Don't look at the camera

This morning I did my walk with Yoda and there was a shooting star and the sounds of a dog cornering a fox with the fox making distress and territory combination calls in response. Would that not be enough for a meditation? Except my mind was focused in on a movie I had seen last night. It was a Finnish Movie called The Man With No Past. Now I have not seen many (or any other) Finnish movies so I cannot tell if this is typical but I have seen many Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Russian movies  and this movie by Aki Kaurismäki was different. It reminded me of handheld indie movies with pick up casts of people off the street who are given instructions like "Just say the lines, don't act, just be natural, don't think, and ABOVE ALL DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA!


It was nominated for an Academy award in 2002 for Foreign language film and it is an ironic comedy on an amnesiac finding his way. There some good moments but no big laughs and what we get is a story that was intriguing and off center where people smoke a lot and are quasi depressed.  The result  is like a Jim Jarmusch film (Down by Law and Broken Flowers) in fact Jarmusch placed his Night on Earth in Helsinki using some of Kaurismäki's actors. The acting takes a bit of getting used to  and it is sometimes reminiscent of high school student plays. You remember under-rehearsed High school plays? They are the ones where the kids have memorized the lines but just say the line and then wait until their turn for a line comes up. They don't listen, there is no tension between the characters only dead space, no hint of an internal dialogue behind the lines, no real hint that they are reacting to the other person; only the hitting of the spot and reciting the lines. There was even one scene where one character seems to be looking at a newspaper while he is giving his lines which reminds of Marlon Brando's last movies when he used to not memorize his lines and had them placed on the backs of cantaloupes and other props. And the way the actors stood or walked; they looked as if they were self consciously afraid the whole world was watching and they tried to look natural but their bodies were all stiff as if they wanted to get the whole thing over with.


I was thinking about how we approach God. I look at some of my own experiences at prayer where I just memorized the lines for a performance before God  where my body was all stiff and self-conscious, there is little internal dialogue before I said the lines, no listening only the dead space before the next line that comes up before I say amen and call the curtain down until the next performance..I look back at them and see the comedy and the tragedy of wasted time where I was so self conscious of  of God judging my performance. The only way out of it to enter into an awareness that God loves me and does not judge me on my performance but loves me unreservedly and calls me to forget the lines,  be aware of the space between us  and listen, listen, listen.

Life is not a performance before a critic or even a rehearsal; if it were you would have gotten better lines.