr Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1291584/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv105.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110907/REVIEWS/110909991

Warrior (directed and screenplay/story cowritten by Gavin O'Conner along Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorman) proves to be a surprisingly good movie of this type.  I say surprising because as we talked about this movie in my local Servite community a number of days back, our general consensus was that a fair number of movies have traversed similar ground in recent years -- The Wrestler (2008) and The Fighter (2010).  So we, I believe, legitimately wondered what another movie of this kind could add.  And yet, as I say, I found the movie to be surprising...

I suppose to understand what makes a movie like this work is to understand that movies like this involve two metaphors -- "struggle," and then not just a private/anonymous struggle (which no one sees) but one which has been "elevated to a public stage."   The viewer of this kind of movie is invited to watch the central character of the movie _struggle_, often against _far more_ than just against _mere_ "opponents in the ring" but against various hardships in life (with which we can often identify) and then do so _publicly before all_.  Isn't this the essence of the Rocky (1976) movies and The Gladiator (2000) on which all movies of this story-line/genre are based?

Very good then, what could a "new movie" utilizing this story-line possibly add?  Here is where Warrior gets surprisingly interesting.  First and foremost, the two central characters in the Warrior, Brendan (played by Joel Edgarton) and Tommy (played by Tom Hardy) are two adult _brothers_, from a very dysfunctional, indeed broken family.  Their father, Paddy Conlon (played by Nick Nolte) a veteran of the service was both abusive and a drunk, so much so that his (since deceased) wife left him along with younger son Tommy, (while older son Brendon for reasons we find out in the movie stayed with his father).  Both brothers are deeply scared by their upbringing.  After his mother dies, Tommy joins the Marines and goes to war.  Brandon, grows up to be a physics teacher and marries his high school sweetheart Tess (played by Jennifer Morrison) and attempts to raise "a normal family."

The _one thing_ that both the boys have learned from their father was "how to fight."  Drunk and abusive as he was, Paddy did encourage both, particularly Tommy, in being star quality high school  wrestlers.  And both following high school had become good scrappy fighters in a relatively new (and tremendously brutal) arena sport called Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

The movie begins with a very angry Tommy showing-up in Pittsburgh at the doorstep of his father's house under somewhat mysterious circumstances (wasn't he supposed to be at war?)  He comes back only to berate his old dad (who tries to tell his son that he's been sober now for 3 years, nearly 1000 days).  No matter, Tommy has no time for that.  He shows up, yells at his dad and then leaves.  In the days following, Tommy finds his way to a local MMA gym, where he just beats the daylights out of supposedly one of the better fighters in the sport, and certainly the pride gym owner, Colt Boyt (played by Maximiliano Hernandez) who definitely takes notice.

In the meantime, in Pennsylvania's other major city, Philadelphia (the fictional home of course of Rocky Balboa of the Rocky movies) Brendan's been trying to put together and maintain a normal life with his wife Tess and their two daughters.  It hasn't been easy.  The couple had refinanced their mortgage a number of years back to help pay _for a heart operation_ for one of their little daughters and with the housing market collapse find themselves hopelessly underwater in their mortgage.  Besides working as a physics teacher at a local high school, Brendan bounces at a bar on the side.  Tess also works as a part-time waitress/barmaid as well.  But it's hopeless.  One Saturday night, on his way to his "bouncing" job, Brendan passes a local strip club offering a $500 prize for a MMA pickup fight in a make-shift rink on the strip-club's parking lot.  He stops, enters and wins.  However, when he comes back to school on Monday (his face still bearing the marks of his Saturday fight) thanks to YouTube even the high school kids know that he won those $500 and how.  His boss, Principal Zito (played by Kevin Dunn) is forced to suspend him _without pay_.  With even less options than before, Brendan tells his wife that if nothing else this MMA is relatively "easy money" (at the cost of being beaten up and possibly killed) and seeks out his former MMA buddy Frank Campana (played by Frank Grillo) who now runs a gym to help him train.

Finally while all this is taking place in the lives of the chief protagonists in the story, a super-rich "hedgefund manager" named Mark Bradford (played by Jake McLaughlin) announces to sports television network ESPN's _glee_ that he's going to sponsor a $5 Million "Winner Take All" MMA tournament that he calls "Sparta" 6 weeks hence in Atlantic City.  Mark Bradford does this simply because "he can" and because, he tells ESPN, "Just like a kid wants to know who's the toughest kid on the block, I want to find-out who's the toughest guy on the Planet."  There are slots for 16 fighters.  Since MMA is obscure enough of a sport,  both Tommy and Brendan get into the tournament.  Colt Boyt whose star, Pete "Mad-Dog" Grimes (played by Erik Apple), had been beaten-up by Tommy in the rink that one day, helps Tommy get into the tournament.  Brendan gets in because Frank Campana's star fighter gets hurt just before the tournament starts. 

As the tournament begins, the ESPN sportscasters are skeptical of both Tommy and Brendan.  A video of Tommy beating the daylights out of "Mad Dog" Grimes had circulating around YouTube (but was that a fluke?) and even less was known of Brendan.  Other legitimate (and fearsome) stars, including a Russian fighter named Koba (played by Kurt Angle) had entered the contest.  But that video of Tommy beating-up "Mad Dog" Grimes had made it all the way to Iraq, where a number of Marines identified Tommy as someone who had literally "ripped the door off of a sinking and burning tank" saving all its crew-members but had (mysteriously) not stopped to be thanked never-mind honored with any medal.  What's with that?  (There's a reason, that becomes clear in the film).  In any case, Tommy comes to the tournament with a large and grateful Marine fan-base.  Brendan too has his high schoolers, even the Principal, cheering for him, but nobody takes him seriously.  But he's fighting literally for his home ...

So _both_ Tommy and Brendan, brothers, have compelling stories and yes, we want both of them to win.  The _awful tragedy_ is in this story is that _only one can win_.

And that is _exactly_ what I believe this movie _adds_ to the "fighter" story-line.  Here we want _both_ of these bruised brothers to be able to win (and yes, to _reconcile_ rather than keep "fighting" even with their deeply flawed but also with the haze of the alcohol finally gone _deeply repentant_ dad).  But the circumstances are _staged_ so that _only one can win_.  And who is this scenario _staged_ by?  A "hedgefund manager" _a modern day God_ who like a Greek God of old, may not be evil, but considers humanity something to be played with _for his own amusement_.  Wow.

So on the surface, Warrior may seem "just like any other fighter/gladiator-like movie," but _just like_ most other fighter/gladiator-like movies, there's a lot more going on than meets the eye, and Warrior actually becomes one of the better ones in this regard, for Warrior as _staged_ as it is, becomes a surprisingly _multi-leveled_ parable about life.

Finally for those who may wish a _direct connection_ with the Bible/Christianity/our Faith, as I've mentioned in other reviews on this Blog, the metaphor of "struggle" also appears famously in the Bible with Jacob finding himself wrestling with an unknown opponent in the Desert one night _in a key moment in his life_,  where at the end of the night Jacob is given by his opponent a new name, Isra-el. which we are told means, "one who wrestles with God." (Genesis 32:23-34).


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Contagion

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv106.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110907/REVIEWS/110909994

Contagion (directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Scott Z. Burns) is a major Hollywood production (Warner Brothers) about a fictional world-wide outbreak of a particularly virulent swine-flu-type virus that suddenly appears in Hong Kong and comes to kill millions of people across the United States and, indeed, world-wide before a vaccine is developed to bring the epidemic under control.  The movie was produced with the cooperation of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has dedicated a "current feature" section on their website to the film.

In the film, Beth Enhoff (played by Gwenyth Paltrow) flies back to Minneapolis (via Chicago) after a business trip to Hong Kong looking like she's come down with "some kind of a bug," probably the flu.  It's November, just before Thanksgiving.  She's flown across all kinds of time zones.  Hong Kong is much warmer that time of year than either Chicago or Minneapolis.  Would one be that surprised if she "came down with something" as a result of all that traveling all that distance and finding oneself in all kinds of different climates and environments in a short amount a time?  Probably not.  However, the next day after she "pats her son on the head" as he heads off to school, her husband Mitch (played by Matt Damon) is horrified to see her collapse in their kitchen and go into convulsions.  He calls 911.  The paramedics come take her to the hospital.  She goes into convulsions again in the emergency room and dies.  Mitch is left stunned to the core when the emergency room doctor and attendants tell him that his wife is dead.  At the time, they tell him that it was probably meningitis or encephalitis (probably the latter) and that an autopsy _could_ be done but would probably not reveal anything useful.  Shell-shocked, Mitch leaves the body of his wife at the hospital to begin plans for a funeral.

THE NEXT DAY, Mitch is called by the school nurse that his son is ill with a fever and to come to take him home.  Within hours, the son's dead as well.  In the meantime, a sweating man collapses in Tokyo on a commuter bus and goes into convulsions.  Someone videotapes him convulsing and posts this on YouTube.  Additionally, we see a bicycle courier in Hong Kong again sweating, stopping to catch a breath.  He leans against a wall to rest and soon collapses/dies...

With two members of Mitch's family dying in 48 hours of acute flu like illness, Mitch himself is initially quarantined by Minnesota public health authorities.  When he does not come down with symptoms within a couple of days, he is released.  But in the meantime, the Minnesota public health authorities inform the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.  Both the Minnesota public health authorities and the CDC are in contact with the World Health Organization and are informed of the deaths of the man in Tokyo and several similar deaths in Hong Kong.  Dr. Ellis Cheever (played by Laurence Fishburne) of the CDC sends an assistant Dr. Erin Mears (played by Kate Winslet) up to Minneapolis to liaison with the Minnesota public health authorities.  The WHO sends Dr. Leonora Orantes (played by Marion Cotillard) from its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland to Hong Kong to liaison with public health authorities there.  It is soon established that the man who collapsed and died in Tokyo had been on business in Hong Kong as well.  However, soon a man in Chicago, who hadn't been to Hong Kong is reported to have come down with the same illness (and died).  While interviewing Mitch, Dr. Mears asks if his deceased wife had recently visited anybody in Chicago.  Mitch tells her that the only one that he would think of that his wife would know in Chicago was an ex-boyfriend of hers.  When he mentions his name, it turns out the man who died in Chicago of the same symptoms...

In the meantime, other kids from Mitch's son's school _as well as the school nurse_ come down with the same symptoms and die within a few days of their appearance.  And people in Tokyo, Chicago and Hong Kong are coming down with symptoms and dying rapidly as well.  An autopsy is now conducted on Mitch's wife's brain and tissue samples are rapidly sent to the CDC, other viral specialists including one in San Francisco and to the WHO.  The virus that's isolated is 2/3 from a pig 1/3 from a bat and had somehow made the leap from bat/pig to human somewhere in or around Hong Kong.

All this is discovered within 2 weeks of the first death, Mitch's wife, due to this illness.  However, by this time, thousands of people across the world are coming down with the virus and it is killing 1/3-1/2 of them.   It is clear therefore that the incubation period is very short (2-3 days) and transmission apparently taking place by touch and/or cough.  Dr. Erin Mears begins coordinating with FEMA in Minneapolis to temporarily convert a local national guard armory into a centralized quarantine/treatment center for those effected by the virus, when she herself succumbs to the virus as well...

To quarantine large numbers of people (and to bury them) requires the calling out of the national guard and panic/chaos begin to set-in.  Grocery stores start to get looted.  The governor of Wisconsin panics and orders his national guard to seal the borders between Wisconsin and Minnesota (and presumably Illinois).

With the virus having been isolated if extremely dangerous, a world wide effort (but only in appropriately sealed level-4 isolation facilities) begins to develop a vaccine.  But the process is slow requiring months before a vaccine could be both developed and then grown en masse for use by the general public.  This feeds all kinds of conspiracy rumors, spread now in real-time on the internet/blogosphere as well as all kinds of quack advice for "cures." Jude Law plays a particularly opportunistic (when not paranoid) blogger named Alan Krumwiede.  In China, desperate villagers from a town particularly hit by the virus abduct the WHO's official (Dr Lorena Orantes, mentioned above) who had been sent down there to work with local authorities to contain the virus outbreak.  The villagers (along with the local public health authorities) demand that they be among the "first in line" for the vaccine when it comes on line ...

The scenario is hair-raising and, of course, does "end well" ... though only after the deaths of millions around the globe.  I'll leave it to viewers to decide if they consider the scenario fully credible.

To be honest, I found it surprising that despite portrayals of apparent disruptions in food distribution in the U.S. (looting of shops, etc), both gasoline and electrical power continued to flow apparently without problems.  Another recent program called After Armageddon (2010) produced by the History Channel suggested that the distribution systems for both gasoline/diesel and electrical power would become vulnerable as key people either fell ill, became frightened or otherwise became impeded from going to work due to lack of fuel, roadblocks, stalled traffic, quarantines, etc.
 
On the other hand, the characteristics of the virus in Contagion (very short incubation time on the order of 2-3 days, and very easy method of transmission - by touch or cough) may have made the scenario presented in this movie a "very rare" or "worst case" scenario in its own right.

In any case, though the movie is _not_ for the squeamish (not much is shown but the topic itself might frighten many people), it does give one much to think about, and then to _really appreciate_ the work of "first responders," in this case, in the medical field.


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Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness [2011]

MPAA (unrated) Roger Ebert (3 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (written and directed by Joseph Dorman) is a documentary about the Russian/Ukrainian-born Jewish Yiddish-language writer born Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich who took the pen name Sholem Aleichem.  He is most famous for writing the stories of Tevye the Milkman which became the basis for the musical / film Fiddler on the Roof.

Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich was born in 1859 in the Shtetl, that is, in one of many predominantly Jewish villages that existed in the Polish/Ukranian/Byelorussian countryside at that time.  The documentary followed his rather itinerant life from the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Ukrainian countryside to Kiev, Ukraine's capital to New York City back then to Czarist Russia in Odessa and finally back to New York City again, where he died in 1916).

The 19th century was the period of the Romantic Movement and Romantic Nationalism marked by prodigious production of art and literature throughout Europe and the rise of nationalist consciousnesses again throughout Europe coalescing around the ethnic traditions being collected and studied at the time (ie the Brothers Grimm, et al) often for the first time in their own language and then celebrated in a big way.   The Yiddish Renaissance of which Sholem Aleichem was very much part (as he edited a Yiddish language literary journal out of Kiev at the time) was very much _in the spirit of the age_.  Similar movements throughout Europe ranging from Norway and Finland in the North to Italy in the South helped produce a plethora of new nation states resulting from both the unification of Germany and Italy to the eventual breakup of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, all taking place during a period from the late 19th century through to the end of World War I.

However, the picture was _not at all_ "completely rosy," as the same movements that gave voices to countless theretofore marginalized/anonymous and largely discounted people (and peoples) throughout Europe _also_ resulted in violent clashes when parallel and competing nationalist movements came into contact and clashed.  In Czarist Russia for instance, the same Romantic Movement that produced such Russian literary giants as Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov, whose literary legacies this documentary argued _helped inspire_ Sholem Aleichem and other figures of the Yiddish Renaissance, _also_ resulted in the pogroms of the late 19th century that drove Czarist Russia's Jews by the hundreds of thousands/millions into exile and eventually into the United States.  And the same Romantic Nationalism that inspired the Yiddish Renaissance _also_ inspired within the Jewish community the Zionist movement that eventually rejected the Yiddish language as "a language of bondage" in favor of Modern Hebrew which became the primary language of the modern state of Israel. 

This then would be the socio-cultural background of this documentary, and which covered it quite well though the documentary focused on where this background directly touched Sholem Aleichem's life in Russia, in the Jewish diaspora community in the United States (New York), and in Zionist circles at the time and Israel since.

The richness and dynamicism of that period of time (from the late 1800s through the early 1900s) in Europe has generally _not_ been captured well in American film.  Perhaps the recent Sherlock Holmes remake and the upcoming sequel could give one a taste, as well as Woody Allen's recent movie Midnight in Paris.  However, those portrayals are of London and Paris which touch on the western edge of Europe and don't necessarily capture the spirit of that time that was playing-out actually _primarily_ in Central Europe.  Here perhaps Czech (and other Central European) portrayals _could be useful_ especially the "life and times" of the fictional Czech character Jara Cimrman (invented by Czech writers in the 1970s during the height of the Cold War in good part to remind even the Czechs what Central Europe used to be like before it was devastated first by the Nazis and then by the Communists).  For this was both the part of the world and the time that also produced both Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein and is perhaps culturally most similar to that of Sholem Aleichem portrayed in the documentary here.  Knowing more of the region and the time could help one better appreciate both the Yiddish Rennaisane and then even better grasp the full horror of the Nazi Holocaust which all but wiped out the Jewish community that had remained in this region.  For in doing so, the Holocaust wiped-out from 10 percent to, in some parts, one-third of the people that gave the region its life.

Still what Sholem Aleichem gave to the Jewish community and to the world were his stories of a time and place (amply recounted in the documentary) that remains part of the heritage of tens of millions to hundreds of millions of people in the region around the world as well as a wisdom present in those stories that can be useful to us all.  Because most of us both "like a good story" and can certainly appreciate the precariousness of life that _can feel_ at times like being a "Fiddler on a Roof."  And the documentary did a great, great job at telling the story of one of the greatest storytellers of his time (and any time).


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