Walking with the Enemy [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

Historia y Cine (J.L. Urraca Casal) review*
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review

Background Materials:
     ShalomMagazine.com (M. Michelson) article about Hungarian WW II era Jewish Resistance Hero Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum
     NYTimes (A. Gates) review of documentary Unlikely Heroes [2003] which included the story of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum and was narrated by Ben Kingsley
     JewishStandard.com (J. Friedman) article about a stage play entitled "Unlikely Hero" about Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum
     Wikipedia entry about post-WW I / WW II era Hungarian Head of State (Regent) Miklós Horthy
     Wikipedia entry about Swiss Vice-Consul to Hungary Carl Lutz credited for saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews

My Review:
While in truth the final verdict on the film Walking with the Enemy [2013] (directed by Mark Schmidt, screenplay by Kenny Golde with additions by Richard Lasser) will need to come from both the Jewish/Israeli and Hungarian press as well as Jewish/Israeli and Hungarian public opinion (in both Hungary/Israel and abroad), IMHO the key to appreciating this film is that, set in WW II era Hungary during the closing year of the war, the film actually tells the stories of a number of people, both Hungarian and non, including Hungary's WW II era leader the Regent Miklós Horthy, trying to navigate their way through the horror/mess of the War "In the East," that is, seeking a way to "walk in the midst of enemies" on many sides. 

The primary protagonist of the film, fictionalized (for reasons unclear to me), is Alec Cohen (played by James Armstrong) who is based on the actual Hungarian WW II era Jewish resistance hero named Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum (article about, review of 2003 documentary in part about, review of stage play about).  After escaping a Hungarian forced-labor-camp for young able-bodied men of Jewish ancestry and discovering that the rest of his family had been deported from their home village, he went back to Budapest where he became involved in the Jewish underground there.  Since he had "Aryan features" (looked German ...) and like many educated Central Europeans at the time he spoke German fluently, he came to _impersonate_ a German SS officer in late-1944 Nazi occupied Budapest (Obviously he had to get a hold of an SS officer's uniform to do so).  Then together with several others Jewish resistance members (also dressed in captured SS uniforms) playing as if they were under his command, he would interdict attempts by the Hungarian National Socialist Arrow Cross units to round-up and capture Budapest's Jews, sending them instead to safe-houses throughout the city and giving them forged Swiss citizenship and travel documents obtained from the offices of Swiss Vice-Consul to Hungary Carl Lutz (played in the film by William Hope).  Of course, together they were but a tiny squad of impersonators in the midst of Hungary's capital city under Nazi occupation and as time went on, increasingly under siege by the approaching Soviet army.  So the number of people that they could actually save was necessarily "small" (though the number approached thousands to even tens of thousands) and of course involved enormous risk (capture meant torture and followed by summary execution).  Still, a remarkable number of episodes recalled in the background materials about the historical Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum cited above are dramatized in the film.

Then Hungary's story during World War II was about as complex as they come.  The World War II era Kingdom of Hungary was led by a conservative (former admiral) Regent Miklós Horthy (played in the film by Ben Kingsley) since the chaos following the dissolution of the Austria-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, a chaos that had included a brief period when Hungary had been under Communist rule.  Hence Regent Miklós Horthy was very wary of the Communist Soviet Union even as he mistrusted the mass movements of Fascism as well.  As "Regent" that is a "stand-in" (if for several decades ...) for the "vacant" throne of Hungary, he was, if nothing else, a rather "old school" Aristocrat, or at least espousing the values of that old Aristocracy.  As such, the "mass movements" of the time, especially those espousing thuggery (like both the Communists and the Fascists) were ever suspect by him.  Yet, post WW I Hungary was a small country between two regional powers -- Soviet Russia on one side and later Nazi Germany on the other.  So Miklós Horthy is portrayed in the film (and the wikipedia article about him seems to agree) as one who navigate Hungary between these two powers.  Yes, for much of the War, he did consider Nazi Germany as "the lesser of the two Evils," but so long as Hungary remained not outright occupied, he did the minimum to cooperate with the Nazis.  Notably, while Hungary remained unoccupied he refused to allow Hungary's Jews to be deported.  In late 1941, under pressure from Nazi Germany, he did come to expel (to Nazi occupied Ukraine, and hence to their deaths ...) Jewish refugees who had fled to Hungary (non-Hungarian citizens).

History seems to bear-out his resistance to Nazi pressure as he was NOT tried as a War Criminal after the War).  It was when Miklós Horthy tried to negotiate an Armistice with the Soviet Union that the Nazis stormed in to occupy Hungary and the persecutions / deportations of Hungary's Jews to the death camps of Nazi occupied Poland began.

Anyway, the story of Miklós Horthy's (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to "walk between Hungary's enemies" is also portrayed in this film.

It all makes for a complicated story, but one that many of Central European ancestry would certainly appreciate.  I, of Czech parents, have an aunt who has always quite adamantly maintained that if Austria-Hungary had been able to survive as a "Central European Federation" respecting the rights of all its constituent ethnicities then neither the Nazis nor the Communists would have been able to come to dominate Central Europe and perhaps WW II would have been able to have been prevented.  The splintering of Central Europe into many tiny nation states (including post-WW I Czechoslovakia) resulted in none of these little countries being able to stand-up to either the resurgent Nazi Germany or the post-WW II Soviet Russian juggernaut.

Again final word on the accuracy of the portrayal of WW II era Hungary in this film should be left to both Hungary's (and Israel's) press and public opinion (both in Hungary/Israel and abroad).  But I do appreciate the attempt.  Also Catholics (as well as Protestants) would appreciate that the film-makers tried to underline that many attempts, often successful, by both Catholic / Protestant institutions as well as clergy and laypeople to provide safe-havens to Hungary's many (hundreds of thousands) of Jews.  The Nazi and Hungarian Fascist Arrow-Cross jackboots often carried the day.  However despite brutal occupation, tens of thousands perhaps upwards to several hundred thousand Hungary's Jews across the country were saved.  And that is something to note (and honor) as well.

So over all, pretty good job folks, pretty good job!  This was _not_ a simple story to tell and you did IMHO quite well!  Congratulations!


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.  

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The Other Woman [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

The Other Woman [2014] (directed by Nick Cassavetes, screenplay by Melissa K. Stack) will probably not win many academy awards.  There I said it ;-).  A lot of Cameron Diaz vehicles are like that (I think of the quite trashy but at times honestly very, very funny Bad Teacher [2011] ... yes she played there an awful teacher and on oh so many levels ;-).   I would also add that I find the current film's PG-13 rating very hard to justify (PARENTS TAKE NOTE...).  After all, teens and even children can be admitted to see R-rated films.  They just have to attend the film with an adult (usually a parent). 

Further, since the film's clearly adult focused / oriented -- there's not a single child or even teen cast in the entire film -- I'd honestly think that most teens wouldn't find the film particularly interesting.  It's basically about a fairly large bunch of (to teens) OLD PEOPLE (folks in their almost 30s, late 30s, 40s and beyond) acting "very badly."  Mom and dad might find parts of the movie quite telling or otherwise funny.  BUT I WOULD IMAGINE THAT THE AVERAGE TEEN WOULD QUICKLY NOTE: "HEY THIS FILM ISN'T ABOUT US _AT ALL_" and declare it "lame."  And they'd be RIGHT.

So what to say about a movie that's about adultery, adultery and more adultery? 

Well, at least the film shows pretty well the pain that the said adultery causes.  One can't help but feel sorry for "living far-off in the Connecticut suburbs" wife Kate King (played by Leslie Mann) who discovers that her Manhattan-working well-dressed wheeling-and-dealing "entrepreneur-of-some-sort" husband Mark (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has been cheating on her. 

One even feels sorry for the Manhattan apartment living, "living the dream" (even if previously "unattached"), late-30-something/40-something corporate lawyer Carly (played by Cameron Diaz) who thought she found "a soul-mate" (someone who could understand her) in the confident, ever well-dressed, above mentioned wheeling-and-dealing "entrepreneur-of-sorts" Mark.  He clearly knew Manhattan.  He clearly knew the "dog-eat-dog" pressures of life/business there.  And yet, he seemed to "stand above it all" ... finding time to be romantic with Carly despite the pressures of the pitch and the sell and the job. 

But then a life of "wheeling and dealing" in a high-stakes / "dog-eat-dog" world of commerce, especially if one's wife lives blissfully "far away in the suburbs" can present Temptations to use those "wheeling and dealing skills" (being "everything for everybody" in order to make the sale ...) in "other fields" besides business.  And so we find that good ole Mark even has another mid-late 20-something babe named Amber (played by true Sports Illustrated supermodel Kate Upton) squirreled away at a beach house in The Hamptons and finally another brown-haired, light-sundress-wearing beauty in the once Caribbean Pirate haven, more recently recast as a "tax haven," of The Bahamas.   Mark would make a few airline pilots, traveling salesmen and even spies jealous ... sigh ... ;-).  And yet in the end as I write this, I can't but feel a little sorry for him as well:  One _could_ say that he had arguably become a (up until he got caught) "multi-tasking monster" of our time, juggling _a lot_ of "balls" (yes, I get the double meaning ;-) "in the air."  YET LOOK AT THE DAMAGE TO SO MANY PEOPLE THAT HE CAUSED ...

Anyway, bottom line ... this is not necessarily a bad reflection piece FOR ADULTS.  But I still don't understand the PG-13 rating.  If I were a teen, I'd find the film "kinda boring/lame." ;-)


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Rio 2 [2014]

MPAA (G)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (K. McFarland) review

Rio 2 [2014] (directed by Carlos Saldanha, characters and story by Carlos Saldanha along with Don Rhymer screenplay by Jenny Bicks, Yoni Brenner and Carlos Koktin) surprised me in a good way, through truth be told, I should not have been surprised.  After al,l the director Carlos Saldanha is orignally from Brazil and so would be expected to make a even a kids' film several orders of magnitude more respectful and enlightening of his country of origin's culture than Hollywood films for the big (Grand Budapest Hotel [2013]) and small (Muppets Most Wanted [2014]) made by film-makers with at best a "reader's" or "tourist's" appreciation of the cultures that they were portraying (and frankly making fun of...). 

I held off on viewing and reviewing this film because it came out theaters here in Chicago on the very same weekend as the annual Chicago Latino Film Festival featuring dozens of excellent films made by Latino film makers about their own cultures and national histories (I still have a couple of films that I saw at the festival to review here).  I did not want to confuse authentically Latin American / Latino films made by authentically Latin American / Latino film makers with a Latino-based film coming from Hollywood, but seeing it now, I kinda regret that ... ;-) because Carlos Saldanha honestly did a great job here (and he is in fact, from Brazil ;-).

However, talking for a moment  to adults and not really here to kids -- yes I realize that Rio 2 [2014] was a kids film ;-) -- we live in a globalized time in which for the very small "annoyance" of watching films with subtitles we can (if we choose to) see films at festivals like Chicago's annual European Union, Latino and Black Diaspora Film Festivals about different places in the world, made by film makers from those places in the world.  These kind of festivals take place NOT JUST in larger cities like Chicago but ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES. One just has to look for them: Just Google "Film Festival" and the state or major city that you live in or near and you'll be surprised how many of these festivals play ANNUALLY near you.  The films playing these international film festivals, which are held all over the country and indeed across the world, are made by film-makers from all over the world.  And far more often than not, they are far more intelligent than the one-two-or-even-three-step removed productions made by "far away from the subject matter" Hollywood.  Yes, one will run into propaganda pieces, but (1) one runs into domestically made propaganda pieces as well (consider said Muppets Most Wanted [2014] mentioned above as well as Hop [2011] and Hoodwinked 2 [2011] among even domestically made KIDS' FILMS), and (2) many/most foreign films playing at these festivals are personalist human dramas about what it's like to live in "fill in the blank" country made by a film-maker ACTUALLY FROM THAT COUNTRY.   So ADULTS (and again, not really kids) for the price of "putting up with subtitles" for $10-12 one can get in 2 hours a better perspective into what it's like to live in "fill in the blank" country, the country's history, what the country's proud of, etc, than one could get spending THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on taking "a tour" there.  That's not to say that tours and MISSION EXPERIENCES are bad.  But international film festivals ARE A LOT CHEAPER ...

Muito bem (very good) ... back to the film at hand ;-).  Rio [2011] and now Rio 2 [2014] is that rare Hollywood children's animated film franchise that's made by a director who's actually originally from the country in which the films are set.  And honestly both films become WONDERFUL AMBASSADORS TO VIEWERS with regard to Brazil and its culture.

THE CURRENT FILM'S VERY FIRST SEQUENCE links the flamboyance of the world-famous carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro with the flamboyantly colorful BIRDS and other wildlife of Brazil.  The people dancing in the streets and on floats parading through the streets -- the people often dressed in elaborate and colorful feathers -- are juxtaposed with the film's lovable and colorful BIRDS DANCING AND SINGING (chirping) AWAY AS WELL.  Wow!  What a GREAT WAY to explain the uniqueness of Brazil's carnival celebrations as compared to the ways it's celebrated (always flamboyantly, but ever differently) across the globe and in a way that even a kid could understand:  Brazilians often dress for Carnevale in flamboyant dress often accented by feathers BECAUSE THEIR OWN BIRDS ARE DRESSED THAT WAY.  And they sing and they dance JUST LIKE THE BIRDS OF THEIR LAND DO.  Again, even a 6 year old could understand that ;-)

Then the fundamental story in the Rio franchise about the relationships between Birds (to a large extent conflated WITH BRAZILIANS) and various people (often enough but not always WESTERNERS / NORTHERNERS, that is "non Brazilians").  And to the franchise's credit, the franchise shows IN BOTH FILMS that there are both "good and bad Birds" (again often linked to Brazilians) and "good and bad People" (again often linked to Westerners/Northerners that is, non-Brazilians).

So Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenstein) is a rare Brazilian Blue Macaw who in the first film actually spent much of his life "up North" (in the United States) among humans and even at the beginning of this film remains quite at home among people perhaps even more so that with birds.  Indeed, he and his wife Jewel (voiced by Anne Hatheway) actually were introduced to each other as a result of intervention of humans: In the first movie Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro) a Brazilian ornitologist (one who studies birds) came all the way up to the United States to find the very rare Blu (to bring back for Jewel then thought to be only other "Blue Macaw" left in the whole world).  Dr. Tulio finds Blu happily residing in snowy North America (as the first film notes "NOT Brazil" ;-) with Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann) a (North) American pet-shop owner.  Not only does Dr. Tulio bring Blu back to Rio (for Jewel) but also Linda because the two "bird geeks" fall in love with each other in the process ;-).  The result is that both Bird and Human, and South American and North American, are shown to being able to get along and indeed help each other.

In this second film, we find that Tulio and Linda go out into the Amazon (to look for rare birds) and THERE discover (on basis of a feather) that there _may be_ other Blue Macaws living out there somewhere deep in the Amazon.  That news sends Blu and Jewel and their family out to the Amazon as well: Blu's not particularly happy as one who's lived all his life around the comforts of the city, he'd prefer to stay home, while Jewel, more comfortable with the ways of birds would like to go out and see if they could find "more of their kin").  Much ensues ...

Among that which ensues is that Blu / Jewel (and their other feathered friends) DO FIND the "lost flock of Blue Macaws" that Tulio and Linda were looking for (and actually help the two humans find the flock as well ... ;-) and, we find that at the head of this flock of Blue Macaws is ... Jewel's father, the rather stern and very "pro-bird chauvinistic" Eduardo (voiced by Andy Garcia), who for a while dismisses Blu as "a pet" for being too "lost in the jungle" and way too favorable of people ("I can't believe he used to the p-word" poor Blu complains at one point).

Well, of course, _that_ attitude will have to change and by the end of the film even Eduardo comes to recognize that while there are evil people out there (like a foreman of a logging enterprise that just wants to cut down all the trees around where they live), there are also good ones (like the hapless if kind Tulio and Linda) AND THAT IT'S A GOOD THING THAT PEOPLE (err BIRDS ;-) like BLU EXIST, who can form bridges between Birds and People (between "us" and "them") rather than just "stay with one's own kind." ;-)

And the film also features Evil Birds.  Nigel (voiced by Jemaine Clement) who had been something of a "king pin" of a "bird gang" running out of a Rio de Janeiro "favela" in the first movie, makes an appearance again as a sinister bird out to just cause trouble among the other birds as well.

All this plays out with some very authentic Brazilian and Amazonian imagery and motifs:  I've actually been several times to the my religious order's (the Servites) Mission in the Acre.  So I can attest to the authenticity of the boats and Amazonian towns portrayed in the film.  Then one of the truly inspired _gems_ of this film portrays the Blue Macaws and their Red Parrot neighbors settling a dispute. How?  With "a war."  But what do they mean by "a war"?  A "bird soccer match" with a Brazilian chestnut serving as the soccer ball ;-).

So folks this is a very nice movie with some very very nice messaging to young kids: (1) The Other need not be your enemy, and indeed could become your friend, (2) Indeed can all enrich each other just like all those tropical birds enrich the life and culture of Brazil, and (3) DISPUTES NEED NOT BE SETTLED WITH GUNS ... WHY NOT A BALL GAME OR TWO INSTEAD ;-).

And that's honestly NOT A BAD MESSAGE FOR CHICAGO (my hometown and where I'm currently stationed as well), plagued in recently by a vicious wave of gang violence, AS WELL.

So parabens (congratulations) Carlos Saldanha parabens!

 
ADDENDUM:

I mentioned above that I had gone (led a group from the United States) out to the Servite Mission in Acre, Brazil deep in the Amazon some years back.  I was also the principal translator into English of a book published (in Portuguese) for free by the Servites about the Amazon.  It was called The Amazonia We Do Not Know.  The English translation, worth the read, is available here. 


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Transcendence [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  AARP () Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Transcendnce [2014] (directed by Wally Pfister, screenplay by Jack Paglen) is a sci-fi-ish thriller set in the near future that explores the possibility (and some of the ramifications) of uploading a human mind onto a computer, in effect, digitizing it, making it (at least the digitized copy) as portable (and malleable...) as a computer virus or a jpeg file.

The concept and possibilities/dangers therefore will be fascinating to many, and yet also probably further in the future than the film's "near future" setting.  Why?  At minimum, a _functioning_ digitized copy of a brain from nature could not reside in just _any_ computer.  There are questions of brain architecture that would have to be resolved/simulated that would make the architecture of a computer fit for containing such a functioning digitized copy of a brain very different from the common-place computer or smart phone of today.  Hence said digitized copy of a brain couldn't just "swim across the internet" at will and "parking itself in just any given computer" at will ... So in the "real world" it would probably be PRETTY EASY to find where the digitized mind of AI-guru Dr Will Caster (played in the film by Johnny Depp) was residing.  And once one knew where said computer containing the digitized mind of AI-guru Will Caster was located, I'd be pretty certain that EVEN TODAY the good folks at the NSA (or even "Anonymous") would find a way to hack and destroy it without resorting to the (MILD SPOILER ALERT) rather Apocalyptic ending that the current story culminates in.

Still, I do find the possibilities / potential dangers raised by the very concept of "digitizing a human brain" fascinating: (1) If one could make a functioning digital copy of someone's brain, one could (obviously) make digital clones.  Yet those digital clones, from the very moment that they were created would necessarily begin to diverge from themselves.  (2) Could some law enforcement entity in the future do some kind of "MRI scan" of a captured "terrorist suspect's" brain and then "extract information" from the digitized copy of that prisoner's brain? (virtual "enhanced interrogation" /  or even virtual torture?).  (3) Could a future employer do said "MRI-like scan" of a potential employee's brain to make a digital copy "to run simulations with" to see what that potential employee would be capable of?  Could the employer then not hire the potential employee but keep the digital copy of the potential employee's "on file just in case" ... or even (unethically) use that digital copy of the potential employee's brain to do the employer's work without paying the potential employer for its services? (virtual slavery?)

Above, I've "played jazz" with basic concept behind the film, but the story-line of the film itself is not bad:  After AI-guru Dr. Will Caster is shot (and more importantly poisoned by a toxin-laced bullet) by a radical anti-technology terrorist group, his desperate wife and colleague Dr. Evelyn Caster (played by Rebecca Hall) decides to try to upload the contents of Will's brain into their computer before he dies (They were AI specialists working on advanced computers that were trying to mimic mammalian brain processes).   The radical anti-technology terrorist group tries to stop her, but ... well you guessed it ... she succeeds.

'Cept ... is the digital copy of Will's mind, really Will?  That's what Will and Evelyn's best friend and also colleague Dr. Max Waters (played by Paul Bethany) asks.  And the rest of the movie is about answering that question ... even as Will's "digital mind" becomes "bigger and bigger and bigger" (more and more capable) ... and hence, scarier and scarier ...

Now obviously _at best_ the digital copy of Will's mind IS A COPY (a CLONE).  On the other hand, since the original Dr. Will Caster died shortly after his mind was "uploaded" to the computer, "digital Will" could be (at least at the beginning) a _pretty good facsimile_.  And if "digital Will" changed/grew/evolved afterwards, well ... don't we all (change/grow/evolve) during the course of our lives?

Then theologically (metaphysically) speaking, there could be a question of whether one really could transfer the mind (and arguably the soul) of a person from a biological substrate to a digital one.  Then if one could make out of the digital copy thousands of other copies, would the soul copy/multiply/individuate as well?  The CNS/USCCB reviewer reminds readers that certainly the traditional Catholic/Christian metaphysical answer would be a rather emphatic no.  On the other hand, the book / film Cloud Atlas [2012] suggests that the final bastion of human prejudice will be against artificial sentient beings.

My own concern would be that even if becomes possible to upload a person's mind onto a computer, WHAT ELSE WOULD THE "GOOD PEOPLE" OFFERING SUCH A SERVICE "BUNDLE" WITH THE PROCESS ... Would the "digital you" suddenly become "incompatible" with all "name that brand" competitor products/services?  Or on the other hand could the "digital you" suddenly find itself _craving_ "name that brand" allied products/services?   Would the "Good People" who uploaded and would be storing one's digitized mind become "part owners" of its contents (our memories) and therefore be able to "sell" them?  Could some NSA-like agency be able then to get a search warrant to "scan through" our digitized mind's memories stored somewhere by the "Good People" offering us this "service" of "parking" our "digitized minds" with them?

As I wrote in my review of the recent film Her [2013] that raises similar questions, we can be thankful that whether we were created by chance OR (as we Catholic/Christians believe) BY A NOW CLEARLY, TRULY SURPRISINGLY BENEVOLENT CREATOR we do apparently truly have Free Will.  There have been no "Name that Service Ads" appearing in front of our minds' eyes or in our dreams.  In contrast, it's hard to imagine an "electronic companion" created by some for-profit corporation that would not have some kind of "adware" bundled inside that "e-friend" or accompanying our new digitized "virtual minds."   And then honestly how much "bundled adware" or other "non/post-human functionality" could there be added to a digitized human mind before its previous "human soul" would be altered beyond recognition/destroyed.  A mechanized "transformer" being only capable of using "name that brand" products/services would definitely not be a human any more (but rather some kind of weird cyber-slave) even if it was driven by an initially human brain "uploaded" to make the mechanized thing run.

But wow!   What kind of thoughts / concerns this film raises!  Several reviewers (including some I list above) have compared this film to the Frankenstein story where the lead character, Dr Will Caster plays the roles of both "mad scientist" and his "monstrous creation."  It's funny, but this may be the first time I've ever thought this (I turned fifty late last year): I'm happy that I'll probably be dead before most of what's portrayed as playing out in this film comes to pass ;-)

But still honestly, what a discussion piece!


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Heaven is For Real [2014]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-1)  AARP (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 - 4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune/Variety (J. Chung) review
AARP-MfG (B. Newcott) review 
RE.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Heaven is For Real [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Randall Wallace along with Chris Parker, based on the book by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent) released just in time for Passover and the Christian celebrations Easter ends a remarkably respectful Lent this year by Hollywood, one which featured other Biblically themed films including Son of God [2014] and Noah [2014].

It's a hopeful (and true) story about a little boy named Colton Burpo (played by Conner Corum) who had a near death experience of Heaven after he nearly died.  Coming to after nearly dying, he surprised everyone, including his parents (played by Greg Kinnear and Kelly Reilly), with his straight-forward talking of things literally "not of this earth," things about both his family history and "things of God / the Christian faith" that AS A FOUR YEAR OLD he could not have known or easily made-up, things like Jesus' Stigmata (Colton was growing up in a Methodist household, Colton's dad being a Methodist minister) or Jesus' eye color (few to no one would have invented this detail, much less a four year old, much less the color that the four year old matter-of-factly mentioned it was -- neither "really weird" nor particularly expected).  So what happened?

It's a lovely and again hopeful story released as a film just in time for our (Christian) celebration of Jesus' Resurrection at Easter.

Do Catholics / Christians have to believe the contents of this film?  Of course not (one does not have to believe ANY "private revelation").  But it does support the basic message of the Jesus' Gospel, that "God is With Us" (Matt 1:23, Matt 28:20) through the whole of our lives and that even Death does not have he Final Word, the final Word remains with God, "the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." (Rev 22:12-13).

So in the midst of a very busy next few days (I'm writing this during Holy Week as we approach the beginning of the Triduum tomorrow) this would not be an entirely waste of time to see (but do go to the Liturgies first ;-)

But in any case Happy Holy Week and Happy Easter all!


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Elena [2012]

MPAA (UR would be R)   Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Official website

BrCine.br (C. Nader) review*
O Fohla.br (M. Laob) review*

Elena [2012] (directed and cowritten by Petra Costa along with Carolina Ziskund) is a heart-rending documentary that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  It's about the young Brazilian director's older sister Elena who at 19 and an aspiring actress in New York had committed suicide some 20 years earlier. 

Why did Elena do it?  Isn't that ever the question?   Petra had been only seven at the time.  What she remembered of her older sister was what a seven year old would remember plus pictures, film clips, and even voice recordings of her, as Elena, self-conscious about her "bad" handwriting would often send audio cassette tapes in lieu of letters back home to her family.

It's clear that Elena had a depressive personality.  Artists of all types are also notoriously moody.  New York, the home of the United States' "serious artists" is arguably chock full of them.  Recent films about tortured artists in New York include Black Swan [2010] (for which Natalie Portman won an Oscar), A Late Quartet [2012] (which costarred the brilliant and tortured in life Philip Seymour Hoffman, who recently died of a drug overdose) and Frances Ha [2012] (which starred the ever-smiling even if her characters face sooo much failure and pain, Greta Gerwig).

Further, this is an IMHO quintessentially Brazilian story, where family history already carries with it a great deal of suffering/pain. Though born out in the provinces in "Mines Gerais" Elena and Petra's mother had already been in her youth an aspiring artist.  She then married dashing young man who had come back from studies in the United States a convinced Leftist and Che Guevara supporter.  Together they had joined the Brazilian Communist Party and IF NOT FOR HER MOTHER BEING PREGNANT WITH ELENA WOULD HAVE ALMOST CERTAINLY JOINED THE EMERGING "BRAZILIAN COMMUNIST INSURGENCY" OF THE 1960s FORMING ON THE BORDER WITH URUGUAY WHERE THEY WOULD HAVE ALMOST CERTAINLY BEEN KILLED.  Instead, the Communist leadership had convinced them "guerrilla warfare" was NOT good for a young couple with a child and convinced them that they could play "a different role" away from the fighting.  ALMOST ALL THEIR FRIENDS WHO JOINED THE BRAZILIAN COMMUNIST GUERRILLA FIGHTERS HAD BEEN KILLED OR EXECUTED IN THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING ELENA'S BIRTH.  The irony, of course, that Petra and her parents ALL owe their lives to ELENA who grew up to kill herself is again just heart-rending.

Then from what I've experienced of Brazilian families (my religious order, the Servites, has a significant presence in Brazil), distance especially for young women, from their families is REALLY, REALLY HARD.  So even though Elena initially went ENTHUSIASTICALLY to New York to study performance arts (acting and dance), and even made some connections -- she apparently reported back home that she met people like Francis Ford Copolla -- soon she found herself deathly homesick, quit everything and went home to Brazil.

So what did the family do?  Again, something IMHO quintessentially (if they have the means) Brazilian: both mom and younger daughter Petra accompanied Elena back to New York to LIVE THERE WITH HER TO SUPPORT HER so that she'd complete her studies.

Of course, Elena was a mess.  And despite a family that loved her and clearly wanted to support her, she spiraled inward and eventually took a bottle of pills and killed herself.

What could have been done?  Elena had apparently gone to get help.  She was on lithium in the months before she died.  This was apparently just before Prosac and similar anti-depressant drugs had come-out.  

She was above all a very sensitive person, an artist type in a family with both perhaps predispositions toward sadness/depression and then a family history (the friends around the parents who were all killed) with much to feel sadness / depression about.


So how does the director tell the story of Elena's life and her death.  Beautifully.  She interviews people who knew her as a friend and as a student.  She uses those audiotapes of her reports back home.  She uses old 8-mm and Super-8 movie clips of her when she was young and then performing at school in New York.  She also uses the metaphor of water (see the poster) showing Elena as simply feeling overwhelmed.

Does the film glorify her suicide?  It's a question to ask.  I'd say emphatically no.  If anything, the film so clearly expresses the sadness of the family that lost her, misses her and has experienced her suicide as a very big hole left by her in their lives.  They do go on, but they wonder why (she did it) and wish (for both her and their sake) that she was still with them.  No it's not a glorification of suicide at all.  The film just shows it to be a big, sad hole, for everyone it touched.



* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.  

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Patagonia of Dreams (orig. Patagonia de los Sueños) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 - 4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Cinechile.cl listing*

Official website*

Cinechile.cl Interview (English) w. Director

Patagonia of Dreams (orig. Patagonia de los Sueños) [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* (directed and co-written by Jorge López Sotomayor [IMDb] [CCh]* along with Gerardo Cáceres [IMDb] [CCh]* based on the Diary of Chantal Rouquaud*) is a Chilean / Argentinian film that played recently at the 30th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  The film played at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival last year.

Set in Buenos Aires and Patagonia of the latter part of the 1800s, it would be fair to compare the film to the famous Hollywood Post-Colonial "Colonial epic" Out of Africa [1985] as the issues / conflicts present are remarkably similar:

(1) In each case a European couple or family already of some means sets out to another land (actually under the jurisdiction of another European/Western power) to make (or re-make) their fortune.

Out of Africa [1985] is based on the memoirs the Karen Denisen (played in that film by Meryl Streep) who at the beginning of her story married a Swedish (lesser) baron named Bror von Brixen.  She soon moved with her new husband to Kenya (then British East Africa) where they wished to (re)establish a name for themselves with a coffee plantation.

Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* is inspired by the diary of Chantal Rouquaud (played in the film by Juanita Ringeling [IMDb] [CCh]*) who at the beginning of the story was the 17 year old daughter of M. and Mde. Rouquard (played by Martín Neglia [IMDb] [CCh]* and Alessandra Guerzoni [IMDb] [CCh]*).  The family though "already-of-some-means" back in France had emigrated to Argentina some years earlier in hopes of "increasing their station" there.  At the beginning of the story, we learn that M. Rouquard has staked the family's fortunes on establishing a "fish processing" operation out in the coastal wilds of Argentina's southern Patagonia region, to the distress of the 17-year-old Chantal who had been looking forward being a young and sought-after "belle of the balls" back in B.A.

(2) In each case, arrival out "in the colonies" (Kenya / British East Africa for the Von Brixens), Patagonia for the Rouguauds was a shock.  In both cases, they found themselves among truly tiny communities of Europeans/Westerners (white people...) in lands that, naturally, had belonged other NATIVE populations. What were the white European colonists doing there?

That's a very good question noted Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] [IMDb] [CCh]* director present at the film's screening and part of the reason why he made the film (not in any way to "glorify" Chile / Argentina's expansion Southward into Patagonia during the late 1800s but rather to put it in a general context of other Western/European colonial expansions occurring at the time all across the globe.

What made the Rouquauds feel that they deserved to go down to Patagonia to start a fish processing enterprise on land nominally conceded to them by Argentina but had clearly been inhabited by others since time immemorial?  What made the Von Brixens feel that they deserved to leave their smaller possessions in southern Scandinavia and try luck with a coffee plantation on land nominally conceded to them by the British Colonial authority but was on land that was inhabited by native Kenyans since time immemorial?  For that matter, what made the artist Paul Gauguin feel that he could to leave everything (including his own wife and kids) in France and "reestablish himself" on the French colonial "possession" of Tahiti and spend the rest of his life painting half-naked native Tahitian women on land nominally controlled by France but in reality had belonged to the Tahitian Polynesian people since time immemorial?   What made countless Europeans from 1500 through to the end of World War II leave their native lands and "try their luck" with all kinds of commercial ventures big and small on "other peoples' lands" and requiring various levels of immorality (ranging from simply setting-up a Mission or trading post on land that was initially largely empty but certainly _never_ previously "theirs" to displacement/marginalization of the native populations to enslavement to genocide) to do so?

Yet, of course, I write my blog from CHICAGO, today a city of 2.5 million and a metropolitan area of 8-10 million which started as a simple trading post founded in the 1780s by Jean Baptiste du Sable of African (Haitian) and French descent who thought it a wise idea to set one up near the mouth of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan (about 100-200 meters from where the AMC River East-21 Movie Theater where I saw the current film stands today ;-).  A few miles upstream, the Chicago River comes within a mile of the Des Plaines River, which flows into the Illinois River and then into the Mississippi.  So Du Sable's trading post (and modern Chicago) fell on the crossroads of a shipping route that could extend from the North Atlantic (the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in Canada) down the St. Lawrence River across the chain of the Great Lakes and then by means of this geographic accident of the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers coming so close to each other all the way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.  Is North America a better place because Du Sable had the foresight to setup a trading post here in what subsequently became the metropolis of Chicago?   And while it is true that Native American tribes who used to live in the Chicago area were eventually forcibly removed / wiped-out (as a consequence of the Blackhawk War) that was not an inevitability but rather a subsequent choice by the American government that eventually took definitive hold of the region.  (The same could be said of the fate of the the native peoples of Patagonia on whose lands the Rauguauds initially set-up their still quite little fish processing facility.  It wasn't necessarily inevitable that the Argentinian government would unleash a campaign of genocide against the native peoples on their lands, or the Chilean government would marginalize the natives onto North American style reservations).    

(3) As in the case of the experience of the Von Brixens in Kenya (British East Africa) the experience of the Rauguauds in Patagonia was one where there was international tension in the air.  Not only was there the question of the morality of "coming from far away" to "establish themselves" on "other peoples' land", there was competition between "Great" or "Regional Powers" over the land.  In the case of the Von Brixens, the competition was between the British in what today is Kenya and the Germans whose East African possessions became today's Tanzania.  In the case of the Rauguauds, the tension was between Argentina and Chile, who both claimed large portions of Patagonia and even the British who had a colony on the Falkland Islands / Malvinas (over which there was the (in)famous 1982 War between Argentina and Britain).

(4) If there is a lot of subtext to both stories -- colonialism, the mistreatment of the native peoples as a consequence, international rivalry, even the role of women (as both Out of Africa [1985] and Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] were told an basis of recollections by (then) relatively young women of their experiences of "colonial life" that wasn't necessarily chosen ... both probably would have preferred initially to stay in their native lands if they had been given a choice, instead they had to obey the men in their lives and try "to make the best of things" when they go there -- both stories are ultimately about the individuals present in the stories.

In both cases, there scoundrels, and there were noble types. Both Out of Africa [1985]'s Karen Denisen von Brixen (played in that film by Meryl Streep) and Patagonia de los Sueños [2013] Chantal (played by Juanita Ringeling [IMDb] [CCh]*) matured as a result of their experiences in the colonies.  And both found their soul mates out there: Karen von Brixen found the dashing bush pilot Denys (played in the film by Robert Redford), while Chantal found the German born ethnographer/artist Thomas Ohlsen (played in the film by Ariel Canale [IMDb] [CCh]*) whose drawings of the Tehuelche people of Patagonia remain among the best records of their way of life in the early years of contact with the Europeans/the West.

All in all, North American and European viewers who like history would probably find this historical drama about the Rauguaud family's experience in Patagonia of the late 1800s fascinating and its viewing might inspire discussions about the nature, circumstances and legacy of the European/Western Colonial Era in general.  Again, what (besides simply "Manifest Destiny" arrogance) drove so many Europeans to seek both better lives and even fortunes all across the globe at that time? 


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.  

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