Reflection on choices

I love movies- the whole idea of pictures moving to tell a story as a product of a collaboration of artists, artisans, and journeyman laborers pooling their considerable talents and agreeing on a vision they can share. I saw four (4 !!) during the Thanksgiving break- two on Netflix and two at the theaters.  Three were examples of that collaborative effort and one failed based on the choices that were made.

The three joys were Ang Lee's Life of Pi,  and Spielberg's  Lincoln in theaters with stunning visions and choices - not all of them worked but a little like a comedian's monologue where the jokes that fail are forgotten in the joy of laughing at the jokes that work. These movies, the images, the questions,  the interactions between actors, they all stayed stayed on in my mind long after the lights had come up. I will be using scenes from these pieces of art for a long time to come as I reflect on scripture for sermons.

Still of Gérard Lanvin, Gilles Lellouche and Claire Pérot in Point Blank

On Netflix Point Blank :This is no brilliant great movie that will last for all time- it is pure hard work by some people  who trusted each other to create a roller coaster ride thriller. Not great art but good film making so that you care about the characters while you are being thrilled by the work. 

The one miss was Main Street and it had everything going for it- topical story about a community in decline searching for a solution, it is set in Durham, NC, a city which I knew well once upon a time, a neat twist of comparison of the poison of tobacco which built the town and the new poison of Hazardous Waste that promises to rebuild the town -- pick your "poison de jour"-  Horton Foote writing the screen play, a world class stage director, John Doyle, a brilliant cast who do fine acting Colin Firth, Ellen Burstyn, Orland Bloom, Patricia Clarkson, Amber Tamblyn  -- how could it go wrong?  Well - the director made choices and each actor had good scenes to strut their stuff - and they did- the problem was the script was like a stage play with "acting class" written all over them and each actor seemed to act independently of each other. The plot seemed to have gaps which you could drive a semi through-- indeed the wreck of the fleet of trucks carrying hazardous waste seems like a perfect icon of the movie. The camera work was restrained in order to give the actors room but it looked as if the director lost interest in telling the story and more in giving his actors their free rein. By the end of the movie with the characters telegraphing their changes in their lives- I thought that the director had had enough and wrapped it up since his money had run out.


 What are the kind of choices we make that create art with others by giving our best give our best to create a community vision that invites others to join in? I think of a film as a metaphor for the church; lots of good and talented people but are we uniting around a shared vision, are we giving our best, do we all participate in living the underlying story in our lives or are we just play acting our roles?