Colette [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Novinky.cz (6/10)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD listing*
FDB.cz listing*

iDnes.cz (M. Spáčilová) review*
Lidovky.cz (A. Prokopová) review*
Novinky.cz (V. Míšková) review*

Czech that Film [official site] [2014 line-up at GSFC in Chicago]

About writer Arnošt Lustig [en.wikip] [cz.wikip]* [NYT Obituary] [Amazon.com] [IMDb]

Colette [2013] [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Milan Cieslar [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]* along with Arnošt Lustig [en.wikip] [cz.wikip]* [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]* the author of the novel Colette: Dívka z Antverp (Colette: A Girl from Antwerp) on which the film is based, and Ladislava Chateau [FDB]*) is a Holocaust themed film that played recently at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago as part of 2014 Czech That Film Tour cosponsored by the Czech Diplomatic Mission to the United States.

Perhaps uneven (see even the Czech reviews above) and arguably experimental in various aspects (for instance, the version of the film that was presented at the GSFC was _dubbed_ by European actors in English), the value of the film to American/Western audiences would be two-fold: (1) The film introduces in a new way the contributions of Czech Jewish writer, and Holocaust survivor, Arnošt Lustig [en.wikip] [cz.wikip]*[NYT Obit] to American/Western audiences, and  (2) the film offers a "small country" perspective (and perhaps a peculiarly Czech one) to the experience of the Holocaust, one which Western and perhaps particularly American audiences would find unfamiliar and perhaps even somewhat unnerving: 

For very early in the story at a 1973 New York "first meeting of the parents" dinner of two young first generation Jewish American lovebirds, both children of Holocaust survivors, the father of the future groom _encouraged by his future daughter-in-law_ asks her mother: "So being that I've been where you've been (I'm also a Holocaust survivor) can I ask you ... how did you make it?  How did you survive?"  Taken aback by the question (the reason why the father of the groom was asked by his future daughter-in-law to broach the question was that her mother _never talked about it_), she answers, "Well, like all of us survived ... by a series of 'little miracles.'"  She went on to explain how one time an SS-officer had tried to take her to the side and rape her, and she "pushed him so hard that he fell into the mud."  and that seeing what was happening "even the other guards stepped to her defense."

It's immediately clear that the father-of-the-groom was unconvinced but he didn't push the matter further.  After dinner though, as he and his son walk home, he tells his son that her story was a lie, perhaps even a noble one, but a lie nonetheless.  Why?   Because "if she had really defended her honor in that way against that SS officer, she would have almost certainly been shot right then and there."

The father then says goodbye to his son, goes back to his flat, and ... as a writer, spends the rest of the night, inspired to write ... The rest of the story follows:

What follows is the story of two _young_ but in every other aspect, utterly ordinary European Jews, one Czech, from Prague, named Vili, short for Vilhelm (played by Jiří Mádl [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) and the other Belgian, Colette (played by Clémence Thioly [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) from Antwerp.  And the two met in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Now, How??? did they even meet?   The vast majority of Jews arriving at Auschwitz were immediately "processed," that is, stripped of their remaining possessions (including of their hair and the clothes on their backs) and then led into the showers where they were gassed-to-death and later cremated.  Well, by sheer luck, Vili _was recognized_ ON THE RAILROAD PLATFORM, THERE, IN AUSCHWITZ as he disembarked from the train (from the cattle car that he was in) by a Czech-Jewish friend who he had known from Teresienstadt (another Nazi concentration camp though that one located on Czech soil).  THAT FRIEND was able to pull Vili aside from the rest of the arrivals and have him put subsequently on a "work detail" (rather than be sent to be gassed in short order like the vast majority of the other arrivals).

Some months (?) later, when Colette arrived at Auschwitz being "young," she was initially separated from the rest of her family for work (to death...) in a quarry (rather than for immediate gassing), and later, by chance, she caught the eye of a young SS Officer (played by Eric Bouwer [IMDb] [CSFD]*[FDB]*) who simply desired her as a mistress (today, post-1990s-era-Bosnian-conflict, we wouldn'd call her a mistress anymore but rather a sex-slave).

Both Vili and Colette eventually come to be placed in a "sub-Camp" named "Kanada" where their jobs were to "process" the belongings left-over by the Jews (the vast, vast majority) who were simply stripped of everything that they had left when they arrived (including, even the hair on their heads and the clothes on their backs) before being gassed.  It is in this little "Niche in Hell" that Vili and Colette (and a small group of other Jews around them) survived.

How?  Well ... by being forced to methodically purloin the belongings of those who had already been gassed, they (by luck) came into possession of "currency" (stuff) that they could secret and exchange to extend their lives.  For while EVERYONE OF THEM was ALWAYS under the gaze (and quite literally "under the gun") of utterly drunk-with-power SS-guards (and their collaborators) and could be summarily shot AT ANYTIME, BY ANYONE OF THEM if anyone-of-them suspected that they might be "stealing," THESE GUARDS THEMSELVES BENEFITED FROM THE PETTY THEFTS OF THEIR PRISONERS.  Why??  Because all the possessions that Vili and Colette and the others "processing" the belongings of the arriving Jews discovered and immediately turned-over to their Nazi overseers "went to the Reich."  HOWEVER, if Vili found a tin-of-meat (or even an apple or orange) stashed in a bottom of a suitcase, or, more significantly, Colette found _a piece of jewelry_ THAT HAD BEEN SOWN INTO THE HEM of a piece of clothing by its previous owner AND THEY DECIDED TO QUICKLY HIDE THE DISCOVERED ITEM FROM THE IMMEDIATE VIEW OF THE GUARDS, THEN THIS ITEM (be it a tin of meat, a flask of schnaps or vodka ... or a jewel) BECAME SOMETHING THAT ONE COULD USE TO TRADE WITH OTHERS (with other prisoners AND WITH THE GUARDS) FOR ... FAVORS.  Since the guards, stood "at the top of the food chain" in the Camp, they did not mind this kind of petty corruption taking place, BECAUSE THEY COULD TAKE THIS UNDECLARED STUFF HOME WITH THEM (out of the Camp).  Everything that was "officially found" WENT "TO THE REICH."  The items that were _initially secreted-away/stolen by the prisoners_ eventually "floated up" to the Guards, who then were able to take the stuff out of the Camp FOR THEIR OWN (STILL PETTY ... but it probably ADDED UP... ) ENRICHMENT.

This then became the world / "economy" in which Vili and Colette found themselves in (and even "fell in love" in).  And they do find that EVEN IN HELL, JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING, even tantalizingly, the _possibility_ of eventual freedom (if one was just able to figure out who to bribe, with how much, at what time...) WAS "FOR SALE."

Honestly folks, I get this.  I'm not necessarily proud of it, but I do.  It's a "small country" approach to survival.  I know that "Big countries" -- the Russians, the Americans, heck even the Germans / Brits prefer "sweeping epics" with "cowboys" (or "cossacks"), or even "Lawrence of Arabia" on horses, fighting off Evildoers as "partisans" (like the Bielski brothers of Beolorussia, whose actual, though rare, exploits have been made into the Hollywood film Defiance [2008]) and so forth.  But those are stories of the Powerful.

Presented here, quite sincerely, is a "small country solution" for survival: "What do I have to sell?  What can I get a hold of to sell?  Where can I hide?  How I can be(come) 'valuable' in some way until the storm blows over?"

As such, unnerving as this story may be, I do believe that it does contribute to the memory of the Holocaust, and it is a story written by someone, Arnošt Lustig [en.wikip] [cz.wikip]* [NYT Obituary], who really was there.


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014]

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

Let's face it, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014] (directed by Matt Reeves, screenplay by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Mark Bomback based on the 1963 novel [amzn] by Pierre Boulle [IMDb]) like the original novel, the 60s-70s era movie franchise and then Rise of the Planet of the Apes [2011] which rebooted the series for the current day, are ALL BASED on the _inversion_ of a horrible racial epithet: 

The original novel and the Hollywood movie franchise that quickly followed were all created in the context of the post-WW II rolling collapse of the previous (white-dominated) colonial order as a result of the successes of both national liberation and civil rights movements of _peoples of color_ the world over (from India, to Algeria, to Jamaica / Fiji to the Congo to the Deep South in the United States).  Given that only a generation before, white people of both Europe and the Americas had considered themselves self-evidently superior to the "darker" races, this collapse was experienced as a shock to many.  With regards to Africans in particular, it had not been uncommon for white people at the turn of the 20th century to consider Africans (blacks) to be closer to the apes (which also natively resided in Africa) than to themselves.  Yet by the 1960s, "OMG, the Africans were coming" to rule their own countries across the continent, "What was the world coming to?"  This then was the racial (racist) hysteria in which first Boulle's novel and then the 60s-70s era Hollywood movie franchise came out. (Remember there were even "Black Panthers" (!) "roaming" America's streets at the time ...).

Why then resurrect this film-franchise now?  Well, when we have _serious_ (in terms of power) American political figures like Sarah Palin _resurrecting_ American segregation era racist terms like "shuckin' and jivin'" to describe her piques with America's first (and presently ONLY, ... EVER ...) BIRACIAL President Barack Obama, well ... racism and racial fear is ALIVE AND WELL in the U.S. today. 

Both the novel [Amzn] and the subsequent film-franchises [IMDb] take the racist epiteth "They're just Animals (Apes)" and INVERT IT ... Both imagine a world in which arguably "the Apes" are MORE THOUGHTFUL / CIVILIZED than arrogant (and mostly white) "people."

And so then it is here, in the current film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014], set ten years after a human-made virus, but which (because it was being TESTED on chimps) came to be called "simian flu," had escaped from a laboratory and nearly wiped out humanity (the subject matter of the previous film Rise of the Planet of the Apes [2011]).  Two communities, one Ape, one Human, are presented as consolidating themselves, in the San Franciscao Bay Area -- the human community, in the post-apocalyptic remnants of San Francisco; the ape community, led by previously genetically engineered Caesar (played with help of CGI by Andy Serkis) in the Redwood forests north of the city. 

Could the now _two_ "intelligent species," one (Human) radically diminished and the other (Ape) rising coexist?   The Humans, tattered remnant though they are, remain _often_ stuck in their previous prejudices.  The Apes, however, find themselves having to deal with their own memories / rivalries: Caesar actually had _good_ memories of Humans (a human family which treated him well, as genetically enhanced, he had learned from them how to communicate through sign-language and later even voice).  On the other side, there was another Ape, named Koba (played with help of CGI by Toby Kebell) who only remembers Human (scientists) as having causing him excruciating pain as they experimented on him.  Who to follow?  The wiser, and more serene/happier Caesar or the more angry/vengeful Koba?

Much therefore plays out.  And the Humans as well have a range of reactions to the surprisingly intelligent (and arguably ascending Apes).  While MANY still cling to their pre-bio-apocalypse sense of superiority vis-a-vis "the Apes," others like Malcolm (played by Jason Clarke), his post-apocalypse girlfriend (played by Keri Russell) and his somewhat moody/perhaps still shell-shocked teenage son (apparently born before the apocalypse) seem to be more accepting of / perhaps even partially awed by the rise of this new community of intelligent Apes.

And as with the original novel [Amzn] and subsequent movie-franchises [IMDb], the film offers viewers much to think about as they contemplate and challenge within-themselves their inevitable prejudices in our world today.  Good film!


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Mother Joan of the Angels (orig. Matka Joanna od Aniolów) [1961]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Filmweb.PL listing*

Culture.pl article

Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema: [MSP Website] [Culture.pl]


Mother Joan of the Angels (orig. Matka Joanna od Aniolów) [1961] [IMDb] [FW.pl]*[Culture.pl] [en.wikip] [pl.wikip]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Jerzy Kawalerowicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*[Culture.pl] [en.wikip] [pl.wikip]* along with Tadeusz Konwicki [IMDb] [FW.pl]*[Culture.pl] [en.wikip] [pl.wikip]* based on the novella* by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*[Culture.pl] [en.wikip] [pl.wikip]*) is an award winning pre-Enlightenment era period piece that would remind American viewers of In the Name of the Rose [1986] or perhaps of the Salem Witch Trials depicted works as Arthur Miller's 1953 stage-play The Crucible.

Though the film is set in a remote village in 17th century Poland, it is based on an incident that took place at an Ursuline Convent in Loudun, France in 1634.  That incident has been also the subject of a book by Aldous Huxley entitled The Devils of Loudun [1952] and a subsequent British horror film The Devils [1971] [IMDb] directed by Ken Russell.  The current Polish film (made before the British one) played recently as part of the series Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema (in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center).


Now on the surface, a film about a convent of apparently demonically possessed nuns and a priest sent over by the Church exorcise them would seem like a strange or even eyes-rolling tendentious film to be made under a Communist regime ("See how stupid and the backward the Catholic Church was (is)...").  On the other hand, the film could be read in almost exactly the same way Arther Miller's play was.  After all, The Crucible was _nominally_ about the 1692-93 Salem Witch Trials but was actually inspired by the 1950s McCarthy Era anti-Communist "witch-hunt" taking place in Hollywood at the time. So ... while nominally (and as certainly explained to the censors...) the current movie was about the Catholic Church of the 17th century (and the censors would hope ... "of the current time" ...) it was made in the context of a Totalitarian (Communist) Regime which was both still quite convinced of its own Truth and (still) quite violently obsessed with maintaining ideological purity ... Hmm...  ;-)


So, in the current film, a priest named Fr. Jozef Suryn (played by Mieczysław Voit [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) is sent by the Church hierarchy to deal with a remote convent of rebellious, indeed "demonically possessed" nuns.  His job was expected to be difficult as the previous priest sent up to deal with the nuns had apparently become "infected" by the same demonic plague that effected the nuns and was subsequently denounced and burnt at the stake by the Church's authorities for witchcraft -- the stake and the pyre still standing quite prominently between the convent and the village that existed just below it.

The villagers, unafraid of the nuns' "possession" and mostly just bemused by the spectacle of watching "the higher ups" -- on one side "dancing" and even somewhat promiscuous nuns, on the other side, far more austere (why? they wonder) Church authorities trying to bring them back into line -- really did not expect Fr. Jozef to fare much better than the previous guy.   Indeed, the village innkeeper (played by Zygmunt Zintel [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) and his rather buxom fortune-telling daughter (played by Maria Chwalibóg [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) tell him as much.  The local priest, Fr. Brym (played by Kazimierz Fabisiak [IMDb] [FW.pl]*), introduced to Fr. Jozef (and to us, the viewers) as he takes two little orphans (or they his?) out to play, past the above mentioned remains of the stake/pyre on which the previous (and failed) Exorcist had been burnt, ALSO tells Fr. Jozef to just be careful and take care of himself.

But Fr. Jozef has a job to do.  So he goes up to the Convent to meet with the Mother Superior, Mother Joan of the Angels (played by Lucyna Winnicka  [IMDb] [FW.pl]*), a smiling nun who freely admits to the priest that she's possessed by eight demons, and even lists them for him.  Further, it's obvious that she doesn't seem to mind (being "possessed").  Hmm...

Now she has some scruples.  When she does fall in love with Fr. Jozef (and _he_ certainly falls for her...) she does not want to give in to _that_ temptation.  So for a good part of the film, the two do castigate themselves and this is the 17th century Catholic Church, so the two are both flagellating themselves (each in their own quarters).  But clearly this can not stand ...

The rest of the film follows.  But it's clear as day 30 minutes into the film that no one is going to "exorcise" anyone (successfully anyway).  So, what's the solution?  Well, what do you think?  Again, like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this is clearly a film intended for dual interpretation (and a challenge to both groups addressed).


NOTE: The film is available through Facets Multimedia's rent-by-mail service and for purchase on Amazon.com for a reasonable price.


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

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Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Slant (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
SlantMagazine (W. Greene) review 
EyeForFilm (A. Wilkinson) review
Variety (D. Harvey) review 

Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia [2013] (directed by Nicholas D. Wrathall) is IMHO an excellent if certainly fawning documentary about Gore Vidal [IMDb] one of the more articulate Americans of the last 100 years.   

PATRICIAN (Gore, born Eugene Louis Vidal, a grandson of U.S. Senator, Thomas Gore (OK), knew Eleanor Roosevelt, who even campaigned for him when he ran, unsuccessfully, for public office, as well as Jackie Kennedy even before she met JFK), ATHEIST (throughout his life he maintained that Judaism, Christianity and Islam were the three biggest curses to befall humanity in its history), HOMOSEXUAL (he wrote and published the first openly gay American novel, The City and the Pillar [1948] which he dedicated to "J.T.," who turned out to be a friend and U.S. serviceman who died on Iwo Jima who Gore later claimed was the only person he ever truly loved), he certainly gloried in being a GADFLY to the AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT from which he came. 

But he certainly made people think.  His commentaries alongside SIMILARLY ARTICULATE and CONSDERVATIVE ICON William F. Buckley, Jr (!) during the 1968 (!) U.S. Presidential campaign became the stuff of legend, and unforgettable excerpts are happily included in this documentary.  Indeed, both he and William Buckley SET THE BAR for intelligent (and witty) public discourse SO MUCH HIGHER THAN WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO TODAY that part of the effect of watching this documentary is to make one wonder if we have fallen off some cliff from a past golden age.

And yes, he did become an intellectual celebrity who attracted the likes of Sting and the Rolling Stones to his, yes, almost "god-like / cliff-side" lair facing the Mediterranean Sea somewhere on the west coast of Italy where he and his (presumably gay) "life-partner" Howard Austen would watch sunsets in truly Olympian splendor.  (The home, again featured in the documentary, was worthy of a Bond / Austin Powers character). 

As presented in the documentary, his was an almost absurdly ostentatious life.  But you just listen to him speak, just effortlessly dressing-down/verbally reducing-to-ashes some of the most powerful people of his time or from his life (from Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, both former governors of California where he lived at one time, to his own mother... ;-) and you look then at that insanely beautiful home of his again in Italy, and it's just staggering:  If one was going to be rich and powerful, perhaps even obscenely rich and powerful, Gore Vidal would not seem to be an entirely awful role model to have, though honestly, Nero or Caligula could be imagined as (his) neighbors. 

Anyway, it makes for a remarkable and often FUN documentary about someone who, if nothing else, actively did choose to live his life to (his) fullest. 


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Begin Again [2014]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (K. Turan) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
Rolling Stone (J. Carney) review

Okay Begin Again [2013] (written and directed by John Carney) is a simultaneously sad and fundamentally hopeful even schmaltzy movie about Dan a washed-up "small independent label" record producer (played by Mark Ruffalo) and a singer-songwriter named Greta (played by Keira Knightly) who had spent five years "just being there" for her similarly struggling singer-songwiter boyfriend named Dave (played by Adam Levine) who turned around and dumped her as soon as he got his first big break.

The two lost souls meet in a folk club in New York.  Dan enters the place already barely-standing drunk after having been fired from the record company he had co-founded.  Greta is all-but-dragged on stage (it's "open mike night") by her salt-of-the-earth / well-meaning friend Steve (played by James Corden) on whose couch she crashed only a few days before, and goads the audience to get her to sing.  Feeling nervous, angry, put-upon, NOT READY, she picks up an acoustic guitar, apologizes for not being happy yet with this song, begins strumming, and sings out in a sad, barely audible, melancholic voice:

So you find yourself at the subway
with your world in a bag by your side
and all at once what seemed like a good way
you realize is the end of the line,
For what it's worth...
Here comes the train upon the track
There goes the pain, it cuts to black
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can't take back ...

The audience, though AT A FOLK BAR, is still generally happier that she.  So soon it puts her out-of-mind and goes back to chatting with friends and drinking.  BUT Dan, who's stared at the same tracks only a few minutes before, wakes up, and starts hearing a drum beat, then a piano, perhaps a violin ... arranging the song in his head, still desperately angry and sad, but now worthy of air-time.  A connection's been made ... by him (and perhaps the viewers) to Greta.  The question now is whether Greta can get out of her own funk to be able to respond affirmatively?  After all, it's immediately clear that she's a _serious_ folk artist and she's just been betrayed (in far more ways than one) by her singer-songwriter boyfriend who she had thought was her soul mate.

The rest of the film follows.  And if you love music, if you love the lyrics that some of these gifted if often _terribly burdened_ word-smiths can string together (and it's not just folk, there's a rapper in the film too) then I think you'll love this film.

The original title of the film was "Can a song save your life?" but the current title fits as well.  The film is all about "Beginning Again."  It makes for a great, if in parts sad, sad, sad film that yes (mild spoiler alert)... does turn out well.


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Tammy [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review

RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Tammy [2014] (directed and cowritten by Ben Falcone along with Melissa McCarthy) continues a string of both very funny movies starring the rather short and rather rotund actress Melissa McCarthy, and movies that despite their gags, sometimes on the cruder side, are _not_ without their point.  As such, like MILLIONS OF OTHER FANS, I have to say that I really LIKE her films and I know that for many, many of our parishioners at Annunciata she is "THE BOMB."

In the current story, set somewhere in downstate Illinois, Tammy (played by Melissa McCarthy) is introduced to us having an epically bad day, she crashes into a deer while heading to work at a random fast food joint, is late therefore arriving at work to the fast food joint, gets fired as a result and returns home early, to find that her husband Greg (played by Nat Faxon) is messing around with their otherwise nice neighbor Missi (played by Toni Collete).  Adding 2 and 2 together, even if perhaps she has it wrong (both Greg and Missi seem to be very nice people and not necessarily messing around in _that_ way), she declares them to be having an affair, packs her bag and head to, where she always heads to when she has a problem: mom's house.

'Cept mom (played by Allison Janney) isn't all that excited about having Tammy home (again?).  Indeed, we find her challenging Tammy to find another way to deal with her problems when grandma named Pearl (played by Susan Sarandon), with her own agenda, steps in.  Ma' was going to send gramms "to a home," gramms was not ready to go, and so Tammy arriving with her suitcase but no money, husband or job, becomes gramm's "ticket to flee."  Okay, it's not exactly the best of plans.  Arguably both Tammy and gramms are enabling each other to continue to avoid harsh realities, but it's a (temporary) "way out" for both of them: Using gramm's car and money, they decide take a quite random road-trip up to Niagara Falls by way of Aunt Lenore (played by Kathy Bates) and her lover Susanne (played by Sandra Oh) living out Kentucky-way.  Much ensues...

Among that which ensues is that both Tammy and Pearl find that they need to grow up / face reality.  And their instructor interestingly enough becomes good ole lesbian Aunt Lenore.  At different times she finds that she has to dress down these two "whiny women" telling them: "Guess what, life _is_ hard" and no one is going to help them (or even be able to help them) until they take responsibility for their lives even when at times it's not easy -- Tammy's not exactly Helen of Troy (neither as rich nor as good looking as she), and Pearl's gettin' old (and also has a drinking problem...).  But then Lenore knew a thing or two about taking responsibility for her life and making the best of things with the cards (gifts/talents) that she was given.

It all makes for a simple story but a remarkably good one: Yes, every single one of us will find life at times to be hard, challenging, disappointing, "not what we wished it to be," but HONESTLY "that's life," and we're asked within the talents and limits that we're given, to make the best of it (and hopefully to be able to reach out to others positively as well).  And honestly, how can one not applaud such a call to both responsibility and compassion?

Now looking at this film, the Catholic Church itself could find itself collectively sighing/complaining a little as "a lesbian couple" is arguably portrayed in the film as the most well-adjusted "of the lot."  But as I've written about this before (in my review of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel [2011]), the Catholic Church and Society have come to a cross-roads.  The Church has stated its position regarding homosexuality and Society, certainly Hollywood / the artistic community, has chosen to take a different view.  As such, part of the pain of taking the stand that the Catholic Church has taken on homosexuality is that it will have to endure for the foreseeable future one film after another in which homosexuals are portrayed as happy, responsible people differing from heterosexuals only in their sexual orientation, and in a free society there will be nothing that the Church will be able to do about it.  Nothing, except acknowledge that even imperfect people (as we are all) can still teach us all.  In any case, it should be noted that the CNS/USCCB's reviewer gave the film NOT an "O" (morally offensive), not an "L" (for limited adult audiences, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling) but an "A-III," the CNS/USCCB's equivalent of the MPAA's R-rating, and the MPAA gave the film an R-rating as well.

In any case, I would like end here by restating my admiration for Melissa McCarthy.  She has proven to be wildly popular in the parish where I serve and I by what I've seen wildly popular among "regular people" all across the country.  And I do think it is because people can relate to her and to the messages that her films often carry.   Here the message was very simple: Don't whine. Know who you are and do the best that you can with the cards (gifts) that you've been given.   And again, how can one not applaud that message?  Good job!


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Deliver Us From Evil [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (1 Star)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (0 Stars)

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

Given that I'm a Catholic priest working in a parish where every other parishioner seems to be part of the Chicago Police Department or some other law enforcement agency and that I've been responsible for working with the young people of the parish since I've come here, I knew that Deliver Us From Evil [2014] (directed and screenplay by Scott Derickson along with Paul Harris Boardman, inspired by the the memoir Beware The Night by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool) about a NYPD officer (Sarchie) who finds himself investigating the demonic even as he did his police work would be a film that I simply needed to see and review here.

Unfortunately, I have to say that this film is a TERRIBLE adaptation, PERHAPS THE WORST that I've ever seen, of the book that it's supposedly inspired by.

Beware The Night (2001) is indeed a engaging / readable book by Ralph Sarchie, an actual former NYPD police officer, who really did come to be involved in what he calls "The Work" (cases involving possible demonic possession) in collaboration with fairly renowned Catholic lay "demonologists" Ed and Lorraine Warren (based in nearby Connecticut and of The Conjuring [2013] fame) and under the supervision of Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P. who also writes the forward to Sarchie's book.

EXCEPT FOR KEEPING SARCHIE'S NAME AND HIS NYPD AFFILIATION, there are VIRTUALLY NO CONNECTIONS AT ALL IN THE FILM to officer Sarchie's actual character or to his actual experience. Consider:

(1) Ralph Sarchie portrays himself in his book as a rather conservative/traditionalist Catholic.  In contrast, in the film Sarchie (played by Eric Bana) is portrayed as a "twice a year Catholic" (Christmas and Easter) and as having a "gift" (his partner calls it a "radar") for detecting cases that come-up that could have a "paranormal" bent.  In his actual book the actual Sarchie _chafes_ at the term "paranormal" maintaining that ALL THINGS "PARANORMAL" ARE "BASICALLY EVIL." 

(2) In Sarchie's book, he describes his mentor BISHOP McKenna, O.P. as again clearly on the Conservative/Traditionalist side of the Church, describing him as one who both prefers AND CELEBRATES REGULARLY the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass.  In contrast, in the film Officer Sarchie comes to be involved in a strange (para-normalish) case that he ONLY PROGRESSIVELY STARTS TO UNDERSTAND AS (PERHAPS) BEING DEMONIC IN ORIGIN through the involvement of a longish-haired, never in clerics, Hispanic "barrio priest" named Fr. Mendoza (played by Édgar Ramírez) who knows one of the families being tormented.

Now don't get me wrong, _my_ perspective on things is probably _far closer_ to that of the "feet on the ground" Fr. Mendoza who "knows the pulse/happenings of his neighborhood," than the venerable Bishop BUT THE OFFICER SARCHIE OF THE FILM IS A VERY DIFFERENT PERSON THAN THE SARCHIE OF THE HIS OWN BOOK.  Further, ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS THE PULSE OF THE "FEET ON THE GROUND" CATHOLIC COMMUNITY among REGULAR parishioners in our cities (and in the country-side) WOULD KNOW THAT THE ACTUAL SARCHIE'S CONSERVATISM/TRADITIONALISM _IS THE NORM_ in our nation's blue-collar neighborhoods (and in the countryside): Year after year, the most common name that our parish's teens pick for Confirmation is _Michael_ after the Archangel who figures so prominently in Officer Sarchie's book and spirituality.

(3) In the film, the case that "Sarchie" and his partner (played by Scott Johnsen) find themselves "investigating" IS ALMOST COMPLETELY AN INVENTION OF THE SCREENWRITERS.  In the film, a squad of Marines in Iraq led by a certain Santino (played by Sean Harris) come across some weird chapel with a Persian / Latin inscription out there in the deserts of Iraq and return demonically possessed.  Santino, who starts wall-painting business after returning home, alternatively paints this inscription on random walls throughout the Bronx (including one on a prominent wall inside the Bronx Zoo) and then (presumably when he snaps out of whatever demonic state that he was in) paints over it again (to hide it).  Vulnerable people who see this inscription, which talks of some sort of a "doorway." come to be susceptible to demonic possession as well.  (Others apparently start to hum the song by The Doors called "Break On Through To the Other Side.") 

WELL ... IN THE BOOK: THERE'S NO MENTION OF THE IRAQ WAR (or even the VIETNAM WAR, where the reference to "The Doors" would have been more time-appropriate).  THERE'S NO MENTION OF "THE DOORS" OR THE BRONX ZOO AT ALL (!! - even though BOTH play such  overwhelmingly important roles in the film).  And there's only a brief mention in Sarchie's book (Chapter 11) of a case involving a JEWISH BORN WALL-PAINTER FROM NEW JERSEY who Officer Sarchie eventually came to believe MAY HAVE BEEN CURSED BY HIS BRAZILIAN-BORN MOTHER-IN-LAW in some sort of a West African-Yoruba inspired Santeria/Voodoo-like Rite.

So while in the film a Hispanic-named Marine turned "wall painter" from the Bronx came home from Iraq (the Middle East) with some sort of demonic curse on him, in Sarchie's book it was a Jewish-born (sort of Middle-Eastern) wall-painter from New Jersey who was cursed by his Brazilian (Hispanic in the broadest sense) mother-in-law ;-).

But it's all the same, right? ;-)

(4) Finally, as the film's climax approaches, Fr. Mendoza suggests that Officer Sarchie bring the possessed ex-Marine now _very conflicted_ tagger/wall-painter Santino to THE EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE for the requisite Exorcism.  Say what??

Oh to be a fly on the wall to hear the phone call between Fr. Mendoza and the good people at the Rectorate there at the Episcopal Cathedral:

"Hi, I'm Fr. Mendoza (you know of the religion and ethnicity that once launched that Armada against your ancestors' fair land, even as your pirates were sinking our ships with your Queen's blessing coming back with loot that we ourselves had stolen and melted down from the indigenous folks of the Americas).  I'm from a small Hispanic parish in a part of the Bronx that none of your Lower Manhattan parishioners, day-or-night, would be caught dead in except perhaps when on a cocaine run or perhaps with a sizable armed escort.  And it occurred to me that since some of you folks are also into archaic language (Shakespearean English if not our Latin) and Medieval dress, in the spirit of more contemporary Ecumenical cooperation or at least tolerance, to ask you if I could rent perhaps one of your meeting rooms, or perhaps a chapel, actually a niche in your Cathedral would do fine, TO PERFORM AN EXORCISM on a troubled colleague of a parish family of mine.  Don't worry, we'll clean-up the mess after ourselves when we're done.

"Now why would I ask YOU good folks so far away and of a different culture / religious tradition that often laughs at ours?  I'm not sure.  I think it has something do with my own character being driven to do these things by a Hollywood script writer who may harbor a deep hatred of my own character's religion -- a hatred that my character could actually even partially understand/sympathize with but a hatred taken to such a degree that the scriptwriter driving my actions can't even conceive conducting said exorcism in my own religion's church.  Or perhaps it's just that St. Patrick's Cathedral, you know down the street, is booked ... I just don't know" ;-)

THIS IS JUST A REALLY STUPID / POORLY CONCEIVED MOVIE.

I would recommend the book.  It's well written and sounds authentically like the traditionalist-minded  NYPD officer who wrote it.  But the film ... it's just terrible.


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