Saturday, December 17, 2016

Children of Nazareth (Poetry by Bob Racine)

The Scriptures tell us of Jesus’ birth but give us no account whatsoever of his childhood, except his visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve in the company of his parents.  The time between the events we observe at Christmas – the manger, the shepherds, the Wise Men, Herod, etc. – and his baptism by John that preceded the start of his ministry has otherwise been called the Silent Years.  We can only speculate about what this Hebrew child did on a daily basis around the Nazareth streets and countryside.  I offer the following simple poem as a meditation on that time, but seen through the eyes of other young ones, unsuspecting kids with whom he played or worked.      

Oh, children of Nazareth!  You have not looked of late
into each other’s eyes, as you rough about, kicking up the dust of centuries.              
And why should you know?  Why should you know?

Cease not then your animal noise.  Go make your little stampedes
among lazy herds of village sheep, who know you too well to fear you.
Go have your fights, skin your knees, take your bruises,
keep your dithery pace with the blood that races in your veins.

Why should you know now of that blood’s power to speak
to nations and peoples yet unborn?

Crouched in a corner, you wait to catch the desert wind by the tail.
But it spurns your habitations and sends you back to your
lackluster streets to ply your meager trades, live out your meager days,
and sow your proud mortal seed, dream however you must.

Soon enough the last seed will be sown; age will slow you down –
foot companions to your beasts of burden.
Not until then will you ever look, look deep, deep into each other’s eyes.
Then at last you may realize:  You’re not all the same,

for time, in accord with its sacred offices, has sought you out,  
yet to vindicate you, in the well-wrought life of Another amongst you  
more free, more knowing and more restless than even you.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Bob's Autobiographical Summary

This time around I am repeating the publication of my Autobiographical Summary first posted in October of 2013, with a few more pertinent details.  Many subscriptions have been added to my blog mailing list since that time and perhaps many who were on it in the beginning have forgotten about it.  This now will be the entry that henceforth I will make reference to at the close of each of the writings.  It will be easier to locate, being more recent. 

It was on February 25, 1933 in Norfolk, Virginia, that I, Robert Wayne Racine, arrived in the world, the only child-to-be of Raymond and Virginia Racine.  Growing up in Norfolk I was nurtured in Central Baptist Church of that city, where I felt the call to the ministry very early in my life.  I graduated from Maury High School there in January, 1952 and received my Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest College in 1955 as a pre-ministerial student.  My divinity degree came from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1963, after a few years of experience in the field as a welfare caseworker, and I served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Scranton, Pennsylvania from 1963 until 1967.  I then accepted a job with Mass Media Ministries in Baltimore, Md., an independent interfaith agency designed to serve churches of all faiths seeking to develop media programs.  I worked for them, under the editorship of Clifford York, a fellow minister, as chief writer and assistant editor on their bi-weekly Newsletter publication, reviewing short films, TV and current cinema.  I also conducted seminars on media usage, wrote promotional fliers and gave personal consultation to people in church-related professions on the planning of media programs. 

In 1974 I moved to Columbia, Maryland, where I have resided ever since.  Following the discontinuance of the Mass Media Newsletter in 1980, I became involved in community theater, organizing my own in conjunction with Kittamaqundi Community, an ecumenical church body in that city.  The theater remained in operation for twenty-two years.  In that endeavor I got training in acting, directing, and producing, and in 1988 began writing scripts, several of which have been performed in public, one for the annual Baltimore New Playwrights Festival.  In recent years, since the retirement of the theater, I have segued from script writing into fiction writing.  A novella, “It Won’t Fit Through the Door,” remains available on compact disc.  “All Saints Eve” is my first full length novel still seeking publication.  A novella entitled “The Safety Zone” was posted in serial form on this blog in the winter of 2015.  I have also written over the space of the last fifty years a considerable body of poetry, and at varied times and on varied occasions have given public recitations of them.  Several have appeared in this blog. 

I seem to have always worn two hats throughout my adult life – religion and the arts.  Almost all I have done over the past half century has involved participation in both worlds.  And now the early profession of film critic that I practiced in association with Mass Media Ministries, cut short by the onset of a severe hearing loss, has found a soul-gratifying rebirth in the reviewing of motion pictures on DVD in this blog, along with other writings.  The word processor now has become my stage as well as my printed page, thanks to the brilliant assistance and supervision of my stepson JC Nolan, to whom I will be eternally grateful.

I have been married to my third wife, Ruby, since 1981. An elementary school teacher for close to thirty years (retired in 1996), she is the supreme love of my life and has been a magnificent support to me in all my endeavors since we met.  We reside in Columbia.  We have seven offspring between us from previous marriages and eight grandchildren.  Though now in our latter years, we remain very active in the Kittamaqundi congregation and share in its leadership and work. 

I am largely in good health for my age, or so my doctors tell me.  I do have a severe hearing loss already mentioned which has plagued me since the early 1970s.  I have one good eye, and I am now a partial cripple as the result of a Lumbar Stenosis condition that keeps me somewhat bent over, relieved in no little measure by the use of a walker and aided by regular physical therapy.  But my internal organs seem to be functioning in top form.  I plan to be around for some time yet.
   
The following is a list of what I regard as my personal beliefs and values, to which I hold myself personally accountable:

Biblical writings as a repository of moral, ethical and spiritual instruction
The existence of God both as unfathomable mystery and redeeming presence
The perseverance of faith, both as outlook and practice
A spiritual community that is supportive and nurturing
Diversity of expression within a unity of faith sharing
Integrity and wholeness of character
Personal discipline in all domains as opposed to off-the-wall lifestyles
The dignity of work
Scrupulous care of one’s own body as indeed the Temple of God
Equally scrupulous care of the planet Earth as the bosom mother of us all
The sanctity of all living creatures
The unique giftedness of each and every human individual
The loving family as the foundation of civilized society          
A creative fusion between religion and the arts
Music and poetry as the language of God and food for the soul
The preservation and study of sacred and classic writings
Friendship that sets no boundaries and imposes no obligations
Patience and kindness
Humility of spirit
Unbounded and unqualified forgiveness, both of self and others

And basic to all:
Love as a verb, not a noun, which is to say aggressive good will in action,
compassionate service to others, selfless labors to lighten each other’s burdens, and active commitment to the ongoing liberation of the human spirit


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 2, 2016

The Innocents (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr. & 55 min., color, 2016
                                               
Will footnotes from World War II and its immediate aftermath ever cease to turn up – not only to be deposited in the teeming trove of stories that nations keep on file but also to uncover further evidence of that war’s inhumanity as it crossed the boundaries of the countries that were directly involved?  Will we ever run out?  Not likely!  While this French/Polish co-production is a fictional work, it is based upon a postwar situation that I doubt if many of us have ever heard about.  I know I never have until now. 
                                               
We have seen visualizations of Nazi and Japanese cruelty, of the plight of children and families, of the extensive sufferings and oppressions of refugees, far more widespread than even those of our own day – so far!  But who knows what another year or two or three will bring about!   Stories of horror brought about by the insanity of any and all wars are as numerous as the sand grains on the seashore.  I have no doubt that ongoing historical research will continue to yield new material and inspire writers and film makers for generations yet to come.  We have not heard the last about the World Wars.  
                                               
The action in this motion picture takes place in the vicinity of Warsaw in December of 1945, just seven months after formal hostilities with Germany have ceased. The victims portrayed and their sufferings are a most unlikely group, not apt to be printed on page one of any newspaper, but the consequences of their abuse are made painfully immediate in this powerful drama.  They are not peasants or members of a hated race or political prisoners; they are Catholic nuns in a local convent.  In keeping with their policy of privacy and seclusion from society at large they suffer in silence from a nightmare visited upon them by Russian soldiers those many months previous.  But that allegedly sacred seclusion is cracked wide open in the movie’s first scene.  They find that they cannot endure out of sight of the world any longer without terrible risk to the lives of many of the women inhabitants.
                                               
The Rev. Mother Superior (Agata Kulesza) tells it most plainly: They have suffered plenty under the Germans, deprivations of one sort or another, but they were not prepared for what the supposedly liberating Russians would bring upon them, something far worse.  Every last nun in the place was raped by Russian soldiers, not just once but many times while the soldiers billeted themselves on the convent grounds.  The rapes all took place during the same month or so of the occupation. Many of them have become pregnant and now as expectant mothers they are coming to term at approximately the same time. 
                                               
The first sound we hear is a choir of nuns singing their daily prayers.  The second sound we hear is a scream that pierces the serene and solemn air, one that curiously no one in the chapel appears to be surprised by; they keep on singing.  We soon determine that the scream is a young postulant in labor, having been the entire nine months without medical assistance.  At last one of the singers, Maria (Agata Bazak), leaves the place and rushes desperately to a Red Cross hospital not far away to get help. 
                                               
A French doctor Mathilde Beaulieu, in Poland to serve in that Red Cross unit that has been dispatched from France, played by a French actress named Lou de Laage, is persuaded to take time out to rush to the convent.  She does this at some risk to herself, because the doctors are under tight military restrictions that require them to give priority attention to the sick in the hospital where their country has commissioned them to serve.  The patients in that hospital have been under their care for many weeks.  What Matilde sees in the convent horrifies her, especially when she discovers that the baby the woman in labor is about to deliver is in the breach position.  She has to perform the surgery in the presence of other nuns including the Rev. Mother Superior.  Probably nothing like this had ever happened at a convent before in recorded history.  There is therefore no precedent for how to treat these circumstances without the violation of vows taken.   Maria lets the outside world into what is supposed to be an inviolable dwelling, and earns the censure of the Mother.   
                                               
What follows is a titanic struggle, physical and emotional and spiritual. The previously air tight cloister in which these nuns have been training and learning turns into an environment of scared women, whose faith is severely tested, even that of the Mother to whom they have pledged obedience.  They have been trained to regard any exposed flesh from beneath their habits as a betrayal of their commitment to their vows. Naturally Mathilde, who is not a person of faith, only of healing, finds this premise to be inscrutable.  One older nun recoils against being asked for her swollen stomach to be examined.  She pulls her garments tight around herself and runs off, saying she does not want to be consigned to hell.  The nuns have been convinced that God will punish them if they do not endure what needs to be endured, even apparently if it risks the life of an unborn child.  What we observe is actually a collision between Medieval religious superstition and 20th century science.  Mathilde, young and sensitive and relatively new to her profession, has to suppress her revulsion over the conditions she observes and try in her own inexperienced fashion to prevent a human disaster. 
                                               
Breaking water and the agony of labor gradually consume everybody’s attention.  More births are portrayed in this motion picture than I ever remember seeing in any motion picture before.  The disciplines of the nuns and their usual rigors are disrupted – the crying of newborns gasping for life.  The Mother finally claims that she has found homes in which the children will be raised.  She begins wrapping each infant in a blanket and walking it to its alleged new residence herself.   
                                               
Maria, who has not been impregnated, turns out to be the strongest of the nuns and finally stands up to her Mother Superior, who maintains that the place will now be in disgrace and subject to scandal.  She tells the Mother that the convent was already beset by disgrace and scandal before Mathilde arrived and tries to convince her that the doctor is a gift from heaven.    
                                               
Though it is controversial, the writing never takes on the cast of a political drama. Maria and Mathilde establish a wholesome rapport, the former becoming a much needed help to the latter, even learning how herself to deliver a baby in the doctor’s absence.  This alliance does much to soften the resistance of the nuns to Mathilde, especially after she saves them from further molestation and maybe arrest by letting the phony word out to the Russians that an epidemic has broken out in the building. This places the Rev. Mother in a kind of subordinate position, which is reinforced when some shocking news about her comes to light.    
                                               
Mathilde is not treated as a supporting character.  She is a leading player, not some symbol of enlightenment amid the unenlightened.  The writers give her dimension and spend time delving into her heart and mind.  She does some meaningful introspection, disclosing dark emotions to her momentary lover (Vincent Macaigne), also a doctor, fighting his own demons of doubt and near despair.  They are both professionally skilled but demonstrate a personal vulnerability they would never reveal to their superiors.  He himself eventually becomes involved with Mathilde in the healing of the nuns.  
                                               
Perhaps what I have said thus far gives the impression that this is a stark tragedy, but let me correct that impression.  There are a few tragic incidents portrayed, and some very disturbing sights disclosed, even an attempted rape of Mathilde by Russian soldiers, but it is ultimately a story of personal triumph, with a decidedly bright and upbeat conclusion.  It weighs many conflicting values but comes out solid in the corner of decency and humanity.  We could say that the convent undergoes a positive rebirth of spirit and purpose. 
                                               
Credit for this amazing and vivid work of cinema goes essentially to a French woman named Anne Fontaine, who did the directing and co-wrote the screenplay with three other persons – Sabrina B. Karine, Pascal Bonitzer, and Alice Vial.  Someone has called “The Innocents” a war movie about women, by women and for women.  But speaking as a male viewer, I recommend it most highly to all who respect life and those brave enough to be dedicated to maintain it under hostile and forbidding circumstances.  You can rent it from Netflix.



To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Recovering from Election Shock (Essay by Bob Racine)

Recovering from Election Shock (Essay by Bob Racine)

At least half the nation woke up on Wednesday morning November 9 and encountered a severe shock.  As supporters of Hillary Clinton my wife Ruby and I were among them.  These several days later we are still a bit unsteady and out of focus from her defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.  We feel bruised, affronted, and even slightly traumatized.  At the very least the news was disillusioning, and we find ourselves asking each other and no one else in particular the dreadful question: What happens next?  But whatever Mr. Trump takes it upon himself to do after the Inauguration on January 20, we know that before we can expect ourselves to regain our sense of balance and brace for the contrary wind that may soon be blowing, we have to apply the first aid required for newly depressed and crushed spirits.  

It is my habit to begin each and every day by engaging in my own personal devotions, before I even eat breakfast or hop on the day’s agenda.  That morning was a slight exception.  After rising from bed I was so eager to get the final word about the election that I skipped to the front door and picked up the Washington Post off our front walkway where each morning it is faithfully delivered.  When I read the headline I experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach before the emotions I have already described kicked in.  To be perfectly honest I was suddenly in no mood for prayer or meditation.  But I pushed through that resistance and got right to it, as downcast in spirit as I was.

Now what could I say to the God of the universe at a moment such as that?  After complaining to the Great One and baring my feeling of dismay, what else? – I did what I have been instructed by the New Testament to do.  I prayed for my enemy – well, not my enemy exactly; I knew without giving it much thought that Trump had not done me any particular harm.  It was and is his mindset that I and millions of others are up against.  Before I further report upon what I did in that quiet moment, I would like to summon the shade of an Old Testament character.  

“Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” has arrested the attention of millions of youngsters and young-at-heart adults over the four decades since it broke loose upon the stage and the video circuits.  Joseph is the youngest of thirteen sons of Jacob, descendent of the venerated Abraham.  He is portrayed in the play as a handsome, innocent and pleasant young person that any child or teen could smilingly identify with – in other words, very brotherly loving.  But he is in actuality a well-scrubbed version of the conceited, precocious Daddy’s boy, brash and narcissistic, that shows up in the original Biblical narrative.  The father Jacob is clueless about his favorite son’s irritating traits.  Jacob even has the effrontery to dress the boy in a sparkling coat, while apparently leaving the twelve others in ragged garments.  Not until Joseph begins spouting off about his dreams of royal authority does Daddy take some issue with him. 

Then comes the dream, flung into the face of his brothers.  It goes something like this: “I dreamed that we were all stars in heaven, but that I was the brightest star of all and you my brothers bowed down and worshipped me.”  This is too much for the brothers; they gang up on him and sell him to slave marketers headed for Egypt.  Frankly I would have felt like shipping him off myself, after hearing this outburst of pomposity.  But of course most of you know the story.  The brothers tell the father that his favorite son is dead, gored by an animal.  Years pass, as Joseph manages to win the Pharaoh’s favor enough to be freed from his bondage and get himself appointed to a high government post.  As it so happens, his family back home, suffering from a widespread famine along with thousands of others, comes begging to the Pharaoh’s food distributor, whom they finally recognize as the presumably dead brother, and they are all reconciled.       

I will not give further details except to say that Joseph, older and more mature, goes through much soul searching and inward struggle when he finds himself in the very position of power over his relatives, about whom he had so brashly prophesied as a youth.  Reconciliation does not come easily.

The upshot of the story for me, as I am sure it is for many others, is the old saw about being careful for what you most want and hope for, you just might get it.  Joseph discovers that governing is not as simple a matter as he has assumed.  It is not some fancy dressed affair or some ongoing circus.  And that is what my prayer for Trump was all about and still is.  I pray that once in office, or at least within the first year of his administration, and confronted by the complex business of governing and the knottiness of the issues he has treated so sophomorically during his campaign, he will be sobered and – far-fetched as it may sound – perhaps humbled by what he finds on his plate.  He has already softened some of his daggered rhetoric.  The people he wanted to bar from the country are no longer Muslims per se.  Now he claims he just wants to keep out people from countries that support terrorism.  One thing that may do much to bring about some change in his mindset about immigrants is for the government agencies, in charge of vetting those who apply for entrance, to invite him to peruse and study just how strict the process is.  Take him through the rigor of it and the thoroughness of it!  Recently on 60 Minutes we heard people who have been admitted after a years-long wait speak of just how hard it really is to even gain a foothold in the U.S., much less obtain citizenship.  He needs to meet immigrants and become familiar with immigrant families.  He should be given a thorough education about the country he has decided to lead.  He should be vetted!

I confess that there is a spiteful part of me that wants him to be a total failure as the Chief Executive, so that I can become smug about the balloted choice of him to lead, a choice in which I did not participate.  But that would involve lying in wait to maybe sabotage his best efforts.  I am not interested in sabotage or in thorough demonization.  I agree with what Obama said to him when they met for the first time in the Oval Office.  He said he wanted Trump to succeed, because if he fails, the country fails, the people are shortchanged.  I hope he can do something about reducing unemployment.  How can I ask him to keep an open mind, if I’m not willing to do the same?  I hope he can do some needed repair work on our unbalanced economy.  I hope he can improve the condition of our cities.  I hope he can contribute toward the plans already being put in place for the updating of our nation’s infrastructure.   And I really am hoping and praying that he will surprise us all and build healthy personal relations with minorities.  Nobody would be more pleased than I in any of these cases.

Presidents have surprised us before.  Who would have ever suspected that a practically unknown individual like Harry Truman, a temperamental, dogmatic, rude, undiplomatic, opinionated snapper, chosen for Veep in 1944 as a result of some inner party compromising, who knew nothing about the atomic bomb or nuclear power when Roosevelt’s death forced him into office, would in his eight years in the White House racially integrate the armed services, preside over the forging of the GI Bill, give impetus to the Marshall Plan that did so much to heal postwar Europe and recognize the then new State of Israel!  Who would have suspected that a deep south politician like Lyndon Johnson would upon John F. Kennedy’s death be responsible for the passage of more Civil Rights legislation than any President before or since has ever been able to claim?  And Abraham Lincoln had more enemies than a sick dog has fleas when he took office; who would have thought this backwoods rail splitter could bring about at least the legal emancipation of slavery that would stand the test of time over what is now one hundred and fifty years and counting?

So I hope I have made it clear that in this posting I have not come to praise our new Caesar OR to bury him.  I am asserting my allegiance to my country and am expressing my appreciation for our democratic form of government that allows for such a peaceful exchange of leadership, even in the midst of such sharp social and political division as has become so evident during this past Presidential campaign.  I am saying that since we now have a new President, let us give him a fair chance.  My prayers have led me to once again embrace that opportunity.  It is the only alternative we as a civilized nation have at our disposal other than the chaos of military coup or bloody revolution.    


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.



Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Ex Machina (Movie Review by Bob Racine


                                    1 hr & 48 min, color, 2015

Those who care deeply about the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and its potential for becoming dominant over Human Intelligence (and ingenuity) should make it a point to see this sharp futuristic piece of science fiction.  While it does not work through the controversy or come to any specified conclusion about that mysterious question of possibility, it does pose a plot predicament that places the thinking and exploring viewer into yet another conceivable set of bizarre circumstances in which the two, the Artificial and the Human, come eyeball to eyeball with each other. 

We share the bedazzlement of a twenty-six-year-old Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), programmer for a high profile digital research company.   He is asked to examine a robot and determine by observation whether or not she has developed consciousness.  Yes, this robot has gender; she (Alicia Vikander) is called Ava by her creator, and she has been shaped into the slim body of an attractive young woman who speaks flawless English.  Offhand she reminds me of the movie “Her”, except in that gripper the artificial being is only a voice, not a tangible corporeal manifestation.  And she is also reminiscent of the computer brain HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, who speaks most clearly and eloquently, manifests emotion and makes independent decisions that complicate human programming. 

Caleb interviews and interacts with Ava, whose seductiveness is not at first apparent to him.  It is the kind of one-on-one that requires us to pay close attention to each and every word and phrase and syllable.  There is no room for the attentive mind to wander, not even for a fleeting moment.  We know that there is more to Ava’s part of the encounter than there appears to be, more than a mere exchange of names.  It does not take Caleb long to verify that she is indeed a creature of consciousness, not simply an amalgamation of wires and cylinders and programmed apparatuses, though she does look wired up and quite conspicuously. 

But there is a third character in the scenario whom I found to be even more of a fascination, and that is Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the middle-aged genius who has invented her.  If the film had followed the expected protocol of science fiction and made Nathan in the image of the conventional Frankenstein-ian mad scientist in strident quest for power, he would have been tiresome from the get-go.  But the first we see of Nathan he is recovering from one of his many alcohol-induced hangovers, a quite self-involved hedonist, somewhat depressed and depressive to listen to.  He acts as if he is more an observer in the scenario than an instructor or controller.  He appears to be relaxed and matter of fact about what he has created.  He works alone in his subterranean lab located at a remote mountain spot many hours away from urban civilization.  Caleb is ordered flown there by helicopter, where the object of his inquiry as well as Nathan awaits him; there he is scheduled to stay for a week.  Nathan has also created another female robot named Kyoko, who is purportedly incapable of much reasoning and not conversant in any language.  Her only function is to wait upon Nathan mechanistically.

The place is surrounded by lush mountain scenery at a quite high altitude, with cliffs and snow-covered rock and waterfalls.  An apparently peaceful environment!   And we encounter only this foursome.  A very small cast in very restrictive surroundings!  I am not sure how the average viewer will experience the setting as the movie begins, but I found it to be strangely foreboding, in spite of the unspoiled sanctuary of nature in which the lab is cradled.  Even Nathan refers to the place as claustrophobic.  Ava does not speak in some abrasive monotone; her voice is soft and appropriately inflective.  And yet we know that more is in the offing than we can imagine.

We are exposed to the bewildering corridors of Nathan’s mind and his somewhat amoral assessment of life on the planet, its tumultuous past and what he sees as its grim future.   But Ava, from whose wiles Nathan makes no effort to protect Caleb, turns out to be the intended manipulator of both men.  Just how susceptible each of them will be to her devices is the question that keeps the drama of the film in high suspenseful traction.  

Caleb sees things in the lab that disturb him and make him somewhat vulnerable before Ava.  One would expect that Nathan is closely observing the young man’s reactions.  But does he have any real agenda in mind or is he just a lonely, hermitic man using Caleb to satisfy his hunger for human and professional contact?          

Sexuality comes to play a very vital part in the functioning of both women robots.  Caleb is amazed and a bit confused over the fact that Nathan has given them sexuality at all.  Nathan’s reason for this, which he readily and matter-of-factly shares with the younger man, leads to some strong medical and philosophical argument between the two of them.  Is not a robot’s only purpose for existence that of improved calculation and reasoning and motor functioning?  Is it not constructed to serve Science?  Or does this creator have something more in mind?  Caleb soon discovers the answer, to his shock and horror.  He also begins to have a sense of unreality about the environment into which he has stepped.  Is it all a professional experiment or is there a game being played?  Is he being tested, or is he the butt of some joke?  One thing that feeds these fears is Ava’s attempt to turn him against Nathan, or so it appears. 

Where are things headed in this spooky business (one of last year’s Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay)?  This may not be a film for all tastes; its outcome is quite horrific.  But it is not an exploitative exercise in chills for chills’ sake.  It directs our thinking and sense of inquiry – carefully and ingeniously – toward a most crucial subject, one that the scientific genius Stephen Hawking, who believes that the AI threat is real, has written about.  

The honored screenplay and the film’s direction are both the labor of a man named Alex Garland.   He has well named it.  The title, “Ex Machina”, is a Latin phrase derived from a Greek term meaning “out of a machine”.  Sometimes it is joined to the Latin word for god, Deus.  “Deus ex machina” is the concept of deity as something technical, created by human ingenuity and intellect as opposed to a transcendent living force that defies definition.  Can a robot generate feelings and independent self-consciousness; can it develop spiritual quality?  Or is she, he, or it doomed to be nothing more than a mechanism, however far advanced?   Or – here is the really scary question: Does she, he, or it have to have these capacities in order to exercise independent control over human beings?  Mr. Garland attacks these frightening questions excitingly and intelligently and with superb, state-of-the-art use of cinematic engineering.  I hope he has other great things in store for us.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Lord Jim (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


                                    2 hrs & 34 min, color, 1965

Is it a degree of fear that distinguishes a hero from a coward?  If not, what else does?  This is a fitting and most pertinent question when studying the narrative of this exciting late 19th century adventure movie, released in 1965 and recently rereleased into home viewing and based upon a novel by the celebrated author Joseph Conrad.  The man whose story gets told is one who must swim in the dangerous waters that cover the boundary separating courage and cowardice.  I call it an adventure story, though it is also one of deep reflection.  The journey its main character takes is not just one through time and space but of the seeking heart and mind.  The novel is strange in that this main character is not given a last name.  From the opening narration he is called simply Jim, a kind of Everyman on a quest for redemption.  He is British, but he is not a Lord in his country’s Parliament nor is the designation in any respect official.  That title is bestowed upon him by grateful people he rescues.  More about that shortly!

It is a story of a man’s search for his destiny and his craving for redemption.  And who better equipped to bring such a one to life than Peter O’Toole, one of the best actors ever to be seen on the movie screen.  Watching him make his way in Jim’s shoes gives me the unmistakable feeling that he is still alive.  He was gifted with a face that could externalize complex emotion so vividly that I wonder how many takes it required to get each demanding scene just right and what vast resources of spirit and imagination he drew upon.  Those who directed him, in this instance Richard Brooks, who also wrote the screenplay, must have been awestruck by what he gave them to work with.  It must have been something like being entrusted with a precious metal to build a tower.  “Lord Jim” is not O’Toole’s best role, but it is nevertheless one that draws us almost musically into the mystery of the man he embodies. 

Jim is a man who starts out as an aspiring seaman, beginning at the lowest rank in His Majesty’s Navy but rising over time to the distinction of an officer.  He yearns to be a hero and for a spell he establishes himself as a loyal second in command earning the plaudits of an admiring captain (Jack Hawkins), saving his commander-in-chief from a mutiny and proving himself diligent and rugged in all departments.  But fate deals him a nasty blow, when an injury forces him into temporary hospitalization on land, and afterward, eager to get back over water, he takes up second in command on a vessel of a less reputable crew and less structural seaworthiness.  During a raging storm and in a moment of human weakness he makes a sudden, fateful, panicked decision that amounts to desertion.  His career as a seaman tanks, his reputation in ruins.  In disgrace he then becomes a lonely vagabond wandering the earth and looking for he knows not what, until a European merchant (Paul Lukas) not knowing who Jim is offers him an extremely dangerous task smuggling arms and ammunition to a tribe somewhere in the Southeast Asian islands who are captives of a savage warlord (Eli Wallach). 

Yes, he becomes their champion liberator, toppling the dictator and inciting the captive population to throw off their captors and reestablish civil and sacred order.  The half hour or so in which this uprising is depicted is an especially exciting and heart thumping affair, intricately portrayed and hard driving.  Through it all he gains a measure of self-respect as well as the admiration and gratitude of the people he has liberated.  He also wins the love of a beautiful young and brave native woman (Dallah Lavi).  But fate it seems is not through with him even yet.  Other greedy fortune hunting enemies (led by ruthless swindler James Mason) conspire to subvert the colony, and Jim’s infamous history catches up with him.  The justice finally meted out is both strange and somehow sad and beautiful, all at once. 

Fear does play a large part in the twists and turns of his odyssey.  We are told in the voiceover that imagination, something Jim has in acute quantity, can make a person see what that one fears to see.  A strong and daring individual may force her/himself to act bravely in an emergency situation, but however much that one accomplishes with brave behavior, fear is like a silent foe forever stalking and waiting.  Courage may momentarily resist fear, but it does not obliterate it.  Especially is this true of those whose means of livelihood is fraught with danger.   

At a climactic moment Jim himself gives us an even more challenging notion:  “Maybe cowards and heroes are both ordinary [persons] who for a split second do something out of the ordinary”.   I personally find this a bit of a puzzle.  It certainly warrants discussion.  In fact, there are many words coming from the mouths of both sympathetic and corrupt characters in this screenplay that one could spend an entire evening examining. 

Here is another puzzler: “Some men [or women] are not meant to be heroes and some heroes cannot become men [or women]”, apparently too busy making one sacrifice or another or thriving upon life-or-death risk.  This kind of dialogue is typical of Conrad’s fiction.  He is both mysterious and intellectual.  Accordingly the movie is both an action spectacle and a meditation upon the behavior of the human mind and heart.  It tackles not only the subjects of courage and cowardice but of humility and atonement.  And in Conrad’s world the evil persons portrayed know the weaknesses of their enemies and play upon them; there is as much psychological combat at moments of confrontation as there is armed conflict.  

Speaking in purely cinematic terms, the picture’s stereophonic soundtrack and photography are quite lovely.  The imagery and the editing are of the finest caliber, as is the score.  There is also some beautiful choreography engaged in by the natives that my wife and I found most fascinating and entertaining.  Many including myself are still puzzling over the film’s weak reception at the time of its first release a half century ago.  I think it would prove a worthy rediscovery.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Monday, September 26, 2016

The Year of the Refugee (Essay by Bob Racine)



The sea was as indifferent to human suffering as it had always been.  All it provided for the body washed ashore was a stretch of sand.  It could have been a beached whale or a diseased fish or even a seagull struck down in flight.  The sight was bizarre; it looked as if that sea had no room for it, that it had decided as a thoughtless matter of course to spew it from its depths and leave it for vultures of the air to have a feast, as if it cared a whit for the survival of even those predators.  The photograph was taken from a medium range position, the forehead turned in the direction of the camera, the face snuggled into the chest so far that the countenance could not be distinguished.  Only the size and clothing of the body revealed that it belonged to that of a male child of somewhere between six and ten years in age.  The beach was otherwise devoid of any human traffic.

Whose progeny is he?  And how did parent and offspring become separated?  Were his adult companions aboard the leaky, fragile boat also fatalities of the disaster that claimed the child’s life or was he snatched by a capricious wave from the loving arms meant to protect him?  How many were on the makeshift vessel? 

If you stare at the picture long enough you begin to imagine that the child is only sleeping, perhaps an afternoon nap.  I want to shout through the frame for him to wake up, to stretch himself and stand on his feet.  I want to ask him where he lives and suggest to him that he go home where parents are waiting for his return, where love and caring wait to shelter him and bestow upon him again their warmth and protectiveness.  Go home, little one, and find a softer more snuggly bed on which to lie and dream your dreams.  If your family is too far away for walking, someone to be sure would be willing to give you a ride, maybe the photographer who took your picture.  I would, if I were not on the other side of the world.
 
In the days following my first viewing of the photograph I have been catching glimpses of elementary school age children making their way to and from school, climbing aboard or off the school bus or playing in my neighborhood, totally abandoned to their games and oblivious to world events.  The music they make has been momentarily soothing to a soul stung by the nightmare of displacement and persecution.  But that photograph keeps popping up in my head and I feel careworn again for those in flight from atrocity and the immanent possibility of death.
    
So little can be known about the kid’s origin or the circumstances of the drowning; those who gathered up the body at some point after the picture was snapped must have faced the question of how these remains could be disposed of.  Was an autopsy performed?  Hardly necessary!  He had drowned for sure.  What respectful burial rites were observed and by whom?   Was there any way he could be identified and entombed along with the family that took him to sea, or is the family still surviving somewhere?        
 
The image has gone viral; it has become a larger than life symbol of the desperate migrations.  The whole world has been called upon to witness one of the singular shocks of the current refugee crisis into which all nations have been drawn in one way or another.  Are these the ones who are supposed to be our enemies?  Is shutting the door on such as these by the construction of a wall what so many are calling for?  Would the barring of them really make our country safer? 

We in our relatively safe environments have all been wondering how children such as these ever got jammed into one of those boats, how parents could bring themselves to uproot them from their former nests.  It tells us something about just how cheap and dangerous life has become for innocent people in those war torn countries, when rugged life over water becomes a more desirable option, when the cruel sea is a more attractive alternative than the terra firma from which they seek escape.  It is hard for us Americans to imagine, but the endless armada speaks most convincingly.

The independent Christian church in Columbia, Maryland, to which my wife and I belong, called Kittamaqundi Community Church, has cast its lot with those in many parts of the country who are ready to roll out the welcome mat for the thousands to whom our President has extended the invitation to find a home in the U.S.  On the evening of September 15 an assembly of caring people took place in our small sanctuary.  The meeting was called forth by what is known among us as a Focus Group, organized, instituted and led by a committed member of our congregation named Don Link.  Fifteen others have joined him to pursue the commitment.  As I understand it, it was that photograph of the lifeless corpse on that remote and lonely beach, among many others generated by the international press, that seized upon Don’s energy and imagination to initiate our church’s part in the resettling of refugees.
             
The Lutheran Social Services sent two representatives to our gathering to introduce us to their “Good Neighbor” program.  Prior to the meeting that Focus Group had been collecting materials for Welcome Kits that LLS distributes to the hundreds of refugee families they are resettling this year.  All members of our congregation were invited to attend, after the fifteen people who had joined the Focus Group had talked it up.  Our Pastor Heather Kirk-Davidoff, herself an enthused member, shared in an email to the community the following day that they had been expecting something like thirty people to be in attendance.   But no less than sixty-two showed up including many from other congregations who had caught wind of it.  It was an ecumenical gathering, including Jews, Muslims, Unitarian-Universalists, and Quakers.   Our church has entered into a “Level One” partnership with LLS, a one-year commitment to a refugee family that includes rent assistance, employment assistance, completely furnishing an apartment, providing help with clothing and food and transportation and all other things a family might need.  It is a project that is estimated to cost at least $20,000.  Pledge cards were passed out and considerable money was collected by the end of the evening, $4,825 in checks and $7,750 pledged.  And that was just a start.

I could not begin to describe to you the current and force of the excitement that permeated that meeting.  Heather started things off by reminding us that there are prominent voices in our country who are prepared to say “NO!” to these refugees.  But then she asked all of us present that if we feel inclined we should answer those voices back.  She called upon us to say a loud and decisive “YES!” to them and to say “WELCOME!”  The entire room as far as I could tell did just that; we all shouted “YES!” and “WELCOME!”
and we were then off and running.

Hanging over our heads is the cloud of worry as to whether for all our efforts we will ever lay eyes on the family for which we wait.  It is my earnest prayer that if the Republican candidate is elected, he will have grave second thoughts about turning all these suffering people away.  If the United States government were to do that, it would be a moral and humanitarian disgrace.  Of course each refugee entering our country should be thoroughly vetted upon admittance, but no one should be denied entrance simply because they come from a war torn country or because they are Muslim or any other religious persuasion.  If we did, our relations with the international community would be poisoned, perhaps beyond recovery, especially those European countries that have already commenced opening their borders and taken on the resettlement process.  They who are overwhelmed with the refugee flow would be justified in asking why we, who are not so overwhelmed and reside at a greater geographic distance, cannot do our part in the crisis.  Of course it is our hope and expectation based upon information that the Lutheran ministry has supplied that the family will reach us well before January 20, when the new President takes office.  

Finally, at our meeting, a woman named Ann Ivester, whom we have personally known for at least twenty years, put the case in the most profound and persuasive terms of all.  “Tonight, when we take a step to help a refugee family, we draw a thread of connection between our lives and theirs.  With this thread, we start re-weaving a fabric that has been torn, the fabric of human community.”  Local churches, mosques, synagogues and civic organizations all across America can do a lot to help bring this about.  There have been enough bodies of drowned children and adults floating on the seas.  2016 is the year of the refugee, and it behooves our nation to step up to the timely plate.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

45 Years (Movie Review by Bob Racine)



                             1 hr & 35 min, color, 2015
                            
Much can be conveyed in movie terms despite a minimum of dialogue!  Silence for a stretch between players can speak volumes, assuming the facial expressions and body language are vividly portrayed by an astute photographer and a skillful lighting designer.  Human countenances can tell stories if shot in appropriate close-up and imbued with the seasoned talents of choice cast members.  We in the twenty-first century have become so speed oriented in our motion pictures, so hyped on flashy scenes and mouthfuls of words and movements and explosive collisions of people and objects that I sometimes think perhaps we have lost much of our capacity to enjoy low keyed fare.
                            
“45 Years” is the kind of deceptively simple storytelling that reminds me of much of art theater film product that prevailed during the 1950s and 1960s.  The British production revolves around a retired married couple, Kate and Geoff, who undergo a quiet, subtle sea change in the weight and substance of their almost five decades of matrimony, incited by the uncovering of a secret heretofore buried amidst moldy memorabilia. 
                            
I do not know how many of you if any remember a British actress of that period by the name of Charlotte Rampling.  It has been a good half century since I had the chance to see her at work; she is what I consider the star of this film, with strong support from Tom Courtenay, whom some of you may remember from a movie of a few years back which I reviewed, “Quartet”.  (He is the tenor of the bunch drawn back into a romance with a soprano to whom he was once married and who treated him most horribly.)  I took great pleasure in watching Charlotte and Tom fill these two splendid roles, two distinguished veterans at work.
                            
A mere five days before they are to attend a party celebration of their forty-fifth anniversary conducted by friends and acquaintances, Geoff gets a letter from Switzerland informing him that the remains of his old German flame Katya, with whom he scaled the heights in the Swiss Alps fifty years ago and who fell to her death into a glacier on one of their treks, have been found, preserved in ice as she was seen at the time of the disaster.  Geoff appears at first to be only minimally concerned about the news, but over the following days and hours he begins to evidence short fits of restlessness and irritability not in character for him.  He even resorts to smoking again, something they have both quit doing long before.  He tries to enliven their English countryside dwelling by drawing Kate into a lightweight dance in their living room and afterward urging her to go to bed with him and make love, things they are not apparently in the habit of doing.  But the attempt yields quite disappointing results.  It seems quite fake in retrospect, an act of quiet desperation on the husband’s part to stabilize a marriage that probably he too fears may have suffered a mortal wound.  Then during the wee hours of the night she finds him thrashing around in their attic in search of pictures of Katya.  Visiting the attic at such an hour is also something that Geoff is not accustomed to doing. 
                            
Kate begins to observe that he is fixated upon the woman; she begins to feel threatened and a mite insecure, not to mention worried.  All this behavior on Geoff’s part is seen through her eyes, from her point of view.  We are reminded that what is not spoken can speak as disturbingly as what comes off the tongue, sometimes much more injuriously, and what one is then forced to say when pressed for the unspoken message can sound fatuous and counterfeit.
                            
The way Kate finds out just how important the young German woman was/is to her husband I will leave for the viewer to discover.  What she learns without his knowledge is like a knife in her ribs, and what she decides to do about it involves as much secrecy as Geoff has practiced over the years on her. 
                            
The pace of the film is quite slow – slow but sensitive and studied.  The imagery of the sprawling countryside seems to reinforce the aura of distance and solitude that enshrouds them.  Life in their immediate environment is itself slow, measured and deliberate in habit and form; “the rush of days” is unknown to them.  But the space between them is never dead; their minds are active, their spirits alive and as fertile as the ground on which they reside.  They never quite reach the point of quarrelsome exchange, though anger at moments simmers beneath the surface of things and in one important instance clears the air of indecision about what the next move should be.
                            
We learn that five years before, when the fortieth anniversary was to have been observed, Geoff had bypass heart surgery, which explains why they are celebrating the forty-fifth instead.  The two of them are somewhat decrepit, and in one quite honest disclosure Geoff comments: “The worst part of decrepitness is losing the purpose of things to be done”.  And in another conversation it is Kate who seems to reinforce that homemade maxim by remarking: “Funny how you forget the things in life that [once] made you happy”.  This reflection impels her forthwith to unearth some old piano music she once practiced and have a go at it.  What we hear coming off the keyboard sounds decent enough at her age to suggest that she has neglected a musical talent that once must have impressed family and friends.  It seems significant that she plays all by herself, when Geoff is not home.  The music appears in the context of the story to be her means of reassuring her heart and mind in the midst of her shattering discovery about Geoff and the woman he once loved and may still.
                            
There are two things that puzzle me about the scenario, as sensitive and well portrayed as it is.  It is obvious that they have never had children, but we are never given any suggestion as to why.  Or did Katya have something to do with that too?  We are also not informed about their chosen livelihoods before retirement.  I suppose that they were both professional people and that their careers may have made having a family close to impossible.  Maybe! 
                            
They do make it to the party, an apparently pleasant affair, with some laughter and some fond remembrances.  But Writer/Director Andrew Haigh, who has based his work on a story entitled “In Another Country” by David Constantine, shoots the scene in a most ingenious manner.  As is the custom in western society the bride and groom are the first to take to the floor to dance, and he has his camera stay with them all through the singing of their chosen ballad, right up to the second the song concludes, using a very slow zoom shot that draws Kate’s face into gradual close-up, the other dancers including Geoff fading from sight.  What happens in a split second after the music ceases and just before the movie ends underscores again how strong the body and face without accompanying words can speak. 
                            
How does the crisis get resolved, or does it?  The tale signifies with great care the manner in which unwritten bargains and contracts become established between the parties to a marriage and point the way to an uncertain future.  Viewers under fifty may be at a loss as to how to relate to the film, but older adults should connect with it, especially those who have tied the marital knot and have many years with their spouses behind them. 


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.