I Do (Prête-moi ta main) -- meddling and marriage

Director: Eric Lartigau, 2006

The staple of the romantic comedy is the happily single bachelor put into a position where permanent relationship looms, threatening his carefree ways. I Do takes this formula and meddles with it a little.

When we first meet Luis (Alain Chabat), he's a young man in the 70s with wild hair and wildly in love. But he is surrounded by his mother Genevieve (Bernadette Lafont), the strong-willed widow and matriarch of the family, and five sisters. Overbearing, they insult his girlfriend and scare her away. In the process, Luis' heart is scarred. He had eyes only for his girl and she is gone. But it is his nose that reminds him of her scent. And developing a fragrance to remember her, he discovers his career: La Nez. He is the nose, the designer in a perfume company.

Cut ahead to present day, Luis is in his early 40s. He lives in his own bachelor pad apartment, where he can enjoy casual sex with one-night stands and no familial repercussions. Yet his laundry is handled by his mom and sisters, and he gets meals there when he wants. In short, he is pampered.

When this "G6" counsel of women suddenly decide it is time for Luis to grow up and get married, his life takes a decidedly downward turn. The amusing montage of bad blind dates arranged for him by his family is reminscent of that in Arranged, but here Luis is far more blunt with his needs and desires.

Realizing that his family will not give in until he has settled down, Luis hatches a perfect plan to get them off his back. He will get married to a "perfect woman" and then be stood up at the altar. In this way, he can almost get married yet stay single and gain lifelong sympathy from the mother and sisters. Of course, this would not be a comedy if the plan played out perfectly.

The perfect woman comes along in the form of Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the sister of his best friend. She has moved to the city and is in need of a job. When he offers to hire her she strikes a hard bargain but the contract is agreed. These two have appeared together before, in The Science of Sleep, and they play well here. Her businesslike approach covers a different family need. Both want something from the other, yet neither desires any commitment. It is simply a commercial transaction.

Different parts of this premise have appeared in earlier films over the years. Richard Gere hired Julia Roberts to be his escort 20 years ago in Pretty Woman. Kate Hudson tried to show How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Here these combine as a hiring and firing of a bride. And of course, this focus on my best friend's sister's wedding brings to mind Julia Roberts again in My Best Friend's Wedding.

Two moral issues emerge from this film. First, there is the concept of meddling. What gave Luis' mother or sisters' the right to get involved in his life? Are they better able to decide what is best for him than he is? The apostle Paul addresses the problem of meddling in two of his letters. To his young pastor friend Timothy, he writes (about widows): "not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to." (1 Tim. 5:13) These young women who have nothing better to do start meddling in the lives of others. To the church at Thessalonica, Paul warns: "We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies" (2 Thess. 3:11). Meddling is even compared to murder in 1 Pet. 4:15: "If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler."

We might feel the urge to play matchmaker for our friends or single relatives, but is that really our place? Surely it is better for us to give them space to make their own decisions. If they are adults, they are responsible for their own actions. They have their own lives to live. We can offer some insight, even some wisdom. But to press beyond this is to meddle and become a busybody.

The second moral issue is that of casual sex apart from marriage. This shows up in most movies these days. But it is a predominant theme here, since Luis wants to avoid commitment. He is focused on externals, the looks of a woman, the size of her breasts, the smell of her scent. But he cares less about her deeper character qualities. After all, he wants passion, not permanence. Relationships are superficial for him. Yet, this causes great damage to the soul. We are more than animals. We are complex physical, emotional and spiritual beings created to enjoy marital intimacy and sexual union (Gen. 2:24). Marriage may not be for everyone. Even Paul affirms this (1 Cor. 7:8). But sex is to be cherished and enjoyed in the marriage bed (Heb. 13:4). Sex while single diminishes the sanctity of this physical union while making us thinner, weaker people. This is not a message that is welcome today. In contrast, when we find the perfect marriage partner, we help each other become deeper, stronger, more loving people.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Duplicity -- success and trust

Director: Tony Gilroy, 2009.

After his debut film, Michael Clayton, Gilroy comes back with a stronger, smarter, brighter movie. Both deal with multinational conglomerates, but Duplicity has more pizazz. Perhaps it's the star power of Julia Roberts, or the chemistry between Roberts and Clive Owen. It helps that the screenplay is tight and engaging. Gilroy wrote it himself. And he has written some dandies, including the fabulous Bourne movie trilogy.

Owen plays Ray Koval, an MI6 spy while Roberts is Claire Stanwick, a CIA operative. They meet at a cocktail party in the middle east. His attraction to her leads to the bedroom, naturally. Like James Bond, he gets the best looking babe. But he gets more than he bargained for -- a mickey finn. He gets the long sleep, she gets his secret documents.

Jump ahead several years and neither are working for governments any longer. Now they are corporate spies. That pays much better than the bureaucrats, though the thrills may be somewhat diminished. When they meet, their past catches up with them. Their mutual distaste mirrors that of the two corporate CEOs pitted against one another.

Indeed, the opening scene sets the tone well. Sitting on the tarmac of a small airport are two company jets, from two rival pharmaceutical companies, facing each other. When Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti, Sideways) sees his arch-nemesis Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton), something snaps. They get into a yelling, shoving, and wrestling match. There is no love lost between these two.

Both are struggling to find the next big drug. Their need for success is matched only by their need for control. Like the drugs they manufacture, success is their drug of choice. And to achieve this, control is their means.

How do we approach success in our lives, especially our professional careers? Is it a goal that must be attained at any cost, as it is here? If so, the truth will shatter your illusion. It is not a worthy goal. Success, like the drugs themselves, gives a short-lasting hit. After the glow of the achievements dims, we are left with a rusty trophy and a higher goal for our next fix. Such a drug will cost us too much; it will cost us our families, perhaps even our souls.

True success is measured in healthy balance of work and play; it is measured in healthy relationships, with family and friends, even coworkers. True success is measured in pleasing God (1 Thess. 2:4), obeying him and glorifying him (1 Cor. 10:31). These will bring lasting rewards, crowns that will not fade with time but will endure throughout eternity (1 Pet. 5:4).

If control is the means for Tully's success, the means for our spiritual success is service. As we serve those around us, we build them up and our relationships grow stronger. We serve God, and in serving him we minister to others. More than service, love is central. When we love God and then our neighbor (Lk. 10:27), we are pouring ourself into an enduring endeavour. Success will surely follow.

Gilroy slyly brings us new information on the love-hate relationship between Ray and Claire. Employing a clever multi-screen view to segue between the past and present, he shows us there is more to this than we first saw. And as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that they have to trust each other and their team to make their spying and stealing work. But even as this emerges, it seems that the different players are playing each other, so that it is unclear who is on whose side. A scam is happening, but what scam?

This brings us to trust and love. Trust is in short supply here. Can spies really trust? Who do they trust? Certainly, Ray and Claire must trust each other if there is true love between them. But is there this love? For us, if we love someone we need to trust enough to let them see who we really are. We keep our true self hidden most of the time in pursuit of success, but the woman we sleep with needs to know her husband. Ray puts his finger on this when he says to Claire, "I look at you, and I think, 'That woman . . . that woman knows who I am and loves me anyway.' " What is necessary in a human love relationship is infinitely more relevant with God.

Jesus is the only person who completely and absolutely knows us, warts and all. And he loves us anyway. It does not matter what you have done, where you have been. He does not hold that against you. He simply loves you and wants you to love him back. He stands at the door waiting for you to open and let him in (Rev. 3:20). No one else offers that kind of unconditonal acceptance and love. After all, isn't that we what we all really want?

Duplicity offers a sharp picture of deceit and double-dealing. It takes us on a merry journey that requires keen observation to follow the trickery and twists. Yet, it lands on the runway of trust and stops at the gate of unconditional love offered by Jesus, who said he was the gate (Jn. 10:7). Will you exit the plane and enter into his love, or will you look for your own form of human success and acceptance like the two CEOs?

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Finding Neverland -- imagination and faith

Director: Marc Forster, 2004.

"Grow up." "Act your age." "Quit being a kid." "Be a man." How many times have we heard people tell us one of these? Or maybe we have used them on our kids. They sound so mature and logical. But they fly in the face of the premise of this movie.

Finding Neverland takes us behind the scenes of "Peter Pan," telling the story that led to that play's creation. Though it is based on real life, some of the events are more imaginative or modified, such as the conflating of five Llewelyn Davies children into four. But surely a movie that extols imagination can be cut some inventive slack.

Johnny Depp (Chocolat) plays James M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright, with a marvelous brogue and a genuine sense of wonder. Coming off an opening night flop, Barrie is keen to create a play that will be a hit. But he has writer's block. His beautiful but distant wife Mary (Radha Mitchell) is no help. There is little love shared between the two. For them, appearance and proper behavior is paramount. After all, this is 1903 London, barely post-Victorian.

Enter Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her brood of kids. When Barrie is walking his dog in a London park, he meets Peter (Freddie Highmore), one of her sons. Peter and Barrie are foils to one another, at the very heart of the film. When Barrie invites Sylvia and her sons to sit and watch him put on a show, he entreats them to activate their childlike imaginations and turn his dog, Porthos, into a dancing bear. The initial interchange between Peter and Barrie set the tone for the film and defines a key theme.

When Peter says cynically, reclining on the green grass, "This is absurd. It's just a dog," Barrie retorts,"Just a dog? Just?" Offended, Barrie addresses his dog first and then Peter:

Porthos, don't listen! Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, 'He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man,' or 'That's not a diamond, it's just a rock.' Just.

Peter has suffered the loss of his father. (In real life, his father was alive when Barrie met them, but his death makes for a better narrative.) He has not processed his grief, and is not ready to embrace dreams that are fragile. He does not want them dashed, as were all his dreams for enjoying time with his dad.

How often do we quash other's dreams with this little word "just." We may put down our kids' goals and aspirations, suggesting they "be real" yet in the process put to death their imagination. Death by little words. Maybe we do this to ourselves with negative self-talk. "I am just a blog-writer," I might say. What I really want is to be an author, writing books that people enjoy and are transformed by. Yet that little word "just" diminishes my hopes and dreams until I settle for what is, instead of aspiring for what could be. Just. Jesus said with faith even as tiny as a mustard seed, as small as could be imagined, nothing would be impossible (Matt. 17:20).

Craig Detweiler, in his excellent book "Into the Dark," quotes another of Barrie's line from this early scene which lays out the film's central thesis: " 'With those eyes, my bonnie lad, I'm afraid you'll never see it. However, with a wee bit of imagination, I can turn around right now and see the great bear, Porthos.' Producer Richard Gladstein says, 'That line is really the quintessential part of the movie. . . . It's really about giving a child back his childhood." Imagining vs settling, growing up vs staying childlike, believing vs disbelieving, these are the antithetical pairs that focus the movie.

As Barrie develops a friendship with the Llewelyn Davies family, he grows more child-like even as Peter stoically remains adult-like. To almost each scene with the boys Barrie brings toys for his imaginative games. Sometimes he is a pirate taking captives, other times he is an Indian shooting cowboys. Yet as he grows closer to them, he grows more distant from his wife. And he draws the ire of Sylvia's pragmatic mother (Julie Christie). She is worried about how the appearance of a grown man acting like a child around a widow can impact the social and marital prospects, rather than being concerned for the boys' well-being. Straitlaced, she is great at social conformity and adept at quashing many dreams.

The whole concept of believing is highlighted in two other scenes. First, we see Barrie trying to show the boys how to fly a kite. When Michael, the youngest, tries the first time he fails and the other boys offer dream-quashing comments, "Oh, I told you this wasn't going to work!" and "I don't think he's fast enough." But the child-like Barrie speaks words of encouragement, calling for faith, "It's not going to work if no one believes in him!" Faith is what they needed.

Then, toward the end of the film, when Sylvia lies ill in bed, Barrie uncharacteristically tells her, "They can see it, you know. You can't go on just pretending." (There's that just word again.) But she refutes this with passion: "Just pretending? You brought pretending into this family, James. You showed us we can change things by simply believing them to be different." And in a closing scene with Peter, Barrie pleads with the boy, "Just believe." And in a moment of magic that will cut through the most hardened heart, Peter finally believes, and lets his grief emerge with a single tear. The man has accepted responsibility and the boy has become a child.

Jesus has called us to become like little children if we wish to enter into his kingdom (Matt. 18:3). As we give up our own maturity and wisdom and once more look at life with eyes that can see the wonder of the dew drop on the rose petal or the beauty of the sunset over the Pacific, we learn to play again. We learn to laugh again. We can dream big dreams again. We can become a writer or an astronaut, a pro sports player or an actor.

Barrie's playing with the boys releases his own imagination. And from this emerges the ground-breaking concept of a playful play. At the time, plays were serious, not fantastic. But, drawing heavily from his times with the Llewelyn Davis family, he creates "Peter Pan," the story of a boy who would not grow up, and who goes to Neverland, the mythical place where we never grow old. And this would be his magnum opus.

The contrast between growing up and staying childlike is captured in two crucial scenes. In one, George, another of the boys, realizes his mother is seriously ill. Watching his reaction, Barrie comments, "Magnificent. The boy is gone. In the last 30 seconds . . . you became a grown-up." Is this a compliment or a put-down? In perhaps the most poignant scene, Barrie finally opens up about Neverland. He has never told this to anyone, but he recounts to Sylvia how the death of his younger brother, when he himself was a child, traumatized his mother and left him in a perpetual child-like state. Evan as an adult, he has retreated from his responsibilities. He has continued to be a child. What a contrast to Peter, and even to George, two young boys who behave like middle-aged men.

Jesus once said if we have faith we can move mountains (Matt. 21:21). We have limited our faith with our adult reasoning. But if faith can save a man destined for hell (Eph. 2:8), if that faith can provide forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:14), all our sins past, present and future (Col. 2:13), that same faith can make us realize dreams we were too afraid even to tell our friends. It's time to give up growing up. It's time to play like a child. It's time to look at life through the eyes of our imaginations.

As nostalgic and mushy as it seems, Finding Neverland is a beautiful film, giving testament to the wonder of a child's imagination. And it points us to faith in a God who can change things.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Blood Simple -- guarantees, isolation and tests

Director: Joel Coen, 1984.

A quarter century ago a pair of fresh young film-makers hit the scene. They were the brothers Coen. This was their first film, but it contains seeds of the greatness that was to come, with foreshadowings of both Fargo and their Best Picture Oscar, No Country for Old Men.

Like No Country, Blood Simple is set in Texas. But where the later film used the harsh landscape almost as a character, here is is used simply as a backdrop for a film noir. Like any good noir, the private eye provides voice-over narration. Well, at least for the opening scene, but that's all that's needed to provide context for what is about to unfold:

The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own.

Two major themes emerge from this initial soliloquy: guarantees and isolation.

Like most film noir, the premise is clear: cuckolded husband hires a man to kill his wife. But the characters are complex: a cheating wife and a jealous husband, a committed lover and a jaded detective.

When Marty (Dan Hedaya) finds out that his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is sleeping with his employee Ray (John Getz), he solicits the private eye who discovered the adulterous pair in the act, Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh), to murder them both. A simple, if sinful, proposition, yet Marty doesn't count on the depths of deceit of the detective, whose greed outstrips his guile. Double-cross follows double-cross until it is unclear whose heart is the coldest.

Of the four main characters, Visser is the simplest and the wickedest. Contrary to film noir norms, this private detective is no good guy. He is not even gray and shadowy. He is cold and cunning, manipulating and malevolent. Although he prefers to stay within the law, he has no conscience about crossing the line if the price is right. Honor and honesty are words absent from his phrasebook. The Coens even portray his evil with careful camera work that focuses on the sweat that slowly slides down his face and the flies that alight on his head. The diseases that the flies may carry are nothing compared to the wickedness that he harbors in his heart. This, combined with a satanic laugh, makes Visser a vile villain.

Since Marty is the husband wronged, he might be the sympathetic hero. But he is loud and obnoxious, and a would-be murderer. He has no charm, no heart, only a love of money. He wants his pound of flesh. He wants his guarantees. But, "nothin' comes with a guarantee," and Marty finds out first-hand how true this is in painful and humiliating ways.

Speaking of guarantees, Benjamin Franklin once said, "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Even Jesus needed to pay taxes when he walked the earth, though he came up with the money in a miraculous manner (Matt. 17:27). And Jesus faced death, an ignominious penal death by crucifixion. The penalty, though, was not his but ours. Jesus died on our behalf to take the punishment for our sins, that we might find forgiveness and freedom to live in him (Eph. 1:7). Visser was wrong; life comes with a guarantee. We face a choice with two guaranteed outcomes: new life in Jesus (Matt. 25:34) or separation from God apart from him (Matt. 25:41, 46).

Unlike Marty, Abby is the real protagonist in this dark film. Though she sets the wheels in motion with her infidelities, she remains in the dark through most of the narrative. Separated from Marty, when Ray becomes guilt-crazed in a Macbethian manner, Abby realizes she has no one to turn to. She is isolated, on her own. And she does not really know what is happening around her.

Abby may be alone, but we have a guarantee of community and fellowship with Jesus. When we trust him, we are brought into his family as children of God (). Moreover, we become members of the body of Christ, the church universal, even if we are not attending a local church. Best of all, Jesus promises never to leave us or forsake us (). Others might walk away, leaving us like Abby to face our enemies apart from other people. But Jesus will always be with us.

And then there's Ray. When we first meet Ray he seems just a small-town hick, harmless enough. But the way of the adultress is death, as Proverbs says (Prov. 2:16-19). His choices cause him to slide slowly down the slippery slope. But it his love, misplaced though it may be, that drives him there. Visser, the film's anti-conscience, speaks to Marty in one scene about getting our hands dirty. "That's the test, ain't it? Test of true love." Ray in his ignorance misreads the signs and seeks to save his "true love" Abby by getting his hands down and dirty. But at what cost.

Jesus got his hands dirty for us. He humbled himself by clothing his godness in humanity (Phil. 2:6-7). Then he had his hands pierced, nailed to the rough wood of a cross of execution (Acts 2:23). He died to save his true love, humanity; you and me. What we could not do, he did for us. And unlike Ray, Jesus was able to complete his mission, saving us in his love. Our life comes through Jesus' blood simple.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs